Tammas

A LATE light burned in the office of the Minnesotan. Old Tammas McCullough, returning in the dripping rain from a long drawn-out debate with Willie Wallace on Queen Victoria’s attitude toward the Crimean War, tried the door of the printing shop. It was locked, but a red-haired young man came to open it.

‘You’re an angel in disguise, Tammas,’ he said. ‘ I came down before the rain started. You can take me up the hill directly under that umbrella. It’s as big as all Scotland. It beats all how it rains this April. It ’s the wettest weather I’ve seen since I left New England.’

He motioned the old man to a scratched yellow arm-chair, and went back to his case of type, offering disjointed bits of conversation now and then.

‘The Lady Franklin came in for the first time this season after supper tonight — ’

‘She’s airly,’ said Tammas.

‘Yes, the river has n’t been open before the twentieth most years. They brought some government papers in the mail, a call for bids. I’m running it to-morrow. It’s a particular job; that’s why I’m working to-night.’

There was a silence of some length. Tammas studied the map of the Territory of Minnesota that hung on the wall opposite him.

‘It’s a call for bids for buffalo pelts. The government is going to buy a hundred thousand for fur coats for the soldiers. There’s been a heap of complaining of the cold by the men out on the frontier here this last winter.’

Tammas’s eyes dropped to the floor, where the water spread in two muddy pools around his heavy shoes. He evinced no interest in the subject, although he was a fur man in the employ of young John Cameron.

‘There’ll be a lively scramble for the contract,’ the newspaper man continued after another season of work, ’but St. Paul ought to stand some show. We’re nearer the source of supply than the other towns.’

‘Wull the bit o’ printin’ beoot in the other towns the morn?’ Tammas asked casually, as the printer slipped on his coat, and blew out the kerosene lamp.

The young man struck a match to light them to the door. ‘Half a dozen of the other papers get it, the Minneapolis Democrat, the St. Anthony Express, and some of those from the larger towns south of here; but they’re all weeklies, and won’t be out for two or three days.’

‘There’s sma’ doot but that man frae St. Anthony will tak the contrac’,’ said the Scotchman gloomily.

They shuffled along through the dark over the slippery boards of the high-set sidewalks, descending nowand again by a perilous flight of two or three steps to cross a miry street.

‘I’m thinkin’ Queen Victoria is richt aboot the Roosians,’ Tammas chatted, his mind going afield from furs and the far west. At the top of the hill he left the printer at his boarding-house, and went on to the three-room cottage where he lived alone.

The house was tidy, but when he had hung his dripping coat to steam beside the fire, he went about setting it more severely to rights. Then he carried a candle into the bedroom, and drew out a large carpet-bag from the closet. He packed it deliberately, humming a thread of old Scotch melody, — a strange sound for this lonely midnight hour. When he had finished he tried the coat before t he fire. It was still wet, so he wrapped a heavy blanket about him, and pinching out his candle flame with rough thumb and forefinger, he stepped out into the wet night again.

The town huddled in complete darkness, except for one light that shone high and star-like through the rain; the extravagant lamp of some late-writing guest in the fifth story of the Fuller House, that palace of travelers. Tamjnas McCullough took a slow but certain way east for a quarter of a mile and stopped on the porch of a two-story brick house. He knocked heavily, and after a little repeated the summons, until the door was opened from within. John Cameron stood there in his carpet slippers, with an orange and white sun-in-the-east-pattern quilt wrapped about him.

‘Why, come in, come in, Tammas. What’s wrong?’

Tammas stepped in, but refusing to walk into the parlor with his wet garments he took the one chair in the narrow hall. Directly above his head hung a rack made of a splendid pair of deer antlers. A high sealskin cap hung on one of the branches.

‘It’s been a cauld winter,’ he remarked to his employer.

‘Yes, it has,’ answered Cameron, huddling over his candle on the steps.

‘I’m thinkin’ the so’diers in the forts were no’ so comfortable as they micht be.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the young man, with a keen personal appreciation just then of the discomfort of chilliness. But he and Tammas had worked together these four years and had deep respect for each other’s ways.

‘The American government is no’ a really hard maister to warrk for,’ the old man ventured. Then there was silence.

‘Were you thinking of getting a job from the government?’ asked Cameron at last.

The old Scot looked startled.

‘Ye’ll no’ be dischargin’ me, Maister Cameron?’ he said.

‘Oh, no, no,’ said Cameron, relieved. ‘I would n’t like to part with you, Tammas.’

Again no sound but the steady swash of the heavy rain against the house.

‘Has Willie Wallace been saying the United States is no good?’ ventured the young man.

‘Na, na, Wullie’ll be a guid American yet. I was doon for a wee chat the nicht, and stoppit to tak’ the young printer man frae the Minnesotan under raa umbrella. He was warrkin’ late.’

Cameron’s face was full of interest, but he waited patiently.

‘It was no’ sae foolish as I thocht that you ha’ cluttered up the shop wi’ buffalo pelts ’ —

The pauses were scarcely shorter now, but they were tense and live.

‘They’re getting scarcer every year,’ filled in the young man.

‘The printer man was set tin’ up a wee piece frae the government atWashingtoon, that askit for bids for—’ Tammas’s voice stopped stubbornly.

‘For bids for carrying the mail to Superior,’ hazarded Cameron, knowing full well that no such item would bring the old Scot to him at t his time of night.

‘Na, na,’ said Tammas testily. ‘It was for bids for one hundred thousand coats for the so’diers, made o’ buffalo pelts.’

The young man rose eagerly.

‘I have about forty thousand pelts,’ he exclaimed, ‘and the driver of the Crow Wing stage said only to-day that a caravan of Chippewas has come over from Red River Valley to Fort Ripley with their winter furs. They only do that when they have made a big haul.’

‘A cauId winter makes the fur thick, an’ the beasts easy o’ gettin’,’ remarked Tammas.

‘The newspaper won’t be out until noon. The stage for Crow Wing and the Fort leaves at five in the morning,’ Cameron continued rapidly. ‘I have to be in St. Paul this spring. Can you go, Tammas?’

The old Scot stood up. His face was almost melancholy. Only his eyes beneath their shaggy brows burned happily.

‘Aye, aye, Maister Cameron. It’s no’ for me to hol’ back an’ pick ma jobs.’

‘Hire all the runners you need to strike up into the Canadian country. Get a-hold of all the pelts you can, and I’ll try to manage the rest from the Dacotahs. You’ll probably have to stay until midsummer. By the way, what was the time limit?’

‘It was no’ wise for me to be too curious-minded,’ said Tammas in gentle rebuke.

Cameron laughed.

‘Well, they’d have to give several months at least for a bid of that size. We’ll keep each other posted. Goodbye, Tammas. Take care of yourself.’

‘Guid-bye, Maister Cameron.’

‘Get some sleep, Tammas, but don’t forget to pack your carpet-bag.’

‘That winna tak mony meenuts,’ answered the old man, preparing to go.

‘This is going to make my fortune, Tammas,’ called the young man gayly, standing quilt-wrapped in the doorway, and holding his flickering candle high to light Tammas McCullough down the slippery steps.

‘I’m no’ sae sure,’ said Tammas, sadly. ‘I’m thinkin’ more like it wull mak some guid gold for that fur man frae St. Anthony, or that clever ane frae Minneapolis.’

Interest ran high when the Minnesotan of April 19, 1856, came out at noon with the government’s call for bids for one hundred thousand buffalo pelts. A score of fur-traders throughout the territory entered the competition, and their various chances of landing the contract was an hourly recurring subject of conversation in houses and shops, and on the streets of the little capital. Every steamboat that clocked in the next month or two was awaited eagerly for any private information it might have picked up at trading points along the Minnesota or the Mississippi as lo who was buying buffalo pells in their vicinity. The territory was scoured for the furs; and team, stage, and boat brought them in to the storage houses in the larger towns, waiting the making of the bids, and their opening at Washington.

Tammas McCullough sent faithful and hopeful figures to Cameron by every stage from his headquarters near Fort Ripley, one hundred and thirty miles northwest of St. Paul. His records were remarkable. He was reaching every scattered camp or Indian village on the reservat ions in the northern part of the territory, and even as far west as the Dacotahs, but his footnotes were characteristic.

‘ Ye ha’ better no’ look for more pelts frae here,’ he would write. ‘Superior an’ Red Wing ha’ cleaned the coontry cot.’ Or, ‘We ha’ had but sma’ luck the week.’

He stayed up in the woods for a month after the opening of the bids, picking up small lots still of pelts, and writing of his extreme surprise that the United States had awarded the contract to one John Cameron, fur-trader of St. Paul. ‘Be shairp to lookit ower the papers to see there be no flaw in them,’ he cautioned.

‘It’s all settled,’ Cameron wrote back, ‘except for carrying out the condition specified in the call for bids, that the government shall inspect the pelts before they are made up. That is but a matter of formality. We have an extra ten thousand over the contract number, and the pelts are all of unusually high grade.’

Tammas came back in the late summer. He went straight from t he stage to his little house, unpacked his carpetbag, and walked down in the dusk to Willie Wallace’s.

‘Weel, weel, here’s the great mon from the wild Indian coontry,’ said his host.

‘Guid-evenin’,’ said Tammas, as though he had been seeing Willie daily.

‘Hoo mony pelts did ye get, Tammas?’ asked his old friend curiously.

‘Ye’re no’ a friend o’ mine, Wullie, if ye’JI askit such pairsonal questins. I am minded no’ to stop —’

‘Ah, sit doon, sit doon,’ begged Willie. ‘ We ha’ no’ talkit ower the RussoTurkish peace papers. I ha’ saved the bits o’ printin’ for ye these mony months.’

Cameron and Tammas went through the shop together the next morning. The building, built of blue limestone and two stories in height, was hemmed closely in on one side by a harness shop and on the other by a frame building housing a restaurant. Its lower floor was divided into two rooms, an ample salesroom in the front, with the rear room reserved for work on the raw skins brought in. A couple of windows and a door looked out from the back wall down on the Mississippi, with a wide valley view beyond. The steep bluff that clambered down to the river bank left only a strip of three or four feet of rocky ground between it and the back of the building. All of the solid row of buildings for a quarter of a mile on either side of t he fur-shop ran back thus close to the top of the bluff.

‘Back doors are n’t of much use here,’ said John Cameron, standing in the breezy doorway. ‘We’ll never deliver an ounce of freight here, unless it comes by balloon.’

‘Fur-shops need a’ the air they can get,’ answered Tammas drily, as they turned to go up to the storeroom on the second floor. The open staircase led up from the salesroom, starting well up toward the front of the store, and hugging the side wall at the right. The one large room above, lighted by three windows in the front, and an equal number in the rear wall, was piled high with buffalo pelts. The room was strong with a scorched, dusty odor from the huge piles of furs, coupled with the medicinal tang of the drugs used to discourage moths.

‘I’m having them done up in bundles of twenty to make them easier to count when the inspector comes. They’re to send an army officer up from Washington soon. We’ll fix a place for him up near the front of the store, where the light is good, and on the same side as the staircase. I plan to have a carpenter cover over most of the width of the stairway with smooth boards, to form a slide. Then we can shoot the bundles of pelts down close to the inspector, and they won’t require much handling. A couple of men up here, and two or three to shake out the pelts down there for the officer, and a man to throw the rejected skins into the back room, will be about enough to manage the job, I figure. We’ve got a handsome lot of pelts, thanks to you, Tammas: a hundred and ten thousand all told, and it ought to be a smooth job all through.’

‘Where wud I be warrkin’, Maister Cameron ? ’

‘Oh, I’ll leave you foot-loose, Tammas. You’ve done your share. You can stay around and see the fun, or have a holiday, as you like.’

It was well along in October before the young army officer arrived from Washington.

Cameron chafed somewhat at the delay.

‘How do they expect to get these coats made for this winter, even with all the fur-sewers in the territory—'

‘But it takes so everlasting long to get out here to the end of the world,’ replied the soldier. ‘I’ve been seven days on the way, and even then I came up from Dunleith in your fastest boat, the Northern Belle.’ ‘Your government should have accepted the bid of that fur man from Superior,’ said Cameron soberly.

‘Why?’ asked the soldier.

‘ Because then,’ said the Minnesotan, ‘you ’d have had the pleasure of traveling north from here by stage. It only takes seven days more.’

The officer joined heartily in the laugh at his own expense.

‘You come out ahead,’ he agreed, ‘and you ’ve got a darn attractive country up here too, if it was n’t for the winters. Now let’s get to work early to-morrow morning. I want to get through as quickly as possible. Are the skins handy?’

‘Yes, they are all in the building.’

Cameron’s plan worked out well. The bundles of pelts handled by several men in the big storeroom above, slid smoothly down the covered staircase, were shaken out swiftly one by one before the young officer, who stamped them with the government’s seal of acceptance or by a gesture rejected them. Yet despite the busy regularity and outward cheer of the workers, all was not well. Out of the first, thousand pelts examined, Cameron, who was keeping a record to check up with, had to write down in plain figures only ‘287 accepted.’ The second thousand fared twenty-one better, but as the day wore on they averaged steadily not more than three hundred accepted out of each thousand. They were pelts of superior quality, but the young officer cast aside a skin for any slightest mar or defect.

These opulent westerners probably had half a million pelts more or less, and his one thought was, ‘get the best for the government.’ A little later in the day when he was growing very tired and his task looked endless, his idea modified a little: ‘Get the best for the government consistent with getting back to Washington for the election — and well — before the ice shuts me up in this wilderness.’ But even then he cast pelts aside steadily, sending more than half to the back room.

‘When does navigation close up here?’ he tried to ask casually, at the end of the first day, as he prepared to go back to the Fuller House for the night.

‘Oh, not for a good two weeks yet,’ one of the helpers answered, ‘not before the tenth of November. The Lucy has made the trip even later than that, but she’s a tough little boat.’

Cameron himself was busy figuring. They had handled eighty thousand pelts, and only thirty thousand of these had been accepted.

The officer stood in the doorway.

‘It seems good to get a breath of air,’ he said. ’I can hardly see straight.’

Cameron nodded with cheerful understanding. ’It is a tiresome job, but I hope you’ll sleep well.’

’I don’t expect to,’ grumbled the soldier. ’I shall probably rock in a boat over a sea of buffalo waves all night — but let’s get at it earlier to-morrow. By the way, when does the next boat go down?’

‘The Northern Belle’s gone; the Lucy leaves at noon to-morrow, and the Ocean Wave the next morning. There is no boat then until Monday.’

The officer sighed. ‘I’ll make the Ocean Wave,’ he said, and walked slowly off through the crisp October evening to his hotel.

Tammas had been hovering about all day, conspicuously cheerful, even jocose — a state of mind so strange to him that Cameron, worried and harassed by the rejection of two thirds of his pelts, yet found time to wonder and grow anxious about the old Scot, who had fallen, during the afternoon, to helping with the carrying of the discarded skins out to the back room, which was now heaped high with them. ‘Tammas,’ said young Cameron when all the rest had gone, ‘ the officer said he thought you a jolly old codger.’

Tammas’s face grew wontedly sober.

‘It wudna he’p the cause ef the young so’dier frae Washington were to think us doon in the hairt,’ he said.

‘You’re right,’ said his employer, ‘but what are we going to do?’

‘That’s no to be thocht of the day. We maun sleepit, an’ come fresh to the battle the morn.’

So they set an early hour for meet ing at the shop in the morning, and Cameron went home to thrash over the problem through half the hours of the night. Burlingham, another St. Paul trader, had perhaps thirty thousand pelts, and Clark had some, but it would be humiliating in the extreme to ask for aid from these business rivals. Besides, there was no way of bringing a single pelt into the building except past the very eyes of the inspector. There was no way out. He could not keep his faith wit h the government. Financial ruin was inevitable too. Every dollar he owned or had been able to borrow had gone into the venture of collecting the great heap of good pelts lying rejected in the workroom of his shop. His mind traveled round and round in a circle, coming back to the same starting-point, until toward morning he fell restlessly asleep and overslept by an hour his appointment with Tammas at the store. He hurried out into the hazy autumn morning, his hastily snatched breakfast in his hand. It was scarcely light yet, but it lacked less than an hour of the time when the officer had wished to begin work.

‘Plague my sleepiness and stupidity. There is n’t time to do anything,’ he railed at himself as he neared the building.

The old Scot met him at the door.

‘I’m done for, Tammas,’ he said. ‘I see no way out, and I even overslept.’

‘ It’s a cauld! morn in’,’ said the other. ‘I ha’ just steppit in mysel’.'

‘Well I’m glad you got some sleep,’ returned Cameron.

‘What wud be the guid o’ stayin’ up a’ nicht just to gang to Peter Hammond’s an’ back?’

‘Peter’s?’

‘Aye, the ane doon the Pig’s Eye road that cleans the wells.’

Tammas had locked the door, and now began gingerly climbing the stairs on the narrow foot-space not covered by the boards. Cameron followed, bewildered. They reached the second floor. About thirty thousand pelts still remained in neat bundles toward the front of the room, but the place seemed desolately empty. Tammas walked back toward the three large windows that overlooked the river. Near them stood two heavy wooden capstans.

‘I ha’ Peter doon in the warrk-room to he’p us roon these nesty machines o’ his,’ he remarked. ‘We’ll oot wi’ the windies.’ And he proceeded to remove the hinged windows.

A sudden light, not of the morning, broke on Cameron, and he laughed long and merrily.

‘They’re guid pelts,’ said the old man, ‘an’ onyway a’ pelts look alike to young so’diers frae Washingtoon.’

‘Is the ledge of ground down there wide enough to work from?’

‘Aye, aye, an’ a foot-space or twa to spare.’

‘How many pelts can you raise at once?’

‘About thurty.’

‘Will four extra men do?’

‘Four is just richt.’

‘All right., I’ll get them here before the officer comes.’

Cameron swung down the stairs, smiling broadly in spite of himself.

‘There may be the dickens to pay before we get through with this job, but there’s a chance —’ And he went off into another peal of laughter, whereat the startled Peter peeped from the back room.

‘Will it work, Peter?’ asked Cameron.

‘Sure it will,’ answered the wellcleaner.

His employer had but a moment to speak with Tammas, on his return with the extra workmen, before the soldier appeared.

‘I s’all stay doon here,’ the old man said solemnly, ‘to keepit the so’dier man frae steppin’ oot inta the back room, an’ catchin’ cauld.’

Then the hum of the work began.

The officer worked swiftly, but with less keenness. His eyes were still tired from the unusual strain of yesterday’s close work. He discarded fewer pelts to-day, but out of the first few thousands accepted scarcely more than half.

‘I dreamed last night that we got frozen up in our steamboat staterooms, and the captain came to ask me how to make cranberry sauce, and to offer me a few buffalo robes he said the President had sent by mail. He threw one over me, then another and another, and another, and another, until I smothered, and they took me back to Washington and buried me with honors,’ said the officer, as he stopped for a moment’s rest, about the middle of the morning.

The helpers joined in the laugh, then turned to receive another of the endless chain of bundles that; slid down the stairway. A sudden sound smote the brief silence that followed, — the creaking of heavy ropes. Tammas strayed casually forward from the rear room.

‘What’s that?’ asked the officer,

‘Ha’e ye no’ ta’en note how the October air carries sound verra clear?’ asked the Scot. '’T is wonderfu’, hoow we’re hearin’ the noise o’ the warrk i’ the harness shop just as plain as if ’t was here.’

‘ I have heard of that quality in your autumn air,’ answered the young man from Washington, resuming his steady grind of inspection and stamping.

By noon they had gone over fiftyfour thousand, and accepted about thirty-one thousand, leaving almost forty thousand still to be selected to make up the contract number. The officer had his lunch sent in from the little restaurant next door to save time, and he swallowed it hastily.

‘I’ll just take a ten-minute turn in the air,’ he suggested, ‘and get back to work. I want to finish to-night — or I won’t get back to Washington to vote for Fremont. Can you spare a little time, Mr. Cameron?’

Cameron came forward at once, and they started briskly up the street.

‘This isn’t my sort of an assignment,’ explained the officer, ‘but Captain Roe, who was detailed for the work and who knows furs from A to Z, fell ill shortly before he was to start. I was brought up in Georgia, and I’ve always been on duty in the South.’

‘This is all new to you, then?’ said the fur man.

’Yes, the country, the furs, and all.’

‘Well, you’re doing a good job for the government, anyway,’ replied Cameron cordially. ‘I’ve never seen any inspection more thorough.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ returned the young officer. ‘By the way, you have a magnificent view of the Mississippi from the bluffs here. Could n’t we get around back of some of these buildings — perhaps through a back door on the ledge, I’d like to see the valley.’

A swift vision assailed the fur man of great bundles of buffalo pelts swaying dizzily in the bright noon-sunned air half-way between the narrow rocky ledge and three open upper windows of a blue limestone building.

‘A little farther on the view is better,’ he said frankly, but he scanned the length of the street for any sight that might be moulded into a diversion.

Just ahead of them out of a small candy shop popped a boy and girl tugging at a skipping rope.

‘ You’re scairt; I ’ll take the outside,’ piped the little girl shrilly to her companion; and between the two t he rope stretched taut across the high sidewal k.

‘ Why, what’s this ? ’ asked Cameron, brought to a standstill.

The children’s faces flamed.

‘Buchanan or Fremont or Fillmore?’ they challenged.

‘Fremont forever!’ said the young officer ardently.

‘Well, then, you can walk around,’ said the little maid stoutly.

The young men laughed.

‘We were just about to turn back, anyway,’ said the officer. And they fell into a warm discussion of the coming election, with popular feeling running so high throughout the country that even the babies were taking sides passionately.

At the door of the shop they returned to the subject of furs.

‘That’s a clever stairway arrangement of yours for sliding down the furs,’ approved the officer. ‘You must have your storage arranged pretty well above too, to hold so many pelts. I think I’ll take a run up there before I settle down to work again.

He stood with one foot on the uncovered border of stair, his hand on the rail. Cameron followed him, without clear intention,

Tammas had come in the door a moment before with the mail. He seemed to see neither his employer nor the inspector. He drew a thin newspaper from his pocket and beckoned to one of the helpers.

‘Did I no’ tell ye, Jeems, that that mon Fremont wud ha’ but sma’ chance. The Washingtoon papers ha’ ta’en a straw vote.’ He ran his rough forefinger impressively down the printed colums of figures.

The officer plunged down from the sixth step.

’Have you a late newspaper from Washington?’ he asked eagerly.

In a few minutes they were all at the grind again, and through the hours of the afternoon the work went on almost automatically. The officer rejected with a dogged conscientiousness that he had himself ceased to realize.

‘No danger of his accepting all of them, even to make up the last thousand, and we’re far from that yet,’ thought Cameron, preparing the shop for their working after nightfall. At their present rate they could scarcely finish before midnight.

He sent out for additional lamps. Tammas went across the street to the grocer’s for one.

‘Let me put some water in the oil,’ suggested the grocer, half-seriously. ‘He could n’t see to be so particular then. What’s he thinkin’ of to discard so many of our good Minnesota pelts?’

‘Na, na,’ said the old Scot. ‘Maister Cameron is no’ the man to tak’ up wi’ sma’ tricks.’

‘Well, so long as you have enough pelts to have him discard them like water, we won’t kick,’ said the groceryman heartily. ’We ’re proud that you and Mr. Cameron lives in St. Paul, Tammas.’

It was one in the morning when they finished. The workmen above, who had been sliding bundles down since sixthirty the morning before, half stumbled, half slid down the cumbered stairs, an air of satisfaction mixed with all their weariness and stiffness. They winked stealthily at Tammas, and went out into the night.

The soldier made polite adieux, praising generously even the climate of the territory, now that he was about to leave it. His boat, the Ocean Wave, left in a few hours. Tammas McCullough walked down to the Fuller House with him.

‘You and your employer must have had a lively summer, collecting all those pelts. I feel as though I’ve looked over a million, more or less. Let’s see,’ he stopped and struck a match to look at his card of figures. ‘I’ve inspected 217,141 pelts in two days — ’

‘It was no’ sae verra hard gettin’ them,’ said Tammas. ‘I’ve seen livelier days and nichts here in the shop.’

‘Well, of course, I don’t know anything about the fur business,’ admitted the soldier, ‘but I’m glad to have met some one who does. It’s a mighty interesting life you live up here.’

‘It is that,’ answered the Scot simply.

‘Look me up, Mr. McCullough, if you ever come cast. I’m usually stationed in Virginia,’

They parted at the door of the hotel, shaking hands warmly. Then the officer went in for a few hours’ sleep.

’That’s a nice old Scot,’ he said to the night-clerk; ‘open as a book.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the clerk.

‘Call me just in time for the boat. I’ll have breakfast aboard,’ said the soldier.

Tammas took his slow way up the hill toward home in the frosty darkness. Every bone in his body ached. He stopped at a street crossing to rest a moment. The town slept, but the furshop was still well lighted, so he retraced his steps.

Cameron sat alone at his desk. His face was white with fatigue, but he smiled.

‘Ye maun gang up to the hoose an’ rest, Maister Cameron,’ said Tammas McCullough.

‘I was waiting for my ’partner,’ said John Cameron.