uir to count the lambs," said I; "maybe you
would care to come up with me and see something of the country?"

He hesitated for a moment, and then he shook his head.

"I have some letters," he said, "which I ought to write as soon as
possible. I think that I will stay at quiet this morning and get them
written."

All forenoon I was wandering over the links, and you may imagine that my
mind was turning all the time upon this strange man whom chance had
drifted to our doors. Where did he gain that style of his, that manner
of command, that haughty menacing glint of the eye? And his experiences
to which he referred so lightly, how wonderful the life must have been
which had put him in the way of them! He had been kind to us, and
gracious of speech, but still I could not quite shake myself clear of
the distrust with which I had regarded him. Perhaps, after all, Jim
Horscroft had been right and I had been wrong about taking him to West
Inch.

When I got back he looked as though he had been born and bred in the
steading. He sat in the big wooden-armed ingle-chair, with the black
cat on his knee. His arms were out, and he held a skein of worsted from
hand to hand which my mother was busily rolling into a ball. Cousin
Edie was sitting near, and I could see by her eyes that she had been
crying.

"Hullo, Edie!" said I, "what's the trouble?"

"Ah! mademoiselle, like all good and true women, has a soft heart," said
he. "I didn't thought it would have moved her, or I should have been
silent. I have been talking of the suffering of some troops of which I
knew something when they were crossing the Guadarama mountains in the
winter of 1808. Ah! yes, it was very bad, for they were fine men and
fine horses. It is strange to see men blown by the wind over the
precipices, but the ground was so slippery and there was nothing to
which they could hold. So companies all linked arms, and they did
better in that fashion; but one artilleryman's hand came off as I held
it, for he had had the frost-bite for three days."

I stood staring with my mouth open.

"And the old Grenadiers, too, who were not so active as they used to be,
they could not keep up; and yet if they lingered the peasants would
catch them and crucify them to the barn doors with their feet up and a
fire under their heads, which was a pity for these fine old soldiers.
So when they could go no further, it was interesting to see what they
would do; for they wou