SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

a bit of it,” said Archie. “It’s the old fox’s cunning. He’s simply playin’ with the poor fellows. Oh, it’s wicked!”

      The navvies followed with difficulty, for they had no gift of speed on a steep hill-face. Palliser-Yeates waited again till they were very near him, and then, like a hen partridge dragging its wing, trotted down the more level ground by the stream side. The pursuit was badly cooked, but it lumbered gallantly along, Number Four now making the running. A quarter of a mile ahead was the beginning of the big Haripol woods which clothed the western skirts of Stob Ban, and stretched to the demesne itself.

      Suddenly Palliser-Yeates increased his pace, with no sign of a limp, and, when he passed out of sight of the two on the rock, was going strongly.

      Archie shut up his glass. “That’s a workmanlike show, if you like. He’ll tangle them up in the woods, and slip out at his leisure and come home. I knew old John was abso-lute-ly safe. If he doesn’t run slap into Macnicol—”

      He broke off and stared in front of him. A figure like some ancient earth-dweller had appeared on the opposite bank. Hair, face, and beard were grimed with peat, sweat made furrows in the grime, and two fierce eyes glowered under shaggy eyebrows. Bumping against its knees were the antlers of a noble stag.

      “Wattie,” the two exclaimed with one voice.

      “You old sportsman,” cried Archie. “Did you pull that great brute all the way yourself? Where is Lord Lamancha?”

      The stalker strode into the water dragging the stag behind him, and did not halt till he had it high on the bank and close to the car. Then he turned his eyes on the two, and wrung the moisture from his beard.

      “You needn’t worry,” Archie told him. “Mr Palliser-Yeates has all the navvies in the Haripol woods.”

      “So I was thinkin’. I got a glisk of him up the burn. Yon’s the soople one. But we’ve no time to loss. Help me to sling the beast into the cawr. This is a fine hidy-hole.”

      “Gad, what a stag!”

      “It’s the auld beast we’ve seen for the last five years. Ye mind me tellin’ ye that he was at our stacks last winter. Come on quick, for I’ll no be easy till he’s in the Crask larder.”

      “But Lord Lamancha?”

      “Never heed him. He’s somewhere up the hill. It maitters little if he waits till the darkenin’ afore he comes hame. The thing is we’ve got the stag. Are ye ready?”

      Archie started the car, which had already been turned in the right direction. Coats and wraps and heather were piled on the freight, and Wattie seated himself on it like an ancient raven.

      “Now, tak a spy afore ye start. Is the place clear?”

      Archie, from the rock, reported that the hill-side was empty.

      “What about the Beallach?”

      Archie spied long and carefully. “I see nothing there, but of course I only see the south end. There’s a rock which hides the top.”

      “No sign o’ his lordship?”

      “Not a sign.”

      “Never heed. He can look after himsel’ braw and weel. Push on wi’ the cawr, sir, for it’s time we were ower the hill.”

      Archie obeyed, and presently they were climbing the long zigzag to the Crask pass. Wattie on the back seat kept an anxious look-out, issuing frequent bulletins, and Janet swept the glen with her glasses. But no sign of life appeared in the wide sunlit place except a buzzard high in the heavens and a weasel slipping into a cairn. Once the watershed had been crossed Wattie’s heart lightened.

      “Weel done, John Macnab,” he cried. “Dod, ye’re the great lad. Ye’ve beaten a hundred navvies and Macnicol and a’, and ye’ve gotten the best heid in the country-side…Hae ye a match for my pipe, Sir Erchie? Mine’s been in ower mony bogholes to kindle.”

      It was a clear, rain-washed world on which they looked, and the sky to the south was all an unbroken blue. The air was not sticky and oppressive like yesterday, but pure and balmy and crystalline. When Crask was reached the stag was decanted with expedition, and Archie addressed Janet with a new authority.

      “I’m goin’ to take you straight home in the Hispana. You’re drippin’ wet and ought to change at once.”

      “Might I change here?” the girl asked. “I told them to send over dry things, for I was sure it would be a fine afternoon. You see, I think we ought to go to Haripol.”

      “Whatever for?”

      “To be in at the finish—and also to give Lady Claybody her dog back. Wee Roguie is rather on my conscience.”

      “That’s a good notion,” Archie assented. So Janet was handed over to Mrs Lithgow, who admitted that a suitcase had indeed arrived from Glenraden. Archie repaired to the upper bathroom, which Lamancha had aforetime likened to a drain-pipe, and, having bathed rapidly, habited himself in a suit of a reasonable newness and took special pains with his toilet. And all the while he whistled and sang, and generally comported himself like a madman. Janet was under his roof—Janet would soon always be there—the most miraculous of fates was his! Somebody must be told, so when he was ready he went out to seek the Bluidy Mackenzie and made that serious-minded beast the receptacle of his confidences.

      He returned to find a neat and smiling young woman conversing with Fish Benjie, whose task had been that of comforter and friend to Roguie. It appeared that the small dog had been having the morning of his life with the Crask rats and rabbits. “He’s no a bad wee dog,” Benjie reported, “if they’d let him alane. They break his temper keepin’ him indoors and feedin’ him ower high.”

      “Benjie must come too,” Janet announced. “It would be a shame to keep him back. You understand—Benjie found Roguie in the woods—which is true, and handed him over to me—which is also true. I don’t like unnecessary fibbing.”

      “Right-o! Let’s have the whole bag of tricks. But, I say, you’ve got to stage-manage this show. Benjie and I put ourselves in your hands, for I’m hanged if I know what to say to Lady Claybody.”

      “It’s quite simple. We’re just three nice clean people—well, two clean people—who go to Haripol on an errand of mercy. Get out the Hispana, Archie dear, for I feel that something tremendous may be happening there.”

      As they started—Benjie and Roguie on the back seat—Bluidy Mackenzie came into view, hungrily eyeing an expedition from which he seemed to be barred.

      “D’you mind if we take Mackenzie,” Archie begged. “We’ll go very slow, and he can trollop behind. The poor old fellow has been havin’ a lonely time of it, and there’s likely to be such a mix-up at Haripol that an extra hound won’t signify.”

      Janet approved, and they swung down the hill and on to the highway, as respectable an outfit as the heart could wish, except for the waterproof-caped urchin on the back seat. The casual wayfarer would have noted only a very pretty girl and a well-appointed young man driving an expensive car at a most blameless pace. He could not guess what a cargo of dog-thieves and deer-thieves was behind the shining metal and spruce enamel…Benjie talked to Wee Roguie in his own tongue, and what Janet and Archie said in whispers to each other is no concern of this chronicle. The sea at Inverlarrig was molten silver running to the translucent blue of the horizon, the shore woods gleamed with a thousand jewels, the abundant waters splashing in every hollow were channels of living light. The world sang in streams and soft winds, the cries of plover and the pipe of shore-birds, and Archie’s heart sang above them all.

      Close to Haripol gates a tall figure rose from the milestone as the car slowed down.

      “Well, John, my aged sportsman, you did your part like a man. We saw it all.”

      “How are things going?”

      “Famously.”

      “The