s starting on the way to Inverlochy when M'Iver protested we must
certainly go a bit of the way to Kilcumin.

"I'm far from sure," said he, "that that very particular bit of
MacDonald woman is quite confident of the truth of my story. At any
rate, she's no woman if she's not turning it over in her mind by now,
and she'll be out to look the road we take before very long or I'm
mistaken."

We turned up the Kilcumin road, which soon led us out of sight of the
hut, and, as my friend said, a glance behind us showed us the woman in
our rear, looking after us.

"Well, there's no turning so long as she's there," said I. "I wish your
generosity had shown itself in a manner more convenient for us. There's
another example of the error of your polite and truthless tongue! When
you knew the woman was not wanting the money, you should have put it in
your sporran again, and----"

"Man, Elrigmore," he cried, "you have surely studied me poorly if you
would think me the man to insult the woman--and show my own stupidity at
the same time--by exposing my strategy when a bit fancy tale and a short
daunder on a pleasant morning would save the feelings of both the lady
and myself."

"You go through life on a zigzag," I protested, "aiming for some goal
that another would cut straight across for, making deviations of an
hour to save you a second's unpleasantness. I wish I could show you the
diplomacy of straightforwardness: the honest word, though hard to say
sometimes, is a man's duty as much as the honest deed of hand."

"Am I not as honest of my word as any in a matter of honour? I but gloze
sometimes for the sake of the affection I have for all God's creatures."

I was losing patience of his attitude and speaking perhaps with
bitterness, for here were his foolish ideas of punctilio bringing us a
mile or two off our road and into a part of the country where we were
more certain of being observed by enemies than in the way behind us.

"You jink from ambuscade to ambuscade of phrase like a fox," I cried.

"Call it like a good soldier, and I'll never quarrel with your
compliment," he said, good-humouredly. "I had the second excuse for the
woman in my mind before the first one missed fire."

"Worse and worse!"

"Not a bit of it: it is but applying a rule of fortification to a
peaceful palaver. Have bastion and ravelin as sure as may be, but safer
still the sally-port of retreat."

I stood on the road and looked at him, smiling very