the old cottage at Loch Dour, where they were living, and where he
had erected a small manufactory and laboratory for the making of his
inventions, which had become profitable. The consul reiterated his
delight at meeting them again.

"I'm not so sure of that, sir, when you know the business on which I
come," said Mr. Callender, dropping rigidly into a chair, and clasping
his hands over the crutch of a shepherd-like staff. "Ye mind, perhaps,
that ye conveyed to me, osteensibly at the request of James Gow,
a certain sum of money, for which I gave ye a good and sufficient
guarantee. I thought at the time that it was a most feckless and
unbusiness-like proceeding on the part of James, as it was without
corroboration or advice by letter; but I took the money."

"Do you mean to say that he made no allusion to it in his other
letters?" interrupted the consul, glancing at Ailsa.

"There were no other letters at the time," said Callender dryly. "But
about a month afterwards we DID receive a letter from him enclosing a
draft and a full return of the profits of the invention, which HE HAD
SOLD IN HONDURAS. Ye'll observe the deescrepancy! I then wrote to the
bank on which I had drawn as you authorized me, and I found that they
knew nothing of any damages awarded, but that the sum I had drawn had
been placed to my credit by Mr. Robert Gray."

In a flash the consul recalled the one or two questions that Gray had
asked him, and saw it all. For an instant he felt the whole bitterness
of Gray's misplaced generosity--its exposure and defeat. He glanced
again hopelessly at Ailsa. In the eye of that fresh, glowing, yet
demure, young goddess, unhallowed as the thought might be, there was