"Are you cold?"

"Not now." He added unexpectedly: "You think I'd be all right, don't
you, if only you could have a go at my tonsils or my adenoids? I believe
you're just waiting to have a go at them."

"Your tonsils are septic," Stonehouse agreed gravely. "I told you so,
but I wouldn't advise anything drastic until you're stronger. We'll
think about it in a month or two. You're better already."

Cosgrave chuckled to himself. In the shadow in which he sat the chuckle
sounded elfish and almost mocking.

"Oh, yes, I'm better!"


Stonehouse took his first holiday for three years, and carried Cosgrave
off with him to a rough shooting-box in the Highlands lent him by a
grateful and sporting patient, and for a week they tramped the moors
together and stalked deer and fished in the salmon river that ran in and
out among the desolate hills. The place was little more than a
shepherd's cottage, growing grey and stubborn as a rock out of the
heather, and beyond that proffered them occasionally by a morose and
distrustful gillie they had no help or other companionship. They won
their food for themselves, cooked it by the smoking fire, and washed
heroically in the icy river water. A sting of winter was already in the
wind and a melancholy and bitter rain swept the hills, giving way at
evening to unearthly sunsets. They saw themselves as pioneers at the
world's end. And Stonehouse, who had calculated its effect on Cosgrave,
was himself caught up in the fierce, rough charm of that daily life. He