They walked together to the stable, where Neil himself rubbed down his horse, saw that she had a modest drink, covered her up, and then turned, ready to accompany his host back to the house. "Had a good time abroad--eh?" asked Malcolm with a somewhat covert glance at Neil as they walked. Neil threw his head up with a joyous air. "Ripping. It’s a bit thick coming back to the grey silence of the glens. It’s a white silence with us. We’ve heavy drifts from Balquhidder up. You’re pretty free here." "It’s coming, though," said Malcolm, with an upward glance at the snell skies. "Come inside. The house is small, but it’s easily warmed. That’s one comfort." When Neil had washed his hands and brushed his clothes they passed into the little snuggery, where Malcolm sat and smoked of an evening. He had made some little alteration in the arrangement of the house, and the room which the General had used as his library and sitting-room was now converted into a dining-room, which it had originally been. It was a man’s house now, the few tokens of Isla’s presence having long since disappeared. Whether Malcolm was able to keep the peace between his two elderly and contentious servants nobody knew. Truth to tell, he never bothered his head about them, and many a storm rose and raged in the kitchen and was followed by many a dead and ominous calm, but of these he seemed to be totally unaware. He had none of those finer shades of feeling which had rendered Isla immediately conscious of any rift in the domestic lute. Drummond stretched himself in the lounge-chair before the blazing peat with a sigh of content. He was in the mood to be at peace with the whole world and to give every man more than his due. It occurred to him as he looked at Malcolm, on whose face the full light from the window fell where he sat, that he had improved in looks of late. The coarseness had disappeared from his features, and there was an expression of refinement and delicacy which had been at one time wholly absent. It was such an improvement that Drummond decided that Mackinnon’s looks had been underrated. The keen, hard, simple life, in conjunction with the pursuit of a certain lofty ideal, had wrought its saving grace in Malcolm Mackinnon, as it will in any man who gives it fair play. "Surely you didn’t stop away as long as you intended," said Malcolm as he lit up his pipe, while waiting for Diarmid’s summons to eat. "I was there three weeks--long enough to idle about, though I could have stopped three years," said Drummond significantly. "Your sister didn’t come home with you?" "No. They haven’t any plans just yet. Aunt Betty talks about staying over Easter, and if they stop as long of course I’ll go back." "Nice, is it, or Monte Carlo?"