at that I flung back into my seat with a curse, resolute to show him I was as good a man as he. My grim-faced guardian angel washed his hands of me with a Scotch proverb.

“He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. The lad will have to gang his ain gate,” I heard him tell Wolfe as they strolled away.

Still the luck held against me. Before I rose from the table two hours later I wrote out notes for a total so large that I knew the Grange must be mortgaged to the roof to satisfy it.

Volney lolled in his chair and hid a yawn behind tapering pink finger-nails. “’Slife, you had a cursed run of the ivories to-night, Kenn! When are you for your revenge? Shall we say to-morrow? Egad, I’m ready to sleep round the clock. Who’ll take a seat in my coach? I’m for home.”

I pushed into the night with a burning fever in my blood, and the waves of damp mist which enveloped London and beat upon me, gathering great drops of moisture on my cloak, did not suffice to cool the fire that burnt me up. The black dog Care hung heavy on my shoulders. I knew now what I had done. Fool that I was, I had mortgaged not only my own heritage but also the lives of my young brother Charles and my sister Cloe. Our father had died of apoplexy without a will, and a large part of his personal property had come to me with the entailed estate. The provision for the other two had been of the slightest, and now by this one wild night of play I had put it out of my power to take care of them. I had better clap a pistol to my head and be done with it.

Even while the thought was in my mind a hand out of the night fell on my shoulder from behind. I turned with a start, and found myself face to face with the Scotchman Balmerino.

“Whither away, Kenneth?” he asked.

I laughed bitterly. “What does it matter? A broken gambler—a ruined dicer— What is there left for him?”

The Scotch Lord linked an arm through mine. I had liefer have been alone, but I could scarce tell him so. He had been a friend of my father and had done his best to save me from my folly.

“There is much left. All is not lost. I have a word to say to your father’s son.”

“What use!” I cried rudely. “You would lock the stable after the horse is stolen.”

“Say rather that I would put you in the way of getting another horse,” he answered gravely.

So gravely that I looked at him twice before I answered:

“And I would be blithe to find a way, for split me! as things look now I must either pistol myself or take to the road and pistol others,” I told him gloomily.

“There are worse things than to lose one’s wealth——”

“I hear you say it, but begad! I do not know them,” I answered with a touch of anger at his calmness.

“——When the way is open to regain all one has lost and more,” he finished, unheeding my interruption.

“Well, this way you speak of,” I cried impatiently. “Where is it?”

He looked at me searchingly, as one who would know the inmost secrets of my soul. Under a guttering street light he stopped me and read my face line by line. I dare swear he found there a recklessness to match his own and perhaps some trace of the loyalty for which he looked. Presently he said, as the paving stones echoed to our tread:—

“You have your father’s face, Kenn. I mind him a lad just like you when we went out together in the ’15 for the King. Those were great days—great days. I wonder——”

His unfinished sentence tailed out into a meditative silence. His voice and eyes told of a mind reminiscent of the past and perhaps dreamful of the future. Yet awhile, and he snatched himself back into the present.

“Six hours ago I should not have proposed this desperate remedy for your ills. You had a stake in the country then, but now you are as poor in this world’s gear as Arthur Elphinstone himself. When one has naught but life at stake he will take greater risks. I have a man’s game to play. Are you for it, lad?”

I hesitated, a prophetic divination in my mind that I stood in a mist at the parting of life’s ways.

“You have thrown all to-night—and lost. I offer you another cut at Fortune’s cards. You might even turn a king.”

He said it with a quiet steadfastness in which I seemed to detect an undercurrent of strenuous meaning. I stopped, and in my turn looked long at him. What did he mean? Volney’s words came to my mind. I began to piece together rumours I had heard but never credited. I knew that even now men dreamed of a Stuart restoration. If Arthur Elphinstone of Balmerino were one of these I knew him to be of a reckless daring mad enough to attempt it.

“My Lord, you say I might turn a king,” I repeated slowly. “’Tis more like that I would play the knave. You speak in riddles. I am no guesser of them. You must be plain.”

Still he hung back from a direct answer. “You are dull to-night, Kenn. I have known you more gleg at the uptake, but if you will call on me to-morrow night I shall make all plain to you.”

We were arrived at the door of his lodgings, a mean house in a shabby neighbourhood, for my Lord was as poor as a church mouse despite his title. I left him here, and the last words I called over my shoulder to him were,

“Remember, I promise nothing.”

It may be surmised that as I turned my steps back toward my rooms in Arlington Street I found much matter for thought. I cursed the folly that had led me to offer myself a dupe to these hawks of the gaming table. I raged in a stress of heady passion against that fair false friend Sir Robert Volney. And always in the end my mind jumped back to dally with Balmerino’s temptation to recoup my fallen fortunes with one desperate throw.

“Fraoch! Dh ’aindeoin co theireadh e!” (The Heath! Gainsay who dare!)

The slogan echoed and reechoed through the silent streets, and snatched me in an instant out of the abstraction into which I had fallen. Hard upon the cry there came to me the sound of steel ringing upon steel. I legged it through the empty road, flung myself round a corner, and came plump upon the combatants. The defendant was a lusty young fellow apparently about my own age, of extraordinary agility and no mean skill with the sword. He was giving a good account of himself against the four assailants who hemmed him against the wall, his point flashing here and there with swift irregularity to daunt their valiancy. At the moment when I appeared to create a diversion one of the four had flung himself down and forward to cling about the knees of their victim with intent to knife him at close quarters. The young man dared not shorten his sword length to meet this new danger. He tried to shake off the man, caught at his white throat and attempted to force him back, what time his sword still opposed the rest of the villains.

Then I played my small part in the entertainment. One of the rascals screamed out an oath at sight of me and turned to run. I pinked him in the shoulder, and at the same time the young swordsman fleshed another of them. The man with the knife scrambled to his feet, a ludicrous picture of ghastly terror. To make short, in another minute there was nothing to be seen of the cutpurses but flying feet scampering through the night.

The young gentleman turned to me with a bow that was never invented out of France. I saw now that he was something older than myself, tall, well-made, and with a fine stride to him that set off the easy grace of his splendid shoulders. His light steady blue eyes and his dark ruddy hair proclaimed him the Highlander. His face was not what would be called handsome: the chin was