"My owner will be able to pay, I expect, when I get one. For when the worst comes to the worst, Miss Carmichael, I can always put myself up to auction. Do you think I should fetch a fair price? Item, one Highland estate, seriously damaged by the Crofter Commission, and an ancestral tree, ditto, by Darwinism. N.B.--Property encumbered by several mortgages and one extravagant proprietor." He lay back against a hay-cock with his hands behind his head, looking the personification of lazy content as he watched her face shift and change. "You don't seem to approve of my plan," he went on, in the same light tones, "but the idea has infinite charm for me; it would save so much trouble, and do so little harm. People sell themselves to the devil, we are told, and that may be reprehensible--at any rate, it would be uncomfortable. But what inconvenience or immorality can there be in making yourself over, soul and body, to some virtuous Christian man or woman who, in all probability, is far more capable of running the coach respectably than you are?" "The same immorality as there is in any other form of suicide, I suppose," she replied coldly; but he was not to be put off. "And what immorality is there in suicide, Miss Carmichael? I hold that my life is my own, unless I make over the responsibility of it to someone else, which you say is wrong. Therefore, I have a perfect right to do what I please with it." "Once you have overcome the initial difficulty of discovering what you do please," she retorted sharply. And he smiled. "You use a detective camera apparently, but I admit it. I am only certain of one thing, it pleases me to please myself. It pleases me now to forget that there is such a thing as money, and to go to bed at ten o'clock." "Which shows that you are virtuously inclined, and that, therefore----" "I refuse to be whitewashed by your charity," he interrupted. "I am of the earth, earthy; though sometimes I can lie on my back in the hay and see heaven opening----" His voice, with a sudden cadence in it, ceased as he sprang lightly to his feet. "Come along, Cameron--you are intolerably long over that pipe--my energy, Miss Carmichael, does not arise from Goodness, but from Greed. If the hay is not in tonight, it may rain; if it rains, the hay will be spoilt. If it is spoilt I shall have to buy more, and if I buy more I shall not have that shilling to spend on myself. It comes to that in the end, even in Arcadia."