Chris said Why? and Neil licked his lips and thought Boadicea probably looked like that. She’d strip well—and damn it, she does—for Ogilvie. Then he pushed his cup over for replenishing, they were sitting at tea alone, and told the tale about Mr Piddle that had come up to the office as he left. Mrs Ogilvie knew this side-line of Piddle’s?—sending fishing news to the Tory Pictman? Well, he’d been gey late in gathering it to-day, doing another side-line down in Paldy, prevailing on a servant lassie there to steal him the photo of an old woman body who had hanged herself, being weary with age. Back at last he’d come to the office, he-he! photo in hand and all set fine, and looked at the clock and saw he’d a bare three minutes to tear down the Mile and reach the train at the Station in time. So he flittered down the stairs like a hen in hysterics and got on his bike and tore up the Mile, and vanished from sight, the Runner subs leaning out from their window and betting on the odds that he’d meet that inevitable lorry right now—it was an understood thing that he’d die under a lorry some day, and be carted home in a jam-pot.

Well, it seems that he reached the Station all right, the lorries scattering to right and left and Piddle cycling hell for leather, shooting through the taxi-ranks at the Station and tumbling into the arms of a porter. And the porter asked who he thought he was, Amy Mollison doing a forced landing? Piddle said He-he! and dropped his bike and ran like the wind for the Pictman train, he knew the platform for it fine, he’d to run half-way up to the middle guard’s van.

Well, he rounded into No. 6 platform and gave a bit of a scraich at the sight, the Pictman train already in motion and pelting out of Duncairn toun. It was loaded up with Edinburgh students, clowning and playing their usual tricks, a bit fed up with their visit to Duncairn, they’d been leaning out to shout things to the porters when Mr Piddle came hashing in sight, head thrust out like a cobra homing like hell to the jungle with a mongoose close on his tail. And they gave a howl and started to cheer, Mr Piddle running like the wind by now to reach the middle brake. The guard looked out and yelled to him to stop, he’d never make it and do himself a mischief. But the van was chockablock with students, they pushed the guard aside, a half-dozen of them, and thrust out their hands, Piddle thought that fine, if only he could get near enough to hand up the Pictman packet to them. And at last, bursting his braces and a half-dozen blood-vessels, or thereabouts, he got close in touch—down came the hands, the students all yelled, and next minute Piddle was plucked from the earth and shot, packet and all, into the guard’s van. And then the train vanished with a howl of triumph, an express that didn’t stop till it got to Perth.