But Tommy was not in the kitchen; he was on the garden-wall watching Miss Ailie’s persecutor.

“Would it no be easier to watch him frae the gate?” suggested Gavinia, who had not the true detective instinct.

Tommy disregarded her womanlike question; a great change had come over him since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like a little balloon that wanted to cut its connection with earth and soar.

“What makes you look so queer?” cried the startled maid.  “I thought you was converted.”

“So I am,” he shouted, “I’m more converted than ever, and yet I can do it just the same!  Gavinia, I’ve found a wy!”

He was hurrying off on Mr. McLean’s trail, but turned to say, “Gavinia, do you ken wha that man is?”

“Ower weel I ken,” she answered, “it’s Mr. McLean.”

“McLean!” he echoed scornfully, “ay, I’ve heard that’s one of the names he goes by, but hearken, and I’ll tell you wha he really is.  That’s the scoundrel Stroke!”

No wonder Gavinia was flabbergasted.  “Wha are you then?” she cried.

“I’m the Champion of Dames,” he replied loftily, and before she had recovered from this he was stalking Mr. McLean in the cemetery.

Miss Kitty sleeps in a beautiful hollow called the Basin, but the stone put up to her memory hardly marks the spot now, for with a score of others it was blown on its face by the wind that uprooted so many trees in the Den, and as it fell it lies.  From the Basin to the rough road that clings like a belt to the round cemetery dyke is little more than a jump, and shortly after Miss Kitty’s grave had been pointed out to him.  Mr. McLean was seen standing there hat in hand by a man on the road.  This man was Dr. McQueen hobbling home from the Forest Muir; he did not hobble as a rule, but hobble everyone must on that misshapen brae, except Murdoch Gelatley, who, being short in one leg elsewhere, is here the only straight man.  McQueen’s sharp eyes, however, picked out not only the stranger but Tommy crouching behind Haggart’s stone, and him did the doctor’s famous crook staff catch in the neck and whisk across the dyke.

“What man is that you’re watching, you mysterious loon?” McQueen demanded, curiously; but of course Tommy would not divulge so big a secret.  Now the one weakness of this large-hearted old bachelor (perhaps it is a professional virtue) was a devouring inquisitiveness, and he would be troubled until he discovered who was the stranger standing in such obvious emotion by the side of an old grave.  “Well, you must come back with me to the surgery, for I want you to run an errand for me,” he said testily, hoping to pump the boy by the way, but Tommy dived beneath his stick and escaped.  This rasped the doctor’s temper, which was unfortunate for Grizel, whom he caught presently peeping in at his surgery window.  A dozen times of late she had wondered whether she should ask him to visit her mamma, and