and conceding its apparent accuracy. He thought he had never met a more ill-assorted trio than Mr Cressey and his new friends, or than these last a more sinister combination. Sir Bevil's harsh lined face and his bitter smile were a plain warning that he was a dangerous man. He was, moreover, a man with a grievance, which his naturally violent temper had magnified into a mortal affront. Passionate and revengeful, damaged in repute and broken in fortune, his recent conversion to Jacobitism was a characteristic gambler's throw against the whole tribe of upstarts who, to his illbalanced mind, were the authors of his ruin. Jews, Whigs, and Hanoverians were all confounded in one searing flame of hatred. But he possessed reckless courage, the arrogance of Lucifer, and a volcanic energy that, at the age of forty-five, had yet power to sweep weaker natures along with him. It was a magnetic quality; and after a few minutes in his company, the Captain of the Carysbrooke began to understand how easy-going Jack Cressey, born to be led and now a little sated with uneventful splendours, had been caught up, willy-nilly, in this masterful orbit. Adventurers, however, even well-born and desperate adventurers, are a fairly common and consistent type; and it was to the second stranger that le Chemineau, for particular reasons of his own, was covertly devoting the keener scrutiny VOL. CCXXIII.-NO. MCCCXLVII. -a scrutiny tempered by physical disgust. Dr Hew M'Leod was of any age between fifty and seventy. His sober attire was slovenly; his vest stained and snuff bestrewn, his linen soiled, his wig yellowed and awry. For all his Highland name, he spoke a broad Lowland Scots that was at times unintelligible to the southerner. He was squat, misshapen in figure, and in countenance hideously ugly-a sort of frightful travesty of mankind. For as if Nature were dissatisfied with the repulsive effect of small, squinting, colourless eyes, a huge and bulbous nose and a slobbering mouth, she had superadded to these blemishes the blasting ravages of disease. The man's whole face, to his coarse outstanding ears, was an inflamed crimson, and deeply pitted by the smallpox; and an unnatural vitality-some form of nervous afflictionkept this bestial mask in incessant movement: the pig's eyes blinking and rolling, the great lips sucking and whistling, the skin of the scarred forehead lifting and contracting like that of an ape. There was, indeed, at first glance much that was more simian than human about Dr M'Leod. But a high brow and a wide prominent chin indicated that behind these repellent externals, and their owner's obsequious manners and absurd affections of gentility, lay intelligence and will power. Of the two men, he was the more dangerous. Had the Captain been a little older, this с physician might have called to his mind another doctor, of Divinity and from Salamanca; and had he known more of politics he would have recognised a type at that time far from rare, if happily less common than mere adventurersthe professional plotter, with intrigue in his blood and black deceit and malevolence in his heart-the type, in short, of Oates, and Ferguson, and Simon of Lovat. As it was, he was conscious chiefly of an intense loathing of this stricken creature, coupled with a shrewd perception of his poisonous qualities. A little secret information from Lord Tewkesbury had put him, as he hoped, in the way of making use of Dr M'Leod; but he was determined on sight to trust that gentleman no farther than he could see him. In such company, young Jack Cressey, with his easy grace and his ingenuous eager countenance, looked like a wellbred hound beside a panther and a jackal. He shared with his sister the same clear pale skin and dark eyes and brown lustrous hair, for he wore his own; but his was plainly the weaker character of the two. Yet this weakness enhanced, or helped to retain, a boyish charm that explained a universal popularity and the particular affection his old friend felt for him. Few could know Jack Cressey without loving him. Even the fanatical baronet betrayed a kind of domineering regard for his disciple, although, as if doubting the latter's discretion, he watched him closely. The disciple, in fact, was ill-fitted to maintain a part; and that he was under tension was shown by a nervous volubility and a restless eye that leapt continually from one to another of the party, yet never stayed to meet a steady glance. It was impossible that the young man should not feel at times, and increasingly as the vital hour drew near, a haunting sense of his folly. He was gambling with his own and his sister's happiness; and that, not from any deep conviction, but because a pack of zealots and adventurers had cajoled him in his cups and played upon his vanity. They needed him for his wealth and local influence; but if things went ill (and how many plots went otherwise?), and they could save their necks by casting him to the wolves, cast he would be without scruple. Among English Jacobites there was little honour or idealism, and in his sober moments Jack Cressey knew it. Knew it so well that in truth only his plighted word, and the forceful magnetism of Sir Bevil Rainborough, who never flattered and was at least a man, held the young Lord of the Manor to his mistaken path. And now, at the eleventh hour, the sudden transit across this path of his oldest friend had started in his wavering heart fresh springs of dubiety and regret. Le Chemineau stood for all that he was hazarding the quiet life, the settled order, the old, easy, pleasant things-things once derided, but here and now, on such a summer's evening, amid his own green lawns and sheltered pleasaunces, calling to him like a song. For all these, in but a few days' time, might loom instead the gallows or the bread of exile. It was not surprising that his nerves were taut and his thoughts confused, or that Sir Bevil, who understood him very well, kept an anxious eye upon him and cursed from his soul the untimely arrival of Captain le Chemineau. "Geographers on pathless downs Place elephants instead of towns. . . .' You need a wife, Jack, to administer it." "I'd need a dozen," said Jack Cressey. "Do you call this the country life?" his friend retorted. "Faith, 'tis a village in itself! Upon the surface, however, The architect must have been all went tolerably well. To one of Matt Prior's geogthe accompaniment of mutual raphersand lively exchanges by the reunited friends, and egregious interpolations, in broad Doric, by the Scots doctor, the little party moved slowly through the gardens towards the great house. Ann Cressey had little to say, and Sir Bevil less. The baronet kept himself very close to her brother's elbow, and his morose stare was often turned upon the unwelcome guest; but to the girl, who while she played her own minor part studied narrowly the other actors, it seemed that he was now rather irritated than suspicious, and that the Captain's gifted impersonation "Och aye," put in Dr M'Leod in his broad slobbering speech; "it's a braw muckle hoose. A no mind a bonnier, wi' sic a rowth o' windies that a body micht keek fra' a' the days o' the year, forbye his Grace o' Hamilton's, by Bothwell Brigg, whaur the puir seely Whigs were routit, wull be no sae ill a biggin. Aiblins," he added, his little pig's eyes converging cunningly upon the visitor's face-" aiblins A should ask your pardon, Captain? There are Whigs and Whigs. Ye'll On the upper terrace, before be ane yoursel, nae doot, or an amiable trifler had so far passed muster with him. But she was by no means so sure of Dr M'Leod. ye wudna hae a bonny ship the cawpital o' oor twa kingtae sail a' the seas in?" "Oh, I have no politics," the Captain said easily. "Confound 'em all, say I!" 66 Ech, A'm juist anither like yoursel!" the doctor cried with enthusiasm, leering hideously; "A' for peace and a quiet life, a mon wha' lo'es his yill and whusky and a cut o' caller sawmon by his ain fire end. Awa' wi' thae poleetical clanjamfries and a' sic carfuffles!" "If I take you correctly," said le Chemineau, "we should have much in common. But you seem to have travelled plaguey far from your own fire end, doctor." The doctor slobbered and chuckled like a great turkey. "A spoke in maitaphorrs," said he. "A'm an exile o' ma ain free wull, Captain, fra the land o'ma bairth. The banks o' Carrt Water wull ken me nae mair. That's fra ma auld crony, Wully Hamilton. You'll no ken Wully Hamilton? He's a graund verrsifier is Wully. . . . The hale fac' is," he confided, with the air of imparting useful knowledge, "there are ower mony physeecians in bonny Scotland. It doms, noo sae happily united. But whiles A cud greet for ma ain land. Ye dinna ken Scotland, sir?" Sir Bevil, who had been glooming impatiently during this colloquy, woke up with a start and shot a piercing glance at the speaker. Jack Cressey opened his mouth. Even Ann's pretty eyebrows went up. For there were certain topicstreason, for example, and traitors-which tactful persons then eschewed in strange company. And although the story was an old one, no legitimist was likely to forget that a M'Leod of Assynt had betrayed Montrose. But the doctor himself appeared as unconscious of receiving offence as the Captain of intending it. He wagged his crimson face and rolled his eyes and showed his blackened teeth in a grin of odious affability. 66 Na, na!" he cried again. "Ma gran'faither, gude mon cam tae Glasgie fra' the Isles There are M'Leods o' Skye ye ken-a gang o' bairbarou reivers and pirates, nae doot but ma ain folk. Ye wudna think it, aha? There's leetl o' bairbarism aboot Dr Hew Losh, mon! it's mairvellou wha' twa three geenerations o This was delivered with a slobbering roll of "r's" like a rafale of water-logged kettledrums. But as the finished article, after a further series of gobbling chuckles, showed signs of continuing his reminiscences, Jack Cressey, with a muttered, "Curse Wully Hamilton!" cut in rather hastily with offers of refreshment to his tactless guest. The latter's artless inquiry, indeed, had cast a chill upon the proceedings: one ill-omened name, like the fearful syllables of Asmodeus, had conjured up dæmons. It was a subdued party that entered the Manor House, Sir Bevil, if not actively suspicious, at least very much on guard again, young Cressey preoccupied by uneasy visions, and Ann greatly puzzled by her ally's unaccountable lapse from discretion. Even Dr M'Leod contented himself with reflective whistlings and blowings. Only le Chemineau, blandly indifferent to the perturbations he had caused, kept up a languid commentary upon the splendours around him. "It was his father, my greatuncle," the other explained; "French Jack they called him. He was the spit of old King Louis, and must needs copy him in everything, even to his red heels and his periwigs and his itch for building. The old stick had some private quarrel with the Court-Rowley refused to make him a duke or something, and he sulked all his life down here, planting and building and acting the Great Cham among the squireens. Well, 'twas his way of spending money; 'tis not mine." 66 Yet perhaps there are worse ways," le Chemineau said. 'Here at least are substantial things, not shadows." His friend eyed him sharply, but he was now staring upward at the ceiling, on which some scene from classical mythology was depicted on a gigantic scale. "Devilish substantial, begad!" he added. ""Tis a Dutch Venus, risen from the Zuyder Zee. . . . Well, if it was my house” He broke off and shrugged, and began to hum an air. It was Dr M'Leod who again "Zounds! I'd as soon live precipitated a small crisis by |