the matter, although they amused their author.

‘Anyhow,’ said I, ‘I should like to investigate the thing. Suppose we go for a stroll?’

The proposal was accepted at once. We put on our hats, took sticks, and prepared to go. Then I glanced at the luggage.

‘Since I was so foolish as to waste my money on revolvers—?’ said I, with an inquiring glance at Hogvardt.

‘The evening air will not hurt them,’ said he; and we each stowed a revolver in our pockets. We felt, I think, rather ashamed of our timidity, but the Neopalians certainly looked rough customers. Leading the way to the door I turned the handle; the door did not open. I pulled hard at it. Then I looked at my companions.

‘Queer,’ said Denny, and he began to whistle.

Hogvardt got the little lantern, which he always had handy, and carefully inspected the door.

‘Locked,’ he announced, ‘and bolted top and bottom. A solid door too!’ and he struck it with his fist. Then he crossed to the window and looked at the bars; and finally he said to me, ‘I don’t think we can have our walk, my lord.’

Well, I burst out laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under cover of our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in. The bars made the window no use. A skilled burglar might have beaten those bolts, and a battering ram would, no doubt, have smashed the door; we had neither burglar nor ram.

‘We’re caught, my boy,’ said Denny, ‘nicely caught! But what’s the game?’

I had asked myself that question already, but had found no answer. To tell the truth, I was wondering whether Neopalia was going to turn out as conservative a country as the Turkish Ambassador had hinted. It was Watkins who suggested an answer.

‘I imagine, my lord,’ said he, ‘that the natives’ (Watkins always called the Neopalians ‘natives’) ‘have gone to speak to the gentleman who sold the island to your lordship.’

‘Gad,’ said Denny, ‘I hope it’ll be a pleasant interview!’

Hogvardt’s broad good-humoured face had assumed an anxious look. He knew something about the people of these islands; so did I.

‘Trouble, is it?’ I asked him.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he answered, and then we turned to the window again, except Denny, who wasted some energy and made a useless din by battering at the door till we beseeched him to let it alone.

There in the room we sat for nearly two hours. Darkness fell; the women had ceased their gossiping, but still stood about the street and in the doorways of their houses. It was nine o’clock before matters showed any progress. Then came shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of men’s feet in a quick triumphant march. Next the stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; while the women and children, crowding out to meet the men, caught up the refrain in shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. So martial and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the rough original. Here it is: