It is a mystery how such a man as he should be entrusted with a secret mission, for he drinks with anyone.

Aha! He scowls at me because I tell the truth about him, but if I had a bottle of whisky to offer him he would soon look pleasant again, and would give me a drink too, when he had swallowed all he could hold." If he had really been my servant I would naturally have kicked him off the train for a fraction of such impudence.

I didn't exactly know what to do.

There is a thoughtful motive behind every apparently random absurdity that Jeremy gets off, but I was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that my wits don't work fast enough to follow such volatile manoeuvres.

Perhaps it's the Scotian blood in me.