“Good evening, Captain,” he said briskly to his client, just as if he had been out for an airing. “This has been a stupid business—a remarkably stupid business. I must crave your pardon. At such an inconvenient time, too! But I hope to make it up some way.” The Captain could scarcely trust his senses. He had risen to defend himself against the savage, and here was his sober man of business back! “Well, it has been what might be called a fairly busy summer with us, Mr Macaulay,” said the Captain, at his wits’ end how to meet so curious a penitent. “And I have still got a twinge of your penknife in my breast now and then.” The factor’s face reddened. “I declare, I’m affronted,” said he. “With a penknife! Tut, tut!—a villainously silly weapon, Captain; and still it might have been a serious enough thing for you. I’m beat to understand it; some lesion of the brain, as the medical jurisprudists say; I would never harm a cat, except _durante furore_—if—if I deliberated on it. I have little doubt I’m the talk of the country—most annoying, most annoying! I should not wonder if the profession made it the occasion of a complaint against me; and if it come to that, sir, I hope I may look for your support?” He took up his penknife again—it still lay on his desk—and the Captain stood back from him abruptly, but he need not have done so, for the lawyer was only going to sharp his pen, as benign and proper a man as ever charged a fee. His client did not know whether to laugh or storm. He felt like to laugh at the ludicrousness of the way Macaulay had returned to his senses; he felt anger with the unaccountable spirit which made the offender more perturbed about the figure he must henceforth cut in public than that he should for a summer have played the part of robber, and wellnigh been a murderer too. But the good humour of Kilree prevailed, and he laughed—a demonstration that but visibly increased Macaulay’s chagrin. “It is no laughing affair, I assure you—at least for me,” said he. “Here I am six months behind with my work, and I doubt not all my correspondents furious.” “Mrs Macaulay and I between us have made shift to deal with the correspondence in your—in your holiday,” said the laird. “The most serious thing, I’m thinking, is a drove of cattle sold by Alasdair Dhu at Marinish tryst; I’m too poor a man to afford the loss of them.” “You will not lose a penny,” said Macaulay. “I got the best of prices for them, and have the money now. It was an irregularity.” “So one might call it,” agreed the Captain. “It was an irregularity, a sudden craze. If I had been a man who drank—” “You would probably have drowned the flame of folly long before now,” said the Captain, who sometimes took a dram.