My Brave and Gallant Gentleman Part 39

"Yes! And she is like Mrs. Clark, but the prize looks too alluring for her to refrain from entering the gamble."

"George! Why should we leave this till to-morrow?"

"I don't know why."

"We could start in to-night, just as easily as to-morrow, and it will be over a day sooner. What do you say?"

"I am ready when you are, Mr. Auld."

"Right! Now, I am going to leave the conversation to you. You must work it round to fit in. I shall do the rest,--the dirty work, as the villain says in the dime novel."

"What do you know about dime novels?" I laughed.

"I am a minister of the gospel now, but ... I was a boy once."

The Rev. William Auld had dinner with me, then he started out in his launch for Clark's ranch. It was arranged that I follow immediately in a rowing boat, which would take me longer to get there and would thus disarm any suspicion of complicity.

When I arrived at Clark's, I could hear the minister talking and Andrew Clark laughing heartily. Mr. Auld was telling some interesting story and he had the old man in the best of humours.

I was welcomed with cheerfulness, and the minister shook hands with me as if he had not seen me for a month of Sundays.

Rita was a-missing. Mrs. Clark seemed nervous and ill-at-ease.

Andrew, however, was in his happiest of moods.

"What special brought ye over, George?" he asked.

I told him of Rita's anxiety to be able to talk English properly and of my willingness to teach her if it could be arranged conveniently. The minister backed up the project with all his ministerial fluency, but Andrew Clark was not the man to agree to a thing immediately, no matter how well it appealed to him.

"Rita's a good la.s.sie," he said, "and she hasna had schoolin' except what Marget and me taught her, and that's little more than being able to read and add up a few lines o' figures.

"George Bremner,--you're an honest man and I like ye fine. You'll ha'e my answer by the end o' the week."

"Right you are!" I exclaimed.

Andrew then started in to tell Mr. Auld of the method he had adopted in regard to the disposition of his output of eggs, and that gave me just the opportunity I wanted.

"How do you raise your chicks, Mr. Clark?" I asked. "Do you use an incubator?"

"Sure thing! And a grand little incubator I ha'e too," he answered.

"She takes two hundred and fifty eggs at a time and gives an average of eighty per cent chicks."

I had lit on Andrew Clark's one and only hobby.

He got up. "Come and ha'e a look at it. It's called 'The Every-Egg-A-Chick' Incubator, and it nearly lives up to its name.

"But it's a pity I ha'e nothin' in her at the minute.

"Come on, too, Mr. Auld. It'll do ye good to learn something aboot chickens, even if you are busy enough lookin' after the sheep."

Andrew took a huge key from a nail in the wall and we followed him out to the log cabin, both of us full of forced interest and bubbling over with pent-up excitement.

Old man Clark talked all the way on his favourite topic; he talked while he inserted the key in the door and he kept on talking as he walked in, all intent on his wonderful egg-hatcher.

He left the key in the door.

Just as I was due to enter, I stepped back. With a quick movement, the minister pulled the door to and turned the key, taking it out of the lock and putting it in his trouser pocket.

"Hey!--what's the matter?" came a voice from the inside.

We did not answer.

Andrew Clark battered on the door with his fists.

"Hey there! The door has snappit to. Open it and come awa' in."

The minister put his lips to the keyhole.

"Andrew Clark,--that door is not going to be opened for some time to come."

"Toots! What are ye bletherin' aboot? What kind o' a schoolboy trick is this you're up to? Open the door and none o' your nonsense."

I chuckled with delight, as I ran off for some boards and nails which I hammered up against the small window for extra security.

When I finished the job, the Rev. William Auld was getting through his lecture to Andrew.

"--And you won't step a foot out of this place, neither shall you eat, till you renounce your devilish vow and speak to the wife of your bosom, as a G.o.d-fearing man should."

Sonorously from behind the door came Clark's voice.

"Willum Auld!--are ye a meenister o' the gospel?"

"Yes!"

"And ye would try to force a man to break a vow made before the Lord?"

"Yes! Andrew."

"Ye would starve a man to death,--murder him?"

"No!--but I would make him very uncomfortable. I would make him so hungry that he would almost hear the gnawing in his internals for meat, if I thought good would come of it."

The man behind the door became furious.

"Willum Auld!"

"Yes! Andrew."

"If ye don't open that door at once, I'll write a complaint to the Presbytery. I'll ha'e ye shorn o' your releegious orders and hunted frae the kirk o' G.o.d."