"Hardly," said Prime.
Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the wumman yer wife?"
"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning when we found ourselves on the shore of the big lake."
"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"
"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the other."
The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his shaggy brows.
"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."
"I am a fiction-writer," Prime admitted, not without some little anxiety as to the effect the statement might have upon the hard-headed under-sheriff.
"Ou, ay! That's it, is it? A story-writer? And, besides that, ye're the biggest fule leevin' to tell it to me. Ye'll no be expectin' me to believe anything ye're sayin', after that! A novel-writer—losh!"
"One of the greatest Scotchmen the world ever saw was a novel-writer," Prime ventured to suggest.