dent, I
had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over
breakfast with my little wife like a Christian, "I wonder what that man
is doing down there? He has been sitting on the step outside our gate
ever since it was light, and he looks as if he were taking root there!"

I made but one bound from the table to the window. For I remembered the
cloaked man who had crossed me in the Meadows the other night. Also my
inbred, almost instinctive curiosity as to the purposes and antecedents
of lurking folk of all kinds, pricked me. We were easy enough to get on
with in Eden Valley once you knew us, but our attitude towards strangers
was distinctly hostile.

This man was muffled to the nose in a cloak, and might very well have
been my inquiring friend of the other night. But when I had opened the
door and marched with the firm ringing steps of a master down the paven
walk towards the gate, the face I saw turned to my approach, altered my
mood in a second.

"Why, Boyd Connoway," I cried, "who would have thought of seeing you
here? What are you doing in Edinburgh? But first come in--there is a
friend here who will be glad to see you!"

"Eh, Mr. Duncan, but I am not sure that I dare venture. 'Tis no more
than decent I am, and the young lady, your wife--oh, but though to see
her sweet face would be a treat for poor Boyd Connoway, what might she
not be sayin' about me dirtying her carpets, the craitur? And as for
sittin' in her fine arm-chairs----"

"Come your ways in, Boyd," I cried. "Have you had any breakfast?
No--then you are just in time! And you will find that our chairs are
only wood, and you would not hurt our fine carpets, not if you danced on
them with clogs!"

"D'ye tell me, now?" said Boyd, much relieved. "Sure, and it's a told
tale through the whole parish that you are livin' in the very lap of
luxury--with nothing in the world to do for it but just make
scratch-scratches on paper with a quill-pen!"

By this time Irma was at the door, hiding herself a little, for she had
still the morning apron on--that in which she had been helping Mrs.
Pathrick. But she was greatly delighted to see Boyd, who, if the truth
must be told, made his best service like an Irishman and a
gentleman--for, as he said, "Even five-and-thirty years of Galloway had
not wiped the sclate of his manners!"

Now Boyd was always a favourite with Irma, and I fear that she was
fonder of him than she ought to have been, instead of