g at the door.

"Come in," he said, and Major Stuart entered, blooming and roseate over
his display of white linen.

"Good gracious!" said he, "aren't you dressed yet? It wants but ten
minutes to dinner-time. What have you been doing?"

Macleod jumped up with some shamefacedness, and began to array himself
quickly.

"Macleod," said the major, subsiding into the big armchair very
carefully so as not to crease his shining shirt-front, "I must give you
another piece of advice. It is serious. I have heard again and again
that when a man thinks only of one thing--when he keeps brooding over it
day and night--he is bound to become mad. They call it monomania. You
are becoming a monomaniac."

"Yes, I think I am," Macleod said, laughing; "but it is a very pleasant
sort of monomania, and I am not anxious to become sane. But you really
must not be hard on me, Stuart. You know that this is rather an
important thing that has happened to me; and it wants a good deal of
thinking over."

"Bah!" the major cried, "why take it so much _au grand serieux?_ A girl
likes you; says she'll marry you; probably, if she continues in the same
mind, she will. Consider your self a lucky dog; and don't break your
heart if an accident occurs. Hope for the best--that you and she mayn't
quarrel, and that she mayn't prove a sigher. Now what do you think of
this house? I consider it an uncommon good dodge to put each person's
name outside his bedroom door; there can't be any confounded
mistakes--and women squealing--if you come up late at night. Why,
Macleod, you don't mean that this affair has destroyed all your interest
in the shooting? Man, I have been down to the gun-room with your friend
Beauregard; have seen the head-keeper; got a gun that suits me
firstrate--a trifle long in the stock, perhaps, but no matter. You won't
tip any more than the head-keeper, eh? And the fellow who carries your
cartridge-bag? I do think it uncommonly civil of a man not only to ask
you to go shooting, but to find you in guns and cartridges; don't you?"

The major chatted on with great cheerfulness. He clearly considered that
he had got into excellent quarters. At dinner he told some of his most
famous Indian stories to Lady Beauregard, near whom he was sitting; and
at night, in the improvised smoking-room, he was great on deer-stalking.
It was not necessary for Macleod, or anybody else, to talk. The major
was in full flow, though he stoutly refused to touch the sp