"And a whole glass will do you no harm, sir," shrewdly observed Hamish.
"Not in the clouds."
"The what, sir?"
"The clouds. Don't you consider we are going shooting through clouds?"
"There will be a snipe or two down here, sir," said Hamish, moving on; for he could not understand conundrums, especially conundrums in English.
The day remained of this moist character to the end; but they had plenty of sport, and they had a heavy bag on their return to Castle Dare. Macleod was rather silent on the way home. Ogilvie was still at a loss to know why his friend should have taken this sudden dislike to living in a place he had lived in all his life. Nor could he understand why Macleod should have deliberately surrendered to him the chance of bagging the brace of grouse that got up by the side of the road. It was scarcely, he considered, within the possibilities of human nature.
CHAPTER XV.
A CONFESSION.
And once again the big dining-hall of Castle Dare was ablaze with candles; and Janet was there, gravely listening to the garrulous talk of the boy-officer; and Keith Macleod, in his dress tartan; and the noble-looking old lady at the head of the table, who more than once expressed to her guest, in that sweetly modulated and gracious voice of hers, how sorry she was he had encountered so bad a day for the first day of his visit.