“Confound it, Hamish!” Macleod said, laughing, “leave all those things till after dinner.”

“Oh, ay, oh ay, Sir Keith, we will hef plenty of time after dinner,” said Hamish, just as if he were one of the party, but very nervously working with the ends of his thumbs all the time, “and I will tell you of the fine big stag that has been coming down every night—­every night, as I am a living man—­to Mrs. Murdoch’s corn:  and I wass saying to her, ’Just hold your tongue, Mrs. Murdoch’—­that wass what I will say to her—­’just hold your tongue, Mrs. Murdoch, and be a civil woman, for a day or two days, and when Sir Keith comes home it iss no more at all the stag will trouble you—­oh no, no more at all; there will be no more trouble about the stag when Sir Keith comes home.’”

And old Hamish laughed at his own wit, but it was in a sort of excited way.

“Look here, Hamish, I want you to do this for me,” Macleod said; and instantly the face of the old man—­it was a fine face, too, with its aquiline nose, and grizzled hair, and keen hawk-like eyes—­was full of an eager attention.  “Go back and fetch that little boy I left with Donald.  You had better look after him yourself.  I don’t think any water came over him; but give him dry clothes if he is wet at all.  And feed him up:  the little beggar will take a lot of fattening without any harm.”

“Where is he to go to?” said Hamish, doubtfully.

“You are to make a keeper of him.  When you have fattened him up a bit, teach him to feed the dogs.  When he gets bigger, he can clean the guns.”

“I will let no man or boy clean the guns for you but myself, Sir Keith,” the old man said, quite simply, and without a shadow of disrespect, “I will hef no risks of the kind.”

“Very well, then; but go and get the boy, and make him at home as much as you can.  Feed him up.”

“Who is it, Keith?” his cousin said, “that you are speaking of as if he was a sheep or a calf?”

“Faith,” said he, laughing, “if the philanthropists heard of it, they would prosecute me for slave-stealing.  I bought the boy—­for a sovereign.”

“I think you have made a bad bargain, Keith,” his mother said; but she was quite prepared to hear of some absurd whim of his.

“Well,” said he, “I was going into Trafalgar Square, where the National Gallery of pictures is, mother, and there is a cab-stand in the street, and there was a cabman standing there, munching at a lump of dry bread that he cut with a jack-knife.  I never saw a cabman do that before; I should have been less surprised if he had been having a chicken and a bottle of port.  However, in front of this big cabman this little chap I have brought with me was standing; quite in rags; no shoes on his feet, no cap on his wild hair; and he was looking fixedly at the big lump of bread.  I never saw any animal look so starved and so hungry; his eyes were quite glazed with the fascination of seeing the man ploughing