"Is that all you heard?"
"It is."
"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"
"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it? The beggar wore kilts!—and the McKay tartan—and, by jinks, if his gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!—and him with his Yankee passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout, is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park—by Godfrey! thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!—you're Boche. And it was so, McKay."
"Seventy-six," corrected McKay gently.
"That's better. It should become a habit."
"Excuse me, Seventy-six; I'm Scotch-Irish way back. You're straight Scotch—somewhere back. We Yankees don't use rods and flies and net and gaff as these Scotch people use 'em. But we're white, Seventy-six, and we use 'em RIGHT in our own fashion." He moistened his throat, shoved aside the glass:
"But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU'RE not white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them."
"You got them?"
"Certainly—at the inn—gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten—having gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there—took the chance that the swine weren't right. And won out."