or. The memory of those two attentive faces--one so fair and
so good, the other so yellow and so wicked--haunted my mind perpetually
for many days afterward.

"Now, William," says Mr. Dark, when we were clear of the lodge gates,
"I'm going to begin by telling you that you must step out of your
own character till further notice. You are a clerk in a bank, and I'm
another. We have got our regular holiday, that comes, like Christmas,
once a year, and we are taking a little tour in Scotland to see the
curiosities, and to breathe the sea air, and to get some fishing
whenever we can. I'm the fat cashier who digs holes in a drawerful of
gold with a copper shovel, and you're the arithmetical young man who
sits on a perch behind me and keeps the books. Scotland's a beautiful
country, William. Can you make whisky-toddy? I can; and, what's more,
unlikely as the thing may seem to you, I can actually drink it into the
bargain."

"Scotland!" says I. "What are we going to Scotland for?"

"Question for question," says Mr. Dark. "What are we starting on a
journey for?"

"To find my master," I answered, "and to make sure if the letter about
him is true."

"Very good," says he. "How would you set about doing that, eh?"

"I should go and ask about him at Stockholm in Sweden, where he said his
letters were to be sent."

"Should you, indeed?" says Mr. Dark. "If you were a shepherd, William,
and had lost a sheep in Cumberland, would you begin looking for it at
the Land's End, or would you try a little nearer home?"

"You're attempting to make a fool of me now," says I.

"No," says Mr. Dark, "I'm only letting the light in on you, as I said
I would. Now listen to reason, William, and profit by it as much as you
can. Mr. James Smith says he is going on a cruise to Sweden, and makes
his word good, at the beginning, by starting northward toward the coast
of Scotland. What does he go in? A yacht. Do yachts carry live beasts
and a butcher on board? No. Will joints of meat keep fresh all the
way from Cumberland to Sweden? No. Do gentlemen like living on salt
provisions? No. What follows from these three Noes? That Mr. James
Smith must have stopped somewhere on the way to Sweden to supply his
sea-larder with fresh provisions. Where, in that case, must he stop?
Somewhere in Scotland, supposing he didn't alter his course when he was
out of sight of your seaport. Where in Scotland? Northward on the main
land, or westward at one of the islands?