story.

"Now what do you think, Ian?" said the chief, ending a recital true
to the very letter, and in a measure calm, but at various points
revealing, by the merest dip of the surface, the boiling of the
floods beneath.

"You must send him the head, Alister," answered Ian.

"Send-what-who-I don't understand you, Ian!" returned the chief,
bewildered.

"Oh, well, never mind!" said Ian. "You will think of it presently!"

And therewith he turned his face to the wall, as if he would go to
sleep.

It had been a thing understood betwixt the brothers, and that from
so far back in the golden haze of childhood that the beginning of
it was out of sight, that, the moment one of them turned his back,
not a word more was to be said, until he who thus dropped the
subject, chose to resume it: to break this unspoken compact would
have been to break one of the strands in the ancient bond of their
most fast brotherhood. Alister therefore went at once to his room,
leaving Ian loving him hard, and praying for him with his face to
the wall. He went as one knowing well the storm he was about to
encounter, but never before had he had such a storm to meet.

He closed the door, and sat down on the side of his bed like one
stunned. He did not doubt, yet could hardly allow he believed, that