WHITE WINGS, VOLUME II (continued 2)

"I am glad you take it so coolly," says our governor-general, in a matter-of-fact way that rather startles him. "More unlikely things have happened."

But he recovers himself directly.

"No, no," says he, laughing. "There is one objection. She could not sit on any of the parochial Boards of Strathgovan. Now I know my uncle looks forward to putting me on the Police Committee and the Lighting Committee, and no end of other Committees. By the way, she might go on the School Board. Do they have women on the School Boards in Scotland?"

On this point his hostess was no better informed than himself.

"Well," said he, after a bit, "I wouldn't call her pretty, you know; but she has a singularly interesting face."

"Oh, do you think so?" says the other, quite innocently.

"I do, indeed," answers the ingenuous Youth. "And the more you see of her the more interesting it becomes. You seem to get so well acquainted with her somehow; and—and you have a sort of feeling that her presence is sort of necessary."

This was somewhat vague; but he made another wild effort to express himself.

"What I mean is—that—that suppose she were to leave the yacht, wouldn't the saloon look quite different? And wouldn't the sailing be quite different? You would know there was something wanting."

"I should, indeed," is the emphatic reply.

"I never knew any one," says the Youth, warming to his work of thorough explanation, "about whose presence you seem so conscious—even when she isn't here—I don't mean that exactly—I mean that at this moment now, you know she is on board the yacht—and it would be quite different if she were not. I suppose most people wouldn't call her pretty. There is nothing of the Book of Beauty about her. But I call it a most interesting face. And she has fine eyes. Anybody must admit that. They have a beautiful, soft expression; and they can laugh even when she is quite silent——"

"My dear Mr. Smith," says his hostess, suddenly stopping short, and with a kind of serious smile on her face, "let me talk frankly to you. You acted very sensibly, I think, in coming with us to humour your uncle. He will come to see that this scheme of his is impracticable; and in the meantime, if you don't mind the discomfort of it, you have a holiday. That is all quite well. But pray don't think it necessary that you should argue yourself into falling in love with Mary. I am not in her confidence on such a delicate matter; but one has eyes; and I think I might almost safely say to you that, even if you persuaded yourself that Mary would make an excellent wife—and be presentable to your friends—I say even if you succeeded in persuading yourself, I am afraid you would only have thrown that labour away. Please don't try to convince yourself that you ought to fall in love with her."

This was plain speaking. But then our admiral-in-chief was very quickly sensitive where Mary Avon was concerned; and perhaps she did not quite like her friend being spoken of as though she were a pill that had to be swallowed. Of course the Youth instantly disclaimed any intention of that kind. He had a very sincere regard for the girl, so far as he had seen her; he was not persuading himself; he was only saying how much she improved when you got better acquainted with her.

"And if," said he, with just a touch of dignity, "if Miss Avon is—is—engaged——"

"Oh, I did not say that," his hostess quickly interposed. "Oh, certainly not. It was only a guess on my part——"

"——or likely to be engaged," he continued, with something of the same reserve, "I am sure I am very glad for her sake; and whoever marries her ought to have a cheerful home and a pleasant companion."

This was a generous sentiment; but there was not much of a "wish-you-may-be-happy" air about the young man. Moreover, where was the relief he ought to have experienced on hearing that there was an obstacle—or likelihood of an obstacle—to the execution of his uncle's scheme which would absolve him from responsibility altogether?

However, the subject could not be continued just then; for at this moment a tightly-brushed small head, and a narrow-brimmed felt hat, and a shapely neck surrounded by an upstanding collar and bit of ribbon of navy-blue, appeared at the top of the companion, and Mary Avon, looking up with her black eyes full of a cheerful friendliness, said—

"Weil, John, are you ready to start yet?"

And the great, brown-bearded John of Skye, looking down at this small Jack-in-the-box with a smile of welcome on his face, said—

"Oh, yes, mem, when the breakfast is over."

"Do you think it is blowing outside, then?"

"Oh, no, mem, but there is a good breeze; and maybe there will be a bit of a rowl from the Atlantic. Will Mr. —— himself be for going now?"

"Oh, yes, certainly," she says, with a fine assumption of authority. "We are quite ready when you are ready, John; Fred will have the things off the table in a couple of minutes."

"Very well, mem," says the obedient John of Skye, going forward to get the men up to the windlass.

Our young Doctor should have been there to see us getting under way. The Sound of Ulva is an excellent harbour and anchorage when you are once in it; but getting out of it, unless with both wind and tide in your favour, is very like trying to manoeuvre a man-of-war in a tea-cup. But we had long ago come to the conclusion that John of Skye could sail the White Dove through a gas-pipe, with half a gale of wind dead in his teeth; and the manner in which he got us out of this narrow and tortuous channel fully justified our confidence.

"Very prettily done, Captain John!" said the Laird—who was beginning to give himself airs on nautical matters—when we had got out into the open.

And here, as we soon discovered, was the brisk fresh breeze that John of Skye had predicted; and the running swell, too, that came sweeping in to the mouth of Loch-na-Keal. Black indeed looked that far-reaching loch on this breezy, changeful morning—as dark as it was when the chief of Ulva's Isle came down to the shore with his runaway bride; and all along Ben-More and over the Gribun cliffs hung heavy masses of cloud, dark and threatening as if with thunder. But far away in the south there was a more cheerful outlook; the windy sea shimmering in light; some gleams of blue in the sky; we knew that the sunshine must be shining on the green clover and the beautiful sands of Iona. The White Dove seemed to understand what was required of her. Her head was set for the gleaming south; her white wings outspread; as she sprang to meet those rushing seas we knew we were escaping from the thunder-darkness that lay over Loch-na-Keal.

And Ulva: had we known that we were now leaving Ulva behind us for the last time, should we not have taken another look back, even though it now lay under a strange and mysterious gloom? Perhaps not. We had grown to love the island in other days. And when one shuts one's eyes in winter, it is not to see an Ulva of desolate rocks and leaden waves; it is a fair and shining Ulva, with blue seas breaking whitely along its shores; and magical still channels, with mermaid's halls of seaweed; and an abundant, interesting life—all manner of sea-birds, black rabbits running among the rocks, seals swimming in the silent bays. Then the patch of civilisation under shelter of the hills; the yellow corn-fields; the dots of human creatures and the red and tawny-grey cattle visible afar in the meadow; the solitary house; the soft foliage of trees and bushes; the wild-flowers along the cliffs. That is the green-shored island: that is the Ool-a-va of the sailors; we know it only in sunlight and among blue summer seas: it shines for us for ever!

The people who go yachting are a fickle folk. The scene changes—and their interests change—every few minutes. Now it is the swooping down of a solan; again it is the appearance of another island far away; presently it is a shout of laughter forward, as some unlucky wight gets drowned in a shower of sea-spray: anything catches their attention for the moment. And so the White Dove swings along; and the sea gets heavier and heavier; and we watch the breakers springing high over the black rocks of Colonsay. It is the Laird who is now instructing our new guest; pointing out to him, as they come in view, Staffa, the Dutchman, Fladda, and Lunga, and Cairnaburg. Tiree is invisible at the horizon: there is too wild a whirl of wind and water.

The gloom behind us increases; we know not what is about to happen to our beloved but now distant Ulva—what sudden rumble of thunder is about to startle the silence of the dark Loch-na-Keal. But ahead of us the south is still shining clear: blow, winds, that we may gain the quiet shelter of Polterriv before the evening falls! And is it not full moon to-night?—to-night our new guest may see the yellow moon shining on the still waters of Iona Sound.

But the humiliating truth must be told. The heavy sea has been trying to one unaccustomed to life on board. Howard Smith, though answering questions well enough, and even joining voluntarily in conversation occasionally, wears a preoccupied air. He does not take much interest in the caves of Bourg. The bright look has gone from his face.

His gentle hostess—who has herself had moments of gloom on the bosom of the deep—recognises these signs instantly; and insists on immediate luncheon. There is a double reason for this haste. We can now run under the lee of the Erisgeir rocks, where there will be less danger to Master Fred's plates and tumblers. So we are all bundled down into the saloon; the swell sensibly subsides as we get to leeward of Erisgeir; there is a scramble of helping and handing; and another explosion in the galley tells us that Master Fred has not yet mastered the art of releasing effervescing fluids. Half a tumblerful of that liquid puts new life into our solemn friend. The colour returns to his face, and brightness to his eyes. He admits that he was beginning to long for a few minutes on firm land—but now—but now—he is even willing to join us in an excursion that has been talked of to the far Dubhartach lighthouse.

"But we must really wait for Angus," our hostess says, "before going out there. He was always so anxious to go to Dubhartach."

"But surely you won't ask him to come away from his duties again?" Mary Avon puts in hastily. "You know he ought to go back to London at once."

"I know I have written him a letter," says the other demurely. "You can read it if you like, Mary. It is in pencil, for I was afraid of the ink-bottle going waltzing over the table."

Miss Avon would not read the letter. She said we must be past Erisgeir by this time; and proposed we should go on deck. This we did; and the Youth was now so comfortable and assured in his mind that, by lying full length on the deck, close to the weather bulwarks, he managed to light a cigar. He smoked there in much content, almost safe from the spray.

Mary Avon was seated at the top of the companion, reading. Her hostess came and squeezed herself in beside her, and put her arm round her.

"Mary," said she, "why don't you want Angus Sutherland to come back to the yacht?"

"I!" said she, in great surprise—though she did not meet the look of the elder woman—"I—I—don't you see yourself that he ought to go back to London? How can he look after that magazine while he is away in the Highlands? And—and—he has so much to look forward to—so much to do—that you should not encourage him in making light of his work."

"Making light of his work!" said the other. "I am almost sure that you yourself told him that he deserved and required a long—a very long—holiday."

"You did, certainly."

"And didn't you?"

The young lady looked rather embarrassed.

"When you saw him," said she, with flushed cheeks, "so greatly enjoying the sailing—absorbed in it—and—and gaining health and strength, too—well, of course you naturally wished that he should come back and go away with you again. But it is different on reflection. You should not ask him."

"Why, what evil is likely to happen to him through taking another six weeks' holiday? Is he likely to fall out of the race of life because of a sail in the White Dove? And doesn't he know his own business? He is not a child."

"He would do a great deal to please you."

"I want him to please himself," said the other; and she added, with a deadly frown gathering on her forehead, "and I won't have you, Miss Dignity, interfering with the pleasures of my guests. And there is to be no snubbing, and no grim looks, and no hints about work, and London, and other nonsense, when Angus Sutherland comes back to us. You shall stand by the gangway—do you hear?—and receive him with a smiling face; and if you are not particularly kind, and civil, and attentive to him, I'll have you lashed to the yard-arm and painted blue—keel-haul me if I don't."

Fairer and fairer grew the scene around us as the brave White Dove went breasting the heavy Atlantic rollers. Blue and white overhead; the hot sunlight doing its best to dry the dripping decks; Iona shining there over the smoother waters of the Sound; the sea breaking white, and spouting up in columns, as it dashed against the pale red promontories of the Ross of Mull. But then this stiff breeze had backed to the west; and there was many a long tack to be got over before we left behind the Atlantic swell and ran clear into the Sound. The evening was drawing on apace as we slowly and cautiously steered into the little creek of Polterriv. No sooner had the anchor rattled out than we heard the clear tinkling of Master Fred's bell; how on earth had he managed to cook dinner amid all that diving and rolling and pitching?

And then, as we had hoped, it was a beautiful evening; and the long gig was got out, and shawls for the women-folk flung into the stern. The fishing did not claim our attention. Familiar as some of us were with the wonderful twilights of the north, which of us had ever seen anything more solemn, and still, and lovely than these colours of sea and shore? Half-past nine at night on the 8th of August; and still the west and north were flushed with a pale rose-red, behind the dark, rich, olive-green of the shadowed Iona. But what was that to the magic world that lay before us as we returned to the yacht? Now the moon had arisen, and it seemed to be of a clear, lambent gold; and the cloudless heavens and the still sea were of a violet hue—not imaginatively, or relatively, but positively and literally violet. Then between the violet-coloured sky and the violet-coloured sea, a long line of rock, jet black as it appeared to us. That was all the picture: the yellow moon, the violet sky, the violet sea, the line of black rock. No doubt it was the intensity of the shadows along this line of rock that gave that extraordinary luminousness to the still heavens and the still sea.

When we got back to the yacht a telegram awaited us. It had been sent to Bunessan, the nearest telegraph-station; but some kind friends there, recognising the White Dove as she came along by Erisgeir, and shrewdly concluding that we must pass the night at Polterriv, had been so kind as to forward it on to Fion-phort by a messenger.

"I thought so!" says Queen T. with a fine delight in her face as she reads the telegram. "It is from Angus. He is coming on Thursday. We must go back to meet him at Ballahulish or Corpach."

Then the discourtesy of this remark struck her.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Smith," said she, instantly. "Of course, I mean if it is quite agreeable to you. He does not expect us, you see; he would come on here——"

"I assure you I would as soon go to Ballahulish as anywhere else," says the Youth promptly. "It is quite the same to me—it is all new, you see, and all equally charming."

Mary Avon alone expressed no delight at this prospect of our going to Ballahulish to meet Angus Sutherland; she sate silent; her eyes were thoughtful and distant; it was not of anything around her that she was thinking.

The moon had got whiter now; the sea and the sky blue-black in place of that soft warm violet colour. We sate on deck till a late hour; the world was asleep around us; not a sound disturbed the absolute stillness of land and sea.

And where was the voice of our singing bird? Had the loss of a mere sum of money made her forget all about Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton, "and Mary Carmichael and me?" Or was the midnight silence too much for her; and the thought of the dusky cathedral over there; with the gravestones pale in the moonlight; and all around a whispering of the lonely sea? She had nothing to fear. She might have crossed over to Iona and might have walked all by herself through the ruins, and in calmness regarded the sculptured stones. The dead sleep sound.

CHAPTER VII.

SECRET SCHEMES.

The delight with which John of Skye heard that his friend Dr. Sutherland was coming back to the yacht, and that we were now setting out for Ballahulish or Corpach to meet him, found instant and practical expression on this fine, breezy, sunlit morning.

"Hector," says he, "we will put the gaff topsail on her!"

What did he care though this squally breeze came blowing down the Sound in awkward gusts?

"It is a fine wind, mem," says he to the Admiral, as we slowly leave the green waters and the pink rocks of Polterriv, and get into the open and breezy channel. "Oh, we will mek a good run the day. And I beg your pardon, mem, but it is a great pleasure to me that Mr. Sutherland himself is coming back to the yat."

"He understands your clever sailing, John: is that it?"

"He knows more about a yat as any chentleman I will ever see, mem. And we will try to get a good breeze for him this time, mem—and not to have the calm weather."

This is not likely to be a day of calm weather, at all events. Tide and wind together take us away swiftly from the little harbour behind the granite rocks. And is Iona over there all asleep; or are there some friends in the small village watching the White Dove bearing away to the south? We wave our handkerchiefs on chance. We take a last look at the gabled ruins over the sea; at the green corn-fields; and the scattered houses; and the beaches of silver sand. Good-bye—good-bye! It is a last look for this summer at least; perhaps it is a last look for ever. But Iona too—as well as Ulva—remains in the memory a vision of sunlight, and smooth seas, and summer days.

Harder and harder blows this fresh breeze from the north; and we are racing down the Sound with the driven waves. But for the rope round the tiller, Miss Avon, who is steering, would find it difficult to keep her feet; and her hair is blown all about her face. The salt water comes swishing down the scuppers; the churned foam goes hissing and boiling away from the sides of the vessel; the broad Atlantic widens out. And that small grey thing at the horizon? Can that speck be a mass of masonry a hundred and fifty feet in height, wedged into the lonely rock?

"No, no," says our gentle Queen Titania with an involuntary shudder, "not for worlds would I climb up that iron ladder, with the sea and the rocks right below me. I should never get half-way up."

"They will put a rope round your waist, if you like," it is pointed out to her.

"When we go out, then," says this coward. "I will see how Mary gets on. If she does not die of fright, I may venture."

"Oh, but I don't think I shall be with you," remarks the young lady quite simply.

At this there is a general stare.

"I don't know what you mean," says her hostess, with an ominous curtness.

"Why, you know," says the girl, cheerfully—and disengaging one hand to get her hair out of her eyes—"I can't afford to go idling much longer. I must get back to London."

"Don't talk nonsense," says the other woman, angrily. "You may try to stop other people's holidays, if you like; but I am going to look after yours. Holidays! How are you to work, if you don't work now? Will you find many landscapes in Regent Street?"

"I have a great many sketches," says Mary Avon, "and I must try to make something out of them, where there is less distraction of amusement. And really, you know, you have so many friends—would you like me to become a fixture—like the mainmast—"

"I would like you to talk a little common sense," is the sharp reply. "You are not going back to London till the White Dove is laid up for the winter—that is what I know."

"I am afraid I must ask you to let me off," she says, quite simply and seriously. "Suppose I go up to London next week? Then, if I get on pretty well, I may come back——"

"You may come back!" says the other with a fine contempt. "Don't try to impose on me. I am an older woman than you. And I have enough provocations and worries from other quarters: I don't want you to begin and bother."

"Is your life so full of trouble?" says the girl, innocently. "What are these fearful provocations?"

"Never mind. You will find out in time. But when you get married, Mary, don't forget to buy a copy of Doddridge on Patience. That should be included in every bridal trousseau."

"Poor thing—is it so awfully ill-used?" replies the steersman, with much compassion.

Here John of Skye comes forward.

"If ye please, mem, I will tek the tiller until we get round the Ross. The rocks are very bad here."

"All right, John," says the young lady; and then, with much cautious clinging to various objects, she goes below, saying that she means to do a little more to a certain slight water-colour sketch of Polterriv. We know why she wants to put some further work on that hasty production. Yesterday the Laird expressed high approval of the sketch. She means him to take it with him to Denny-mains, when she leaves for London.

But this heavy sea: how is the artist getting on with her work amid such pitching and diving? Now that we are round the Ross, the White Dove has shifted her course; the wind is more on her beam; the mainsheet has been hauled in; and the noble ship goes ploughing along in splendid style; but how about water-colour drawing?

Suddenly, as the yacht gives a heavy lurch to leeward, an awful sound is heard below. Queen T. clambers down the companion, and holds on by the door of the saloon; the others following and looking over her shoulders. There a fearful scene appears. At the head of the table, in the regal recess usually occupied by the carver and chief president of our banquets, sits Mary Avon, in mute and blank despair. Everything has disappeared from before her. A tumbler rolls backwards and forwards on the floor, empty. A dishevelled bundle of paper, hanging on to the edge of a carpet-stool, represents what was once an orderly sketch-book. Tubes, pencils, saucers, sponges—all have gone with the table-cloth. And the artist sits quite hopeless and silent, staring before her like a maniac in a cell.

"Whatever have you been and done?" calls her hostess.

There is no answer: only that tragic despair.

"It was all bad steering," remarks the Youth. "I knew it would happen as soon as Miss Avon left the helm."

But the Laird, not confining his sympathy to words, presses by his hostess; and, holding hard by the bare table, staggers along to the scene of the wreck. The others timidly follow. One by one the various objects are rescued, and placed for safety on the couch on the leeward side of the saloon. Then the automaton in the presidential chair begins to move. She recovers her powers of speech. She says—awaking from her dream—

"Is my head on?"

"And if it is, it is not of much use to you," says her hostess, angrily. "Whatever made you have those things out in a sea like this? Come up on deck at once; and let Fred get luncheon ready."

The maniac only laughs.

"Luncheon!" she says. "Luncheon in the middle of earthquakes!"

But this sneer at the White Dove, because she has no swinging table, is ungenerous. Besides, is not our Friedrich d'or able to battle any pitching with his ingeniously bolstered couch—so that bottles, glasses, plates, and what not, are as safe as they would be in a case in the British Museum? A luncheon party on board the White Dove, when there is a heavy Atlantic swell running, is not an imposing ceremony. It would not look well as a coloured lithograph in the illustrated papers. The figures crouching on the low stools to leeward; the narrow cushion bolstered up so that the most enterprising of dishes cannot slide; the table-cover plaited so as to afford receptacles for knives and spoons; bottles and tumblers plunged into hollows and propped; Master Fred, balancing himself behind these stooping figures, bottle in hand, and ready to replenish any cautiously proffered wine-glass. But it serves. And Dr. Sutherland has assured us that, the heavier the sea, the more necessary is luncheon for the weaker vessels, who may be timid about the effect of so much rolling and pitching. When we get on deck again, who is afraid? It is all a question as to what signal may be visible to the white house of Carsaig—shining afar there in the sunlight, among the hanging woods, and under the soft purple of the hills. Behold!—behold!—the red flag run up to the top of the white pole! Is it a message to us, or only a summons to the Pioneer? For now, through the whirl of wind and spray, we can make out the steamer that daily encircles Mull, bringing with it white loaves, and newspapers, and other luxuries of the mainland.

She comes nearer and nearer; the throbbing of the paddles is heard among the rush of the waves; the people crowd to the side of the boat to have a look at the passing yacht; and one well-known figure, standing on the hurricane deck, raises his gilt-braided cap,—for we happen to have on board a gentle small creature who is a great friend of his. And she waves her white handkerchief, of course; and you should see what a fluttering of similar tokens there is all along the steamer's decks, and on the paddle boxes. Farewell!—farewell!—may you have a smooth landing at Staffa, and a pleasant sail down the Sound, in the quiet of the afternoon! The day wears on, with puffs and squalls coming tearing over from the high cliffs of southern Mull; and still the gallant White Dove meets and breasts those rolling waves, and sends the spray flying from her bows. We have passed Loch Buy; Garveloch and the Island of Saints are drawing nearer; soon we shall have to bend our course northward, when we have got by Eilean-straid-ean. And whether it is that Mary Avon is secretly comforting herself with the notion that she will soon see her friends in London again, or whether it is that she is proud of being again promoted to the tiller, she has quite recovered her spirits. We hear our singing-bird once more—though it is difficult, amid the rush and swirl of the waters, to do more than catch chance phrases and refrains. And then she is being very merry with the Laird, who is humorously decrying England and the English, and proving to her that it is the Scotch migration to the south that is the very saving of her native country.

"The Lord Chief Justice of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President of the Royal Academy—the heads and leading men everywhere—all Scotch—all Scotch," says he.

"But the weak point about the Scotch, sir," says this philosopher in the ulster, who is clinging on to the tiller rope, "is their modesty. They are so distrustful of their own merits. And they are always running down their own country."

"Ha, ha!—ho! ho! ho!" roars the Laird. "Verra good! verra good! I owe ye one for that. I owe ye one. Howard, have ye nothing to say in defence of your native country?"

"You are speaking of Scotland, sir?"

"Ay."

"That is not my native country, you know."

"It was your mother's, then."

Somehow, when by some accident—and it but rarely happened—the Laird mentioned Howard Smith's mother, a brief silence fell on him. It lasted but a second or two. Presently he was saying, with much cheerfulness—

"No, no, I am not one of those that would promote any rivalry between Scotland and England. We are one country now. If the Scotch preserve the best leeterary English—the most pithy and characteristic forms of the language—the English that is talked in the south is the most generally received throughout the world. I have even gone the length—I'm no ashamed to admit it—of hinting to Tom Galbraith that he should exheebit more in London: the influence of such work as his should not be confined to Edinburgh. And jealous as they may be in the south of the Scotch school, they could not refuse to recognise its excellence—eh? No, no; when Galbraith likes to exheebit in London, ye'll hear a stir, I'm thinking. The jealousy of English artists will have no effect on public opeenion. They may keep him out o' the Academy—there's many a good artist has never been within the walls—but the public is the judge. I am told that when his picture of Stonebyres Falls was exheebited in Edinburgh, a dealer came all the way from London to look at it."

"Did he buy it?" asked Miss Avon, gently.

"Buy it!" the Laird said, with a contemptuous laugh. "There are some of us about Glasgow who know better than to let a picture like that get to London. I bought it myself. Ye'll see it when ye come to Denny-mains. Ye have heard of it, no doubt?"

"N—no, I think not," she timidly answers.

"No matter—no matter. Ye'll see it when ye come to Denny-mains."

He seemed to take it for granted that she was going to pay a visit to Denny-mains: had he not heard, then, of her intention of at once returning to London?

Once well round into the Frith of Lorn, the wind that had borne us down the Sound of Iona was now right ahead; and our progress was but slow. As the evening wore on, it was proposed that we should run into Loch Speliv for the night. There was no dissentient voice.

The sudden change from the plunging seas without to the quiet waters of the solitary little loch was strange enough. And then, as we slowly beat up against the northerly wind to the head of the loch—a beautiful, quiet, sheltered little cup of a harbour among the hills—we found before us, or rather over us, the splendours of a stormy sunset among the mountains above Glen More. It was a striking spectacle—the vast and silent gloom of the valleys below, which were of a cold and intense green in the shadow; then above, among the great shoulders and peaks of the hills, flashing gleams of golden light, and long swathes of purple cloud touched with scarlet along their edges, and mists of rain that came along with the wind, blotting out here and there those splendid colours. There was an absolute silence in this overshadowed bay—but for the cry of the startled wild-fowl. There was no sign of any habitation, except perhaps a trace of pale blue smoke rising from behind a mass of trees. Away went the anchor with a short, sharp rattle; we were safe for the night.

We knew, however, what that trace of smoke indicated behind the dark trees. By and by, as soon as the gig had got to the land, there was a procession along the solitary shore—in the wan twilight—and up the rough path—and through the scattered patches of birch and fir. And were you startled, Madam, by the apparition of people who were so inconsiderate as to knock at your door in the middle of dinner, and whose eyes, grown accustomed to the shadows of the valleys of Mull, must have looked bewildered enough on meeting the glare of the lamps? And what did you think of a particular pair of eyes—very soft and gentle in their dark lustre—appealing, timid, friendly eyes, that had nevertheless a quiet happiness and humour in them? It was at all events most kind of you to tell the young lady that her notion of throwing up her holiday and setting out for London was mere midsummer madness. How could you—or any one else—guess at the origin of so strange a wish?

CHAPTER VIII.

BEFORE BREAKFAST.

Who is this who slips through the saloon, while as yet all on board are asleep—who noiselessly ascends the companion-way, and then finds herself alone on deck? And all the world around her is asleep too, though the gold and rose of the new day is shining along the eastern heavens. There is not a sound in this silent little loch: the shores and the woods are as still as the far peaks of the mountains, where the mists are touched here and there with a dusky fire.

She is not afraid to be alone in this silent world. There is a bright and contented look on her face. Carefully and quietly, so as not to disturb the people below, she gets a couple of deck stools, and puts down the large sketch-book from under her arm, and opens out a certain leather case. But do not think she is going to attack that blaze of colour in the east, with the reflected glare on the water, and the bar of dark land between. She knows better. She has a wholesome fear of chromo-lithographs. She turns rather to those great mountain masses, with their mysteriously moving clouds, and their shoulders touched here and there with a sombre red, and their deep and silent glens a cold, intense green in shadow. There is more workable material.

And after all there is no ambitious effort to trouble her. It is only a rough jotting of form and colour, for future use. It is a pleasant occupation for this still, cool, beautiful morning; and perhaps she is fairly well satisfied with it, for one listening intently might catch snatches of songs and airs—of a somewhat incoherent and inappropriate character. For what have the praises of Bonny Black Bess to do with sunrise in Loch Speliv? Or the saucy Arethusa either? But all the same the work goes quietly and dexterously on—no wild dashes and searchings for theatrical effect, but a patient mosaic of touches precisely reaching their end. She does not want to bewilder the world. She wants to have trustworthy records for her own use. And she seems content with the progress she is making.

Here's a health to the girls that we loved long ago,

this is the last air into which she has wandered—half humming and half whistling—

Where the Shannon, and Liffey, and Blackwater flow.

—when she suddenly stops her work to listen. Can any one be up already? The noise is not repeated; and she proceeds with her work.

Here's a health to old Ireland: may she ne'er be dismayed;

Then pale grew the cheeks of the Irish Brigade!

The clouds are assuming substance now: they are no mere flat washes but accurately drawn objects that have their fore-shortening like anything else. And if Miss Avon may be vaguely conscious that had our young Doctor been on board she would not have been left so long alone, that had nothing to with her work. The mornings on which he used to join her on deck, and chat to her while she painted, seem far away now. He and she together would see Dunvegan no more.

But who is this who most cautiously comes up the companion, bearing in his hand a cup and saucer?

"Miss Avon," says he, with a bright laugh, "here is the first cup of tea I ever made; are you afraid to try it?"

"Oh, dear me," said she, penitently, "did I make any noise in getting my things below?"

"Well," he says, "I thought I heard you; and I knew what you would be after; and I got up and lit the spirit-lamp."

"Oh, it is so very kind of you," she says—for it is really a pretty little attention on the part of one who is not much given to shifting for himself on board.

Then he dives below again and fetches her up some biscuits.

"By Jove," he says, coming closer to the sketch, "that is very good. That is awfully good. Do you mean to say you have done all that this morning?"

"Oh, yes," she says, modestly. "It is only a sketch."

"I think it uncommonly good," he says, staring at it as if he would pierce the paper.

Then there is a brief silence, during which Miss Avon boldly adventures upon this amateur's tea.

"I beg your pardon," he says, after a bit, "it is none of my business, you know—but you don't really mean that you are going back to London?"

"If I am allowed," she answers with a smile.

"I am sure you will disappoint your friends most awfully," says he, in quite an earnest manner. "I know they had quite made up their minds you were to stay the whole time. It would be very unfair of you. And my uncle: he would break his heart if you were to go."

"They are all very kind to me," was her only answer.

"Look here," he says, with a most friendly anxiety. "If—if—it is only about business—about pictures I mean—I really beg your pardon for intermeddling——"

"Oh," said she, frankly, "there is no secret about it. In fact, I want everybody to know that I am anxious to sell my pictures. You see, as I have got to earn my own living, shouldn't I begin at once and find out what it is like?"

"But look here," he said eagerly, "if it is a question of selling pictures, you should trust to my uncle. He is among a lot of men in the West of Scotland, rich merchants and people of that sort, who haven't inherited collections of pictures, and whose hobby is to make a collection for themselves. And they have much too good sense to buy spurious old masters, or bad examples for the sake of the name: they prefer good modern art, and I can tell you they are prepared to pay for it too. And they are not fools, mind you; they know good pictures. You may think my uncle is very prejudiced—he has his favourite artists—and—and believes in Tom Galbraith, don't you know—but I can assure you, you won't find many men who know more about a good landscape than he does; and you would say so if you saw his dining room at Denny-mains."

"I quite believe that," said she, beginning to put up her materials: she had done her morning's work.

"Well," he says, "you trust to him; there are lots of those Glasgow men who would only be too glad to have the chance——"

"Oh, no, no," she cried, laughing. "I am not going to coerce people into buying my pictures for the sake of friendship. I think your uncle would buy every sketch I have on board the yacht; but I cannot allow my friends to be victimised."

"Oh, victimised!" said he, scornfully. "They ought to be glad to have the chance. And do you mean to go on giving away your work for nothing? That sketch of the little creek we were in—opposite Iona, don't you know—that you gave my uncle, is charming. And they tell me you have given that picture of the rocks and sea-birds—where is the place?——"

"Oh, do you mean the sketch in the saloon—of Canna?"

"Yes; why it is one of the finest landscapes I ever saw. And they tell me you gave it to that doctor who was on board!"

"Dr. Sutherland," says she, hastily—and there is a quick colour in her face—"seemed to like it as—as a sort of reminiscence, you know——"

"But he should not have accepted a valuable picture," said the Youth, with decision. "No doubt you offered it to him when you saw he admired it. But now—when he must understand that—well, in fact, that circumstances are altered—he will have the good sense to give it you back again."

"Oh, I hope not," she says, with her embarrassment not diminishing. "I—I should not like that! I—I should be vexed."

"A person of good tact and good taste," says this venturesome young man, "would make a joke of it—would insist that you never meant it—and would prefer to buy the picture."

She answers, somewhat shortly—

"I think not. I think Dr. Sutherland has as good taste as any one. He would know that that would vex me very much."

"Oh, well," says he, with a sort of carelessness, "every one to his liking. If he cares to accept so valuable a present, good and well."

"You don't suppose he asked me for it?" she says, rather warmly. "I gave it him. He would have been rude to have refused it. I was very much pleased that he cared for the picture."

"Oh, he is a judge of art, also? I am told he knows everything."

"He was kind enough to say he liked the sketch; that was enough for me."

"He is very lucky; that is all I have to say."

"I dare say he has forgotten all about such a trifle. He has more important things to think about."

"Well," said he, with a good-natured laugh, "I should not consider such a picture a trifle if any one presented it to me. But it is always the people who get everything they want who value things least."

"Do you think Dr. Sutherland such a fortunate person?" says she. "Well, he is fortunate in having great abilities; and he is fortunate in having chosen a profession that has already secured him great honour, and that promises a splendid future to him. But that is the result of hard work; and he has to work hard now. I don't think most men would like to change places with him just at present."

"He has one good friend and champion, at all events," he says, with a pleasant smile.

"Oh," says she, hastily and anxiously, "I am saying what I hear. My acquaintance with Dr. Sutherland is—is quite recent, I may say; though I have met him in London. I only got to know something about him when he was in Edinburgh, and I happened to be there too."

"He is coming back to the yacht," observes Mr. Smith.

"He will be foolish to think of it," she answers, simply.

At this stage the yacht begins to wake up. The head of Hector of Moidart, much dishevelled, appears at the forecastle, and that wiry mariner is rubbing his eyes; but no sooner does he perceive that one of the ladies is on deck than he suddenly ducks down again—to get his face washed, and his paper collar. Then there is a voice heard in the saloon calling:—

"Who has left my spirit-lamp burning?"

"Oh, good gracious!" says the Youth, and tumbles down the companion incontinently.

Then the Laird appears, bringing up with him a huge red volume entitled Municipal London; but no sooner does he find that Miss Avon is on deck than he puts aside that mighty compendium, and will have her walk up and down with him before breakfast.

"What?" he says, eyeing the cup and saucer, "have ye had your breakfast already?"

"Mr. Smith was so kind as to bring me a cup of tea."

"What," he says again—and he is obviously greatly delighted. "Of his own making? I did not think he had as much gumption."

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said she. She had been startled by the whistling of a curlew close by, and had not heard him distinctly.

"I said he was a smart lad," said the Laird, unblushingly. "Oh, ay, a good lad; ye will not find many better lads than Howard. Will I tell ye a secret?"

"Well, sir—if you like," said she.

There was a mysterious, but humorous look about the Laird; and he spoke in a whisper.

"It is not good sometimes for young folk to know what is in store for them. But I mean to give him Denny-mains. Whish! Not a word. I'll surprise him some day."

"He ought to be very grateful to you, sir," was her answer.

"That he is—that he is," said the Laird; "he's an obedient lad. And I should not wonder if he had Denny-mains long before he expects it; though I must have my crust of bread, ye know. It would be a fine occupation for him, looking after the estate; and what is the use of his living in London, and swallowing smoke and fog? I can assure ye that the air at Denny-mains, though it's no far from Glasgow, is as pure as it is in this very Loch Speliv."

"Oh, indeed, sir."

They had another couple of turns in silence.

"Ye're verra fond of sailing," says the Laird.

"I am now," she says. "But I was very much afraid before I came; I have suffered so terribly in crossing the Channel. Somehow one never thinks of being ill here—with nice clean cabins—and no engines throbbing——"

"I meant that ye like well enough to go sailing about these places?"

"Oh yes," says she. "When shall I ever have such a beautiful holiday, again?"

The Laird laughed a little to himself. Then he said with a business-like air:

"I have been thinking that, when my nephew came to Denny-mains, I would buy a yacht for him, that he could keep down the Clyde somewhere—at Gourock, or Kilmun, or Dunoon, maybe. It is a splendid ground for yachting—a splendid! Ye have never been through the Kyles of Bute?"

"Oh, yes, sir; I have been through them in the steamer."

"Ay, but a yacht; wouldn't that be better? And I am no sure I would not advise him to have a steam-yacht—ye are so much more independent of wind and tide; and I'm thinking ye could get a verra good little steam-yacht for 3,000*l*."

"Oh, indeed."

"A great deal depends on the steward," he continues, seriously. "A good steward that does not touch drink, is jist worth anything. If I could get a first-class man, I would not mind giving him two pounds a week, with his clothes and his keep, while the yacht was being used; and I would not let him away in the winter—no, no. Ye could employ him at Denny-mains, as a butler-creature, or something like that."

She did not notice the peculiarity of the little pronoun: if she had, how could she have imagined that the Laird was really addressing himself to her?

"I have none but weeman-servants indoors at Denny-mains," he continued, "but when Howard comes, I would prefer him to keep the house like other people, and I will not stint him as to means. Have I told ye what Welliam Dunbaur says—

Be merry, man, and tak not sair in mind—"

"Oh, yes, I remember."

"There's fine common sense in that. And do not you believe the people who tell ye that the Scotch are a dour people, steeped in Calvinism, and niggardly and grasping at the last farthing——"

"I have found them exceedingly kind to me, and warm-hearted and generous—" says she; but he interrupted her suddenly.

"I'll tell ye what I'll do," said he, with decision. "When I buy that yacht, I'll get Tom Galbraith to paint every panel in the saloon—no matter what it costs!"

"Your nephew will be very proud of it," she said.

"And I would expect to take a trip in her myself, occasionally," he added, in a facetious manner. "I would expect to be invited——"

"Surely, sir, you cannot expect your nephew to be so ungrateful——"

"Oh," he said, "I only expect reasonable things. Young people are young people; they cannot like to be always hampered by grumbling old fogeys. No, no; if I present any one wi' a yacht, I do not look on myself as a piece of its furniture."

The Laird seemed greatly delighted. His step on the deck was firmer. In the pauses of the conversation she heard something about—

tántará! Sing tántará!

"Will ye take your maid with ye?" he asked of her, abruptly.

The girl looked up with a bewildered air—perhaps with a trifle of alarm in her eyes.

"I, sir?"

"Ha, ha!" said he, laughing, "I forgot. Ye have not been invited yet. No more have I. But—if the yacht were ready—and—and if ye were going—ye would take your maid, no doubt, for comfort's sake?"

The girl looked reassured. She said, cheerfully:

"Well, sir, I don't suppose I shall ever go yachting again, after I leave the White Dove. And if I were, I don't suppose I should be able to afford to have a maid with me, unless the dealers in London should suddenly begin to pay me a good deal more than they have done hitherto."

At this point she was summoned below by her hostess calling. The Laird was left alone on deck. He continued to pace up and down, muttering to himself, with a proud look on his face.

"A landscape in every panel, as I'm a living man! ... Tom 'll do it well, when I tell him who it's for.... The leddies' cabin blue and silver—cool in the summer—the skylight pented—she'll no be saying that the Scotch are wanting in taste when she sees that cabin!

Sing tántará! Sing tántará!

* * * The Highland army rues

That ere they came to Cromdale!

And her maid—if she will not be able to afford a maid, who will?—French, if she likes! Blue and silver—blue and silver—that's it!"

And then the Laird, still humming his lugubrious battle-song, comes down into the saloon.

"Good morning, ma'am; good morning! Breakfast ready? I'm just ravenous. That wild lassie has walked me up and down until I am like to faint. A beautiful morning again—splendid!—splendid! And do ye know where ye will be this day next year?"

"I am sure I don't," says his hostess, busy with the breakfast-things.

"I will tell ye. Anchored in the Holy Loch, off Kilmun, in a screw-yacht. Mark my words now: this very day next year!"

CHAPTER IX.

A PROTECTOR.

"Oh, ay," says John of Skye, quite proudly, as we go on deck after breakfast, "there will be no more o' the dead calms. We will give Mr. Sutherland a good breeze or two when he comes back to the yat."

It is all Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Sutherland now!—everything is to be done because Mr. Sutherland is coming. Each belaying pin is polished so that one might see to shave in it; Hector of Moidart has spent about two hours in scraping and rubbing the brass and copper of the galley stove-pipe; and Captain John, with many grins and apologies, has got Miss Avon to sew up a rent that has begun to appear in the red ensign. All that he wants now is to have the yacht beached for a couple of days, to have the long slender sea-grass scraped from her hull: then Mr. Sutherland will see how the White Dove will sail!

"I should imagine," says the Youth, in an undertone, to his hostess, as we are working out the narrow entrance to Loch Speliv, "that your doctor-friend must have given those men a liberal pour-boire when he left."

"Oh, I am sure not," said she, quickly, as if that was a serious imputation. "That is very unlikely."

"They seem very anxious to have everything put right against his coming," he says; "at all events, your captain seems to think that every good breeze he gets is merely thrown away on us."

"Dr. Sutherland and he," she says, laughing, "were very good friends. And then Angus had very bad luck when he was on board: the glass wouldn't fall. But I have promised to bottle up the equinoctials for him—he will have plenty of winds before we have done with him. You must stay too, you know, Mr. Smith, and see how the White Dove rides out a gale."

He regarded her—with some suspicion. He was beginning to know that this lady's speech—despite the great gentleness and innocence of her eyes—sometimes concealed curious meanings. And was she now merely giving him a kind and generous invitation to go yachting with us for another month; or was she, with a cruel sarcasm, referring to the probability of his having to remain a prisoner for that time, in order to please his uncle?

However, the conversation had to be dropped, for at this moment the Laird and his protégée made their appearance; and, of course, a deck-chair had to be brought for her, and a foot-stool, and a sunshade, and a book. But what were these attentions, on the part of her elderly slave, compared with the fact that a young man, presumably enjoying a sound and healthy sleep, should have unselfishly got up at an unholy hour of the morning, and should have risked blowing up the yacht with spirits of wine in order to get her a cup of tea?

It was a fine sailing day. Running before a light topsail breeze from the south-east, the White Dove was making for the Lynn of Morven, and bringing us more and more within view of the splendid circle of mountains, from Ben Cruachan in the east to Ben Nevis in the north; from Ben Nevis down to the successive waves of the Morven hills. And we knew why, among all the sunlit yellows and greens—faint as they were in the distance—there were here and there on slope and shoulder stains of a beautiful rose-purple that were a new feature in the landscape. The heather was coming into bloom—the knee-deep, honey-scented heather, the haunt of the snipe, and the muircock, and the mountain hare. And if there was to be for us this year no toiling over the high slopes and crags—looking down from time to time on a spacious world of sunlit sea and island—we were not averse from receiving friendly and substantial messages from those altitudes. In a day or two now the first crack of the breechloader would startle the silence of the morning air. And Master Fred's larder was sorely in want of variety.

Northward, and still northward, the light breeze tempering the scorching sunlight that glares on the sails and the deck. Each long ripple of the running blue sea flashes in diamonds; and when we look to the south, those silver lines converge and converge, until at the horizon they become a solid blaze of light unendurable to the eye. But it is to the north we turn—to the land of Appin, and Kingairloch, and Lochaber: blow, light wind; and carry us onward, gentle tide; we have an appointment to keep within shadow of the mountains that guard Glencoe.

The Laird has discovered that these two were up early this morning: he becomes facetious.

"Not sleepy yet, Miss Mary?" he says.

"Oh, no—not at all," she says, looking up from her book.

"It's the early bird that catches the first sketch. Fine and healthy is that early rising, Howard. I'm thinking ye did not sleep sound last night: what for were ye up before anybody was stirring?"

But the Laird does not give him time to answer. Something has tickled the fancy of this profound humourist.

"Kee! kee!" he laughs; and he rubs his hands. "I mind a good one I heard from Tom Galbraith, when he and I were at the Bridge of Allan; room to room, ye know; and Tom did snore that night. 'What,' said I to him in the morning, 'had ye nightmare, or delirium tremens, that ye made such a noise in the night?' 'Did I snore?' said he—I'm thinking somebody else must have complained before. 'Snore?' said I, 'twenty grampuses was nothing to it.' And Tom—he burst out a-laughing. 'I'm very glad,' says he. 'If I snored, I must have had a sound sleep!' A sound sleep—d'ye see? Very sharp—very smart—eh?"—and the Laird laughed and chuckled over that portentous joke.

"Oh, uncle, uncle, uncle!" his nephew cried. "You used never to do such things. You must quit the society of those artists, if they have such a corrupting influence on you."

"I tell ye," he says, with a sudden seriousness, "I would just like to show Tom Galbraith that picture o' Canna that's below. No; I would not ask him to alter a thing. Very good—very good it is. And—and—I think—I will admit it—for a plain man likes the truth to be told—there is just a bit jealousy among them against any English person that tries to paint Scotch scenery. No, no, Miss Mary—don't you be afraid. Ye can hold your own. If I had that picture, now—if it belonged to me—and if Tom was stopping wi' me at Denny-mains, I would not allow him to alter it, not if he offered to spend a week's work on it."

After that—what? The Laird could say no more.

Alas! alas! our wish to take a new route northward was all very well; but we had got under the lee of Lismore, and slowly and slowly the wind died away, until even the sea was as smooth as the surface of a mirror. It was but little compensation that we could lean over the side of the yacht, and watch the thousands of "sea-blubbers" far down in the water, in all their hues of blue, and purple, and pale pink. The heat of the sun was blistering; scorching with a sharp pain any nose or cheek that was inadvertently turned towards it. As for the Laird, he could not stand this oven-like business any longer; he declared the saloon was ever so much cooler than the deck; and went down below, and lay at length on one of the long blue cushions.

"Why, John," says Queen T., "you are bringing on those dead calms again. What will Dr. Sutherland say to you?"

But John of Skye has his eye on the distant shore.

"Oh, no, mem," he says, with a crafty smile, "there will not be a dead calm very long."

And there, in at the shore, we see a dark line on the water; and it spreads and spreads; the air becomes gratefully cool to the face before the breeze perceptibly fills the sails; then there is a cheerful swing over of the boom and a fluttering of the as yet unreleased head-sails. A welcome breeze, surely, from the far hills of Kingairloch. We thank you, you beautiful Kingairloch, with your deep glens and your rose-purple shoulders of hills: long may you continue to send fresh westerly winds to the parched and passing voyager!

We catch a distant glimpse of the white houses of Port Appin; we bid adieu to the musically-named Eilean-na-Shuna; far ahead of us is the small white lighthouse at the mouth of the narrows of Corran. But there is to be no run up to Fort William for us to-night; the tide will turn soon; we cannot get through the Corran narrows. And so there is a talk of Ballahulish; and Captain John is trying hard to get Miss Avon to pronounce this Bal-a-chaolish. It is not fair of Sandy from Islay—who thinks he is hidden by the foresail—to grin to himself at these innocent efforts.

Grander and grander grow those ramparts of mountains ahead of us—with their wine-coloured stains of heather on the soft and velvety yellow-green. The wind from the Kingairloch shores still carries us on; and Inversanda swells the breeze; soon we shall be running into that wide channel that leads up to the beautiful Loch Leven. The Laird reappears on deck. He is quite enchanted with the scene around him. He says if an artist had placed that black cloud behind the great bulk of Ben Nevis, it could not have been more artistically arranged. He declares that this entrance to Loch Leven is one of the most beautiful places he has ever seen. He calls attention to the soft green foliage of the steep hills; and to that mighty peak of granite, right in the middle of the landscape, that we discover to be called the Pap of Glencoe. And here, in the mellow light of the afternoon, is the steamer coming down from the north: is it to be a race between us for the Bal-a-chaolish quay?

It is an unfair race. We have to yield to brute strength and steam kettles.

Four to one Argyle came on,

as the dirge of Eric says. But we bear no malice. We salute our enemy as he goes roaring and throbbing by; and there is many a return signal waved to us from the paddle-boxes.

"Mr. Sutherland is no there, mem, I think," says Captain John, who has been scanning those groups of people with his keen eyes.

"I should think not; he said he was coming to-morrow," is the answer.

"Will he be coming down by the Chevalier in the morning, or by the Mountaineer at night?" is the further question.

"I don't know."

"We will be ashore for him in the morning, whatever," says John of Skye cheerfully; and you would have thought it was his guest, and not ours, who was coming on board.

The roaring out of the anchor chain was almost immediately followed by Master Fred's bell. Mary Avon was silent and distraite at dinner; but nothing more was said of her return to London. It was understood that, when Angus Sutherland came on board, we should go back to Castle Osprey, and have a couple of days on shore, to let the White Dove get rid of her parasitic seaweed.

Then, after dinner, a fishing excursion; but this was in a new loch, and we were not very successful. Or was it that most of us were watching, from this cup of water surrounded by the circle of great mountains, the strange movings of the clouds in the gloomy and stormy twilight, long after the sun had sunk?

"It is not a very sheltered place," remarked the Laird, "if a squall were to come down from the hills."

But by and by something appeared that lent an air of stillness and peace to this sombre scene around us. Over one of those eastern mountains a faint, smoky, suffused yellow light began to show; then the outline of the mountain—serrated with trees—grew dark; then the edge of the moon appeared over the black line of trees; and by and by the world was filled with this new, pale light, though the shadows on the hills were deeper than ever. We did not hurry on our way back to the yacht. It was a magical night—the black, overhanging hills, the white clouds crossing the blue vaults of the heavens, the wan light on the sea. What need for John of Skye to put up that golden lamp at the bow? But it guided us on our way back—under the dusky shadows of the hills.

Then below, in the orange-lit cabin, with cards and dominoes and chess about, a curious thing overhead happens to catch the eye of one of the gamblers. Through the skylight, with this yellow glare, we ought not to see anything; but there, shining in the night, is a long bar of pale phosphorescent green light. What can this be? Why green? And it is Mary Avon who first suggests what this strangely luminous thing must be—the boom, wet with the dew, shining in the moonlight.

"Come," says the Laird to her, "put a shawl round ye, and we will go up for another look round."

And so, after a bit, they went on deck, these two, leaving the others to their bezique. And the Laird was as careful about the wrapping up of this girl as if she had been a child of five years of age; and when they went out on to the white deck, he would give her his arm that she should not trip over any stray rope; and they were such intimate friends now that he did not feel called upon to talk to her.

But by and by the heart of the Laird was lifted up within him because of the wonderful beauty and silence of this moonlight night.

"It is a great peety," said he, "that you in the south are not brought up as children to be familiar with the Scotch version of the Psalms of David. It is a fountain-head of poetry that ye can draw from all your life long; and is there any poetry in the world can beat it? And many a time I think that David had a great love for mountains—and that he must have looked at the hills around Jerusalem—and seen them on many a night like this. Ye cannot tell, lassie, what stirs in the heart of a Scotchman or Scotchwoman when they repeat the 121st Psalm:—

I to the hills will lift mine eyes,

From whence doth come mine aid;

My safety cometh from the Lord

Who heaven and earth hath made.

Thy foot He'll not let slide, nor will

He slumber that thee keeps:

Behold, He that keeps Israel

He slumbers not nor sleeps.

Ask your friend Dr. Sutherland—ask him whether he has found anything among his philosophy, and science, and the new-fangled leeterature of the day that comes so near to his heart as a verse of the old Psalms that he learnt as a boy. I have heard of Scotch soldiers in distant countries just bursting out crying, when they heard by chance a bit repeated o' the Psalms of David. And the strength and reliance of them: what grander source of consolation can ye have? 'As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth, even for ever.' What are the trials of the hour to them that believe and know and hope? They have a sure faith; the captivity is not for ever. Do ye remember the beginning of the 126th Psalm—it reminds me most of all of the Scotch phrase

'laughin' maist like to greet'

—'When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south!'"

The Laird was silent for a minute or two; there was nothing but the pacing up and down the moonlit deck.

"And you have your troubles too, my lass," said he, at length. "Oh, I know—though ye put so brave a face on it. But you need not be afraid; you need not be afraid. Keep up your heart. I am an old man now; I may have but few years to reckon on; but while I live ye will not want a friend.... Ye will not want a friend.... If I forget, or refuse what I promise ye this night, may God do so and more unto me!"

But the good-hearted Laird will not have her go to sleep with this solemnity weighing on her mind.

"Come, come," he says cheerfully, "we will go below now; and you will sing me a song—the Queen's Maries, if ye like—though I doubt but that they were a lot o' wild hizzies."

CHAPTER X.

"MARY, MARY!"

Is there any one awake and listening—perhaps with a tremor of the heart—for the calling out of "White Dove, ahoy!" from the shore? Once the ordinary loud noises of the morning are over—the brief working of the pump, the washing down of the decks—silence reigns once more throughout the yacht. One can only hear a whispering of the rain above.

Then, in the distance, there is a muffled sound of the paddles of a steamer; and that becomes fainter and fainter, while the White Dove gradually loses the motion caused by the passing waves. Again there is an absolute stillness; with only that whispering of the rain.

But this sudden sound of oars? and the slight shock against the side of the vessel? The only person on board the yacht who is presentable whips a shawl over her head, darts up the companion way, and boldly emerges into the moist and dismal morning.

"Oh, Angus!" she cries, to this streaming black figure that has just stepped on deck, "what a day you have brought with you!"

"Oh, it is nothing!" says a cheerful voice from out of the dripping macintosh—perhaps it is this shining black garment that makes the wet face and whiskers and hair glow redder than ever, and makes the blue eyes look even bluer. "Nothing at all! John and I have agreed it is going to clear. But this is a fine place to be in, with a falling glass! If you get a squall down from Glencoe, you won't forget it."

"A squall!" she says, looking round, in amazement. Well might she exclaim; for the day is still, and grey, and sombre; the mountains are swathed in mist; the smooth sea troubled only by the constant rain.

However, the ruddy-faced Doctor, having divested himself of his dripping garment, follows his hostess down the companion, and into the saloon, and sits down on one of the couches. There is an odd, half pathetic expression on his face, as he looks around.

"It seems a long time ago," he says, apparently to himself.

"What does?" asks his hostess, removing her head-gear.

"The evenings we used to spend in this very saloon," says he—looking with a strange interest on those commonplace objects, the draughts and dominoes, the candlesticks and cigar-boxes, the cards and books—"away up there in the north. It seems years since we were at Dunvegan, doesn't it, and lying off Vaternish Point? There never was as snug a cabin as this in any yacht. It is like returning to an old home to get into it."

"I am very glad to hear you say so," says his hostess, regarding him with a great kindliness. "We will try to make you forget that you have ever been away. Although," she added frankly, "I must tell you you have been turned out of your state-room—for a time. I know you won't mind having a berth made up for you on one of those couches."

"Of course not," he said; "if I am not in your way at all. But——"

And his face asked the question.

"Oh! it is a nephew of Denny-mains who has come on board—a Mr. Smith, a very nice young fellow; I am sure you will like him."

There was nothing said in reply to this.

Then the new-comer inquired, rather timidly, "You are all well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes!"

"And—and Miss Avon, too?" said he.

"Oh, yes! But Mary has suffered a great misfortune since you left."

She looked up quickly. Then she told him the story; and in telling him her indignation awoke afresh. She spoke rapidly. The old injury had touched her anew.

But, strangely enough, although Angus Sutherland displayed a keen interest in the matter, he was not at all moved to that passion of anger and desire for vengeance that had shaken the Laird. Not at all. He was very thoughtful for a time; but he only said, "You mean she has to support herself now?"

"Absolutely."

"She will naturally prefer that to being dependent on her friends?"

"She will not be dependent on her friends, I know," is the answer; "though the Laird has taken such a great liking for her that I believe he would give her half Denny-mains."

He started a little bit at this; but immediately said—

"Of course she will prefer independence. And, as you say, she is quite capable of earning her own living. Well, she does not worry about it? It does not trouble her mind?"

"That affair of her uncle wounded her very keenly, I imagine, though she said little; but as for the loss of her little fortune, not at all! She is as light-hearted as ever. The only thing is that she is possessed by a mad notion that she should start away at once for London."

"Why?"

"To begin work; I tell her she must work here."

"But she is not anxious? She is not troubled?"

"Not a bit! The Laird says she has the courage of ten men; and I believe him."

"That is all right. I was going to prescribe a course of Marcus Aurelius; but if you have got philosophy in your blood, it is better than getting it through the brain."

And so this talk ended; leaving on the mind of one of those two friends a distinct sense of disappointment. She had been under the impression that Angus Sutherland had a very warm regard for Mary Avon; and she had formed certain other suspicions. She had made sure that he, more quickly than any one else, would resent the injury done to this helpless girl. And now he seemed to treat it as of no account. If she was not troubling herself; if she was not giving herself headaches about it: then, no matter! It was a professional view of the case. A dose of Marcus Aurelius? It was not thus that the warm-hearted Laird had espoused Mary Avon's cause.

Then the people came one by one in to breakfast; and our young Doctor was introduced to the stranger who had ousted him from his state-room. Last of all came Mary Avon.

How she managed to go along to him, and to shake hands with him, seeing that her eyes were bent on the floor all the time, was a mystery. But she did shake hands with him; and said, "How do you do?" in a somewhat formal manner; and she seemed a little paler than usual.

"I don't think you are looking quite as well as when I left," said he, with a great interest and kindness in his look.

"Thank you, I am very well," she said; and then she instantly turned to the Laird and began chatting to him. Angus Sutherland's face burned red; it was not thus she had been used to greet him in the morning, when we were far away beyond the shores of Canna.

And then, when we found that the rain was over, and that there was not a breath of wind in this silent, grey, sombre world of mountain and mist, and when we went ashore for a walk along the still lake, what must she needs do but attach herself to the Laird, and take no notice of her friend of former days? Angus walked behind with his hostess, but he rarely took his eyes off the people in front. And when Miss Avon, picking up a wild flower now and again, was puzzling over its name, he did not, as once he would have done, come to her help with his student-days' knowledge of botany. Howard Smith brought her a bit of wall rue, and said he thought they called it Asplenium marinum: there was no interference. The preoccupied Doctor behind only asked how far Miss Avon was going to walk with her lame foot.

The Laird of Denny-mains knew nothing of all this occult business. He was rejoicing in his occupation of philosopher and guide. He was assuring us all that this looked like a real Highland day—far more so than the Algerian blue sky that had haunted us for so long. He pointed out, as we walked along the winding shores of Loch Leven, by the path that rose, and fell, and skirted small precipices all hanging in foliage, how beautiful was that calm, slate-blue mirror beneath, showing every outline of the sombre mountains, with their masses of Landseer mist. He stopped his companion to ask her if she had ever seen anything finer in colour than the big clusters of scarlet rowans among the yellow-green leaves? Did she notice the scent of the meadow-sweet, in the moist air of this patch of wood? He liked to see those white stars of the grass-of-Parnassus; they reminded him of many a stroll among the hills about Loch Katrine.

"And this still Loch Leven," he said at length, and without the least blush on his face, "with the Glencoe mountains at the end of it. I have often heard say was as picturesque a loch as any in Scotland, on a gloomy day like this. Gloomy I call it, but ye see there are fine silver glints among the mist; and—and, in fact, there's a friend of mine has often been wishing to have a water-colour sketch of it. If ye had time, Miss Mary, to make a bit drawing from the deck of the yacht, ye might name your own price—just name your own price. I will buy it for him."

A friend! Mary Avon knew very well who the friend was.

"I should be afraid, sir," said she, laughing, "to meddle with anything about Glencoe."

"Toots! toots!" said he; "ye have not enough confidence. I know twenty young men in Edinburgh and Glasgow who have painted every bit of Glencoe, from the bridge to the King's House inn, and not one of them able to come near ye. Mind, I'm looking forward to showing your pictures to Tom Galbraith; I'm thinking he'll stare!"

The Laird chuckled again.

"Oh, ay! he does not know what a formidable rival has come from the south; I'm thinking he'll stare when he comes to Denny-mains to meet ye. Howard, what's that down there?"

The Laird had caught sight of a pink flower on the side of a steep little ravine, leading down to the shore.

"Oh, I don't want it; I don't want it!" Mary Avon cried.

But the Laird was obdurate. His nephew had to go scrambling down through the alders and rowan-trees and wet bracken to get this bit of pink crane's-bill for Miss Avon's bouquet. And of course she was much pleased; and thanked him very prettily; and was it catch-fly, or herb robert, or what was it?

Then out of sheer common courtesy she had to turn to Angus Sutherland.

"I am sure Dr. Sutherland can tell us." she says, timidly; and she does not meet his eyes.

"It is one of the crane's-bills, any way," he says, indifferently. "Don't you think you had better return now, Miss Avon, or you will hurt your foot?"

"Oh, my foot is quite well now, thank you!" she says; and on she goes again.

We pass by the first cuttings of the slate-quarries; the men suspended by ropes round their waists and hewing away at the face of the cliff. We go through the long straggling village; and the Laird remarks that it is not usual for a Celtic race to have such clean cottages, with pots of flowers in the window. We saunter idly onwards, towards those great mountain-masses, and there is apparently no thought of returning.

"When we've gone so far, might we not go on to the mouth of the pass?" she asks. "I should like to have a look even at the beginning of Glencoe."

"I thought so," said the Laird, with a shrewd smile. "Oh, ay! we may as well go on."

Past those straggling cottages, with the elder-bush at their doors to frighten away witches; over the bridge that spans the brawling Cona; along the valley down which the stream rushes; and this gloom overhead deepens and deepens. The first of the great mountains appears on our right, green to the summit, and yet so sheer from top to bottom that it is difficult to understand how those dots of sheep maintain their footing. Then the marks on him; he seems to be a huge Behemoth, with great eyes, grand, complacent, even sardonic in his look. But the further and further mountains have nothing of this mild, grand humour about them; they are sullen and awful; they grasp the earth with their mighty bulk below, but far away they lift their lurid peaks to the threatening skies, up there where the thunder threatens to shake the silence of the world.

"Miss Avon," Dr. Sutherland again remonstrates, "you have come five or six miles now. Suppose you have to walk back in the rain?"

"I don't mind about that," she says, cheerfully. "But I am dreadfully, dreadfully hungry."

"Then we must push on to Clachaig," says the Laird; "there is no help for it."

"But wait a moment," she says.

She goes to the side of the road, where the great grey boulders, and ferns, and moist marsh-grass are, and begins to gather handfuls of "sourocks;" that is to say, of the smaller sheep's sorrel. "Who will partake of this feast to allay the pangs of hunger?"

"Is thy servant a baa-lamb that she should do this thing?" her hostess says, and drives the girl forward.

The inn is reached but in time; for behold there is a grey "smurr" of mist coming down the glen; and the rain is beginning to darken the grey boulders. And very welcome are those chairs, and the bread and cheese and beer, and the humble efforts in art around the walls. If the feast is not as the feasting of the Fishmongers—if we have no pretty boxes to carry home to the children—if we have no glimpses of the pale blue river and shipping through the orange light of the room, at least we are not amazed by the appearance of the Duke of Sussex in the garb of a Highlander. And the frugal meal is substantial enough. Then the question about getting back arises.

"Now, Mary," says her hostess, "you have got to pay for your amusement. How will you like walking seven or eight miles in a thunderstorm?"

But here the Laird laughs.

"No, no," he says, going to the window. "That waggonette that has just come up I ordered at the inn on passing. Ye will not have to walk a step, my lass; but I think we had better be going, as it looks black overhead."

Black enough, indeed, was it as we drove back in this silent afternoon, with a thunderstorm apparently about to break over our heads. And it was close and sultry when we got on board again, though there was as yet no wind. Captain John did not like the look of the sky.

"I said you were going to bring a gale with you, Angus," his hostess remarked to him, cheerfully, at dinner.

"It begins to look like it," he answered, gravely; "and it is getting too late to run away from here if the wind rises. As soon as it begins to blow, if I were John, I would put out the starboard anchor."

"I know he will take your advice," she answers, promptly.

We saw little of Angus Sutherland that evening; for it was raining hard and blowing hard; and the cabin below, with its lit candles, and books and cards, and what not, was cheerful enough; while he seemed very much to prefer being on deck. We could hear the howling of the wind through the rigging, and the gurgling of the water along the sides of the yacht; and we knew by the way she was swaying that she was pulling hard at her anchor chain. There was to be no beautiful moonlight for us that night, with the black shadows on the hills, and the lane of silver on the water.

A dripping and glistening figure comes down the companion; a gleaming red face appears at the door. Mary Avon looks up from her draughts, but for an instant.

"Well, Angus, what is the report?" says Queen Titania, brightly. "And what is all the noise on deck? And why don't you come below?"

"They have been paying out more anchor chain," says the rough voice from out of the macintosh; "it is likely to be a nasty night, and we are going to lower the topmast now. I want you to be so kind as to tell Fred to leave out some whisky and some bread and cheese; for John thinks of having an anchor watch."

"The bread and cheese and whisky Fred can get at any time," says she; and she adds with some warmth, "But you are not going to stay on deck on such a night? Come in here at once. Leave your macintosh on the steps."

Is it that he looks at that draught-board? It is Mr. Howard Smith who is playing with Mary Avon. The faithless Miranda has got another Ferdinand now.

"I think I would rather take my turn like the rest," he says, absently. "There may be some amusement before the morning."

And so the black figure turned away and disappeared; and a strange thing was that the girl playing draughts seemed to have been so bewildered by the apparition that she stared at the board, and could not be got to understand how she had made a gross and gigantic blunder.

"Oh, yes; oh, certainly!" she said, hurriedly; but she did not know how to retrieve her obvious mistake.

CHAPTER XI.

AN UNSPOKEN APPEAL.

"What have I done? Is she vexed? Have I offended her?" he asked the next morning, in a rapid manner, when his hostess came on deck. The gale had abated somewhat, but gloom overspread earth and sky. It was nothing to the gloom that overspread his usually frank and cheerful face.

"You mean Mary?" she says, though she knows well enough.

"Yes; haven't you seen? She seems to treat me as though we had never met before—as though we were perfect strangers—and I know she is too kind-hearted to cause any one pain——"

Here he looks somewhat embarrassed for a moment; but his customary straightforwardness comes to his rescue.

"Yes; I will confess I am very much hurt by it. And—and I should like to know if there is any cause. Surely you must have noticed it?"

She had noticed it, sure enough; and, in contrast with that studied coldness which Mary Avon had shown to her friend of former days, she had remarked the exceeding friendliness the young lady was extending to the Laird's nephew. But would she draw the obvious conclusion? Not likely; she was too staunch a friend to believe any such thing. All the same there remained in her mind a vague feeling of surprise, with perhaps a touch of personal injury.

"Well, Angus, you know," she said, evasively; "Mary is very much preoccupied just at present. Her whole condition of life is changed, and she has many things to think of——"

"Yes; but she is frank enough with her other friends. What have I done, that I should be made a stranger of?"

A pathetic answer comes to these idle frettings of the hour. Far away on the shore a number of small black figures emerge from the woods, and slowly pass along the winding road that skirts the rocks. They are following a cart—a common farmyard cart; but on the wooden planks is placed a dark object that is touched here and there with silver—or perhaps it is only the white cords. Between the overhanging gloom of the mountains and the cold greys of the wind-swept sea the small black line passes slowly on. And these two on board the yacht watch it in silence. Are they listening for the wail of the pipes—the wild dirge of Lord Lovat, or the cry of the Cumhadh na Cloinne? But the winds are loud, and the rushing seas are loud; and now the rude farmyard cart, with its solemn burden, is away out at the point; and presently the whole simple pageant has disappeared. The lonely burying-ground lies far away among the hills.

Angus Sutherland turns round again, with a brief sigh.

"It will be all the same in a few years," he says to his hostess; and then he adds, indifferently, "What do you say about starting? The wind is against us; but anything is better than lying here. There were some bad squalls in the night."

Very soon after this the silent loch is resounding with the rattle of halyards, blocks, and chains; and Angus Sutherland is seeking distraction from those secret cares of the moment in the excitement of hard work. Nor is it any joke getting in that enormous quantity of anchor chain. In the midst of all the noise and bustle Mary Avon appears on deck to see what is going on, and she is immediately followed by young Smith.

"Why don't you help them?" she says, laughing.

"So I would, if I knew what to do," he says, good-naturedly. "I'll go and ask Dr. Sutherland."

It was a fatal step. Angus Sutherland suggested, somewhat grimly, that, if he liked, he might lend them a hand at the windlass. A muscular young Englishman does not like to give in; and for a time he held his own with the best of them; but long before the starboard anchor had been got up, and the port one hove short, he had had enough of it. He did not volunteer to assist at the throat halyards. To Miss Avon, who was calmly looking on, he observed that it would take him about a fortnight to get his back straight.

"That," said she, finding an excuse for him instantly, "is because you worked too hard at it at first. You should have watched the Islay man. All he does is to call 'Heave!' and to make his shoulders go up as if he were going to do the whole thing himself. But he does not help a bit. I have watched him again and again."

"Your friend, Dr. Sutherland," said he, regarding her for an instant as he spoke, "seems to work as hard as any of them."

"He is very fond of it," she said, simply, without any embarrassment; nor did she appear to regard it as singular that Angus Sutherland should have been spoken of specially as her friend.

Angus Sutherland himself comes rapidly aft, loosens the tiller rope, and jams the helm over. And now the anchor is hove right up; the reefed mainsail and small jib quickly fill out before this fresh breeze; and, presently, with a sudden cessation of noise, we are spinning away through the leaden-coloured waters. We are not sorry to get away from under the gloom of these giant hills; for the day still looks squally, and occasionally a scud of rain comes whipping across, scarcely sufficient to wet the decks. And there is more life and animation on board now; a good deal of walking up and down in ulsters, with inevitable collisions; and of remarks shouted against, or with, the wind; and of joyful pointing towards certain silver gleams of light in the west and south. There is hope in front; behind us nothing but darkness and the threatenings of storm. The Pap of Glencoe has disappeared in rain; the huge mountains on the right are as black as the deeds of murder done in the glen below; Ardgour over there, and Lochaber here, are steeped in gloom. And there is less sadness now in the old refrain of Lochaber since there is a prospect of the South shining before us. If Mary Avon is singing to herself about

Lochaber no more! And Lochaber no more!

We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more!

—it is with a light heart.

But then if it is a fine thing to go bowling along with a brisk breeze on our beam, it is very different when we get round Ardshiel and find the southerly wind veering to meet us dead in the teeth. And there is a good sea running up Loch Linnhe—a heavy grey-green sea that the White Dove meets and breaks, with spurts of spray forward, and a line of hissing foam in our wake. The zig-zag beating takes us alternately to Ardgour and Appin, until we can see here and there the cheerful patches of yellow corn at the foot of the giant and gloomy hills; then "'Bout ship" again, and away we go on the heaving and rushing grey-green sea.

And is Mary Avon's oldest friend—the woman who is the staunchest of champions—being at last driven to look askance at the girl? Is it fair that the young lady should be so studiously silent when our faithful Doctor is by, and instantly begin to talk again when he goes forward to help at the jib or foresail sheets? And when he asks her, as in former days, to take the tiller, she somewhat coldly declines the offer he has so timidly and respectfully made. But as for Mr. Smith, that is a very different matter. It is he whom she allows to go below for some wrapper for her neck. It is he who stands by, ready to shove over the top of the companion when she crouches to avoid a passing shower of rain. It is he with whom she jokes and talks—when the Laird does not monopolise her.

"I would have believed it of any girl in the world rather than of her," says her hostess, to another person, when these two happen to be alone in the saloon below. "I don't believe it yet. It is impossible. Of course a girl who is left as penniless as she is might be pardoned for looking round and being friendly with rich people who are well inclined towards her; but I don't believe—I say it is impossible—that she should have thrown Angus over just because she saw a chance of marrying the Laird's nephew. Why, there never was a girl we have ever known so independent as she is!—not any one half as proud and as fearless. She looks upon going to London and earning her own living as nothing at all! She is the very last girl in the world to speculate on making a good match—she has too much pride—she would not speak another word to Howard Smith if such a monstrous thing were suggested to her."