"Uncle," said I, "there were men ashore at Sandag
Bay "

I had no time to go further ; indeed, I not only for-
got my words, hut even my weariness, so strange was
the effect on TJncle Gordon. He dropped his pipe and
fell back against the end of the house with his jaw
fallen, his eyes staring, and his long face as white as
paper. We must have looked at one another silently
for a quarter of a minute, before he made answer in
this extraordinary fashion : " Had he a hair kep on ? "



THE MBEBT MES". 45

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man
who now lay buried at Sandag had worn a haiiy cap,
and that he had come ashore alive. For the first and
only time I lost toleration for the man who was my ben-
efactor and the father of the woman I hoped to call my
wife.
"These were living men," said I, "perhaps Jaco-
bites, perhaps the French, perhaps pirates, perhaps ad-
venturers come here to seek the Spanish treasure ship ;
but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your
daughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty ter-
rors, man, the dead sleeps well where you have laid him,
I stood this morning by his grave ; he will not wake be-
fore the trump of doom."

My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke;
then he fixed his eyes for a little on the ground, and
pulled his fingers foolishly ; but it was plain that he
was past the power of speech.
