Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/68



HE moon and Lachlan McDonald were good friends. He had upon various occasions celebrated her pale beauty in highly decorated verse to which Mr. Francis O'Sullivan, perhaps a partial critic, had given unstinted praise. Yet he was glad to note that on this night she hid her face.

Had she peeped out from behind the gray clouds drifting slowly from the east she might not have recognized at once the young fashioner of rhymes to whom she owed those lyrics. Never before had she seen Lachlan McDonald as he was now—a swaggering young soldier of fortune. A red feather nodded in his broad-brimmed hat; a scarlet sash was wound about his buff jacket; a serviceable rapier swung at his side. Withal, there was something foreign about his gear or about the way in which he wore it—something that smacked not at all of Charles Town or the English folk who dwelt there.

That foreign touch was the result of more than a little thought on Lachlan's part, assisted by certain suggestions from Almayne, who knew something of Spanish styles and tricks of dress as manifested in St. Augustine. What manner of man was Don Ruy Ortiz of Barcelona Lachlan did not know. But since