So, still more softly whistling, Cleg departed.
He was not great company that night for the man in the shelter, one "Tyke" Tweedie—a man who had once been a soldier for three months, before being bought off by his father, who had regretted the transaction ever since. "Tyke" was a man of battles. By his own account he had been in the Crimea. He was great upon "the Hichts o' Almy." He described the joint career of himself and the victorious Sir Colin Campbell, concluding his epic with, "Then we charged the enemy and carriet a' afore us, till we garred the Russian chiels rin like stour!"
But Tyke had a poor listener that night, though he never knew it. For Cleg sat silent, and only by a nod did he acknowledge his interest when Tyke had come to the crisis of one of his famous narrations.
The policeman on the beat would sometimes stop and look over the windward edge of the shelter. "Hae ye gotten to the battle o' the Inkermann yet?" he would ask.
"Na, Rob," Tyke would reply, "we are aye on the Hichts o' Almy yet! Dear, sirce, but it was a sare, sare job. Ye see, there was me and Sir Colin, and wi' that we at them sword in hand——"
And the policeman would stroll away from the glow of the fire, out under the stars—alone save for the transient rake-hell cat skirmishing across from area-railing to area-railing, and the tramp of a brother officer coming up sombre and subdued from far down the hill.
But about one of the clock, when the night was verging to its stillest, Cleg looked up and saw the stars overhead thinning out.
"It's never morning already!" he said, rubbing his eyes, for he had not half solved the hard problem of Vara Kavannah.
He stepped out of the shelter. All the heaven to the north was a-flicker with the skarrow of fire.