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"I hope at least that yours will be brief, for I suppose you pass
before me," said I.
"All pass before me," he said, with a shrug and a gesture upward of
the open hands. "It was not always so, sir, but times change. It
was not so when the sword was in the scale, young gentleman, and
the virtues of the soldier might sustain themselves."
There came a kind of Highland snuffle out of the man that raised my
dander strangely.
"Well, Mr. Macgregor," said I, "I understand the main thing for a
soldier is to be silent, and the first of his virtues never to
complain."
"You have my name, I perceive"--he bowed to me with his arms
crossed--"though it's one I must not use myself. Well, there is a
publicity--I have shown my face and told my name too often in the
beards of my enemies. I must not wonder if both should be known to
many that I know not."
"That you know not in the least, sir," said I, "nor yet anybody
else; but the name I am called, if you care to hear it, is
Balfour."
"It is a good name," he replied, civilly; "there are many decent
folk that use it.


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