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Flushed with historical enthusiashtly less eager

"Maybe so," she said uneasily "I don’t knowit sort of gives lanced at her in surprise "Why?"

She shrugged, pulling the crumpled shift off over her head

"I don’t know Maybe it’s just that I have seen burning crosses--on the evening news on TV You know, the KKK--or do you know? Maybe they don’t--didn’t--report things like that on television in Britain?"

"The Ku Klux Klan?" Roger was less interested in fanatical bigots than in the sight of Brianna’s bare brsts, but made an effort to focus on the conversation "Oh, aye, heard of theot the notion?"

"What? You ot it frorants--from whom they were descended, by the bye That’s why they called it ‘Klan,’ aye? Coht--that’s the link The occasion that brings the custom fro?"

"So," Brianna echoed faintly She’d pulled on a fresh shift, and now shook out a clean dress of blue linen, looking uneasy

"Everything starts soently "Most often, we don’t knohere or how; does it et started for a hundred years fro him on one hip "It won’t be us who sees it, or even wee Jeremiah here-- on her stays and reaching for the laces "So our great-grandson can end up being the Grand Dragon"

Roger laughed

"Aye, ht, it’s your father"

24

PLAYING WITH FIRE

HE WASN’T SURE what he had expected So, perhaps The preparation was the sa of beer and a se of the dooryard, and a huge roast pig on a spit of green hickory turned slowly over a bed of coals, sending whiffs of s air

He grinned at the fire-washed faces in front of hirease and flushed with booze, and struck his bodhran His stomach rumbled loudly, but the noise was drowned beneath the raucous chorus of "Killiecrankie"

"O, I met the De-ev-il and Dundeeee

On the brae-aes o’ Killiecrankie-O!"

He would have earned his own supper by the ti forover Black Mountain now He paused under cover of the refrain, just long enough to grab the cup of ale set under his stool and wet his throat, then hit the new verse fresh and solid

"I fought on land, I fought on sea,

At haht my auntie, Oh!

I met the Devil and Dundee

On the braes o’ Killiecrankie-O!"

He s on a face there, and calculated progress in the back of hisnoith a bit of help from the drink on offer, admittedly--and well stuck into what Bree had called "the war at his back, almost hidden by the darkness Everyone had had a chance to see it, though; he’d heard the murmurs of interest and speculation