"It is indeed a beautiful garden," Macleod said, looking round on the withered leaves and damp soil; "no wonder you look after it yourself."
"I am not gardening," the old man said, peevishly. "I have been putting a knife in the ground—burying the hatchet, you might call it. Fancy! A man sees an old hunting-knife in a shop at Gloucester—a hunting-knife of the time of Charles I., with a beautifully carved ivory handle; and he thinks he will make a present of it to me. What does he do but go and have it ground, and sharpened, and polished until if looks like something sent from Sheffield the day before yesterday!"
"You ought to be very pleased, pappy, you got it at all," said Gertrude White; but she was looking elsewhere, and rather absently too.
"And so you have buried it to restore the tone?"
"I have," said the old gentleman, marching off with the shovel to a sort of out house.
Macleod speedily took his leave.
"Saturday next at noon," said he to her, with no timidity in his voice.
"Yes," said she, more gently, and with downcast eyes.
He walked away from the house—he knew not whither. He saw nothing around him. He walked hard, sometimes talking to himself. In the afternoon he found himself in a village in Berkshire, close by which, fortunately, there was a railway station; and he had just time to get back to keep his appointment with Major Stuart.
They sat down to dinner.