“I fear I come at an awkward time,” she said pathetically; “but all alone in this strange city, what was I to do?” “You come at the very time I want you,” he replied. “I had—I had forgotten things. I have been play-acting, and the play is done! Was this”—and he turned to the pseudo-secretary—“was this a part of your entertainment, Lord Balgowie?” “It is a most effective curtain,” said the other, smiling kindly on the little woman; “but it was not, strictly speaking, in the manuscript. I am glad the play, as you say, is over; for I had begun to think you took the part, in one respect, too seriously. I am honoured to meet you, madam; you must be wearied after such a journey. Both of you go at once to the rue Adolphe Yvon, and I shall make the requisite apologies to the company.” He saw them to the street, and returned to join the guests. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with a manner they had never seen in him before, “Le Pompadour has taken his leave _à l’anglais_, and my little joke has terminated in the most dramatic fashion. I have long had a desire to see, as a spectator, what for a dozen years I was under the absurd impression was a life of pleasure; and, at the cost of paying the bills myself and lending my worthy young compatriot my name for a few months, I have had the most delicious and instructive entertainment. In many respects he filled the part of Lord Balgowie better than ever I could do; but two things rather spoiled his admirable presentation—a homely taste in viands, and his honest heart!” THE TALE OF THE BOON COMPANION. “EVERY man his boon companion, every man his maid,” they say in Argyll. Somewhere in the wide world are both the man and the maid, but not always do they come to your door. You may pass the maid at the market, never thinking she was meant to mother your bairns, and her lot thereafter may be over many hills, baking bannocks of oaten meal on another man’s hearth—that’s your ill-fortune; the boon companion may wander by the change-house where you sit drinking late—drinking late and waiting to learn the very songs he knows, and he may never come that road again; but whether that is good for you or ill is the most cunning of God’s secrets. I could tell nine hundred tales and nine of boon companions who met the friend they were meant for, but I have still to learn the art of seeing the end from the beginning of any comradeship. This particular and ancient history that I am telling is a story that is to be heard on winter nights in the fir-wood bothies of Upper Loch Finne. It is the story of an affair that happened in the wild year before the beginning of the little wars of Lorn.