He had received in payment cash, debentures and preference shares,
and his lawyers and his own acumen had acclaimed the bargain.
But all the week-end he had been a little sad. It was the end of so
old a song, and he knew no other tune to sing. He was comfortably
off, healthy, free from any particular cares in life, but free too
from any particular duties. "Will I be going to turn into a useless
old man?" he asked himself.

But he had woke up this Monday to the sound of the blackbird, and
the world, which had seemed rather empty twelve hours before, was
now brisk and alluring. His prowess in quick shaving assured him
of his youth. "I'm no' that dead old," he observed, as he sat on
the edge of he bed, to his reflection in the big looking-glass.

It was not an old face. The sandy hair was a little thin on the top
and a little grey at the temples, the figure was perhaps a little
too full for youthful elegance, and an athlete would have censured
the neck as too fleshy for perfect health. But the cheeks were
rosy, the skin clear, and the pale eyes singularly childlike.
They were a little weak, those eyes, and had some difficulty in
looking for long at the same object, so that Mr. McCunn did not stare
people in the face, and had, in consequence, at one time in his
career acquired a perfectly undeserved reputation for cunning.
He shaved clean, and looked uncommonly like a wise, plump schoolboy.
As he gazed at his simulacrum he stopped whistling "Roy's Wife" and
let his countenance harden into a noble sternness. Then he laughed,
and observed in the language of his youth that there was "life in
the auld dowg yet." In that moment the soul of Mr. McCunn conceived
the Great Plan.