Conclusion.  
“We are a queer lot, what-?-ver!” remarked one of the farmers, with a deep sigh and a candid smile, as he looked round the company.
 
The observation was incontrovertible, if charcoaled faces, lank hair, torn and dripping garments, and a general appearance of drowned-ratiness may be regarded as “queer.”
 
“My friends,” said the laird, digging the carving fork into a cold turkey, “we are also a hungry lot, if I may judge of others by myself, so let me advise you to fall to. We can’t afford to sit long over our supper in present circumstances. Help yourselves, and make the most of your opportunities.”
 
“Thank God,” said Giles Jackman, “that we have the opportunity to sit down to sup under a roof at all.”
 
“Amen to that,” returned the laird; “and thanks to you all, my friends, for the help you have rendered. But for you, this house and all in it would have been burnt to ashes. I never before felt so strongly how true it is that we ‘know not what a day may bring forth.’”
 
“What you say, sir, is fery true,” remarked a neighbouring small farmer, who had a sycophantish tendency to echo or approve whatever fell from the laird’s lips.
 
“It is indeed true,” returned his host, wiping the charcoal from his face with a moist handkerchief; “but it is the Word that says it, not I. And is it not strange,” he added, turning with a humorous look to Barret, “that after all these years the influence of Joan of Arc should be still so powerful in the Western Isles? To think that she should set my house on fire in this nineteenth century!”
 
“I am very glad she did!” suddenly exclaimed Junkie, who, having been pretty well ignored or forgotten by everybody, was plying his knife and fork among the other heroes of the fight in a state of inexpressible felicity.
 
“You rascal!” exclaimed his father; “you should have been in bed long ago! But why are you so glad that Joan set the house on fire?”
 
“Because she gave me the chance to save Blackie’s life!” replied Junkie, with supreme contentment.
 
The company laughed, and continued their meal, but some of them recalled the proverb which states that “the boy is father to the man,” and secretly prophesied a heroic career for Junkie.
 
Ten months passed away, during which period Allan Gordon retired to his residence in Argyllshire while his mansion in the Western Island was being restored. During the same period Archie produced innumerable hazy photographs of Kinlossie House in a state of conflagration; Eddie painted several good copies of the bad painting into which Milly Moss had introduced a megatherium cow and other specimens of violent perspective; and Junkie underwent a few terrible paroxysms of intense hatred of learning in all its aspects, in which paroxysms he was much consoled by the approval and sympathy of dear little Flo.
 
During this period, also, Mabberly applied himself to his duties in London, unaffected by the loss of the Fairy, and profo............