Under the first lamp he paused and hunted for the number over the nearest door where four brass plates menaced the passer-by with that modern form of torture that few live to escape--the inquisitorial process known as dentistry. Making a rapid calculation, he came to the conclusion that the house he sought must lie at the further end of the street--London's "Bridge of Sighs"--where breathless hope and despair elbow each other ceaselessly in the wake of suffering humanity. The fog was changing colour from a dirty yellow to opal, and the damp pavement was becoming visible as McTaggart moved forward with a quick stride that held an elasticity which it did not owe to elation. He walked with an ease and lightness peculiar in an Englishman who, athletic as he may be, yet treads the earth with a certain conscious air of possessing it: a tall, well-built man, slender and very erect, but without that balanced stiffness, the hall-mark of "drill." A keen observer would guess at once an admixture of blood that betrayed its foreign strain in that supple grace of his; in the olive skin, the light feet, and the glossy black hair that was brushed close and thick to his shapely head. Not French. For the Frenchman moves on a framework of wire, fretting toward action, deadly in attack. But the race that bred Napoleon, subtle and resistant, built upon tempered steel that bends but rarely breaks. Now, as he reached the last block and the house he sought, McTaggart paused for a second, irresolute, on the step. He seemed to gather courage with a quick indrawn breath, and his mouth was set in a hard line as his hand pressed the bell. Then he raised his eyes to the knocker above, and with the slight action his whole face changed. For, instead of being black beneath their dark brows, the man's eyes were blue, an intense, fiery blue; with the clear depths and the temper touch that one sees nowhere else save in the strong type of the hardy mountain race. They were not the blue of Ireland, with her half-veiled, sorrowful mirth; nor the placid blue of England, that mild forget-me-not. They were utterly unmistakable; they brought with them a breath of heather-gloried solitude and the deep and silent lochs. Here was a Scot--a hillsman from the North; no need of his name to cry aloud the fact. And yet... The door was opened, and at once the imprisoned fog finding a new outlet drove into the narrow hall. A tall, bony parlour maid was staring back at him as, mechanically, McTaggart repeated the great man's name. "You have an appointment, sir?" Her manner seemed to imply that her dignity would suffer if this were not the case.