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Occasionally the worm turned, and then a good many articles of furniture were overset; and the Misses Hope, who resided beneath us, knocked up through the ceiling with the tongs, whereupon the landlady and her daughter came in armed with the poker and a long-handled broom to promote peace.

But after the affair of the squirt Almond and I took counsel, and Almond said (for Professor Jeeming Flenkin had discovered on the back of a careful drawing of an engine wheel a caricature of himself pointing with index-finger and saying, “Very smutty!”) that he would stand this sort of thing no longer.

So we resolved to work a sell on Mac which he would not forget to his dying day. To effect this we took our landlady and our landlady’s daughter into the plot, and the matter was practically complete when Mac came home. We heard him whistling up the stairs. The engineer was drawing a cherub in Indian ink. The arts student was reading a text-book of geology. The landlady and her daughter were busy about their work in their own quarters. All was peace.

The key clicked in the lock, and then the whistle stopped as Mac entered.

The landlady met him at the door. She gazed anxiously and maternally at his face. She seemed surprised also, and a trifle agitated.

“Dear me, Maister Mac, what’s the maitter? Ye’re no’ lookin’ weel.”

Mac was a little surprised, but not alarmed.

“There is nothing the matter, Mrs. Christison,” said he lightly.

“Eh, Teena, come here,” she cried to her daughter.

Teena came hurriedly at her mother’s call. But as she looked upon Mac the fashion of her countenance changed.

“Are you not well?” she said, peering anxiously into the pupils of Mac’s eyes.

Such attentions are flattering, and Mac, being a squire of dames, was desirous of making the most of it.

“Well, I was not feeling quite up to the mark, but I daresay it’ll pass off,” he said diplomatically.

“You must not be working so hard. You will kill yourself one of these days.”

For which we hope and trust she may be forgiven, though it is a good deal to hope.

“Where do you feel it most, Mr. Mac?” then inquired Teena tenderly.

Mac is of opinion that, if anywhere, he feels it worst in his head, but his chest is also paining him a little.

“Gang richt awa’ in, my laddie,” says the landlady, “an’ lie doon and rest ye on the sofa, an’ I’ll be ben the noo wi’ something till ye!”

Mac comes in with a slightly scared and conscious expression on his face. Almond and I look up from our work as he enters, though, as it were, only in a casual manner. But what we see arrests our attention, and Almond’s jaw drops as he looks from Mac to me, and back again to Mac.

“Good gracious, what’s wrang wi’ ye, man?” he gasps, in his native tongue.

I get up hastily and go over to the patient. I take him by the arm, pull him sharply to the window and turn him round–an action which he resents.

“I wish to goodness you fellows would not make asses of yourselves,” he says, as he flings himself down on the sofa.

Almond and I look at one another as if this fretfulness were one of the worst signs, and we had quite expected it. We say nothing for a little as we sit down to work; but uneasily, as if we have something on our minds. Presently I rise, and, going into the bedroom, motion to Almond as I go. This action is not lost on Mac. I did not mean that it should be. We shut the door and whisper together. Mac comes and shakes the door, which is locked on the inside.

“Come out of that, you fellows,” he cries, “and don’t be gibbering idiots!”

But for all that he is palpably nervous and uneasy.

“Go away and lie down, like a good fellow,” I say soothingly; “it’ll be all right–all right.”