his time the tune was "Macgregors' Gathering," and the
sound of it stirred the grimy lips of a man outside who was delivering
coals--himself a Macgregor--to follow suit. Mr McCunn was a very
fountain of music that morning.

Tibby, the aged maid, had his newspaper and letters waiting by his
plate, and a dish of ham and eggs frizzling near the fire. He fell to
ravenously but still musingly, and he had reached the stage of scones
and jam before he glanced at his correspondence. There was a letter
from his wife now holidaying at the Neuk Hydropathic. She reported that
her health was improving, and that she had met various people who had
known somebody else whom she had once known herself. Mr. McCunn read
the dutiful pages and smiled. "Mamma's enjoying herself fine," he
observed to the teapot. He knew that for his wife the earthly paradise
was a hydropathic, where she put on her afternoon dress and every jewel
she possessed when she rose in the morning, ate large meals of which
the novelty atoned for the nastiness, and collected an immense casual
acquaintance, with whom she discussed ailments, ministers, sudden
deaths, and the intricate genealogies of her class. For his part he
rancorously hated hydropathics, having once spent a black week under
the roof of one in his wife's company. He detested the food, the
Turkish baths (he had a passionate aversion to baring his body before
strangers), the inability to find anything to do and the compulsion to
endless small talk. A thought flitted over his mind which he was too
loyal to formulate. Once he and his wife had had similar likings, but
they had taken different roads since their child died. Janet! He saw
again--he was never quite free from the sight--the solemn little
white-frocked girl who had died long ago in the Spring.

It may have been the thought of the Neuk Hydropathic, or more likely
the thin clean scent of the daffodils with which Tibby had decked the
table, but long ere breakfast was finished the Great Plan had ceased to
be an airy vision and become a sober well-masoned structure. Mr.
McCunn--I may confess it at the start--was an incurable romantic.

He had had a humdrum life since the day when he had first entered his
uncle's shop with the hope of some day succeeding that honest grocer;
and his feet had never strayed a yard from his sober rut. But his mind,
like the Dying Gladiator's, had been far away. As a boy he had voyaged
among books, and they had g