ake a keeper of him. When you have fattened him up a bit,
teach him to feed the dogs. When he gets bigger, he can clean the guns."

"I will let no man or boy clean the guns for you but myself, Sir Keith,"
the old man said, quite simply, and without a shadow of disrespect, "I
will hef no risks of the kind."

"Very well, then; but go and get the boy, and make him at home as much
as you can. Feed him up."

"Who is it, Keith?" his cousin said, "that you are speaking of as if he
was a sheep or a calf?"

"Faith," said he, laughing, "if the philanthropists heard of it, they
would prosecute me for slave-stealing. I bought the boy--for a
sovereign."

"I think you have made a bad bargain, Keith," his mother said; but she
was quite prepared to hear of some absurd whim of his.

"Well," said he, "I was going into Trafalgar Square, where the National
Gallery of pictures is, mother, and there is a cab-stand in the street,
and there was a cabman standing there, munching at a lump of dry bread
that he cut with a jack-knife. I never saw a cabman do that before; I
should have been less surprised if he had been having a chicken and a
bottle of port. However, in front of this big cabman this little chap I
have brought with me was standing; quite in rags; no shoes on his feet,
no cap on his wild hair; and he was looking fixedly at the big lump of
bread. I never saw any animal look so starved and so hungry; his eyes
were quite glazed with the fascination of seeing the man ploughing away
at this lump of loaf. And I never saw any child so thin. His hands were
like the claws of a bird; and his trousers were short and torn so that
you could see his legs were like two pipe-stems. At last the cabman saw
him. 'Get out o' the way,' says he. The little chap slunk off,
frightened, I suppose. Then the man changed his mind. 'Come here,' says
he. But the little chap was frightened, and wouldn't come back; so he
went after him, and thrust the loaf into his hand, and bade him be off.
I can tell you, the way he went into that loaf was very fine to see. It
was like a weasel at the neck of a rabbit. It was like an otter at the
back of a salmon. And that was how I made his acquaintance," Macleod
added, carelessly.

"But you have not told us why you brought him up here," his mother said.

"Oh," said he, with a sort of laugh, "I was looking at him, and I
wondered whether Highland mutton and Highland air would make any
difference in the wretched little sk