He was not yet twenty-one, and boy enough to be proud of the ingenuity which had converted some sandwich crumbs and the lead off a cast into a pair of evil eyes. Man enough, however, to whistle "Who is Sylvia?" as he leant back against the cairn, smiling at Numbo Jumbo and thinking of Lady Maud. "Rick! you bad boy!" cried his aunt's eager voice just as he was beginning to forget everything in drowsiness. "You promised you wouldn't when I threw the last into the Minch, and this is worse, ever so much worse!" "Better, you mean. It's the best I've done. Look at its eyes!" Miss Willina pretended to shudder as her hand, instinct with righteous vengeance, went out towards the idol. "You might leave it there till we go," pleaded Rick. "It really is the best I've done by a long way. Then you could take it home Aunt Will, and have a real _auto-da-fe_. It's more orthodox than drowning; besides, it will help the peats to a blaze when we go in." She burst out suddenly into an amused laugh. "Peats!" she echoed. "Ah, Rick! if you had only seen them at Roederay. The room full of smoke, that lovely girl--she is beautiful, my dear--full of apologies. They took so long to kindle, she said. 'Excuse me,' said I, 'but you mustn't miscall a peat fire. It is the most hospitable one in the world.' They were all lying crisscross like a crow's nest, and you should have seen her relief when I had them standing shoulder to shoulder and they flared up like a Highland regiment at the skirl of the pipes. A little thing that, Rick, but so it was in all. I laughed till I cried. That house full of telephones, electric bells, hot-water pipes--all the modern whims--the factor says people won't take a shooting unless there is a fixed bath nowadays. Well! downstairs Kirsty and Janet the herd; four willing hands and no knowledge. I tell you, Kirst is just terrified of the dampers. 'Will it be blowing down the house, Miss Willina?' she says." "Skip, please." The remark met with a scornful neglect. "Then upstairs those three with the knowledge but never a hand. Brains--at least two of them had, for the husband seemed fickless and no action. There they couldn't understand each other, and Mr. Wilson went about with his hand in his pocket, asking if a five-pound note would do any good. "My dear sir," said I, "neither five, nor ten, nor fifteen will help us if the _Clansman_ can't put in to-morrow. So let us pray for fine weather. Then I promised to lend them our cook, and we became great friends. Only, I don't know why, I felt all along as if something was going to happen; a sort of conviction things were going wrong; a kind of doubt whether we were in our right places; a description of--" Miss Macdonald's presentiments were apt to embrace all things visible and invisible, so Rick made haste with a remark. "And what did you think of the other man,--Eustace?"