"I heard Uncle Tom go up to bed, Malcolm, and I thought I’d better come down." "The fire has gone low," he said, as he sprang up to vacate the most comfortable chair. "Here’s a log. We’ll get a blaze in a minute. Sit down here." She sat down on the extreme edge of the chair and watched him a little wistfully while he attended to the fire. "I thought, perhaps, we had better have a little talk about what we are going to do," she said a trifle unsteadily. "There is nothing but Creagh. The question is--Can it hold us both?" "Don’t speak like that, Isla," he said almost pleadingly. "But really Uncle Tom’s plan is the best, considering all things. Couldn’t you make up your mind even yet to go to London with him, if it were only for a few days?" Isla shook her head. "I couldn’t, Malcolm. Aunt Jean and the girls would drive me crazy just now. Don’t even mention it again. I--I just want to ask you whether it wouldn’t be better to tell Uncle Tom the truth about how you left the army before he goes to-morrow? You know how impulsive he is. He will think nothing of going straight to the War Office or to the Commander-in-Chief, if he can find him, the moment he gets back to London." Malcolm’s face fell. "By Jove, so he might! I never thought of that. But, hang it all, Isla, I can’t tell him." "Let me do it, then. Don’t you see anything would be better in the circumstances than that he should make a fuss? It would make you look such a fool, and it would certainly result in newspaper paragraphs which, through the great kindness of Colonel Martindale, have never appeared." "I’ll see in the morning. I’ll be driving him to the station. Anyhow, I’ll impress on him that the matter must on no account be opened up again--that nothing would induce me to go back to the army," said Malcolm, whose policy all through life had ever been to find the easiest way out. Isla dropped the subject. For the first time since her father’s death she had schooled herself to try to speak of it naturally. "As you let Achree to the Rosmeads for the longer term, what are you going to do? It’s impossible that you can live at Creagh for an indefinite time and without an object." "I want a little while in which to look round, Isla. I must have at least six months to inquire into things. I’m going up to Glasgow on Monday to go over everything with Cattanach. I must see whether the profits of the place cannot be increased in some directions. I can be busy enough for the next six months at least in getting the whole thing into shape. After that I must try to get a berth of some kind. Rosmead was recommending the Argentine. By the time he comes back I shall be in a position to go thoroughly into the prospects there." "And in the meantime, then, you will live at Creagh?" "I thought of doing so. I am sorry for your sake that it isn’t Achree. But I had no hand in that. You shut yourself out, so to speak."