“O-ooh! Gimme a drink,” he begged. “Please gimme a drink. I gotta have it.” The grins faded from the faces before him. They knew full well the signs of incipient delirium tremens. Tammy laughed dryly. “Hast brought home more than an old ox and a cow, Shanty,” he said. “Hast brought a whole menagerie. Yon stick’ll have tuh Wullies in a minute if he’s not liquored.” Reivers dropped to his knees, shuddering, his arms shielding his eyes from imaginary beasts of the bottle. “Take ’em away, boys,” he pleaded. “Kill the big ones, let the little ones go.” With a snarl Moir leaped to his sledge and knocked the neck off a bottle of hooch. “Drink, you scut!” he growled. “I’ll have dealings with you when you’re sobered up.” Reivers drank and began to doze. Moir kicked him upright. “Get into the shed with t’other jackass,” he commanded, propelling him toward the dugout into which MacGregor had crawled. “And in tuh morning you go to work, e’en though snakes be crawling all o’er ’ee.” A faintly muttered curse greeted Reivers as he crawled into the dugout. “You poor curs! What do you want with me now?” came MacGregor’s voice from a corner of the tiny room. “You skunk——” “Easy, MacGregor Roy,” whispered Reivers quietly. “It’s not one of the ‘skunks.’” “MacGregor Roy!” By the light that entered by a slit in the skin-flap Reivers could see the Scotchman painfully lifting his head from his miserable bunk, as he hoarsely repeated his own name. “MacGregor Roy! Who are you, stranger, to call James MacGregor by his family name?” “I’m the man that Shanty Moir brought in this afternoon,” whispered Reivers. “I know, I know,” gasped MacGregor weakly. “But men do not call me MacGregor Roy. James MacGregor they call me, unless—unless——” “Unless they have the ‘Roy’ straight from the lips of your daughter, Hattie.” For a full minute MacGregor sat stricken speechless. “Man, man! Speak!” The unfortunate man came wriggling over and laid his hands pleadingly on Reivers. “Don’t play with me. Is my daughter Hattie alive and well?” “Very much alive,” replied Reivers, “and as well as can be expected of a girl who is worrying her heart out over why her father doesn’t return or send her word.” “Have they no’ guessed—has no’ my brother Duncan guessed by this time?” gasped MacGregor. “Can not they understand that I must be dead or held captive since I do not return? Speak, man, tell me how ’tis with them!” Reivers waited until the poor man had become more quiet before replying to him. “You’d better quiet down a little MacGregor,” he whispered then. “You can’t tell when your friends might be listening, and it wouldn’t do either of us any good if they heard what we’re saying.” “True,” said the old man more quietly. “I’m acting like an old woman. But for three months I’ve been trapped like this, and my head fairly swims when I hear you speak of Hattie. How come you to know of her?”