“I fancy, Father Hamilton,” said I, “you could be convinced of the merits of woman if your heart was ever attacked by one--your heart, that does not believe anything in that matter that emanates from your head.” Again the eagle's gleam from the pitted eyes; and, upon my word, a sigh! It was a queer man this priest of Dixmunde. “Ah, young cockerel,” said he, “thou knowest nothing at all about it, and as for me--well, I dare not; but once--once--once there were dews in the woods, and now it is very dry weather, Master Greig. How about thine honour's secretaryship? Gripp'st at the opportunity, young fellow? Eh? Has the lady said sooth? Come now, I like the look of my old Andrew's--my old Merry Andrew's nephew, and could willingly tolerate his _croque-mort_ countenance, his odour of the sanctuary, if he could weather it with a plethoric good liver that takes the world as he finds it.” He was positively eager to have me. It was obvious from his voice. He took me by the button of my lapel as if I were about to run away from his offer, but I was in no humour to run away. Here was the very office I should have chosen if a thousand offered. The man was a fatted sow to look on, and by no means engaging in his manner to myself, but what was I and what my state that I should be too particular? Here was a chance to see the world--and to forget. Seeing the world might have been of most importance some months ago in the mind of a clean-handed young lad in the parish of Mearns in Scotland, but now it was of vastly more importance that I should forget. “We start in a week,” said the priest, pressing me closely lest I should change my mind, and making the prospects as picturesque as he could. “Why should a man of flesh and blood vex his good stomach with all this babblement of king's wars? and a pox on their flat-bottomed boats! I have seen my last Mass in Dixmunde; say not a word on that to our friends nor to Madame; and I suffer from a very jaundice of gold. Is't a pact, friend Scotland?” A pact it was; I went out from Miss Walkinshaw's lodging that afternoon travelling secretary to the fat priest. CHAPTER XVI RELATES HOW I INDULGED MY CURIOSITY AND HOW LITTLE CAME OF IT Dunkerque in these days (it may be so no longer) was a place for a man to go through with his nose in his fingers. Garbage stewed and festered in the gutters of the street so that the women were bound to walk high-kilted, and the sea-breeze at its briskest scarcely sufficed to stir the stagnant, stenching atmosphere of the town, now villainously over-populated by the soldiery with whom it was France's pleasant delusion she should whelm our isle.