than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out
your tartans. Something clannish now--one of those ancestral rigs
that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark,
handsome type."

"Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge
chest. "Set off you'll be."

* * * * *

Set off he was.

And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his
brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid
plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his
shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay
with big buckles.

"Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean
merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch
topaz.

"Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was
Hades he was going into.

Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast
between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his
face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony
hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful
that he was not a centipede.