“It is no laughing affair, I assure you—at least for me,” said he. “Here I am six months behind with my work, and I doubt not all my correspondents furious.”
“Mrs Macaulay and I between us have made shift to deal with the correspondence in your—in your holiday,” said the laird. “The most serious thing, I’m thinking, is a drove of cattle sold by Alasdair Dhu at Marinish tryst; I’m too poor a man to afford the loss of them.”
“You will not lose a penny,” said Macaulay. “I got the best of prices for them, and have the money now. It was an irregularity.”
“So one might call it,” agreed the Captain.
“It was an irregularity, a sudden craze. If I had been a man who drank—”
“You would probably have drowned the flame of folly long before now,” said the Captain, who sometimes took a dram.
“A flame, exactly! Just a flame; no word better describes it. When you spoke of taking down that rotten den, I was for the time possessed. I can honestly tell you that a score of thoughts came sweeping through me that I never harboured for a second in my life before.”
“Nor had intruded on you before, eh, Macaulay?” said the Captain.
“That—that is neither here nor there; if every man confessed the thoughts his better nature rejected we were all condemned for the gallows sooner or later.”
“I must say I was looking for a little more contrition, Mr Macaulay,” said the Captain. “You’ll allow the escapade was a little unusual, and not without some inconvenience to myself? You seem to take it in so odd a spirit that I cannot be sure against a recurrence. I may tell you that I’m determined to have Kincreggan down—I can be as dour as yourself, you see—and though I might be prepared to fight the point of its ownership once in the old fashion, I cannot guarantee that I should be ready for that a second time.”