She shook her head. "You do not understand. You cannot understand. We are a very old and strong people with roots deep, deep in the earth." "Please God you are right," he said. "But, Saskia, you know that if I can ever serve you, you have only to command me. Now I can do no more for you than the mouse for the lion--at the beginning of the story. But the story had an end, you remember, and some day it may be in my power to help you. Promise to send for me." The girl laughed merrily. "The King of Spain's daughter," she quoted, "Came to visit me, And all for the love Of my little nut-tree." The other laughed also, as a young man in the uniform of the Preobrajenski Guard approached to claim the girl. "Even a nut-tree may be a shelter in a storm," he said. "Of course I promise, Quentin," she said. "_Au revoir._ Soon I will come and take you to supper, and we will talk of nothing but nut-trees." He watched the two leave the room, her gown glowing like a tongue of fire in the shadowy archway. Then he slowly rose to his feet, for he thought that for a little he would watch the dancing. Something moved beside him, and he turned in time to prevent the jade casket from crashing to the floor. Two of the supports had slipped. He replaced the thing on its proper table and stood silent for a moment. "The priest and the soldier gone, and only the beast of burden left.... If I were inclined to be superstitious, I should call that a dashed bad omen." CHAPTER I HOW A RETIRED PROVISION MERCHANT FELT THE IMPULSE OF SPRING Mr. Dickson McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with the towel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the looking-glass, and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window. In the little garden lilacs were budding, and there was a gold line of daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a birch flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. A blackbird whistled from a thorn-bush, and Mr. McCunn was inspired to follow its example. He began a tolerable version of "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch." He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster. Calculation revealed to him the fact that in his fifty-five years, having begun to shave at eighteen, he had wasted three thousand three hundred and seventy hours--or one hundred and forty days--or between four and five months--by his neglect of this admirable invention. Now he felt that he had stolen a march on Time. He had fallen heir, thus late, to a fortune in unpurchasable leisure.