re in the house blazed brightly in the study
where Mr. Airlie and the reverend gentleman sat talking: while mother and
children warmed themselves with sense of duty in the cheerless kitchen.
And often, as Mr. Airlie, who was of an inquiring turn of mind, had
convinced himself, the only evening meal that resources would permit was
the satisfying supper for one brought by the youngest daughter to her
father where he sat alone in the small dining-room.

Mr. Airlie, picking daintily at his food, continued his stories: of
philanthropists who paid starvation wages: of feminists who were a holy
terror to their women folk: of socialists who travelled first-class and
spent their winters in Egypt or Monaco: of stern critics of public morals
who preferred the society of youthful affinities to the continued company
of elderly wives: of poets who wrote divinely about babies' feet and
whose children hated them.

"Do you think it's all true?" Joan whispered to her host.

He shrugged his shoulders. "No reason why it shouldn't be," he said.
"I've generally found him right."

"I've never been able myself," he continued, "to understand the Lord's
enthusiasm for David. I suppose it was the Psalms that did it."

Joan was about to offer comment, but was struck dumb with astonishment on
hearing McKean's voice: it seemed he could talk. He was telling of an
old Scotch peasant farmer. A mean, cantankerous old cuss whose curious
pride it was that he had never given anything away. Not a crust, nor a
sixpence, nor a rag; and never would. Many had been the attempts to make
him break his boast: some for the joke of the thing and some for the
need; but none had ever succeeded. It was his one claim to distinction
and he guarded it.

One evening it struck him that the milk-pail, standing just inside the
window, had been tampered with. Next day he marked with a scratch the
inside of the pan and, returning later, found the level of the milk had
sunk half an inch. So he hid himself and waited; and at twilight the
next day the window was stealthily pushed open, and two small, terror-
haunted eyes peered round the room. They satisfied themselves that no
one was about and a tiny hand clutching a cracked jug was thrust swiftly
in and dipped into the pan; and the window softly closed.

He knew the thief, the grandchild of an old bedridden dame who lived some
miles away on the edge of the moor. The old man stood long, watching the
small cloaked