ed not so much about the price of machines for
drying saturated crops as about the conjectural cost of living in the
various houses they saw from afar, set amidst the leafless trees of
November.

"You don't think of coming to live in England, do you?" said he.

"No--at least, not at present," Macleod said. "Of course; one never
knows what may turn up. I don't propose to live at Dare all my life."

"Your wife might want to live in England," the major said, coolly.

Macleod started and stared.

"You have been writing a good many letters of late," said his companion.

"And is that all?" said Macleod, answering him in the Gaelic. "You know
the proverb--_Tossing the head will not make the boat row_. I am not
married yet."

The result of this journey was, that they agreed to purchase one of the
machines for transference to the rainy regions of Mull; and then they
returned to London. This was on Wednesday. Major Stuart considered they
had a few days to idle by before the _battue;_ Macleod was only
excitedly aware that Thursday and Friday--two short November days--came
between him and that decision which he regarded with an anxious joy.

The day went by in a sort of dream. A pale fog hung over London: and as
he wandered about he saw the tall houses rise faintly blue into the gray
mist; and the great coffee-colored river, flushed with recent rains,
rolled down between the pale embankments; and the golden-red globe of
the sun, occasionally becoming visible through the mottled clouds, sent
a ray of fire here and there on some window-pane or lamp.

In the course of his devious wanderings--for he mostly went about
alone--he made his way, with great trouble and perplexity, to the court
in which the mother of Johnny Wickes lived; and he betrayed no shame at
all in confronting the poor woman--half starved, and pale, and emaciated
as she was--whose child he had stolen. It was in a tone of quite
gratuitous pleasantry that he described to her how the small lad was
growing brown and fat; and he had the audacity to declare to her that as
he proposed to pay the boy the sum of one shilling per-week at present,
he might as well hand over to her the three months' pay which he had
already earned. And the woman was so amused at the notion of little
Johnny Wickes being able to earn anything at all, that, when she
received the money and looked at it, she burst out crying; and she had
so little of the spirit of the British matron, and so li