"There's a wild strain in the Bolderos somewhere," continued the doctor, crossing his legs, and settling down for a chat. "Those lassies have had a gay lady among their forebears at some time or other, for they didn't get their pranks from old Brown-boots. To do Brown-boots justice, he was respectable--I'm thinking it was his one virtue. Proud as Lucifer, and vain as a peacock--they say you can't be both, but he _was_--and so was Maud--and it was just her vanity that got the whip hand of her pride at the last. It must have been," musing; "nothing else could account for her throwing over a nice fellow like Foster, and a good match too, for poor loony Val without a sixpence. She didn't know he hadn't a sixpence, mind you; she meant to come back and queen it at Claymount,--where I doubt not she would soon have ruled the roost, if she hadn't had the ill-luck to kill the old lady instead. She wanted to show she had two strings to her bow, d'ye see?" He smoked and nodded, then started afresh:-- "Aye, aye, and there was Leonore--Leonore Stubbs--the widow. Her that played the mischief with that poor lad of mine, Tommy Andrews, and lost me the best assistant I ever had. I tried to get Tommy back after the Bolderos left, but no; he scunnered the place; she had just eaten the heart out of him, Leonore had. My word, she was a jaunty bit creature. I fair weakened to her myself, when she would stand by the road-side looking up at me in the gig, with those big, laughing eyes of hers--and her wee bit moothie, it was the prettiest bit thing--though mind you, I ran her down to Tommy. Poor Tommy!" "He wouldn't take a telling," resumed the speaker, after a pause. "They never will, you know--those dour, close, machine-like lads; they'll make no resistance; they'll let you talk and talk and think you've convinced them--and it just rolls like water off a duck's back. Tommy garred me believe it was all over and done with. He went about his work, and kept out of little pussycat's way, and then, phew! all at once the murder was out! It was simply bottled up; and one fine day--I don't know what happened, for cart-ropes wouldn't drag it out of him--but _something_ did, and he came in, looking battle and murder and sudden death. He was off at crack of dawn,--and that was just a few days before Maud's fine elopement took place. We had never had such an excitement before in these humdrum parts, and we never shall again." To all of this the friend, also a Scot, hearkened without emitting a syllable. When, however, his ear detected the accents of finality, he shook the ashes from his pipe and opened his lips: "I fell in with the rejected gentleman the other day". "Foster? No? Did you? Did you really? How was that?" In an instant the doctor was on the alert. "I was on my holiday, doing a bit of fishing in an out-of-the-way part of Sutherland, and there were only two or three of us in the hotel. Foster was one." "A tall, thin man, with a lantern-jawed face?"