[Love at First Sight Frontispiece]
[The Ghost-Bear]
[Salving the Ghost-Bear's Skin]
[He threw short with a Gasp]
[Stale-mate]
[Pursued]
[The Forerunner]
[Drew Swiftly, and as Swiftly Loosed]
THE MASTER-GIRL
He had come gently and observantly up the glen, tapping here and scratching there as he climbed, and ever and anon straightening an elderly back to deliver a small cough. Also at intervals he would turn his face to the way by which he had come to rest the plantar muscles and study the lie of the land.
Chance-led he came and unadventurously, as one might say, and with no more premonition of impending change, or of this being a White Day in his life than had you, yourself, dear reader, when you left your breakfast-table this morning.
He was a little person in the clerical wideawake and dark tweeds of a don in vacation, elderly and grey, with heavy, lower-middle-class features refined by expression as a sunset refines a dull street.
Something about the rounded shoulders and narrow chest bespoke the bookish man, the "scholar's slope," they used to call it. His hands were large and broad at the finger-tips, such must have done manual labour in their time, pick-and-shovel work, possibly. At the moment of his walking into this story they were—I will not say dirty, but redolent of the soil, for as he went he would still be fumbling in a roomy wallet which pulled down his shoulder, and be taking therefrom for close and loving inspection this or that shapeless fragment of stone which he would presently return to the society of its fellows.
"It never came here by accident—there is no such thing," he murmured, conversing with himself, thought discussing matters with thought, as do the thoughts of those of us who live the single life, or cherish interests which are unshared by those with whom we cohabit. "We have no example from this level," he went on, turning in hand a something small and angular which he had picked up a few yards down the slope, a fragment of grey chert it was. "Three conchoidal fractures are sufficient, when associated with such patination. Here are—six—eight minor flaws in these cutting edges, apart from the cross-fracture—(patinated too). Yes, undoubtedly a used-up flake. And the thing hasn't travelled half-a-mile from home.... Where's the floor?"
"And, to think," he went on, "that such evidence would be lost—wasted upon that young doctor-fellow. It is almost incredible, the crass ignorance of our so-called scientific men.... Tried to interest him ... no use.... 'Out here to climb,' he says!... And with lovely things like these under his feet.... Amazing!"