ff answer.

"Was that you I heard crying on me when we were running for the train?"

"Ay. I thought ye had forgot about your kist."

"No fear," said Dickson. "I'm no' likely to forget my auntie's scones."

He laughed pleasantly and then turned to the bagman. Thereafter the
compartment hummed with the technicalities of the grocery trade. He
exerted himself to draw out his companion, to have him refer to the
great firm of D. McCunn, so that the innkeeper might be ashamed of his
suspicions. What nonsense to imagine that a noted and wealthy Glasgow
merchant--the bagman's tone was almost reverential--would concern
himself with the affairs of a forgotten village and a tumble-down house!

Presently the train drew up at Kirkmichael station. The woman
descended, and Dobson, after making sure that no one else meant to
follow her example, also left the carriage. A porter was shouting:
"Fast train to Glasgow--Glasgow next stop." Dickson watched the
innkeeper shoulder his way through the crowd in the direction of the
booking office. "He's off to send a telegram," he decided. "There'll
be trouble waiting for me at the other end."

When the train moved on he found himself disinclined for further talk.
He had suddenly become meditative, and curled up in a corner with his
head hard against the window pane, watching the wet fields and
glistening roads as they slipped past. He had his plans made for his
conduct at Glasgow, but, Lord! how he loathed the whole business! Last
night he had had a kind of gusto in his desire to circumvent villainy;
at Dalquharter station he had enjoyed a momentary sense of triumph; now
he felt very small, lonely, and forlorn. Only one thought far at the
back of his mind cropped up now and then to give him comfort. He was
entering on the last lap. Once get this detestable errand done and he
would be a free man, free to go back to the kindly humdrum life from
which he should never have strayed. Never again, he vowed, never again.
Rather would he spend the rest of his days in hydropathics than come
within the pale of such horrible adventures. Romance, forsooth! This
was not the mild goddess he had sought, but an awful harpy who battened
on the souls of men.

He had some bad minutes as the train passed through the suburbs and
along the grimy embankment by which the southern lines enter the city.
But as it rumbled over the river bridge and slowed down before the
terminus his vitality suddenly re