We came upon Miss Gilchrist in the breakfast room. A pile of linen lay on the horse-hair sofa; and the good lady, with a measuring tape in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, was walking around Ronald, who stood on the hearthrug in a very manly attitude. She regarded me over her gold-rimmed spectacles, and, shifting the scissors into her left hand, held out her right. "H'm," said she; "I give ye good morning, Mosha. And what might you be wanting of us this time?" "Madam," I answered, "that, I hope, is fairly evident." Ronald came forward. "I congratulate you, St. Ives, with all my heart. And you may congratulate me: I have my commission." "Nay, then," said I, "let me rather congratulate France that the war is over. Seriously, my dear fellow, I wish you joy. What's the regiment?" "The 4-th." "Chevenix's!" "Chevenix is a decent fellow. He has behaved very well, indeed he has." "Very well indeed," said Flora, nodding her head. "He has the knack. But if you expect me to like him any the better for it----" "Major Chevenix," put in Miss Gilchrist in her most Rhadamanthine voice, "always sets me in mind of a pair of scissors." She opened and shut the pair in her hand, and I had to confess that the stiff and sawing action was admirably illustrative. "But I wish to heaven, madam," thought I, "you could have chosen another simile!" In the evening of that beatific day I walked back to Edinburgh by some aerial and rose-clouded path not indicated on the maps. It led somehow to my lodgings, and my feet touched earth when the door was opened to me by Bethiah McRankine. "But where is Rowley?" I asked a moment later, looking round my sitting-room. Mrs. McRankine smiled sardonically. "Him? He came back rolling his eyes so that I guessed him to be troubled in the wind. And he's in bed this hour past with a spoonful of peppermint in his little wame." * * * * * And here I may ring down the curtain upon the adventures of Anne de Saint-Yves.