In Secret

"So teach us to number our days," rejoined the voice from the fog, "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

"The days of our years are three-score years and ten," said McKay. "Have you a name?"

"A number."

"And what number will that be?"

"Sixty-seven. And yours?"

"You should know that, too."

"It's the reverse; seventy-six."

"It is that," said McKay. "Come in."

He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left wicket. A young man stepped through.

"Losh, mon," he remarked with a Yankee accent, "it's a fearful nicht to be abroad."

"Come on in," said McKay, re-locking the wicket. "This way; follow me."

They went by the kitchen garden and servants' hall, and so through to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven instantly blew it out.

"Better not," he said. "There are vermin about."

McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the darkness: "Seventy-seven!"

"Je suis la!" came her voice from the stairs.

"It's all right," he said, "it's one of our men. No use sittin' up if you're sleepy." He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.

"Better return to bed," he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into the room on the left.

For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by the casement window he carried only one glass.

"Don't you?" inquired Sixty-seven. "And you a Scot!"

"I'm a Yankee; and I'm through."

"With the stuff?"

"Absolutely."

"Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird--tiens c'est assez drole!" He smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on the deep sill. Then he began breezily: "Well, Seventy-six, what's all this I hear about your misfortunes?"

"What do you hear?" inquired McKay guilelessly.

The other man laughed.

"I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to replenish the wardrobe you had lost."

"Is that all you heard?"

"It is."

"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"

"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it? The beggar wore kilts!--and the McKay tartan--and, by jinks, if his gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!--and him with his Yankee passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout, is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park--by Godfrey! thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!--you're Boche. And it was so, McKay."