Huntingtower Part 32

hopin' ye'll accept."

"I accept," d.i.c.kson replies. "Proudly and gratefully I accept."

The last scene is some days later, in a certain southern suburb of Glasgow. Ulysses has come back to Ithaca, and is sitting by his fireside, waiting on the return of Penelope from the Neuk Hydropathic.

There is a chill in the air, so a fire is burning in the grate, but the laden tea-table is bright with the first blooms of lilac. d.i.c.kson, in a new suit with a flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, looks none the worse for his travels, save that there is still sticking-plaster on his deeply sunburnt brow. He waits impatiently with his eye on the black marble timepiece, and he fingers something in his pocket.

Presently the sound of wheels is heard, and the peahen voice of Tibby announces the arrival of Penelope. d.i.c.kson rushes to the door and at the threshold welcomes his wife with a resounding kiss. He leads her into the parlour and settles her in her own chair.

"My! but it's nice to be home again!" she says. "And everything that comfortable. I've had a fine time, but there's no place like your own fireside. You're looking awful well, d.i.c.kson. But los.h.!.+ What have you been doing to your head?"

"Just a small tumble. It's very near mended already. Ay, I've had a grand walking tour, but the weather was a wee bit thrawn. It's nice to see you back again, Mamma. Now that I'm an idle man you and me must take a lot of jaunts together."

She beams on him as she stays herself with Tibby's scones, and when the meal is ended, d.i.c.kson draws from his pocket a slim case. The jewels have been restored to Saskia, but this is one of her own which she has bestowed upon d.i.c.kson as a parting memento. He opens the case and reveals a necklet of emeralds, any one of which is worth half the street.

"This is a present for you," he says bashfully.

Mrs. McCunn's eyes open wide. "You're far too kind," she gasps. "It must have cost an awful lot of money."

"It didn't cost me that much," is the truthful answer.

She fingers the trinket and then clasps it round her neck, where the green depths of the stones glow against the black satin of her bodice.

Her eyes are moist as she looks at him. "You've been a kind man to me,"

she says, and she kisses him as she has not done since Janet's death.

She stands up and admires the necklet in the mirror. Romance once more, thinks d.i.c.kson. That which has graced the slim throats of princesses in far-away Courts now adorns an elderly matron in a semi-detached villa; the jewels of the wild Nausicaa have fallen to the housewife Penelope.

Mrs. McCunn preens herself before the gla.s.s. "I call it very genteel,"

she says. "Real stylish. It might be worn by a queen."

"I wouldn't say but it has," says d.i.c.kson.

THE END

_By_ JOHN BUCHAN

HUNTINGTOWER

THE PATH OF THE KING

MR. STANDFAST

GREENMANTLE

THE WATCHERS BY THE THRESHOLD

SALUTE TO ADVENTURES

PRESTER JOHN

THE POWER HOUSE

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME