e sharper and fiercer than of yore.
"My father's rank will be good enough for me, but ye will call me Dan
McBride and naething else. Major I was in the Low Countries, and the
warrant's in my saddle-bags," says he. "Wae's me, for I've lost that,
horse and all."

But I had a word to say to that.

"The horse will be sleeping in the stable," said I, "and I will be the
man that's put him there," and told him about the strange horse.

"Yon crater, Dol Beag, didna just dee," says he after a while.

"Nor a drop out of his lug," says I, "if ye will be overlooking a
crooked back. I sent ye that word with the heathen."

"The heathen--the skemp--yon was the last o' the heathen--hilt or hair
o' him that I saw, and me mixed up wi' daftlike wars--it was a packet
that reached me--in Dantzig," says he, "after lying a year, frae some
sensible wench calling hersel' Helen Stockdale. . . ."

I was dumb at that, but I was remembering the lass asking of the Scot
that took the Pagan to the mouth of the Rouen river. "Ay, a priest
gave the packet to a Scots friend o' mine in Rouen, and then it came to
me at a tavern in Dantzig. I didna bide long there. I was landed wi'
the smugglers at Fowey," says he, "and McNeilage put me ashore last
night at the Point and was to leave word for ye. It was a thought
gruesome here," says he, "wi' McAllan and the dog among the bones ben
there--deid? Ay, deid twenty years, Hamish, by the look o' things.
Tell me about Belle," said he, "Belle and the boy, Hamish. The lass
that wrote had a great word o' the boy, and she wanted me hame. I am
not sure why--weemen are such droll . . . Is she religious?" says he.

"Ye'll be seeing," says I.

And then again, "I had to have a crack wi' ye, Hamish, before I could
be doing anything; it's no' canny coming in on folk after a matter o'
twenty years."

All that night we sat before a fire with no other light, and many a
time I would be thinking of the Killer dying in there in the dark, and
the dog beside him; the Nameless Man was not in Dan's mind, but the
length of the night.

"Belle and the boy--'a likely lad,' ye say. Hoch, he'll come hame,
Hamish, never fear--the lasses will be taking him hame at his age."

And when we were stretched before the red glow of the fire he would
still be at the talking, and the last I am minding was his voice.

"I will have lain beside the fire on the battlefield and seen the eyes
o' the wolves glowering through the lowes