"As for that, Mr. Anne," said he, with an incongruous twinkle in his bloodshot eye, "she've been up with a tray: dry toast and a pot of tea. The old gal's bark is worse than her bite, sir, begging your pardon, and meaning as she's a decent one, she is." "I was fearing that might be just the trouble," I answered. One thing was certain. Rowley, that morning, should not be entrusted with a razor and the handling of my chin. I sent him back to his bed, with orders not to rise from it without permission; and went about my toilette deliberately. In spite of the lad, I did not enjoy the prospect of Mrs. McRankine. I enjoyed it so little, indeed, that I fell to poking the sitting-room fire when she entered with the _Mercury_; and read the _Mercury_ assiduously while she brought in breakfast. She set down the tray with a slam and stood beside it, her hands on her hips, her whole attitude breathing challenge. "Well, Mrs. McRankine?" I began, upturning a hypocritical eye from the newspaper. "'Well,' is it? Nhm!" I lifted the breakfast cover, and saw before me a damnatory red herring. "Rowley was very foolish last night," I remarked, with a discriminating stress on the name. "'The ass knoweth his master's crib.'" She pointed to the herring. "It's all ye'll get, Mr.--Ducie, if that's your name." "Madam"--I held out the fish at the end of my fork--"you drag it across the track of an apology." I set it back on the dish and replaced the cover. "It is clear that you wish us gone. Well and good: grant Rowley a day for recovery, and to-morrow you shall be quit of us." I reached for my hat. "Whaur are ye gaun?" "To seek other lodgings." "I'll no say--Man, man! have a care! And me beat to close an eye the nicht!" She dropped into a chair. "Nay, Mr. Ducie, ye daurna! Think o' that innocent lamb!" "That little pig." "He's ower young to die," sobbed my landlady. "In the abstract I agree with you: but I am not aware that Rowley's death is required. Say rather that he is ower young to turn King's evidence." I stepped back from the door. "Mrs. McRankine," I said, "I believe you to be soft-hearted. I know you to be curious. You will be pleased to sit perfectly still and listen to me." And, resuming my seat, I leaned across the corner of the table and put my case before her without suppression or extenuation. Her breathing tightened over my sketch of the duel with Goguelat; and again more sharply as I told of my descent of the rock. Of Alain she said, "I ken his sort," and of Flora twice, "I'm wonderin' will I have seen her?" For the rest she heard me out in silence, and rose and walked to the door without a word. There she turned. "It's a verra queer tale. If McRankine had told me the like, I'd have gien him the lie to his face." Two minutes later I heard the vials of her speech unsealed abovestairs, with detonations that shook the house. I had touched off my rocket, and the stick descended--on the prostrate Rowley.