en you'll load up your car with your folk, and come down the hill to
Dalquharter. There'll be a laddie, or maybe more than one, waiting for
you on this side the village to give you instructions. Take your orders
from them. If it's a red-haired ruffian called Dougal you'll be wise
to heed what he says, for he has a grand head for battles."

Five minutes later Dickson was pursuing a quavering course like a snipe
down the avenue. He was a miserable performer on a bicycle. Not for
twenty years had he bestridden one, and he did not understand such new
devices as free-wheels and change of gears. The mounting had been the
worst part, and it had only been achieved by the help of a rockery. He
had begun by cutting into two flower-beds, and missing a birch tree by
inches. But he clung on desperately, well knowing that if he fell off
it would be hard to remount, and at length he gained the avenue. When
he passed the lodge gates he was riding fairly straight, and when he
turned off the Ayr highway to the side road that led to Dalquharter he
was more or less master of his machine.

He crossed the Garple by an ancient hunch-backed bridge, observing even
in his absorption with the handle-bars that the stream was in roaring
spate. He wrestled up the further hill with aching calf-muscles, and
got to the top just before his strength gave out. Then as the road
turned seaward he had the slope with him, and enjoyed some respite. It
was no case for putting up his feet, for the gale was blowing hard on
his right cheek, but the downward grade enabled him to keep his course
with little exertion. His anxiety to get back to the scene of action
was for the moment appeased, since he knew he was making as good speed
as the weather allowed, so he had leisure for thought.

But the mind of this preposterous being was not on the business before
him. He dallied with irrelevant things--with the problems of youth and
love. He was beginning to be very nervous about Heritage, not as the
solitary garrison of the old Tower, but as the lover of Saskia. That
everybody should be in love with her appeared to him only proper, for
he had never met her like, and assumed that it did not exist. The
desire of the moth for the star seemed to him a reasonable thing, since
hopeless loyalty and unrequited passion were the eternal stock-in-trade
of romance. He wished he were twenty-five himself to have the chance
of indulging in such sentimentality for such a l