"Yes, but that is not their official title." "I can't think of a better one," said he. "By the way----" "Well?" "No, nothing," he said. Maud withdrew her arm from his with dignity. "That is extremely ill-bred," she said. "Mind, I don't in the least want to know what you were going to say--in fact, I would much sooner you did not tell me--but having begun, you would, if you had decent manners, go on." Thurso laughed; sharp though his neuralgia still was, he was already beginning to think of things apart from himself. "How can you say that?" he asked. "You are bursting to know." "Well, yes, I am. Do tell me." "I sha'n't Maud, I think I will change, though it is so late, as I have been in and out of those houses all day. But you needn't; you can begin without me, if you like." Maud put her nose in the air. "Did you _really_ imagine I was going to wait for you?" she asked. * * * * * Thurso went upstairs, still smiling at Maud's unbridled curiosity, especially since there was no mystery or reason for secrecy about that which he had stopped himself telling her. He merely was not quite sure whether or no he wanted to do that which he had been on the point of proposing, and which in itself was of a perfectly unexciting nature. The bare, dull facts of the matter were these. He had let the salmon-fishing of the river here until the end of July to an American, whose name at the moment he could not remember, and this afternoon, as he came out of one of the cottages, he had passed one of his gillies carrying rod and gaff, and walking with a young man of clearly transatlantic origin, whom he felt sure must be the American in question; and the remark he had refrained from making to Maud was that it might be neighbourly to ask him to dinner. But as he made his hurried toilet, he found himself debating the reasons for and against doing this with a perfectly unaccountable earnestness, as if the decision this way or that was one that could conceivably be of importance. On the one side, the reasons against asking him were that the hospitality they could offer him was of the plainest and most baked-apple kind, served in a shrouded room, and that he would probably get a much better dinner at the inn where he was quartered. Also, he himself felt that if he had come up to Caithness to fish, he would much sooner that his landlord did not ask him to dinner, since his hospitality, if accepted, would mean the curtailment of the cream of the evening rise. So perhaps the truer hospitality would be shown in not burdening his tenant with the necessity of inventing an excuse or of accepting a tiresome invitation. Then suddenly the man's name, Bertie Cochrane, flashed into his mind. Thurso had thought it so odd to sign a lease by an abbreviated name. In any case, it would be kinder not to ask Mr. Bertie Cochrane to come three miles in order to eat Scotch broth with a tired landlord, who