fellow would deliberately hand the whole thing over to
his friend, as you have been doing all day. And I suppose bad weather is
as bad elsewhere as it is here."

Macleod was carelessly filling his pipe, and obviously thinking of
something very different.

"Man, Ogilvie," he said, in a burst of confidence, "I never knew before
how fearfully lonely a life we lead here. If we were out on one of the
Treshanish Islands, with nothing round us but skarts and gulls, we could
scarcely be lonelier. And I have been thinking all the morning what this
must look like to you."

He glanced round--at the sombre browns and greens of the solitary
moorland, at the black rocks jutting out here and there from the scant
grass, at the silent and gloomy hills and the overhanging clouds.

"I have been thinking of the beautiful places we saw in London, and the
crowds of people, the constant change, and amusement, and life. And I
shouldn't wonder if you packed up your traps to-morrow morning and
fled."

"My dear boy," observed Mr. Ogilvie, confidently, "you are giving me
credit for a vast amount of sentiment. I haven't got it. I don't know
what it is. But I know when I am jolly well off. I know when I am in
good quarters, with good shooting, and with a good sort of chap to go
about with. As for London--bah! I rather think you got your eyes dazzled
for a minute, Macleod. You weren't long enough there to find it out. And
wouldn't you get precious tired of big dinners, and garden-parties, and
all that stuff, after a time? Macleod, do you mean to tell me you ever
saw anything at Lady Beauregard's as fine as _that?_"

And he pointed to a goodly show of birds, with a hare or two, that Sandy
had taken out of the bag, so as to count them.

"Of course," said this wise young man, "there is one case in which that
London life is all very well. If a man is awful spoons on a girl, then,
of course, he can trot after her from house to house, and walk his feet
off in the Park. I remember a fellow saying a very clever thing about
the reasons that took a man into society. What was it, now? Let me see.
It was either to look out for a wife, or--or----"

Mr. Ogilvie was trying to recollect the epigram and to light a wax match
at the same time, and he failed in both.

"Well," said he, "I won't spoil it; but don't you believe that any one
you met in London wouldn't be precious glad to change places with us at
this moment?"

Any one? What was the situation? P