“Oh, Jim, it sounds too heavenly,” she said. “It makes me feel cool to think of it. Just fancy, in a fortnight’s time we shall all four of us be there, in our own shooting-lodge----” “Farm-house,” said Jim. “Well, I didn’t suppose it was Balmoral, with our own coffee-coloured salmon river roaring down to join the waters of our own loch.” Jim lit a cigarette. “Mabel, you mustn’t think of shooting-lodges and salmon rivers and lochs,” he said. “It’s a farm-house, rather a big one, though I’m sure we shall find it hard enough to fit in. The salmon river you speak of is a big burn, no more, though it appears that salmon have been caught there. But when I saw it, it would have required as much cleverness on the part of a salmon to fit into it as it will require on our parts to fit into our farm-house. And the loch is a tarn.” Mabel snatched the “Guide to Highland Shootings” out of my hand with a rudeness that even a sister should not show her elder brother, and pointed a withering finger at her husband. “‘Achnaleish,’” she declaimed, “‘is situated in one of the grandest and most remote parts of Sutherlandshire. To be let from August 12 till the end of October, the lodge with shooting and fishing belonging. Proprietor supplies two keepers, fishing-gillie, boat on loch, and dogs. Tenant should secure about 500 head of grouse and 500 head of mixed game, including partridge, black-game, woodcock, snipe, roe deer; also rabbits in very large number, especially by ferreting. Large baskets of brown trout can be taken from the loch, and whenever the water is high sea-trout and occasional salmon. Lodge contains’--I can’t go on; it’s too hot, and you know the rest. Rent only £350!” Jim listened patiently. “Well?” he said. “What then?” Mabel rose with dignity. “It _is_ a shooting-lodge with a salmon river and a loch, just as I have said. Come, Madge, let’s go out. It is too hot to sit in the house.” “You’ll be calling Buxton ‘the major-domo’ next,” remarked Jim, as his wife passed him. I had picked up the “Guide to Highland Shootings” again which my sister had so unceremoniously plucked from me, and idly compared the rent and attractions of Achnaleish with other places that were to let. “Seems cheap, too,” I said. “Why, here’s another place, just the same sort of size and bag, for which they ask £500; here’s another at £550.” Jim helped himself to coffee. “Yes, it does seem cheap,” he said. “But, of course, it’s very remote: it took me a good three hours from Lairg, and I don’t suppose I was driving very noticeably below the legal limit. But it’s cheap, as you say.” Now, Madge (who is my wife) has her prejudices. One of them--an extremely expensive one--is that anything cheap has always some hidden and subtle drawback, which you discover when it is too late. And the drawback to cheap houses is drains or offices--the presence, so to speak, of the former, and the absence of the latter. So I hazarded these.