John Macnab (Unabridged). Buchan John

      “I’ve told him everything. It was the only way, for he had begun to suspect. I admit it’s a gamble, but I believe I can trust the child. I think I know a sportsman when I see him.”

      Archie still shook his head. “There’s something else I may as well tell you. I met one of the Raden girls to-day—the younger—she was on the bank when I fell into the Larrig. She asked me point-blank if I knew anybody called John Macnab?”

      Lamancha was wide awake. “What did you say?” he asked sharply.

      “Oh, lied of course. Said I supposed she meant the distiller. Then she told me the whole story—said she had written the letter her father signed. She’s mad keen to win the extra fifty quid. For it means a hunter for her this winter down in Warwickshire. Yes, and she asked me to help. I talked a lot of rot about my game leg and that sort of thing, but I sort of promised to go and lunch at Glenraden the day after to-morrow.”

      “That’s impossible,” said Lamancha.

      “I know it is, but there’s only one way out of it. I’ve got to have smallpox again.”

      “You’ve got to go to bed and stay there for a month,” said Palliser-Yeates severely. “Now, look here, Archie. We simply can’t have you getting mixed up with the enemy, especially the enemy women. You’re much too susceptible and far too great an ass.”

      “Of course not,” said Archie, with a touch of protest in his voice. “I see that well enough, but it’s a black look-out for me. I wish to Heaven you fellows had chosen to take your cure somewhere else. I’m simply wreckin’ all my political career. I had a letter from my agent to-night, and I should be touring the constituency instead of playin’ the goat here. All I’ve got to say is that you’ve a dashed lot more than old Raden against you. You’ve got that girl, crazy about her hunter, and anyone can see that she’s clever as a monkey.”

      But the laird of Crask was not thinking of Miss Janet Raden’s wits as he went meditatively to bed. He was wondering why her eyes were so blue, and as he ascended the stairs he thought he had discovered the reason. Her hair was spun-gold, but she had dark eye-lashes.