seem to be greatly distressed at the result of the afternoon. Indeed, he laughed – not wildly like Janet, but quietly and with philosophy. ‘A very neat hold-up,’ he reflected. ‘Gad, she came on like a small destroying angel … That’s the girl Archie’s been talking about … a very good girl. She looked as if she’d have taken on an army corps … Jolly romantic ending – might have come out of a novel. Only it should have been Archie, and a prospect of wedding bells – what? … Anyway, we’d have won out all right but for the girl, and I don’t mind being beaten by her …’
His meditations were interrupted by the sound of furious wheels on the lone highway, and he cautiously raised his head to see an old horse and an older cart being urged towards him at a canter. The charioteer was a small boy, and above the cart sides projected a stag’s horn.
Forgetting all precautions, he stood up, and at the sight of him Benjie, not without difficulty, checked the ardour of his much-belaboured beast, and stopped before him.
‘I’ve gotten it,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The stag’s in the cairt. The lassie and me histed him in, and she tell’t me to drive to the Castle. But when I was out o’ sicht o’ her, I took the auld road through the wud and here I am. We’ve gotten the stag off Glenraden ground and we can hide him up at Crask, and I’ll slip doun i’ the cairt afore mornin’ and leave him ootbye the Castle wi’ a letter from John Macnab. Fegs, it was a near thing!’
Benjie’s voice rose into a shrill paean, his disreputable face shone with unholy joy. And then something in Palliser-Yeates’s eyes cut short his triumph.
‘Benjie, you little fool, right about turn at once. I’m much obliged to you, but it can’t be done. It isn’t the game, you know. I chucked up the sponge when Miss Raden challenged me, and I can’t go back on that. Back you go to Glenraden and hand over the stag. Quick, before you’re missed … And look here – you’re a first-class sportsman, and I’m enormously grateful to you. Here is something for your trouble.’
Benjie’s face grew very red as he swung his equipage round. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘If ye like to be beat by a lassie, dinna blame me. I’m no wantin’ your money.’
The next moment the fish-cart was clattering in the other direction.
To a mystified and anxious girl, pacing the gravel in front of the Castle, entered the fish-cart. The old horse seemed in the last stages of exhaustion, and the boy who drove it was a dejected and sparrow-like figure.
‘Where in the world have you been?’ Janet demanded.
‘I was run awa wi’, lady,’ Benjie whined. ‘The auld powny didna like the smell o’ the stag. He bolted in the wud, and I didna get him stoppit till verra near the Larrig Bridge.’
‘Poor little Benjie! Now you’re going to Mrs Fraser to have the best tea you ever had in your life, and you shall also have ten shillings.’
‘Thank you kindly, lady, but I canna stop for tea. I maun awa down to Inverlarrig for my fish.’ But his hand closed readily on the note, for he had no compunction in taking money from one who had made him to bear the bitterness of incomprehensible defeat.
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