.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 43828
   :PG.Title: White Wings, Volume I (of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2013-09-27
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: William Black
   :DC.Title: White Wings, Volume I
              A Yachting Romance
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1880
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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WHITE WINGS, VOLUME I
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      WHITE WINGS:

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      A Yachting Romance.

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      BY

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      WILLIAM BLACK,

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      AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON,"
      "GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY," ETC.

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      *IN THREE VOLUMES.*

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      VOL. I.

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      London:
      MACMILLAN AND CO.
      1880.

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      *The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.*

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      LONDON:
      R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
      BREAD STREET HILL.

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      TO OUR

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      QUEEN MABS,

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      IN MEMORY OF HER FIRST CRUISE ON BOARD ANY
      YACHT, THIS RECORD OF OUR LONG SUMMER IDLENESS
      IN 1878 IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY HER
      OBLIGED AND HUMBLE SERVANT,

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      *THE AUTHOR.*

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      BRIGHTON, *June* 1880.

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   CONTENTS.

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CHAPTER I.

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`ON THE QUAY`_


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CHAPTER II.

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`MARY AVON`_


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CHAPTER III.

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`UNDER WAY`_


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CHAPTER IV.

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`A MESSAGE`_


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CHAPTER V.

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`A BRAVE CAREER`_


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CHAPTER VI.

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`OUR NEW GUESTS`_


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CHAPTER VII.

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`NORTHWARD`_


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CHAPTER VIII.

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`PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS`_


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CHAPTER IX.

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`A WILD STUDIO`_


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CHAPTER X.

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`"DUNVEGAN!—OH!  DUNVEGAN!"`_


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CHAPTER XI.

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`DRAWING NEARER`_


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CHAPTER XII.

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`THE OLD SCHOOL AND THE NEW`_


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CHAPTER XIII.

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`FERDINAND AND MIRANDA`_


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CHAPTER XIV.

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`EVIL TIDINGS`_


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CHAPTER XV.

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`TEMPTATION`_


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CHAPTER XVI.

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`THROUGH THE DARK`_





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.. _`ON THE QUAY`:

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   WHITE WINGS:

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   A Yachting Romance.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   ON THE QUAY.

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A murmur runs through the crowd; the
various idlers grow alert; all eyes are suddenly
turned to the south.  And there, far away over
the green headland, a small tuft of brown
smoke appears, rising into the golden glow of
the afternoon, and we know that by and by
we shall see the great steamer with her scarlet
funnels come sailing round the point.  The
Laird of Denny-mains assumes an air of still
further importance; he pulls his frock-coat
tight at the waist; he adjusts his black satin
necktie; his tall, white, stiff collar seems more
rigid and white than ever.  He has heard of
the wonderful stranger; and he knows that
now she is drawing near.

Heard of her?  He has heard of nothing
else since ever he came to us in these northern
wilds.  For the mistress of this household—with
all her domineering ways and her fits of
majestic temper—has a love for her intimate
girl-friends far passing the love of men;
especially when the young ladies are obedient,
and gentle, and ready to pay to her matronly
dignity the compliment of a respectful awe.
And this particular friend who is now coming
to us: what has not the Laird heard about
her during these past few days?—of her high
courage, her resolute unselfishness, her splendid
cheerfulness?  "A singing-bird in the house,"
that was one of the phrases used, "in wet
weather or fine."  And then the enthusiastic
friend muddled her metaphors somehow, and
gave the puzzled Laird to understand that the
presence of this young lady in a house was
like having sweet-brier about the rooms.  No
wonder he put on his highest and stiffest collar
before he marched grandly down with us to
the quay.

"And does she not deserve a long holiday
sir?" says the Laird's hostess to him, as
together they watch for the steamer coming
round the point.  "Just fancy!  Two months'
attendance on that old woman, who was her
mother's nurse.  Two months in a sick-room,
without a soul to break the monotony of it.
And the girl living in a strange town all by
herself!"

"Ay; and in such a town as Edinburgh,"
remarks the Laird, with great compassion.
His own property lies just outside Glasgow.

"Dear me," says he, "what must a young
English leddy have thought of our Scotch way
of speech when she heard they poor Edinburgh
bodies and their yaumering sing-song?  Not
that I quarrel with any people for having an
accent in their way of speaking; they have
that in all parts of England as well as in
Scotland—in Yorkshire, and Somersetshire,
and what not; and even in London itself there
is a way of speech that is quite recognisable
to a stranger.  But I have often thought that
there was less trace of accent about Glesca
and the west of Scotland than in any other
part; in fact, ah have often been taken for an
Englishman maself."

"Indeed!" says this gentle creature standing
by him; and her upturned eyes are full of an
innocent belief.  You would swear she was
meditating on summoning instantly her boys
from Epsom College that they might acquire
a pure accent—or get rid of all accent—on
the banks of the Clyde.

"Yes," say the Laird, with a decision almost
amounting to enthusiasm, "it is a grand
inheritance that we in the south of Scotland
are preserving for you English people; and
you know little of it.  You do not know that
we are preserving the English language for you
as it was spoken centuries ago, and as you
find it in your oldest writings.  Scotticisms!
Why, if ye were to read the prose of Mandeville
or Wyclif, or the poetry of Robert of
Brunne or Langdale, ye would find that our
Scotticisms were the very pith and marrow
of the English language.  Ay; it is so."

The innocent eyes express such profound
interest that the Laird of Denny-mains almost
forgets about the coming steamer, so anxious
is he to crush us with a display of his
erudition.

"It is just remarkable," he says, "that your
dictionaries should put down, as obsolete, words
that are in common use all over the south of
Scotland, where, as I say, the old Northumbrian
English is preserved in its purity; and
that ye should have learned people hunting
up in Chaucer or Gower for the very speech
that they might hear among the bits o' weans
running about the Gallowgate or the
Broomielaw.  '*Wha's acht ye?*' you say to one of
them; and you think you are talking Scotch.
No, no; *acht* is only the old English for
possession: isn't '*Wha's acht ye?*' shorter
and pithier than '*To whom do you belong?*'

"Oh, certainly!" says the meek disciple: the
recall of the boys from Surrey is obviously
decided on.

"And *speir* for *inquire*; and *ferly* for
*wonderful*; and *tyne* for *lose*; and *fey* for
*about to die*; and *reek* for *smoke*; and *menseful*
for *becoming*; and *belyve*, and *fere*, and *biggan*,
and such words.  Ye call them Scotch?  Oh,
no, ma'am; they are English; ye find them
in all the old English writers; and they are
the best of English too; a great deal better
than the Frenchified stuff that your southern
English has become."

Not for worlds would the Laird have
wounded the patriotic sensitiveness of this
gentle friend of his from the South; but
indeed, she had surely nothing to complain
of in his insisting to an Englishwoman on
the value of thorough English?

"I thought," says she, demurely, "that the
Scotch had a good many French words in it."

The Laird pretends not to hear: he is so
deeply interested in the steamer which is now
coming over the smooth waters of the bay.
But, having announced that there are a great
many people on board, he returns to his
discourse.

"Ah'm sure of this, too," says he, "that
in the matter of pronunciation the Lowland
Scotch have preserved the best English—you
can see that *faither*, and *twelmonth*, and *twa*,
and such words are nearer the original
Anglo-Saxon——"

His hearers had been taught to shudder
at the phrase Anglo-Saxon—without exactly
knowing why.  But who could withstand the
authority of the Laird?  Moreover, we see
relief drawing near; the steamer's paddles
are throbbing in the still afternoon.

"If ye turn to *Piers the Plowman*,"
continues the indefatigable Denny-mains, "ye
will find Langdale writing—

   |  And a fewe Cruddes and Crayme.

Why, it is the familiar phrase of our Scotch
children!—Do ye think they would say *curds*?
And then, *fewe*.  I am not sure, but I imagine
we Scotch are only making use of old English
when we make certain forms of food plural.
We say 'a few broth;' we speak of porridge
as 'they.'  Perhaps that is a survival, too, eh?"

"Oh, yes, certainly.  But please mind the
ropes, sir," observes his humble pupil, careful
of her master's physical safety.  For at this
moment the steamer is slowing into the quay;
and the men have the ropes ready to fling
ashore.

"Not," remarks the Laird, prudently backing
away from the edge of the pier, "that I would
say anything of these matters to your young
English friend; certainly not.  No doubt she
prefers the southern English she has been
accustomed to.  But, bless me! just to think
that she should judge of our Scotch tongue
by the way they Edinburgh bodies speak!"

"It is sad, is it not?" remarks his companion—but
all her attention is now fixed on the
crowd of people swarming to the side of the
steamer.

"And, indeed," the Laird explains, to close
the subject, "it is only a hobby of mine—only
a hobby.  Ye may have noticed that I do not
use those words in my own speech, though I
value them.  No, I will not force any Scotch
on the young leddy.  As ah say, ah have
often been taken for an Englishman maself,
both at home and abroad."

And now—and now—the great steamer is
in at the quay; the gangways are run over;
there is a thronging up the paddle-boxes; and
eager faces on shore scan equally eager faces
on board—each pair of eyes looking for that
other pair of eyes to flash a glad recognition.
And where is she—the flower of womankind—the
possessor of all virtue and grace and
courage—the wonder of the world?  The
Laird shares in our excitement.  He, too,
scans the crowd eagerly.  He submits to be
hustled by the porters; he hears nothing of
the roaring of the steam; for is she not coming
ashore at last?  And we know—or guess—that
he is looking out for some splendid creature—some
Boadicea, with stately tread and imperious
mien—some Jephtha's daughter, with proud
death in her eyes—some Rosamond of our
modern days, with a glory of loveliness on her
face and hair.  And we know that the master
who has been lecturing us for half-an-hour on
our disgraceful neglect of pure English will not
shock the sensitive Southern ear by any harsh
accent of the North; but will address her in
beautiful and courtly strains, in tones such as
Edinburgh never knew.  Where is the queen
of womankind, amid all this commonplace,
hurrying, loquacious crowd?

Forthwith the Laird, with a quick amazement
in his eyes, sees a small and insignificant
person—he only catches a glimpse of a black dress
and a white face—suddenly clasped round in
the warm embrace of her friend.  He stares
for a second; and then he exclaims—apparently
to himself:—

"Dear me!  What a shilpit bit thing!"

*Pale—slight—delicate—tiny*: surely such a
master of idiomatic English cannot have
forgotten the existence of these words.  But this
is all he cries to himself, in his surprise and
wonder:—

"Dear me!  What a shilpit bit thing!"





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.. _`MARY AVON`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   MARY AVON.

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The bright, frank laugh of her face!—the
friendly, unhesitating, affectionate look in those
soft black eyes!  He forgot all about
Rosamond and Boadicea when he was presented to
this "shilpit" person.  And when, instead of
the usual ceremony of introduction, she bravely
put her hand in his, and said she had often
heard of him from their common friend, he
did not notice that she was rather plain.  He
did not even stop to consider in what degree
her Southern accent might be improved by
residence amongst the preservers of pure
English.  He was anxious to know if she
was not greatly tired.  He hoped the sea
had been smooth as the steamer came past
Easdale.  And her luggage—should he look
after her luggage for her?

But Miss Avon was an expert traveller, and
quite competent to look after her own luggage.
Even as he spoke, it was being hoisted on to
the waggonette.

"You will let me drive?" says she, eying
critically the two shaggy, farm-looking animals.

"Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind,"
says her hostess, promptly.

But there was no disappointment at all on
her face as we drove away through the golden
evening—by the side of the murmuring shore,
past the overhanging fir-wood, up and across
the high land commanding a view of the wide
western seas.  There was instead a look of
such intense delight that we knew, however
silent the lips might be, that the bird-soul was
singing within.  Everything charmed her—the
cool, sweet air, the scent of the sea-weed,
the glow on the mountains out there in the
west.  And as she chattered her delight to
us—like a bird escaped from its prison and
glad to get into the sunlight and free air
again—the Laird sate mute and listened.  He
watched the frank, bright, expressive face.
He followed and responded to her every mood—with
a sort of fond paternal indulgence that
almost prompted him to take her hand.  When
she smiled, he laughed.  When she talked
seriously, he looked concerned.  He was
entirely forgetting that she was a "shilpit bit
thing;" and he would have admitted that the
Southern way of speaking English—although,
no doubt, fallen away from the traditions of
the Northumbrian dialect—had, after all, a
certain music in it that made it pleasant to
the ear.

Up the hill, then, with a flourish for the
last!—the dust rolling away in clouds behind
us—the view over the Atlantic widening as
we ascend.  And here is Castle Osprey, as
we have dubbed the place, with its wide open
door, and its walls half hidden with
tree-fuchsias, and its great rose-garden.  Had Fair
Rosamond herself come to Castle Osprey that
evening, she could not have been waited on
with greater solicitude than the Laird showed
in assisting this "shilpit bit thing" to
alight—though, indeed there was a slight stumble,
of which no one took any notice at the time.
He busied himself with her luggage quite
unnecessarily.  He suggested a cup of tea,
though it wanted but fifteen minutes to
dinner-time.  He assured her that the glass was
rising—which was not the case.  And when
she was being hurried off to her own room to
prepare for dinner—by one who rules her
household with a rod of iron—he had the
effrontery to tell her to take her own time:
dinner could wait.  The man actually proposed
to keep dinner waiting—in Castle Osprey.

That this was love at first sight, who could
doubt?  And perhaps the nimble brain of one
who was at this moment hurriedly dressing in
her own room—and whom nature has constituted
an indefatigable matchmaker—may have
been considering whether this rich old bachelor
might not marry, after all.  And if he were to
marry, why should not he marry the young
lady in whom he seemed to have taken so
sudden and warm an interest?  As for her:
Mary Avon was now two or three-and-twenty;
she was not likely to prove attractive to
young men; her small fortune was scarcely
worth considering; she was almost alone in
the world.  Older men had married younger
women.  The Laird had no immediate
relative to inherit Denny-mains and his very
substantial fortune.  And would they not see
plenty of each other on board the yacht?

But in her heart of hearts the schemer knew
better.  She knew that the romance-chapter in
the Laird's life—and a bitter chapter it
was—had been finished and closed and put away
many and many a year ago.  She knew how
the great disappointment of his life had failed
to sour him; how he was ready to share among
friends and companions the large and generous
heart that had been for a time laid at the feet
of a jilt; how his keen and active interest, that
might have been confined to his children and
his children's children, was now devoted to a
hundred things—the planting at Denny-mains,
the great heresy case, the patronage of young
artists, even the preservation of pure English,
and what not.  And that fortunate young
gentleman—ostensibly his nephew—whom he
had sent to Harrow and to Cambridge, who
was now living a very easy life in the Middle
Temple, and who would no doubt come in for
Denny-mains?  Well, we knew a little about
that young man, too.  We knew why the
Laird, when he found that both the boy's
father and mother were dead, adopted him,
and educated him, and got him to call him
uncle.  He had taken under his care the son
of the woman who had jilted him five-and-thirty
years ago; the lad had his mother's eyes.

And now we are assembled in the drawing-room—all
except the new guest; and the glow
of the sunset is shining in at the open windows.
The Laird is eagerly proving to us that the
change from the cold east winds of Edinburgh
to the warm westerly winds of the Highlands
must make an immediate change in the young
lady's face—and declaring that she ought to
go on board the yacht at once—-and asserting
that the ladies' cabin on board the *White Dove*
is the most beautiful little cabin he ever saw—when——

When, behold! at the open door—meeting
the glow of the sunshine—appears a
figure—dressed all in black velvet, plain and unadorned
but for a broad belt of gold fringe that comes
round the neck and crosses the bosom.  And
above that again is a lot of white muslin stuff,
on which the small, shapely, smooth-dressed
head seems gently to rest.  The plain black
velvet dress gives a certain importance and
substantiality to the otherwise slight figure;
the broad fringe of gold glints and gleams as
she moves towards us; but who can even think
of these things when he meets the brave
glance of Mary Avon's eyes?  She was
humming, as she came down the stair—

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   |  O think na lang, lassie, though I gang awa;
   |  For I'll come and see ye, in spite o' them a',

—we might have known it was the bird-soul
come among us.

Now the manner in which the Laird of
Denny-mains set about capturing the affections
of this innocent young thing—as he sate
opposite her at dinner—would have merited severe
reproof in one of less mature age; and might,
indeed, have been followed by serious
consequences but for the very decided manner in
which Miss Avon showed that she could take
care of herself.  Whoever heard Mary Avon
laugh would have been assured.  And she did
laugh a good deal; for the Laird, determined
to amuse her, was relating a series of
anecdotes which he called "good ones," and which
seemed to have afforded great enjoyment to
the people of the south of Scotland during
the last century or so.  There was in especial
a Highland steward of a steamer about whom
a vast number of these stories was told; and
if the point was at times rather difficult to
catch, who could fail to be tickled by the
Laird's own and obvious enjoyment?  "There
was another good one, Miss Avon," he would
say; and then the bare memory of the great
facetiousness of the anecdote would break out
in such half-suppressed guffaws as altogether
to stop the current of the narrative.  Miss
Avon laughed—we could not quite tell whether
it was at the Highland steward or the Laird—until
the tears ran down her checks.  Dinner
was scarcely thought of.  It was a disgraceful
exhibition.

"There was another good one about Homesh,"
said the Laird, vainly endeavouring to
suppress his laughter.  "He came up on deck
one enormously hot day, and looked ashore,
and saw some cattle standing knee-deep in a
pool of water.  Says he—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho!—says
he—-says he—'*A wish a wass
a stot!*'—he! he! he!—ho! ho! ho!"

Of course we all laughed heartily, and Mary
Avon more than any of us; but if she had
gone down on her knees and sworn that she
knew what the point of the story was, we
should not have believed her.  But the Laird
was delighted.  He went on with his good
ones.  The mythical Homesh and his idiotic
adventures became portentous.  The very
servants could scarcely carry the dishes
straight.

But in the midst of it all the Laird suddenly
let his knife and fork drop on his plate,
and stared.  Then he quickly exclaimed—

"Bless me! lassie!"

We saw in a second what had occasioned
his alarm.  The girl's face had become ghastly
white; and she was almost falling away from
her chair when her hostess, who happened to
spring to her feet first, caught her, and held
her, and called for water.  What could it
mean?  Mary Avon was not of the sighing
and fainting fraternity.

And presently she came to herself—and
faintly making apologies, would go from the
room.  It was her ankle, she murmured—with
the face still white from pain.  But when she
tried to rise, she fell back again: the agony
was too great.  And so we had to carry her.

About ten minutes thereafter the mistress
of the house came back to the Laird, who
had been sitting by himself, in great concern.

"That girl! that girl!" she exclaims—and
one might almost imagine there are tears in
her eyes.  "Can you fancy such a thing!  She
twists her ankle in getting down from the
waggonette—brings back the old sprain—perhaps
lames herself for life—and, in spite of the
pain, sits here laughing and joking, so that
she may not spoil our first evening together!
Did you ever hear of such a thing!  Sitting
here laughing, with her ankle swelled so that
I had to cut the boot off!"

"Gracious me!" says the Laird; "is it as
bad as that?"

"And if she should become permanently
lame—why—why——"

But was she going to make an appeal direct
to the owner of Denny-mains?  If the younger
men were not likely to marry a lame little
white-faced girl, that was none of his business.
The Laird's marrying days had departed
five-and-thirty years before.

However, we had to finish our dinner,
somehow, in consideration to our elder guest.
And then the surgeon came; and bound up
the ankle hard and fast; and Miss Avon,
with a thousand meek apologies for being so
stupid, declared again and again that her foot
would be all right in the morning, and that we
must get ready to start.  And when her friend
assured her that this preliminary canter of
the yacht might just as well be put off for a
few days—until, for example, that young
doctor from Edinburgh came who had been
invited to go a proper cruise with us—her
distress was so great that we had to promise
to start next day punctually at ten.  So she
sent us down again to amuse the Laird.

But hark! what is this we hear just as Denny-mains
is having his whisky and hot water brought
in?  It is a gay voice humming on the stairs—

.. class:: italics

   |  By the margin of fair Zürich's waters.
   |

"That girl!" cries her hostess angrily, as
she jumps to her feet.

The door opens; and here is Mary
Avon, with calm self-possession, making her
way to a chair.

"I knew you wouldn't believe me," she
says coolly, "if I did not come down.  I tell
you my foot is as well as may be; and
Dot-and-carry-one will get down to the yacht in
the morning as easily as any of you.  And
that last story about Homesh," she says to
the Laird, with a smile in the soft black eyes
that must have made his heart jump.  "Really,
sir, you must tell me the ending of that story;
it was so stupid of me!"

"Shilpit" she may have been; but the Laird,
for one, was beginning to believe that this girl
had the courage and nerve of a dozen men.





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.. _`UNDER WAY`:

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   CHAPTER III.


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   UNDER WAY.

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The first eager glance out on this brilliant
and beautiful morning; and behold! it is all a
wonder of blue seas and blue skies that we
find before us, with Lismore lying golden-green
in the sunlight, and the great mountains
of Mull and Morven shining with the pale
etherial colours of the dawn.  And what are
the rhymes that are ringing through one's
brain—the echo perchance of something heard
far away among the islands—the islands that
await our coming in the west?—

.. class:: italics

   |    O land of red heather!
   |    O land of wild weather,
   |  And the cry of the waves, and the laugh of the breeze!
   |    O love, now, together
   |    Through the wind and wild weather
   |  We spread our while sails to encounter the seas!
   |

Up and out, laggards, now; and hoist this
big red and blue and white thing up to the
head of the tall pole that the lads far below
may know to send the gig ashore for us!  And
there, on the ruffled blue waters of the bay,
behold! the noble *White Dove*, with her great
mainsail, and mizzen, and jib, all set and glowing
in the sun; and the scarlet caps of the men
are like points of fire in this fair blue picture;
and the red ensign is fluttering in the light
north-westerly breeze.  Breakfast is hurried
over; and a small person who has a passion
for flowers is dashing hither and thither in
the garden until she has amassed an armful
of our old familiar friends—abundant roses,
fuchsias, heart's-ease, various coloured
columbine, and masses of southernwood to scent
our floating saloon; the waggonette is at the
door, to take our invalid down to the landing-slip;
and the Laird has discarded his dignified
costume, and appears in a shooting-coat and
a vast gray wide-awake.  As for Mary Avon,
she is laughing, chatting, singing, here, there,
and everywhere—giving us to understand that
a sprained ankle is rather a pleasure than
otherwise, and a great assistance in walking;
until the Laird pounces upon her—as one might
pounce on a butterfly—and imprisons her in
the waggonette, with many a serious warning
about her imprudence.  There let her sing to
herself as she likes—amid the wild confusion
of things forgotten till the last moment and
thrust upon us just as we start.

And here is the stalwart and brown-bearded
Captain John—John of Skye we call
him—himself come ashore in the gig, in all his
splendour of blue and brass buttons; and he
takes off his peaked cap to the mistress of our
household—whom some of her friends call
Queen Titania, because of her midge-like
size—and he says to her with a smile—

"And will Mrs. —— herself be going with
us this time?"

That is Captain John's chief concern: for
he has a great regard for this domineering small
woman; and shows his respect for her, and his
own high notions of courtesy, by invariably
addressing her in the third person.

"Oh, yes, John!" says she—and she can
look pleasant enough when she likes—"and
this is a young friend of mine, Miss Avon, whom
you have to take great care of on board."

And Captain John takes off his cap again;
and is understood to tell the young lady that
he will do his best, if she will excuse his not
knowing much English.  Then, with great
care, and with some difficulty, Miss Avon is
assisted down from the waggonette, and
conducted along the rough little landing-slip, and
helped into the stern of the shapely and shining
gig.  Away with her, boys!  The splash of
the oars is heard in the still bay; the shore
recedes; the white sails seem to rise higher
into the blue sky as we near the yacht; here
is the black hull with its line of gold—the
gangway open—the ropes ready—the white
decks brilliant in the sun.  We are on board
at last.

"And where will Mr. —— himself be for
going?" asks John of Skye, as the men are
hauling the gig up to the davits.

Mr. —— briefly but seriously explains to
the captain that, from some slight experience
of the winds on this coast, he has found it of
about as much use to order the tides to be
changed as to settle upon any definite route.
But he suggests the circumnavigation of the
adjacent island of Mull as a sort of preliminary
canter for a few days, until a certain notable
guest shall arrive; and he would prefer going
by the south, if the honourable winds will
permit.  Further, John of Skye is not to be
afraid of a bit of sea, on account of either
of those ladies; both are excellent sailors.
With these somewhat vague instructions,
Captain John is left to get the yacht under
way; and we go below to look after the
stowage of our things in the various staterooms.

And what is this violent altercation going
on, in the saloon?

"I will not have a word said against my
captain," says Mary Avon.  "I am in love
with him already.  His English is perfectly
correct."

This impertinent minx talking about correct
English in the presence of the Laird of
Denny-mains!

"Mrs. —— herself is perfectly correct;
it is only politeness; it is like saying 'Your
Grace' to a Duke."

But who was denying it?  Surely not the
imperious little woman who was arranging her
flowers on the saloon table; nor yet Denny-mains,
who was examining a box of variegated
and recondite fishing-tackle?

"It is all very well for fine ladies to laugh
at the blunders of servant maids," continues
this audacious girl.  "'Miss Brown presents
her compliments to Miss Smith; and would
you be so kind,' and so on.  But don't they
often make the same blunder themselves?"

Well, this was a discovery!

"Doesn't Mrs. So-and-So request the
honour of the company of Mr. So-and-So or
Miss So-and-So for some purpose or other;
and then you find at one corner of the card
'*R.S.V.P.*?'  'Answer if YOU please'!"

A painful silence prevailed.  We began to
reflect.  Whom did she mean to charge with
this deadly crime?

But her triumph makes her considerate.
She will not harry us with scorn.

"It is becoming far less common now,
however," she remarks.  "'An answer is
requested,' is much more sensible."

"It is English," says the Laird, with
decision.  "Surely it must be more sensible
for an English person to write English.  Ah
never use a French word maself."

But what is the English that we hear now—called
out on deck by the voice of John of Skye?

"Eachan, slack the lee topping-lift!  Ay,
and the tackle, too.  That'll do, boys.  Down
with your main-tack, now!"

"Why," exclaims our sovereign mistress,
who knows something of nautical matters,
"we must have started!"

Then there is a tumbling up the companion-way;
and lo! the land is slowly leaving us; and
there is a lapping of the blue water along
the side of the boat; and the white sails of
the *White Dove* are filled with this gentle
breeze.  Deck-stools are arranged; books and
field-glasses and what not scattered about;
Mary Avon is helped on deck, and ensconced
in a snug little camp-chair.  The days of our
summer idleness have begun.

And as yet these are but familiar scenes
that steal slowly by—the long green island
of Lismore—*Lios-mor*, the Great Garden; the
dark ruins of Duart, sombre as if the shadow
of nameless tragedies rested on the crumbling
walls; Loch Don, with its sea-bird-haunted
shallows, and Loch Speliv leading up to the
awful solitudes of Glen More; then, stretching
far into the wreathing clouds, the long
rampart of precipices, rugged and barren and
lonely, that form the eastern wall of Mull.

There is no monotony on this beautiful
summer morning; the scene changes every
moment, as the light breeze bears us away
to the south.  For there is the Sheep Island;
and Garveloch—which is the rough island;
and Eilean-na naomha—which is the island
of the Saints.  But what are these to the
small transparent cloud resting on the
horizon?—smaller than any man's hand.  The day is
still; and the seas are smooth: cannot we
hear the mermaiden singing on the far shores
of Colonsay?

"Colonsay!" exclaims the Laird, seizing a
field-glass.  "Dear me!  Is that Colonsay?
And they telled me that Tom Galbraith was
going there this very year."

The piece of news fails to startle us
altogether; though we have heard the Laird
speak of Mr. Galbraith before.

"Ay," says he, "the world will know
something o' Colonsay when Tom Galbraith gets
there."

"Whom did you say?" Miss Avon asks.

"Why, Galbraith!" says he.  "Tom Galbraith!"

The Laird stares in amazement.  Is it
possible she has not heard of Tom Galbraith?
And she herself an artist; and coming direct
from Edinburgh, where she has been living
for two whole months!

"Gracious me!" says the Laird.  "Ye do
not say ye have never heard of Galbraith—he's
an Academeecian!—a Scottish Academeecian!"

"Oh, yes; no doubt," she says, rather
bewildered.

"There is no one living has had such an
influence on our Scotch school of painters
as Galbraith—a man of great abeelity—a man
of great and uncommon abeelity—he is one
of the most famous landscape painters of our
day——"

"I scarcely met any one in Edinburgh,"
she pleads.

"But in London—in London!" exclaims
the astonished Laird.  "Do ye mean to say
you never heard o' Tom Galbraith?"

"I—I think not," she confesses.  "I—I
don't remember his name in the Academy
catalogue——"

"The Royal Academy!" cries the Laird,
with scorn.  "No, no!  Ye need not expect
that.  The English Academy is afraid of the
Scotchmen: their pictures are too strong:
you do not put good honest whisky beside
small beer.  I say the English Academy is
afraid of the Scotch school——"

But flesh and blood can stand this no
longer: we shall not have Mary Avon
trampled upon.

"Look here, Denny-mains: we always
thought there was a Scotchman or two in
the Royal Academy itself—and quite capable
of holding their own there, too.  Why, the
President of the Academy is a Scotchman!
And as for the Academy exhibition, the very
walls are smothered with Scotch hills, Scotch
spates, Scotch peasants, to say nothing of
the thousand herring-smacks of Tarbert."

"I tell ye they are afraid of Tom Galbraith;
they will not exhibit one of his
pictures," says the Laird, stubbornly; and
here the discussion is closed; for Master Fred
tinkles his bell below, and we have to go
down for luncheon.

It was most unfair of the wind to take
advantage of our absence, and to sneak off,
leaving us in a dead calm.  It was all very
well, when we came on deck again, to watch
the terns darting about in their swallow-like
fashion, and swooping down to seize a fish;
and the strings of sea-pyots whirring by, with
their scarlet beaks and legs; and the sudden
shimmer and hissing of a part of the blue
plain, where a shoal of mackerel had come
to the surface; but where were we, now
in the open Atlantic, to pass the night?
We relinquished the doubling of the Ross
of Mull; we should have been content—more
than content, for the sake of auld
lang syne—to have put into Carsaig; we
were beginning even to have ignominious
thoughts of Loch Buy.  And yet we let
the golden evening draw on with comparative
resignation; and we watched the colour
gathering in the west, and the Atlantic
taking darker hues, and a ruddy tinge
beginning to tell on the seamed ridges of
Garveloch and the isle of Saints.  When
the wind sprung up again—it had backed to
due west, and we had to beat against it with
a series of long tacks, that took us down
within sight of Islay and back to Mull
apparently all for nothing—we were deeply
engaged in prophesying all manner of things
to be achieved by one Angus Sutherland, an
old friend of ours, though yet a young man
enough.

"Just fancy, sir!" says our hostess to the
Laird—the Laird, by the way, does not seem
so enthusiastic as the rest of us, when he hears
that this hero of modern days is about to join
our party.  "What he has done beats all that I
ever heard about Scotch University students;
and you know what some of them have
accomplished in the face of difficulties.  His
father is a minister in some small place in
Banffshire; perhaps he has 200*l.* a year at
the outside.  This son of his has not cost him
a farthing for either his maintenance or his
education, since he was fourteen; he took
bursaries, scholarships, I don't know what, when
he was a mere lad; supported himself and
travelled all over Europe—but I think it was
at Leipsic and at Vienna he studied longest;
and the papers he has written—the lectures—and
the correspondence with all the great
scientific people—when they made him a
Fellow, all he said was, 'I wish my mother
was alive.'"

This was rather an incoherent and jumbled
account of a young man's career.

"A Fellow of what?" says the Laird.

"A Fellow of the Royal Society!  They
made him a Fellow of the Royal Society last
year!  And he is only seven-and-twenty!  I
do believe he was not over one-and-twenty
when he took his degree at Edinburgh.  And
then—and then—there is really nothing that he
doesn't know: is there, Mary?"

This sudden appeal causes Mary Avon to
flush slightly; but she says demurely, looking
down—

"Of course I don't know anything that he
doesn't know."

"Hm!" says the Laird, who does not seem
over pleased.  "I have observed that young
men who are too brilliant at the first, seldom
come to much afterwards.  Has he gained
anything substantial?  Has he a good practice?
Does he keep his carriage yet?"

"No, no!" says our hostess, with a fine
contempt for such things.  "He has a higher
ambition than that.  His practice is almost
nothing.  He prefers to sacrifice that in the
meantime.  But his reputation—among the
scientific—why—why, it is European!"

"Hm!" says the Laird.  "I have sometimes
seen that persons who gave themselves up
to erudeetion, lost the character of human
beings altogether.  They become scientific
machines.  The world is just made up of books
for them—and lectures—they would not give a
halfpenny to a beggar for fear of poleetical
economy——"

"Oh, how can you say such a thing of
Angus Sutherland!" says she—though he has
said no such thing of Angus Sutherland.
"Why, here is this girl who goes to Edinburgh—all
by herself—to nurse an old woman in her
last illness; and as Angus Sutherland is in
Edinburgh on some business—connected with
the University, I believe—I ask him to call
on her and see if he can give her any advice.
What does he do?  He stops in Edinburgh
two months—editing that scientific magazine
there instead of in London—and all because
he has taken an interest in the old woman
and thinks that Mary should not have the
whole responsibility on her shoulders.  Is that
like a scientific machine?"

"No," says the Laird, with a certain calm
grandeur; "you do not often find young men
doing that for the sake of an old woman."  But
of course we don't know what he means.

"And I am so glad he is coming to us!"
she says, with real delight in her face.  "We
shall take him away from his microscopes, and
his societies, and all that.  Oh, and he is such
a delightful companion—so simple, and natural,
and straightforward!  Don't you think so, Mary?"

Mary Avon is understood to assent: she
does not say much—she is so deeply interested
in a couple of porpoises that appear from time
to time on the smooth plain on the sea.

"I am sure a long holiday would do him a
world of good," says this eager hostess; "but
that is too much to expect.  He is always too
busy.  I think he has got to go over to Italy
soon, about some exhibition of surgical
instruments, or something of that sort."

We had plenty of further talk about
Dr. Sutherland, and of the wonderful future that
lay before him, that evening before we finally
put into Loch Buy.  And there we dined; and
after dinner we found the wan, clear twilight
filling the northern heavens, over the black
range of mountains, and throwing a silver glare
on the smooth sea around us.  We could have
read on deck at eleven at night—-had that
been necessary; but Mary Avon was humming
snatches of songs to us, and the Laird was
discoursing of the wonderful influence exerted
on Scotch landscape-art by Tom Galbraith.
Then in the south the yellow moon rose;
and a golden lane of light lay on the sea, from
the horizon across to the side of the yacht;
and there was a strange glory on the decks
and on the tall, smooth masts.  The peace
of that night!—the soft air, the silence, the
dreamy lapping of the water!

"And whatever lies before Angus Sutherland,"
says one of us—"whether a baronetcy,
or a big fortune, or marriage with an Italian
princess—he won't find anything better than
sailing in the *White Dove* among the western
islands."





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.. _`A MESSAGE`:

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   CHAPTER IV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A MESSAGE.

.. vspace:: 2

What fierce commotion is this that awakes
us in the morning—what pandemonium broken
loose of wild storm-sounds—-with the stately
*White Dove*, ordinarily the most sedate and
gentle of her sex, apparently gone mad, and
flinging herself about as if bent on
somersaults?  When one clambers up the
companion-way, clinging hard, and puts one's
head out into the gale, behold! there is not
a trace of land visible anywhere—nothing but
whirling clouds of mist and rain; and
mountain-masses of waves that toss the *White Dove*
about as if she were a plaything; and decks
all running wet with the driven spray.  John
of Skye, clad from head to heel in black
oilskins—and at one moment up in the clouds,
the next moment descending into the great
trough of the sea—-hangs on to the rope that
is twisted round the tiller; and laughs a
good-morning; and shakes the salt water from his
shaggy eyebrows and beard.

"Hallo!  John—where on earth have we got to?"

"Ay, ay, sir."

"I say WHERE ARE WE?" is shouted, for
the roar of the rushing Atlantic in deafening.

"'Deed I not think we are far from Loch
Buy," says John of Skye, grimly.  "The wind
is dead ahead of us—ay, shist dead ahead!"

"What made you come out against a headwind then?"

"When we cam' out," says John—picking
his English, "the wind will be from the norse—ay,
a fine light breeze from the norse.  And
will Mr. —— himself be for going on now?
it is a ferry bad sea for the leddies—a ferry
coorse sea."

But it appears that this conversation—bawled
aloud—has been overheard.  There
are voices from below.  The skylight of the
ladies' cabin is partly open.

"Don't mind us," calls Mary Avon.  "Go
on by all means!"

The other voice calls—

"Why can't you keep this fool of a boat
straight?  Ask him when we shall be into
the Sound of Iona."

One might as well ask him when we shall
be into the Sound of Jericho or Jerusalem.
With half a gale of wind right in our teeth,
and with the heavy Atlantic swell running,
we might labour here all day—and all the night
too—without getting round the Ross of Mull.
There is nothing for it but to turn and run,
that we may have our breakfast in peace.  Let
her away, then, you brave John of Skye!—slack
out the main-sheet, and give her plenty
of it, too: then at the same moment Sandy
from Islay perceives that a haul at the weather
topping-lift will clear the boom from the davits;
and now—and now, good Master Fred—our
much-esteemed and shifty Friedrich d'or—if
you will but lay the cloth on the table, we
will help you to steady the dancing
phantasmagoria of plates and forks!

"Dear me!" says the Laird, when we are
assembled together, "it has been an awful
night!"

"Oh, I hope you have not been ill!" says
his hostess, with a quick concern in the soft,
clear eyes.

He does not look as if he had suffered
much.  He is contentedly chipping an egg;
and withal keeping an eye on the things near
him, for the *White Dove*, still plunging a good
deal, threatens at times to make of everything
on the table a movable feast.

"Oh, no, ma'am, not ill," he says.  "But
at my time of life, ye see, one is not as light
in weight as one used to be; and the way I
was flung about in that cabin last night was
just extraordinary.  When I was trying to
put on my boots this morning, I am sure I
resembled nothing so much as a pea in a
bladder—indeed it was so—I was knocked
about like a pea in a bladder."

Of course we expressed great sympathy,
and assured him that the *White Dove*—famed
all along this coast for her sober and steady-going
behaviour—would never act so any more.

"However," said he thoughtfully, "the
wakefulness of the night is often of use to
people.  Yes, I have come to a decision."

We were somewhat alarmed: was he going
to leave us merely because of this bit of
tossing?

"I dare say ye know, ma'am," says he
slowly, "that I am one of the Commissioners
of the Burgh of Strathgovan.  It is a poseetion
of grave responsibility.  This very question
now—about our getting a steam fire-engine—has
been weighing on my mind for many a
day.  Well, I have decided I will no longer
oppose it.  They may have the steam
fire-engine as far as I am concerned."

We felt greatly relieved.

"Yes," continued the Laird, solemnly, "I
think I am doing my duty in this matter as a
public man should—laying aside his personal
prejudice.  But the cost of it!  Do ye know
that we shall want bigger nozzles to all the
fire-plugs?"

Matters were looking grave again.

"However," said the Laird cheerfully—for
he would not depress us too much, "it may
all turn out for the best; and I will telegraph
my decision to Strathgovan as soon as ever
the storm allows us to reach a port."

The storm, indeed!  When we scramble
up on deck again, we find that it is only a
brisk sailing breeze we have; and the *White
Dove* is bowling merrily along, flinging high
the white spray from her bows.  And then
we begin to see that, despite those driving
mists around us, there is really a fine clear
summer day shining far above this twopenny-halfpenny
tempest.  The whirling mists break
here and there; and we catch glimpses of a
placid blue sky, flecked with lines of motionless
cirrhus cloud.  The breaks increase; floods
of sunshine fall on the gleaming decks; clearer
and clearer become the vast precipices of
southern Mull; and then, when we get well
to the lee of Eilean-straid-ean, behold! the
blue seas around us once more; and the blue
skies overhead; and the red ensign fluttering
in the summer breeze.  No wonder that Mary
Avon sings her delight—as a linnet sings after
the rain; and though the song is not meant
for us at all, but is really hummed to herself
as she clings on to the shrouds and watches
the flashing and dipping of the white-winged
gulls, we know that it is all about a jolly
young waterman.  The audacious creature:
John of Skye has a wife and four children.

Too quickly indeed does the fair summer
day go by—as we pass the old familiar Duart
and begin to beat up the Sound of Mull
against a fine light sailing breeze.  By the
time we have reached Ardtornish, the Laird
has acquired some vague notion as to how
the gaff topsail is set.  Opposite the
dark-green woods of Funeray, he tells us of the
extraordinary faculty possessed by Tom
Galbraith of representing the texture of foliage.
At Salen we have Master Fred's bell
summoning us down to lunch; and thereafter, on
deck, coffee, draughts, crochet, and a
profoundly interesting description of some of the
knotty points in the great Semple heresy case.
And here again, as we bear away over almost
to the mouth of Loch Sunart, is the open
Atlantic—of a breezy grey under the
lemon-colour and silver of the calm evening sky.
What is the use of going on against this
contrary wind, and missing, in the darkness
of the night, all the wonders of the western
islands that the Laird is anxious to see?  We
resolve to run into Tobermory; and by and
by we find ourselves under the shadow of the
wooded rocks, with the little white town
shining along the semicircle of the bay.  And
very cleverly indeed does John of Skye cut
in among the various craft—showing off a
little bit, perhaps—until the *White Dove* is
brought up to the wind, and the great
anchor-cable goes out with a roar.

Now it was by the merest accident that we
got at Tobermory a telegram that had been
forwarded that very day to meet us on our
return voyage.  There was no need for any
one to go ashore, for we were scarcely in port
before a most praiseworthy gentleman was so
kind as to send us on board a consignment
of fresh flowers, vegetables, milk, eggs, and
so forth—the very things that become of
inestimable value to yachting people.  However,
we had two women on board; and of course—despite
a certain bandaged ankle—they must
needs go shopping.  And Mary Avon, when
we got ashore, would buy some tobacco for
her favourite Captain John; and went into
the post-office for that purpose, and was having
the black stuff measured out by the yard when
some mention was made of the *White Dove*.
Then a question was asked; there was a
telegram; it was handed to Miss Avon, who
opened it and read it.

"Oh!" said she, looking rather concerned;
and then she regarded her friend with some
little hesitation.

"It is my uncle," she says; "he wants to
see me on very urgent business.  He is—coming—to
see me—the day after to-morrow."

Blank consternation followed this announcement.
This person, even though he was
Mary Avon's sole surviving relative, was quite
intolerable to us.  East Wind we had called
him in secret, on the few occasions on which
he had darkened our doors.  And just as we
were making up our happy family party—with
the Laird, and Mary, and Angus
Sutherland—to sail away to the far Hebrides,
here was this insufferable creature—with his
raucous voice, his washed-out eyes, his pink
face, his uneasy manner, and general groom
or butler-like appearance—thrusting himself on us!

"Well, you know, Mary," says her hostess—entirely
concealing her dismay in her
anxious politeness—"we shall almost
certainly be home by the day after to-morrow, if
we get any wind at all.  So you had better
telegraph to your uncle to come on to Castle
Osprey, and to wait for you if you are not
there; we cannot be much longer than that.
And Angus Sutherland will be there; he will
keep him company until we arrive."

So that was done, and we went on board
again—one of us meanwhile vowing to
himself that ere ever Mr. Frederick Smethurst
set sail with us on board the *White Dove*, a
rifle-bullet through her hull would send that
gallant vessel to the lobsters.

Now what do you think our Mary Avon
set to work to do—all during this beautiful
summer evening, as we sat on deck and eyed
curiously the other craft in the bay, or watched
the firs grow dark against the silver-yellow
twilight?  We could not at first make out
what she was driving at.  Her occupation in
the world, so far as she had any—beyond
being the pleasantest of companions and the
faithfullest of friends—was the painting of
landscapes in oil, not the construction of
Frankenstein monsters.  But here she begins
by declaring to us that there is one type of
character that has never been described by
any satirist, or dramatist, or fictionist—a
common type, too, though only becoming
pronounced in rare instances.  It is the moral
Tartuffe, she declares—the person who is
through and through a hypocrite, not to cloak
evil doings, but only that his eager love of
approbation may be gratified.  Look now how
this creature of diseased vanity, of plausible
manners, of pretentious humbug, rises out of
the smoke like the figure summoned by a
wizard's wand!  As she gives us little touches
here and there of the ways of this professor
of bonhomie—this bundle of affectations—we
begin to prefer the most diabolical villainy
that any thousand of the really wicked
Tartuffes could have committed.  He grows and
grows.  His scraps of learning, as long as
those more ignorant than himself are his
audience; his mock humility anxious for
praise; his parade of generous and sententious
sentiment; his pretence—pretence—pretence—all
arising from no evil machinations
whatever, but from a morbid and restless
craving for esteem.  Hence, horrible shadow!
Let us put out the candles and get to bed.

But next morning, as we find ourselves out
on the blue Atlantic again, with Ru-na-Gaul
lighthouse left far behind, and the pale line
of Coll at the horizon, we begin to see why
the skill and patient assiduity of this amateur
psychologist should have raised that ghost for
us the night before.  Her uncle is coming.
He is not one of the plausible kind.  And if
it should be necessary to invite him on board,
might we not the more readily tolerate his
cynical bluntness and rudeness, after we have
been taught to abhor as the hatefullest of
mortals the well-meaning hypocrite whose
vanity makes his life a bundle of small lies?
Very clever indeed, Miss Avon—very clever.
But don't you raise any more ghosts; they
are unpleasant company—even as an antidote.
And now, John of Skye, if it must be that
we are to encounter this pestilent creature at
the end of our voyage, clap on all sail now,
and take us right royally down through these
far islands of the west.  Ah! do we not know
them of old?  Soon as we get round the
Cailleach Point we descry the nearest of them
amid the loneliness of the wide Atlantic sea.
For there is Carnaburg, with her spur of rock;
and Fladda, long and rugged, and bare; and
Lunga, with her peak; and the Dutchman's
Cap—a pale blue in the south.  How bravely
the *White Dove* swings on her way—springing
like a bird over the western swell!  And as
we get past Ru-Treshnish, behold! another
group of islands—Gometra and the green-shored
Ulva, that guard the entrance to Loch
Tua; and Colonsay, the haunt of the sea
birds; and the rock of Erisgeir—all shining
in the sun.  And then we hear a strange
sound—different from the light rush of the
waves—a low, and sullen, and distant booming,
such as one faintly hears in a sea-shell.
As the *White Dove* ploughs on her way, we
come nearer and nearer to this wonder of the
deep—the ribbed and fantastic shores of Staffa;
and we see how the great Atlantic rollers,
making for the cliffs of Gribun and Burg,
are caught by those outer rocks and torn into
masses of white foam, and sent roaring and
thundering into the blackness of the caves.
We pass close by; the air trembles with the
shock of that mighty surge; there is a mist
of spray rising into the summer air.  And
then we sail away again; and the day wears
on as the white-winged *White Dove* bounds
over the heavy seas; and Mary Avon—as we
draw near the Ross of Mull, all glowing in the
golden evening—is singing a song of Ulva.

But there is no time for romance, as the
*White Dove* (drawing eight feet of water)
makes in for the shallow harbour outside
Bunessan.

"Down foresail!" calls out our John of
Skye; and by and by her head comes up to
the wind, the great mainsail flapping in the
breeze.  And again, "Down chub, boys!" and
there is another rattle and roar amid the
silence of this solitary little bay.  The herons
croak their fright and fly away on heavy
wing; the curlews whistle shrilly; the
sea-pyots whirr along the lonely shores.  And
then our good Friedrich d'or sounds his
silver-toned bell.

The stillness of this summer evening on
deck; the glory deepening over the wide
Atlantic; the delightful laughter of the Laird
over those "good ones" about Homesh; the
sympathetic glance of Mary Avon's soft black
eyes: did we not value them all the more
that we knew we had something far different
to look forward to?  Even as we idled away
the beautiful and lambent night, we had a
vague consciousness that our enemy was
stealthily drawing near.  In a day or two at
the most we should find the grim spectre of
the East Wind in the rose-garden of Castle Osprey.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A BRAVE CAREER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A BRAVE CAREER.

.. vspace:: 2

Bur when we went on deck the next morning
we forgot all about the detestable person
who was about to break in upon our peace
(there was small chance that our faithful Angus
Sutherland might encounter the snake in this
summer paradise, and trample on him, and
pitch him out; for this easy way of getting
rid of disagreeable folk is not permitted in
the Highlands nowadays) as we looked on
the beautiful bay shining all around us.

"Dear me!" said Denny-mains, "if Tom
Galbraith could only see that now!  It is a
great peety he has never been to this place.
I'm thinking I must write to him."

The Laird did not remember that we had
an artist on board—one who, if she was not
so great an artist as Mr. Galbraith, had at
least exhibited one or two small landscapes
in oil at the Royal Academy.  But then the
Academicians, though they might dread the
contrast between their own work and that of
Tom Galbraith, could have no fear of Mary Avon.

And even Mr. Galbraith himself might have
been puzzled to find among his pigments any
equivalent for the rare and clear colours of
this morning scene as now we sailed away
from Bunessan with a light topsail breeze.
How blue the day was—blue skies, blue seas,
a faint transparent blue along the cliffs of
Burg and Gribun, a darker blue where the
far Ru-Treshanish ran out into the sea, a
shadow of blue to mark where the caves of
Staffa retreated from the surface of the
sun-brown rocks!  And here, nearer at hand, the
warmer colours of the shore—the soft, velvety
olive-greens of the moss and breckan; the
splashes of lilac where the rocks were bare
of herbage; the tender sunny reds where the
granite promontories ran out to the sea; the
beautiful cream-whites of the sandy bays!

Here, too, are the islands again as we get
out into the open—Gometra, with its one white
house at the point; and Inch Kenneth, where
the seals show their shining black heads among
the shallows; and Erisgeir and Colonsay, where
the skarts alight to dry their wings on the
rocks; and Staffa, and Lunga, and the
Dutchman, lying peaceful enough now on the calm
blue seas.  We have time to look at them,
for the wind is slight, and the broad-beamed
*White Dove* is not a quick sailer in a light
breeze.  The best part of the forenoon is
over before we find ourselves opposite to the
gleaming white sands of the northern bays
of Iona.

"But surely both of us together will be able
to make him stay longer than ten days," says
the elder of the two women to the younger—and
you may be sure she was not speaking
of East Wind.

Mary Avon looks up with a start; then
looks down again—perhaps with the least
touch of colour in her face—as she says
hurriedly—

"Oh, I think you will.  He is your friend.
As for me—you see—I—I scarcely know him."

"Oh, Mary!" says the other reproachfully.
"You have been meeting him constantly all
these two months; you must know him better
than any of us.  I am sure I wish he was on
board now—he could tell us all about the
geology of the islands, and what not.  It will
be delightful to have somebody on board who
knows something."

Such is the gratitude of women!—and the
Laird had just been describing to her some
further points of the famous heresy case.

"And then he knows Gaelic!" says the
elder woman.  "He will tell us what all the
names of the islands mean."

"Oh, yes," says the younger one, "he
understands Gaelic very well, though he cannot
speak much of it."

"And I think he is very fond of boats,"
remarks our hostess.

"Oh, exceedingly—exceedingly!" says the
other, who, if she does not know Angus
Sutherland, seems to have picked up some
information about him somehow.  "You
cannot imagine how he has been looking forward
to sailing with you; he has scarcely had any
holiday for years."

"Then he must stay longer than ten days,"
says the elder woman; adding with a smile,
"you know, Mary, it is not the number of
his patients that will hurry him back to London."

"Oh, but I assure you," says Miss Avon
seriously, "that he is not at all anxious to
have many patients—as yet!  Oh, no!—I
never knew any one who was so indifferent
about money.  I know he would live on bread
and water—if that were necessary—to go on
with his researches.  He told me himself that
all the time he was at Leipsic his expenses
were never more than 1*l.* a week."

She seemed to know a good deal about the
circumstances of this young F.R.S.

"Look at what he has done with those
anæsthetics," continues Miss Avon.  "Isn't it
better to find out something that does good
to the whole world than give yourself up to
making money by wheedling a lot of old women?"

This estimate of the physician's art was not
flattering.

"But," she says warmly, "if the Government
had any sense, that is just the sort of man
they would put in a position to go on with
his invaluable work.  And Oxford and Cambridge,
with all their wealth, they scarcely even
recognise the noblest profession that a man
can devote himself to—when even the poor
Scotch Universities and the Universities all
over Europe have always had their medical
and scientific chairs.  I think it is perfectly
disgraceful!"

Since when had she become so strenuous
an advocate of the endowment of research?

"Why, look at Dr. Sutherland—when he is
burning to get on with his own proper
work—when his name is beginning to be known all
over Europe—he has to fritter away his time
in editing a scientific magazine and in those
hospital lectures.  And that, I suppose, is
barely enough to live on.  But I know," she
says, with decision, "that in spite of everything—I
know that before he is five-and-thirty, he
will be President of the British Association."

Here, indeed, is a brave career for the Scotch
student: cannot one complete the sketch as it
roughly exists in the minds of those two women?

At twenty-one, B.M. of Edinburgh.

At twenty-six, F.R.S.

At thirty, Professor of Biology at Oxford:
the chair founded through the intercession of
the women of Great Britain.

At thirty-five, President of the British Association.

At forty, a baronetcy, for further discoveries
in the region of anæsthetics.

At forty-five, consulting physician to half the
gouty old gentlemen of England, and amassing
an immense fortune.

At fifty——

Well, at fifty, is it not time that "the poor
Scotch student," now become great and famous
and wealthy, should look around for some
beautiful princess to share his high estate with
him?  He has not had time before to think
of such matters.  But what is this now?  Is
it that microscopes and test-tubes have dimmed
his eyes?  Is it that honours and responsibilities
have silvered his hair?  Or, is the
drinking deep of the Pactolus stream a deadly
poison?  There is no beautiful princess awaiting
him anywhere.  He is alone among his
honours.  There was once a beautiful
princess—beautiful-souled and tender-eyed, if not
otherwise too lovely—awaiting him among the
Western Seas; but that time is over and gone
many a year ago.  The opportunity has passed.
Ambition called him away, and he left her;
and the last he saw of her was when he bade
good-bye to the *White Dove*.

What have we to do with these idle dreams?
We are getting within sight of Iona village
now; and the sun is shining on the green
shores, and on the ruins of the old cathedral,
and on that white house just above the
cornfield.  And as there is no good anchorage
about the island, we have to make in for a
little creek on the Mull side of the Sound,
called Polterriv, or the Bull-hole; and this
creek is narrow, tortuous, and shallow; and
a yacht drawing eight feet of water has to be
guided with some circumspection—especially
if you go up to the inner harbour above the
rock called the Little Bull.  And so we make
inquiries of John of Skye, who has not been
with us here before.  It is even hinted, that
if he is not quite sure of the channel, we might
send the gig over to Iona for John Macdonald,
who is an excellent pilot.

"John Macdonald!" exclaims John of Skye,
whose professional pride has been wounded.
"Will John Macdonald be doing anything
more than I wass do myself in the
Bull-hole—ay, last year—last year I will tek my own
smack out of the Bull-hole at the norse end,
and ferry near low water, too; and her
deep-loaded?  Oh, yes, I will be knowing the
Bull-hole this many a year."

And John of Skye is as good as his word.
Favoured by a flood-tide, we steal gently into
the unfrequented creek, behind the great rocks
of red granite; and so extraordinarily clear is
the water that, standing upright on the deck,
we can see the white sand of the bottom with
shoals of young saithe darting this way and
that.  And then just as we get opposite an
opening in the rocks, through which we can
descry the northern shores of Iona, and above
those the blue peak of the Dutchman, away
goes the anchor with a short, quick rush; her
head swings round to meet the tide; the *White
Dove* is safe from all the winds that blow.  Now
lower away the gig, boys, and bear us over
the blue waters of the Sound!

"I am really afraid to begin," Mary Avon
says, as we remonstrate with her for not
having touched a colour-tube since she started.
"Besides, you know, I scarcely look on it that
we have really set out yet.  This is only a
sort of shaking ourselves into our places; I
am only getting accustomed to the ways of
our cabin now.  I shall scarcely consider that
we have started on our real voyaging until——"

Oh, yes, we know very well.  Until we have
got Angus Sutherland on board.  But what
she really said was, after slight hesitation:

"——until we set out for the Northern Hebrides."

"Ay, it's a good thing to feel nervous about
beginning," says the Laird, as the long sweep
of the four oars brings us nearer and nearer to
the Iona shores.  "I have often heard Tom
Galbraith say that to the younger men.  He
says if a young man is over confident, he'll come
to nothing.  But there was a good one I once
heard Galbraith tell about a young man that
was pentin at Tarbert—that's Tarbert on Loch
Fyne, Miss Avon.  Ay, well, he was pentin
away, and he was putting in the young lass
of the house as a fisher-lass; and he asked
her if she could not get a creel to strap on
her back, as a background for her head, ye
know.  Well, says she——"

Here the fierce humour of the story began
to bubble up in the Laird's blue-grey eyes.
We were all half laughing already.  It was
impossible to resist the glow of delight on the
Laird's face.

"Says she—just as pat as ninepence—says
she, 'it's your ain head that wants a creel!'"

The explosion was inevitable.  The roar of
laughter at this good one was so infectious
that a subdued smile played over the rugged
features of John of Skye.  "*It's your ain head
that wants a creel:*" the Laird laughed, and
laughed again, until the last desperately
suppressed sounds were something like
*kee! kee! kee!*  Even Mary Avon pretended to understand.

"There was a real good one," says he,
obviously overjoyed to have so appreciative
an audience, "that I mind of reading in the
Dean's *Reminiscences*.  It was about an old
leddy in Edinburgh who met in a shop a
young officer she had seen before.  He was
a tall young man, and she eyed him from head
to heel, and says she—ha! ha!—says she,
'*Od, ye're a lang lad: God gie ye grace.*'  Dry—very
dry—wasn't it?  There was real
humour in that—a pawky humour that people
in the South cannot understand at all.  '*Od*',
says she, '*ye're a lang lad: God grant ye
grace.*'  There was a great dale of character
in that."

We were sure of it; but still we preferred
the Laird's stories about Homesh.  We
invariably liked best the stories at which the
Laird laughed most—whether we quite
understood their pawky humour or not.

"Dr. Sutherland has a great many stories
about the Highlanders," says Miss Avon
timidly; "they are very amusing."

"As far as I have observed," remarked the
Laird—for how could he relish the notion of
having a rival anecdote-monger on
board?—"as far as I have observed, the Highland
character is entirely without humour.  Ay, I
have heard Tom Galbraith say that very
often, and he has been everywhere in the
Highlands."

"Well, then," says Mary Avon, with a quick
warmth of indignation in her face—how rapidly
those soft dark eyes could change their
expression!—"I hope Mr. Galbraith knows more
about painting than he knows about the
Highlanders!  I thought that anybody who knows
anything knows that the Celtic nature is full
of imagination, and humour, and pathos, and
poetry; and the Saxon—the Saxon!—it is his
business to plod over ploughed fields, and be
as dull and commonplace as the other animals
he sees there!"

Gracious goodness!—here was a tempest!
The Laird was speechless; for, indeed, at this
moment we bumped against the sacred shores—that
is to say, the landing-slip—of Iona; and
had to scramble on to the big stones.  Then
we walked up and past the cottages, and
through the potato-field, and past the white
inn, and so to the hallowed shrine and its
graves of the kings.  We spent the whole of
the afternoon there.

When we got back to the yacht and to
dinner we discovered that a friend had visited
us in our absence, and had left of his largesse
behind him—nasturtiums and yellow-and-white
pansies, and what not—to say nothing of fresh
milk, and crisp, delightful lettuce.  We drank
his health.

Was it the fear of some one breaking
in on our domestic peace that made that
last evening among the western islands so
lovely to us?  We went out in the gig after
dinner; the Laird put forth his engines of
destruction to encompass the innocent lythe;
we heard him humming the "Haughs o' Cromdale"
in the silence.  The wonderful glory of
that evening!—Iona become an intense
olive-green against the gold and crimson of the
sunset; the warm light shining along the red
granite of western Mull.  Then the yellow
moon rose in the south—into the calm
violet-hued vault of the heavens; and there was a
golden fire on the ripples and on the wet
blades of the oars as we rowed back with
laughter and singing.

.. class:: italics

   |  Sing tantara! sing tantara!
   |  Sing tantara! sing tantara!
   |    Said he, the Highland army rues
   |    That ere they came to Cromdale!
   |

And then, next morning, we were up at five
o'clock.  If we were going to have a tooth
pulled, why not have the little interview over
at once?  East Wind would be waiting for us
at Castle Osprey.

Blow, soft westerly breeze, then, and bear us
down by Fion-phort, and round the granite
Ross—shining all a pale red in the early dawn.
And here is Ardalanish Point; and there, as
the morning goes by, are the Carsaig arches,
and then Loch Buy, and finally the blue Firth
of Lorn.  Northward now, and still
northward—until, far away, the white house shining
amidst the firs, and the flag fluttering in the
summer air.  Have they descried us, then?
Or is the bunting hoisted in honour of guests?
The pale cheek of Mary Avon tells a tale as
she descries that far signal; but that is no
business of ours.  Perhaps it is only of her
uncle that she is thinking.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`OUR NEW GUESTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   OUR NEW GUESTS.

.. vspace:: 2

Behold, now!—this beautiful garden of
Castle Osprey all ablaze in the sun—the roses,
pansies, poppies, and what not bewildering our
eyes after the long looking at the blue water
and, in the midst of the brilliant paradise—just
as we had feared—the snake!  He did not
scurry away at our approach, as snakes are
wont to do; or raise his horrent head, and
hiss.  The fact is, we found him comfortably
seated under a drooping ash, smoking.  He
rose and explained that he had strolled up
from the shore to await our coming.  He did
not seem to notice that Mary Avon, as she
came along, had to walk slowly, and was
leaning on the arm of the Laird.

Certainly nature had not been bountiful to
this short, spare person who had now come
among us.  He had closely-cropped, coarse grey
hair; an eagle beak; a certain pink and raw
appearance of the face, as if perpetual east winds
had chafed the skin; and a most pernicious
habit of loudly clearing his husky throat.
Then with the aggressive nose went a
well-defined pugilist's jaw and a general hang-dog
scowl about the mouth.  For the rest
Mr. Smethurst seemed desirous of making up for
those unpleasant features which nature had
bestowed upon him by a studied air of
self-possession, and by an extreme precision of
dress.  Alack, and well-a-day! these laudable
efforts were of little avail.  Nature was too
strong for him.  The assumption of a languid
air was not quite in consonance with the
ferrety grey eyes and the bull-dog mouth;
the precision of his costume only gave him
the look of a well-dressed groom, or a butler
gone on the turf.  There was not much grateful
to the sight about Mr. Frederick Smethurst.

But were we to hate the man for being ugly?
Despite his raw face, he might have the white
soul of an angel.  And in fact we knew
absolutely nothing against his public character or
private reputation, except that he had once
gone through the Bankruptcy Court; and
even of that little circumstance our
womenfolk were not aware.  However, there was no
doubt at all that a certain coldness—apparent
to us who knew her well—marked the manner
of this small lady who now went up and shook
hands with him, and declared—unblushingly—that
she was so glad he had run up to
the Highlands.

"And you know," said she, with that
charming politeness which she would show to the
arch-fiend himself if he were properly
introduced to her, "you know, Mr. Smethurst, that
yachting is such an uncertain thing, one never
knows when one may get back; but if you
could spare a few days to take a run with us,
you would see what a capital mariner Mary
has become, and I am sure it would be a
great pleasure to us."

These were actually her words.  She uttered
them without the least tremor of hesitation.
She looked him straight in the face with those
clear, innocent, confiding eyes of hers.  How
could the man tell that she was wishing him
at Jericho?

And it was in silence that we waited to
hear our doom pronounced.  A yachting
trip with this intolerable Jonah on board!
The sunlight went out of the day; the blue
went out of the sky and the seas; the
world was filled with gloom, and chaos, and
East Wind!

Imagine, then, the sudden joy with which
we heard of our deliverance!  Surely it was
not the raucous voice of Frederick Smethurst,
but a sound of summer bells.

"Oh, thank you," he said, in his affectedly
indifferent way; "but the fact is, I have run up
to see Mary only on a little matter of business,
and I must get back at once.  Indeed, I
purpose leaving by the Dalmally coach in the
afternoon.  Thank you very much, though;
perhaps some other time I may be more
fortunate."

How we had wronged this poor man!  We
hated him no longer.  On the contrary, great
grief was expressed over his departure; and
he was begged at least to stay that one
evening.  No doubt he had heard of Dr. Angus
Sutherland, who had made such
discoveries in the use of anæsthetics?
Dr. Sutherland was coming by the afternoon
steamer.  Would not he stay and meet him
at dinner?

Our tears broke out afresh—metaphorically—when
East Wind persisted in his intention
of departure; but of course compulsion was
out of the question.  And so we allowed him
to go into the house, to have that business
interview with his niece.

"A poor crayture!" remarked the Laird
confidently, forgetting that he was talking of a
friend of ours.  "Why does he not speak out
like a man, instead of drawling and dawdling?
His accent is jist insufferable."

"And what business can he have with
Mary?" says our sovereign lady sharply—just
as if a man with a raw skin and an
eagle-beak must necessarily be a pickpocket.
"He was the trustee of that little fortune of
hers, I know; but that is all over.  She got
the money when she came of age.  What can
he want to see her about now?"

We concerned ourselves not with that.  It
was enough for us that the snake was about
to retreat from our summer paradise of his
own free will and pleasure.  And Angus
Sutherland was coming; and the provisioning
of the yacht had to be seen to; for
to-morrow—to-morrow we spread our white wings again
and take flight to the far north!

Never was parting guest so warmly speeded.
We concealed our tears as the coach rolled
away.  We waved a hand to him.  And then,
when it was suggested that the wagonette
that had brought Mary Avon down from
Castle Osprey might just as well go along to the
quay—for the steamer bringing Dr. Sutherland
would be in shortly—and when we actually did
set out in that direction, there was so little grief
on our faces that you could not have told we
had been bidding farewell to a valued friend
and relative.

Now if our good-hearted Laird had had a
grain of jealousy in his nature, he might well
have resented the manner in which these two
women spoke of the approaching guest.  In
their talk the word "he" meant only one
person.  "He" was sure to come by this
steamer.  "He" was so punctual in his
engagements.  Would he bring a gun or a rod;
or would the sailing be enough amusement for
him?  What a capital thing it was for him to
be able to take an interest in some such
out-of-door exercise, as a distraction to the mind!
And so forth, and so forth.  The Laird heard
all this, and his expectations were no doubt
rising and rising.  Forgetful of his disappointment
on first seeing Mary Avon, he was in all
likelihood creating an imaginary figure of
Angus Sutherland—and, of course, this marvel
of erudition and intellectual power must be
a tall, wan, pale person, with the travail of
thinking written in lines across the spacious
brow.  The Laird was not aware that for
many a day after we first made the
acquaintance of the young Scotch student he was
generally referred to in our private conversation
as "Brose."

And, indeed, the Laird did stare considerably
when he saw—elbowing his way through
the crowd and making for us with a laugh of
welcome on the fresh-coloured face—a
stout-set, muscular, blue-eyed, sandy-haired,
good-humoured-looking, youngish man; who, instead
of having anything Celtic about his appearance,
might have been taken for the son of a
south-country farmer.  Our young Doctor was
carrying his own portmanteau, and sturdily shoving
his way through the porters who would fain
have seized it.

"I am glad to see you, Angus," said our
queen regent, holding out her hand; and there
was no ceremonial politeness in that
reception—but you should have seen the look in her
eyes.

Then he went on to the waggonette.

"How do you do, Miss Avon?" said he,
quite timidly, like a school-boy.  He scarcely
glanced up at her face, which was regarding
him with a very pleasant welcome; he seemed
relieved when he had to turn and seize his
portmanteau again.  Knowing that he was
rather fond of driving, our mistress and
admiral-in-chief offered him the reins, but he
declined the honour; Mary Avon was sitting
in front.  "Oh, no, thank you," said he quite
hastily, and with something uncommonly like a
blush.  The Laird, if he had been entertaining
any feeling of jealousy, must have been
reassured.  This Doctor-fellow was no formidable
rival.  He spoke very little—he only listened—as
we drove away to Castle Osprey.  Mary
Avon was chatting briskly and cheerfully, and
it was to the Laird that she addressed that
running fire of nonsense and merry laughter.

But the young Doctor was greatly concerned
when, on our arrival at Castle Osprey, he saw
Mary Avon helped down with much care, and
heard the story of the sprain.

"Who bandages your ankle?" said he at
once, and without any shyness now.

"I do it myself," said she cheerfully.  "I
can do it well enough."

"Oh, no, you cannot!" said he abruptly; "a
person stooping cannot.  The bandage should
be as tight, and as smooth, as the skin of a
drum.  You must let some one else do that
for you."

And he was disposed to resent this walking
about in the garden before dinner.  What
business had she to trifle with such a serious
matter as a sprain?  And a sprain which was
the recall of an older sprain.  "Did she wish
to be lame for life?" he asked sharply.

Mary Avon laughed, and said that worse
things than that had befallen people.  He
asked her whether she found any pleasure in
voluntary martyrdom; she blushed a little, and
turned to the Laird.

The Laird was at this moment laying before
us the details of a most gigantic scheme.  It
appeared that the inhabitants of Strathgovan,
not content with a steam fire-engine, were
talking about having a public park—actually
proposing to have a public park, with beds of
flowers, and iron seats; and, to crown all, a
gymnasium, where the youths of the neighbourhood
might twirl themselves on the gay trapeze
to their hearts' content.  And where the
subscriptions were to come from; and what were
the hardiest plants for borders; and whether
the gymnasium should be furnished with ropes
or with chains—these matters were weighing
heavily on the mind of our good friend of
Denny-mains.  Angus Sutherland relapsed into
silence, and gazed absently at a tree-fuchsia
that stood by.

"It is a beautiful tree, is it not?" said a
voice beside him—that of our midge-like
empress.

He started.

"Oh, yes," he said cheerfully.  "I was
thinking I should like to live the life of a
tree like that, dying in the winter, you know,
and being quite impervious to frost, and snow,
and hard weather; and then, as soon as the
fine warm spring and summer came round,
coming to life again and spreading yourself out
to feel all the sunlight and the warm winds.
That must be a capital life."

"But do you really think they can feel that?
Why, you must believe that those trees and
flowers are alive!"

"Does anybody doubt it?" said he quite
simply.  "They are certainly alive.  Why——"

And here he bethought himself for a moment.

"If I only had a good microscope now," said
he eagerly, "I would show you the life of a
plant directly—in every cell of it: did you
never see the constant life in each cell—the
motion of the chlorophyll granules circling and
circling night and day?  Did no one ever show
you that?"

Well, no one had ever shown us that.  We
may now and again have entertained angels
unawares; but we were not always stumbling
against Fellows of the Royal Society.

"Then I must borrow one somewhere," said
he decisively, "and show you the secret life of
even the humblest plant that exists.  And then
look what a long life it is, in the case of the
perennial plants.  Did you ever think of that?
Those great trees in the Yosemite valley—they
were alive and feeling the warm sunlight and
the winds about them when Alfred was hiding
in the marshes; and they were living the same
undisturbed life when Charles the First had his
head chopped off; and they were living—in
peace and quietness—when all Europe had to
wake up to stamp out the Napoleonic pest;
and they are alive now and quite careless of
the little creatures that come to span out their
circumference, and ticket them, and give them
ridiculous names.  Had any of the patriarchs a
life as long as that?"

The Laird eyed this young man askance.
There was something uncanny about him.
What might not he say when—in the
northern solitudes to which we were going—the
great Semple heresy-case was brought on
for discussion?

But at dinner the Laird got on very well
with our new guest; for the latter listened
most respectfully when Denny-mains was
demonstrating the exceeding purity, and strength,
and fitness of the speech used in the south of
Scotland.  And indeed the Laird was generous.
He admitted that there were blemishes.  He
deprecated the introduction of French words;
and gave us a much longer list of those aliens
than usually appears in books.  What about
*conjee*, and *que-vee*, and *fracaw* as used by
Scotch children and old wives?

Then after dinner—at nine o'clock the
wonderful glow of the summer evening was still
filling the drawing-room—the Laird must needs
have Mary Avon sing to him.  It was not a
custom of hers.  She rarely would sing a song
of set purpose.  The linnet sings all day—when
you do not watch her; but she will not
sing if you go and ask.

However, on this occasion, her hostess went
to the piano, and sat down to play the
accompaniment; and Mary Avon stood beside her
and sang, in rather a low voice—but it was
tender enough—some modern version of the
old ballad of the Queen's Maries.  What were
the words?  These were of them, any way:—

.. class:: italics

   |  Yestreen the Queen had four Maries;
   |  This night she'll hae but three:
   |  There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
   |  And Mary Carmichael, and me.
   |

But indeed, if you had seen that graceful
slim figure—clad all in black velvet, with the
broad band of gold fringe round the neck—and
the small, shapely, smoothly-brushed head above
the soft swathes of white muslin—and if you
had caught a glimpse of the black eyelashes
drooping outward from the curve of the pale
cheek—and if you had heard the tender, low
voice of Mary Avon, you might have forgotten
about the Queen's Maries altogether.

And then Dr. Sutherland: the Laird was
determined—in true Scotch fashion—that
everybody who could not sing should be
goaded to sing.

"Oh, well," said the young man, with a
laugh, "you know a student in Germany must
sing whether he can or not.  And I learned
there to smash out something like an
accompaniment also."

And he went to the piano without more ado
and did smash out an accompaniment.  And if
his voice was rather harsh?—well, we should
have called it raucous in the case of East
Wind, but we only called it manly and
strenuous when it was Angus Sutherland who sang.
And it was a manly song, too—a fitting song
for our last night on shore, the words hailing
from the green woods of Fuinary, the air an
air that had many a time been heard among
the western seas.  It was the song of the
Biorlinn[#] that he sang to us; we could hear
the brave chorus and the splash of the long oars:—

.. class:: italics

   |  Send the biorlinn on careering!
   |  Cheerily and all together—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |
   |  Give her way and show her wake
   |  'Mid showering spray and curling eddies—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!

Do we not hear now the measured stroke in the
darkness of the morning?  The water springs
from her bows; one by one the headlands are
passed.  But lo! the day is breaking; the dawn
will surely bring a breeze with it; and then the
sail of the gallant craft will bear her over the
seas:—

.. class:: italics

   |  Another cheer, our Isle appears!
   |  Our biorlinn bears her on the faster—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |
   |  Ahead she goes! the land she knows!
   |  Behold! the snowy shores of Canna—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together—
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!

A long, strong pull together indeed: who could
resist joining in the thunder of the chorus?
And we were bound for Canna, too: this was
our last night on shore.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] *Biorlinn*—that is, a rowing-boat.  The word is pronounced
*byurlen*.  The song, which in a measure imitates the rhythm
peculiar to Highland poetry—consisting in a certain repetition
of the same vowel sounds—is the production of Dr. Macleod,
of Morven.  And here, for the benefit of any one who minds
such things, is a rough draft of the air, arranged by a most
charming young lady, who, however, says she would much
rather die than have her name mentioned:—

.. figure:: images/img-092.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Music fragments

   Music fragments

.. vspace:: 2

Our last night on shore.  In such circumstances
one naturally has a glance round at the
people with whom one is to be brought into
such close contact for many and many a day.
But in this particular case, what was the use
of speculating, or grumbling, or remonstrating?
There is a certain household that is ruled with
a rod of iron.  And if the mistress of that
household chose to select as her summer companions
a "shilpit bit thing," and a hard-headed,
ambitious Scotch student, and a parochial
magnate haunted by a heresy-case, how dared one
object?  There is such a thing as peace and
quietness.

But however unpromising the outlook might
be, do we not know the remark that is usually
made by that hard-worked officer, the chief
mate, when, on the eve of a voyage, he finds
himself confronted by an unusually mongrel
crew?  He regards those loafers and outcasts—from
the Bowery, and Ratcliffe Highway,
and the Broomielaw—Greeks, niggers, and
Mexicans—with a critical and perhaps scornful
air, and forthwith proceeds to address them in
the following highly polished manner:—

"By etcetera-etcetera, you are an etceteraed
rum-looking lot; but etcetera-etcetera me *if I
don't lick you into shape before we get to Rio*."

And so—good-night!—and let all good
people pray for fair skies and a favouring
breeze!  And if there is any song to be heard
in our dreams, let it be the song of the Queen's
Maries—in the low, tender voice of Mary Avon:—

.. class:: italics

   |  There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
   |  And Mary Carmichael, and me.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NORTHWARD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   NORTHWARD.

.. vspace:: 2

We have bidden good-bye to the land; the
woods and the green hills have become pale
in the haze of the summer light; we are out
here, alone, on the shining blue plain.  And
if our young Doctor betrays a tendency to
keep forward—conversing with John of Skye
about blocks, and tackle, and winches; and
if the Laird—whose parental care and regard
for Mary Avon is becoming beautiful to
see—should have quite a monopoly of the young
lady, and be more bent than ever on amusing
her with his "good ones;" and if our queen
and governor should spend a large portion
of her time below, in decorating cabins with
flowers, in overhauling napery, and in earnest
consultation with Master Fred about certain
culinary mysteries; notwithstanding all these
divergences of place and occupation, our little
kingdom afloat is compact enough.  There is
always, for example, a reassembling at meals.
There is an instant community of interest when
a sudden cry calls all hands on deck to regard
some new thing—the spouting of a whale or the
silvery splashing of a shoal of mackerel.  But
now—but now—if only some cloud-compelling
Jove would break this insufferably fine weather,
and give us a tearing good gale!

It is a strange little kingdom.  It has no
postal service.  Shilling telegrams are unknown
in it; there is no newspaper at breakfast.
There are no barrel-organs; nor rattling
hansoms raising the dust in windy streets; there
is no afternoon scandal; overheated rooms at
midnight are a thing of the past.  Serene,
independent, self-centred, it minds its own
affairs; if the whole of Europe were roaring
for war, not even an echo of the cry would
reach us.  We only hear the soft calling of
the sea-birds as we sit and read, or talk,
or smoke; from time to time watching the
shadows move on the blistering hot decks,
or guessing at the names of the blue mountains
that rise above Loch Etive and Lochaber.  At
the present moment there is a faint summer
haze over these mountains; as yet we have
around us none of the dazzling light and
strangely intense colours that are peculiar to
this part of the world, and that are only
possible, in fact, in an atmosphere frequently
washed clear by squalls of rain.  This question
of rain turns up at lunch.

"They prayed for rain in the churches last
Sunday—so Captain John says," Mary Avon
remarks.

"The distilleries are stopped: that's very
serious," continues the Laird.

"Well," says Queen T., "people talk about
the rain in the West Highlands.  It must be
true, as everybody says it is true.  But
now—excepting the year we went to America with
Sylvia Balfour—we have been here for five
years running; and each year we made up
our mind for a deluge—thinking we had
deserved it, you know.  Well, it never came.
Look at this now."

And the fact was that we were lying motionless
on the smooth bosom of the Atlantic, with
the sun so hot on the decks that we were glad
to get below.

"Very strange—very strange, indeed,"
remarked the Laird, with a profound air.  "Now
what value are we to put on any historical
evidence if we find such a conflict of testimony
about what is at our own doors?  How should
there be two opeenions about the weather in the
West Highlands?  It is a matter of common
experience—dear me!  I never heard the like."

"Oh, but I think we might try to reconcile
those diverse opinions!" said Angus Sutherland,
with an absolute gravity.  "You hear mostly
the complaints of London people, who make
much of a passing shower.  Then the tourist
and holiday folk, especially from the South,
come in the autumn, when the fine summer
weather has broken.  And then," he added,
addressing himself with a frank smile to the
small creature who had been expressing her
wonder over the fine weather, "perhaps, if you
are pleased with your holiday on the whole, you
are not anxious to remember the wet days; and
then you are not afraid of a shower, I know;
and besides that, when one is yachting, one is
more anxious for wind than for fine weather."

"Oh, I am sure that is it!" called out Mary
Avon quite eagerly.  She did not care how
she destroyed the Laird's convictions about
the value of historical evidence.  "That is an
explanation of the whole thing."

At this, our young Doctor—-who had been
professing to treat this matter seriously merely
as a joke—quickly lowered his eyes.  He
scarcely ever looked Mary Avon in the face
when she spoke to him, or when he had to
speak to her.  And a little bit of shy
embarrassment in his manner towards her—perceivable
only at times—was all the more
singular in a man who was shrewd and
hard-headed enough, who had knocked about the
world and seen many persons and things, and
who had a fair amount of unassuming
self-confidence, mingled with a vein of sly and
reticent humour.  He talked freely enough
when he was addressing our admiral-in-chief.
He was not afraid to meet *her* eyes.  Indeed,
they were so familiar friends that she called
him by his Christian name—a practice which
in general she detested.  But she would as
soon have thought of applying "Mr." to one
of her own boys at Epsom College as to
Angus Sutherland.

"Well, you know, Angus," says she pleasantly,
"you have definitely promised to go
up to the Outer Hebrides with us, and back.
The longer the calms last, the longer we shall
have you.  So we shall gladly put up with
the fine weather."

"It is very kind of you to say so; but I
have already had such a long holiday——"

"Oh!" said Mary Avon, with her eyes full
of wonder and indignation.  She was too
surprised to say any more.  She only stared
at him.  She knew he had been working
night and day in Edinburgh.

"I mean," said he hastily, and looking down,
"I have been away so long from London.
Indeed, I was getting rather anxious about
my next month's number; but luckily, just
before I left Edinburgh, a kind friend sent
me a most valuable paper, so I am quite at
ease again.  Would you like to read it, sir?
It is set up in type."

He took the sheets from his pocket, and
handed them to the Laird.  Denny-mains
looked at the title.  It was *On the Radiolarians
of the Coal Measures*, and it was the
production of a well-known professor.  The
Laird handed back the paper without opening it.

"No, thank you," said he, with some dignity.
"If I wished to be instructed, I would like a
safer guide than that man."

We looked with dismay on this dangerous
thing that had been brought on board: might
it not explode and blow up the ship?

"Why," said our Doctor, in unaffected
wonder, and entirely mistaking the Laird's
exclamation, "he is a perfect master of his subject."

"There is a great deal too much speculation
nowadays on these matters, and parteecularly
among the younger men," remarked the Laird
severely.  And he looked at Angus Sutherland.
"I suppose now ye are well acquainted
with the *Vestiges of Creation*?"

"I have heard of the book," said Brose—regretfully
confessing his ignorance, "but I
never happened to see it."

The Laird's countenance lightened.

"So much the better—so much the better.
A most mischievous and unsettling book.  But
all the harm it can do is counteracted by a
noble work—a conclusive work that leaves
nothing to be said.  Ye have read the
*Testimony of the Rocks*, no doubt?"

"Oh, yes, certainly," our Doctor was glad
to be able to say; "but—but it was a long
time ago—when I was a boy, in fact."

"Boy, or man, you'll get no better book
on the history of the earth.  I tell ye, sir, I
never read a book that placed such firm
conviction in my mind.  Will ye get any of the
new men they are talking about as keen an
observer and as skilful in arguing as Hugh
Miller?  No, no; not one of them dares to
try to upset the *Testimony of the Rocks*."

Angus Sutherland appealed against this
sentence of finality only in a very humble way.

"Of course, sir," said he meekly, "you know
that science is still moving forward——"

"Science?" repeated the Laird.  "Science
may be moving forward or moving backward;
but can it upset the facts of the earth?
Science may say what it likes; but the facts
remain the same."

Now this point was so conclusive that we
unanimously hailed the Laird as victor.  Our
young Doctor submitted with an excellent
good humour.  He even promised to post
that paper on the Radiolarians at the very
first post-office we might reach: we did not
want any such explosive compounds on board.

That night we only got as far as Fishnish
Bay—a solitary little harbour probably down
on but few maps; and that we had to reach
by getting out the gig for a tow.  There was
a strange bronze-red in the northern skies, long
after the sun had set; but in here the shadow
of the great mountains was on the water.  We
could scarcely see the gig; but Angus Sutherland
had joined the men and was pulling
stroke; and along with the measured splash
of the oars, we heard something about "*Ho,
ro, clansmen!*"  Then, in the cool night air,
there was a slight fragrance of peat-smoke;
we knew we were getting near the shore.

"He's a fine fellow, that," says the Laird,
generously, of his defeated antagonist.  "A
fine fellow.  His knowledge of different things
is just remarkable; and he's as modest as a
girl.  Ay, and he can row, too; a while ago
when it was lighter, I could see him put his
shoulders into it.  Ay, he's a fine, good-natured
fellow, and I am glad he has not been led
astray by that mischievous book, the *Vestiges
of Creation*."

Come on board now, boys, and swing up
the gig to the davits!  Twelve fathoms of
chain?—away with her then!—and there is a
roar in the silence of the lonely little bay.
And thereafter silence; and the sweet
fragrance of the peat in the night air, and the
appearance, above the black hills, of a clear,
shining, golden planet that sends a quivering
line of light across the water to us.  And,
once more, good-night and pleasant dreams!

But what is this in the morning?  There
have been no pleasant dreams for John of
Skye and his merry men during the last night;
for here we are already between Mingary Bay
and Ru-na-Gaul Lighthouse; and before us is
the open Atlantic, blue under the fair skies
of the morning.  And here is Dr. Sutherland,
at the tiller, with a suspiciously negligent look
about his hair and shirt-collar.

"I have been up since four," says he, with a
laugh.  "I heard them getting under way,
and did not wish to miss anything.  You know
these places are not so familiar to me as
they are to you."

"Is there going to be any wind to-day, John?"

"No mich," says John of Skye, looking at
the cloudless blue vault above the glassy
sweeps of the sea.

Nevertheless, as the morning goes by, we
get as much of a breeze as enables us to draw
away from the mainland—round Ardnamurchan
("the headland of the great sea") and out into
the open—with Muick Island, and the sharp
Scuir of Eigg, and the peaks of Rum lying over
there on the still Atlantic, and far away in the
north the vast and spectral mountains of Skye.

And now the work of the day begins.  Mary
Avon, for mere shame's sake, is at last
compelled to produce one of her blank canvases
and open her box of tubes.  And now it
would appear that Angus Sutherland—though
deprived of the authority of the sick-room—is
beginning to lose his fear of the English
young lady.  He makes himself useful—not
with the elaborate and patronising courtesy of
the Laird, but in a sort of submissive, matter-of-fact
shifty fashion.  He sheathes the spikes
of her easel with cork so that they shall not
mark the deck.  He rigs up, to counterbalance
that lack of stability, a piece of cord with a
heavy weight.  Then, with the easel fixed, he
fetches her a deck-chair to sit in, and a
deck-stool for her colours, and these and her he
places under the lee of the foresail, to be out
of the glare of the sun.  Thus our artist is
started; she is going to make a sketch of the
after-part of the yacht with Hector of Moidart
at the tiller: beyond, the calm blue seas, and
a faint promontory of land.

Then the Laird—having confidentially
remarked to Miss Avon that Tom Galbraith,
than whom there is no greater authority living,
invariably moistens the fresh canvas with
megilp before beginning work—has turned to
the last report of the Semple case.

"No, no," says he to our sovereign lady,
who is engaged in some mysterious work in
wool, "it does not look well for the Presbytery
to go over every one of the charges in the
major proposeetion—supported by the
averments in the minor—only to find them
irrelevant; and then bring home to him the part
of the libel that deals with tendency.  No, no;
that shows a lamentable want of purpose.  In
view of the great danger to be apprehended
from these secret assaults on the inspiration
of the Scriptures, they should have stuck to
each charge with tenahcity.  Now, I will just
show ye where Dr. Carnegie, in defending
*Secundo*—illustrated as it was with the extracts
and averments in the minor—let the whole
thing slip through his fingers."

But if any one were disposed to be absolutely
idle on this calm, shining, beautiful day—far
away from the cares and labours of the
land?  Out on the taffrail, under shadow of
the mizen, there is a seat that is gratefully
cool.  The Mare of the sea no longer bewilders
the eyes; one can watch with a lazy
enjoyment the teeming life of the open
Atlantic.  The great skarts go whizzing by,
long-necked, rapid of flight.  The gannets
poise in the air, and then there is a sudden
dart downwards, and a spout of water flashes
up where the bird has dived.  The guillemots
fill the silence with their soft kurrooing—and
here they are on all sides of us—*Kirroo!
Kurroo!*—dipping their bills in the water,
hastening away from the vessel, and then
rising on the surface to flap their wings.  But
this is a strange thing: they are all in
pairs—obviously mother and child—and the mother
calls *Kurroo!  Kurroo!*—and the young one
unable as yet to dive or swim, answers
*Pe-yoo-it!  Pe-yoo-it!* and flutters and paddles
after her.  But where is the father?  And has
the guillemot only one of a family?  Over
that one, at all events, she exercises a valiant
protection.  Even though the stem of the
yacht seems likely to run both of them down,
she will neither dive nor fly until she has
piloted the young one out of danger.

Then a sudden cry startles the Laird from
his heresy-case and Mary Avon from her
canvas.  A sound far away has turned all
eyes to the north; though there is nothing
visible there, over the shining calm of the
sea, but a small cloud of white spray that
slowly sinks.  In a second or two, however,
we see another jet of white water arise; and
then a great brown mass heave slowly over;
and then we hear the spouting of the whale.

"What a huge animal!" cries one.  "A
hundred feet!"

"Eighty, any way!"

The whale is sheering off to the north:
there is less and less chance of our forming
any correct estimate.

"Oh, I am sure it was a hundred!  Don't
you think so, Angus?" says our admiral.

"Well," says the Doctor, slowly—pretending
to be very anxious about keeping the sails full
(when there was no wind)—"you know there
is a great difference between 'yacht
measurement' and 'registered tonnage.'  A vessel of
fifty registered tons may become eighty or
ninety by yacht measurement.  And I have
often noticed," continues this graceless young
man, who takes no thought how he is bringing
contempt on his elders, "that objects seen from
the deck of a yacht are naturally subject to
'yacht measurement.'  I don't know what the
size of that whale may be.  Its registered
tonnage, I suppose, would be the number of
Jonahs it could carry.  But I should think that
if the apparent 'yacht measurement' was a
hundred feet, the whale was probably about
twenty feet long."

It was thus he tried to diminish the marvels
of the deep!  But, however he might crush us
otherwise, we were his masters on one point.
The Semple heresy-case was too deep even
for him.  What could he make of "*the first
alternative of the general major*"?

And see now, on this calm summer evening,
we pass between Muick and Eigg; and the
sea is like a plain of gold.  As we draw near
the sombre mass of Rum, the sunset deepens,
and a strange lurid mist hangs around this
remote and mountainous island rising sheer
from the Atlantic.  Gloomy and mysterious
are the vast peaks of Haleval and Haskeval;
we creep under them—favoured by a flood-tide—and
the silence of the desolate shores seems
to spread out from them and to encompass us.

Mary Avon has long ago put away her
canvas; she sits and watches; and her soft
black eyes are full of dreaming as she gazes
up at those thunder-dark mountains against the
rosy haze of the west.

"Haleval and Haskeval?" Angus Sutherland
repeats, in reply to his hostess; but he starts
all the same, for he has been covertly regarding
the dark and wistful eyes of the girl sitting
there.  "Oh, these are Norse names.  Scuir
na Gillean, on the other hand, is Gaelic—it is
*the peak of the young men*.  Perhaps, the
Norsemen had the north of the island, and
the Celts the south."

Whether they were named by Scandinavian
or by Celt, Haleval and Haskeval seemed to
overshadow us with their sultry gloom as we
slowly glided into the lonely loch lying at their
base.  We were the only vessel there; and we
could make out no sign of life on shore, until
the glass revealed to us one or two half-ruined
cottages.  The northern twilight shone in the
sky far into the night; but neither that clear
metallic glow, nor any radiance from moon, or
planet, or star, seemed to affect the thunder-darkness
of Haskeval and Haleval's silent peaks.

There was another tale to tell below—the
big saloon aglow with candles; the white table-cover
with its centre-piece of roses, nasturtiums,
and ferns; the delayed dinner, or supper, or
whatever it might be called, all artistically arranged;
our young Doctor most humbly solicitous
that Mary Avon should be comfortably seated,
and, in fact, quite usurping the office of the
Laird in that respect; and then a sudden sound
in the galley, a hissing as of a thousand squibs,
telling us that Master Fred had once more and
ineffectually tried to suppress the released genie
of the bottle by jamming down the cork.
Forthwith the Laird, with his old-fashioned
ways, must needs propose a health, which is
that of our most sovereign and midge-like
mistress; and this he does with an elaborate
and gracious and sonorous courtesy.  And
surely there is no reason why Mary Avon
should not for once break her habit and join
in that simple ceremony; especially when it
is a real live Doctor—and not only a Doctor,
but an encyclopædia of scientific and all other
knowledge—who would fain fill her glass?
Angus Sutherland timidly but seriously pleads;
and he does not plead in vain; and you would
think from his look that she had conferred an
extraordinary favour on him.  Then we—we
propose a health too—the health of the FOUR
WINDS! and we do not care which of them it
is who is coming to-morrow, so long as he
or she comes in force.  Blow, breezes, blow!—from
the Coolins of Skye, or the shores of
Coll, or the glens of Arisaig and Moidart—for
to-morrow morning we shake out once more
the white wings of the *White Dove*, and set
forth for the loneliness of the northern seas.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS.

.. vspace:: 2

Now the Laird has a habit—laudable or not—of
lingering over an additional half-cup at
breakfast, as an excuse for desultory talk; and
thus it is, on this particular morning, the young
people having gone on deck to see the yacht get
under way, that Denny-mains has a chance
of revealing to us certain secret schemes of his
over which he has apparently been brooding.
How could we have imagined that all this
plotting and planning had been going on
beneath the sedate exterior of the
Commissioner for the Burgh of Strathgovan?

"She's just a wonderful bit lass!" he says,
confidently, to his hostess; "as happy and
contented as the day is long; and when she's
not singing to herself, her way of speech has a
sort of—a sort of music in it that is quite new
to me.  Yes, I must admit that; I did not
know that the southern English tongue was
so accurate and pleasant to the ear.  Ay,
but what will become of her?"

What, indeed!  The lady whom he was
addressing had often spoken to him of Mary
Avon's isolated position in the world.

"It fairly distresses me," continues the
good-hearted Laird, "when I think of her
condeetion—not at present, when she has, if I may be
allowed to say so, *several* friends near her
who would be glad to do what they could for
her; but by and by, when she is becoming
older——"

The Laird hesitated.  Was it possible, after
all, that he was about to hint at the chance of
Mary Avon becoming the mistress of the
mansion and estate of Denny-mains?  Then
he made a plunge.

"A young woman in her position should
have a husband to protect her, that is what
I am sure of.  Have ye never thought of it,
ma'am?"

"I should like very well to see Mary
married," says the other, demurely.  "And I
know she would make an excellent wife."

"An excellent wife!" exclaims the Laird;
and then he adds, with a tone approaching to
severity, "I tell ye he will be a fortunate man
that gets her.  Oh, ay; I have watched her.
I can keep my eyes open when there is need.
Did you hear her asking the captain about his
wife and children?  I tell you there's *human
nature* in that lass."

There was no need for the Laird to be so
pugnacious; we were not contesting the point.
However, he resumed—

"I have been thinking," said he, with a little
more shyness, "about my nephew.  He's a
good lad.  Well, ye know, ma'am, that I do
not approve of young men being brought up in
idleness, whatever their prospects must be;
and I have no doubt whatever that my nephew
Howard is working hard enough—what with the
reading of law-books, and attending the courts,
and all that—though as yet he has not had
much business.  But then there is no necessity.
I do not think he is a lad of any great
ambeetion, like your friend Mr. Sutherland, who has
to fight his way in the world in any case.  But
Howard—I have been thinking now that if he
was to get married and settled, he might give
up the law business altogether; and, if they
were content to live in Scotland, he might look
after Denny-mains.  It will be his in any case,
ye know; he would have the interest of a man
looking after his own property.  Now, I will
tell ye plainly, ma'am, what I have been
thinking about this day or two back; if Howard
would marry your young lady friend, that
would be agreeable to me."

The calm manner in which the Laird
announced his scheme showed that it had been
well matured.  It was a natural, simple, feasible
arrangement, by which two persons in whom he
took a warm interest would be benefited at once.

"But then, sir," said his hostess, with a
smile which she could not wholly repress, "you
know people never do marry to please a third
person—at least, very seldom."

"Oh, there can be no forcing," said the Laird
with decision.  "But I have done a great deal
for Howard; may I not expect that he will do
something for me?"

"Oh, doubtless, doubtless," says this amiable
lady, who has had some experience in match-making
herself; "but I have generally found
that marriages that would be in every way
suitable and pleasing to friends, and obviously
desirable, are precisely the marriages that never
come off.  Young people, when they are flung
at each other's heads, to use the common
phrase, never will be sensible and please their
relatives.  Now if you were to bring your
nephew here, do you think Mary would fall in
love with him because she ought?  More
likely you would find that, out of pure
contrariety, she would fall in love with
Angus Sutherland, who cannot afford to
marry, and whose head is filled with other
things."

"I am not sure, I am not sure," said the
Laird, musingly.  "Howard is a good-looking
young fellow, and a capital lad, too.  I am not
so sure."

"And then, you know," said the other shyly,
for she will not plainly say anything to Mary's
disparagement, "young men have different
tastes in their choice of a wife.  He might not
have the high opinion of her that you have."

At this the Laird gave a look of surprise—even
of resentment.

"Then I'll tell ye what it is, ma'am," said
he, almost angrily; "if my nephew had the
chance of marrying such a girl, and did not do
so, I should consider him—I should consider
him *a fool*, and say so."

And then he added, sharply—

"And do ye think I would let Denny-mains
pass into the hands of *a fool*?"

Now this kind lady had had no intention of
rousing the wrath of the Laird in this manner;
and she instantly set about pacifying him.  And
the Laird was easily pacified.  In a minute or
two he was laughing good-naturedly at himself
for getting into a passion; he said it would not
do for one at his time of life to try to play the
part of the stern father as they played that in
theatre pieces—there was to be no forcing.

"But he's a good lad, ma'am, a good lad,"
said he, rising as his hostess rose; and he
added, significantly, "he is no fool, I assure ye,
ma'am; he has plenty of common sense."

When we get up on deck again, we find that
the *White Dove* is gently gliding out of the
lonely Loch Scresorst, with its solitary house
among the trees, and its crofters' huts at the
base of the sombre hills.  And as the light cool
breeze—gratefully cool after the blazing heat of
the last day or two—carries us away
northward, we see more and more of the awful
solitudes of Haleval and Haskeval, that are
still thunderous and dark under the hazy sky.
Above the great shoulders, and under the
purple peaks, we see the far-reaching corries
opening up, with here and there a white
waterfall just visible in the hollows.  There is a
sense of escape as we draw away from that
overshadowing gloom.

Then we discover that we have a new
skipper to-day, *vice* John of Skye, deposed.
The fresh hand is Mary Avon, who is at the
tiller, and looking exceedingly business-like.
She has been promoted to this post by
Dr. Sutherland, who stands by; she receives
explanations about the procedure of Hector of
Moidart, who is up aloft, lacing the smaller
topsail to the mast; she watches the operations
of John of Skye and Sandy, who are at the sheets
below; and, like a wise and considerate captain,
she pretends not to notice Master Fred, who is
having a quiet smoke by the windlass.  And
so, past those lonely shores sails the brave
vessel—the yawl *White Dove*, Captain Mary
Avon, bound for anywhere.

But you must not imagine that the new
skipper is allowed to stand by the tiller.
Captain though she may be, she has to submit
civilly to dictation, in so far as her foot is
concerned, Our young Doctor has compelled her
to be seated, and he has passed a rope round
the tiller that so she can steer from her chair,
and from time to time he gives suggestions,
which she receives as orders.

"I wish I had been with you when you first
sprained your foot," he says.

"Yes?" she answers, with humble inquiry in
her eyes.

"I would have put it in plaster of Paris," he
says, in a matter-of-fact way, "and locked you
up in the house for a fortnight; at the end of
that time you would not know which ankle was
the sprained one."

There was neither "with your leave" nor
"by your leave" in this young man's manner
when he spoke of that accident.  He would
have taken possession of her.  He would have
discarded your bandages and hartshorn, and
what not; when it was Mary Avon's foot that
was concerned—it was intimated to us—he would
have had his own way in spite of all comers.

"I wish I had known," she says, timidly,
meaning that it was the treatment she wished
she had known.

"There is a more heroic remedy," said he,
with a smile; "and that is walking the sprain
off.  I believe that can be done, but most
people would shrink from the pain.  Of course,
if it were done at all, it would be done by a
woman; women can bear pain infinitely better
than men."

"Oh, do you think so!" she says, in mild
protest.  "Oh, I am sure not.  Men are so much
braver than women, so much stronger——"

But this gentle quarrel is suddenly stopped,
for some one calls attention to a deer that is
calmly browsing on one of the high slopes
above that rocky shore, and instantly all glasses
are in request.  It is a hind, with a beautifully
shaped head and slender legs; she takes no
notice of the passing craft, but continues her
feeding, walking a few steps onward from time
to time.  In this way she reaches the edge of a
gully in the rugged cliffs where there is some
brushwood, and probably a stream; into this
she sedately descends, and we see her no more.

Then there is another cry; what is this
cloud ahead, or waterspout resting on the
calm bosom of the sea?  Glasses again in
request, amid many exclamations, reveal to
us that this is a dense cloud of birds; a flock
so vast that towards the water it seems black;
can it be the dead body of a whale that has
collected this world of wings from all the
Northern seas?  Hurry on, *White Dove*; for
the floating cloud with the black base is moving
and seething—in fantastic white fumes, as it
were—in the loveliness of this summer day.
And now, as we draw nearer, we can descry
that there is no dead body of a whale causing
that blackness; but only the density of the
mass of seafowl.  And nearer and nearer as
we draw, behold! the great gannets swooping
down in such numbers that the sea is covered
with a mist of waterspouts; and the air is
filled with innumerable cries; and we do not
know what to make of this bewildering, fluttering,
swimming, screaming mass of terns, guillemots,
skarts, kittiwakes, razorbills, puffins, and
gulls.  But they draw away again.  The
herring-shoal is moving northward.  The
murmur of cries becomes more remote, and
the seething cloud of the sea-birds is slowly
dispersing.  When the *White Dove* sails up
to the spot at which this phenomenon was
first seen, there is nothing visible but a
scattered assemblage of guillemots—*kurroo! kurroo!*
answered by *pe-yoo-it! pe-yoo-it!*—and
great gannets—"as big as a sheep," says
John of Skye—apparently so gorged that they
lie on the water within stone's-throw of the
yacht, before spreading out their long,
snow-white, black-tipped wings to bear them away
over the sea.

And now, as we are altering our course to
the west—far away to our right stand the vast
Coolins of Skye—we sail along the northern
shores of Rum.  There is no trace of any
habitation visible; nothing but the precipitous
cliffs, and the sandy bays, and the outstanding
rocks dotted with rows of shining black skarts.
When Mary Avon asks why those sandy bays
should be so red, and why a certain ruddy
warmth of colour should shine through even
the patches of grass, our F.R.S. begins to
speak of powdered basalt rubbed down from
the rocks above.  He would have her begin
another sketch, but she is too proud of her
newly acquired knowledge to forsake the tiller.

The wind is now almost dead aft, and we
have a good deal of gybing.  Other people
might think that all this gybing was an evidence
of bad steering on the part of our new skipper;
but Angus Sutherland—and we cannot
contradict an F.R.S.—assures Miss Avon that
she is doing remarkably well; and, as he
stands by to lay hold of the main sheet when
the boom swings over, we are not in much
danger of carrying away either port or
starboard davits.

"Do you know," says he lightly, "I
sometimes think I ought to apply for the post of
surgeon on board a man-of-war?  That would
just suit me——"

"Oh, I hope you will not," she blurts out
quite inadvertently; and thereafter there is
a deep blush on her face.

"I should enjoy it immensely, I know,"
says he, wholly ignorant of her embarrassment,
because he is keeping an eye on the sails.
"I believe I should have more pleasure in
life that way than any other——"

"But you do not live for your own pleasure,"
says she hastily, perhaps to cover her confusion.

"I have no one else to live for, any way,"
says he, with a laugh; and then he corrected
himself.  "Oh, yes, I have.  My father is a
sad heretic.  He has fallen away from the
standards of his faith; he has set up
idols—the diplomas and medals I have got from
time to time.  He has them all arranged in
his study, and I have heard that he positively
sits down before them and worships them.
When I sent him the medal from Vienna—it
was only bronze—he returned to me his
Greek Testament, that he had interleaved and
annotated when he was a student; I believe
it was his greatest possession."

"And you would give up all that he expects
from you to go away and be a doctor on board
a ship!" says Mary Avon, with some proud
emphasis.  "That would not be my ambition
if I were a man, and—and—if I had—if——"

Well, she could not quite say to Brose's face
what she thought of his powers and prospects;
so she suddenly broke away and said—

"Yes; you would go and do that for your
own amusement?  And what would the
amusement be?  Do you think they would let the
doctor interfere with the sailing of the ship?"

"Well," said he, laughing, "that is a
practical objection.  I don't suppose the
captain of a man-of-war or even of a merchant
vessel would be as accommodating as your
John of Skye.  Captain John has his
compensation when he is relieved; he can go
forward, and light his pipe."

"Well, I think for *your father's sake*," says
Miss Avon, with decision, "you had better
put that idea out of your head, once and
for all."

Now blow, breezes, blow!  What is the
great headland that appears, striking out into
the wide Atlantic?

.. class:: italics

   |  Ahead she goes! the land she knows!
   |  Behold! the snowy shores of Canna!
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |

"Tom Galbraith," the Laird is saying
solemnly to his hostess, "has assured me that
Rum is the most picturesque island on the
whole of the western coast of Scotland.  That
is his deleeberate opinion.  And indeed I would
not go so far as to say he was wrong.  Arran!
They talk about Arran!  Just look at those
splendid mountains coming sheer down to the
sea; and the light of the sun on them!  Eh
me, what a sunset there will be this night!"

"Canna?" says Dr. Sutherland, to his
interlocutor, who seems very anxious to be
instructed.  "Oh, I don't know.  *Canna* in
Gaelic is simply a can; but then *Cana* is
a whale; and the island in the distance
looks long and flat on the water.  Or it
may be from *canach*—that is, the moss-cotton;
or from *cannach*—that is, the sweet-gale.
You see, Miss Avon, ignorant people have
an ample choice."

Blow! breezes blow! as the yellow light of
the afternoon shines over the broad Atlantic.
Here are the eastern shores of Canna, high
and rugged, and dark with caves; and there
the western shores of Rum, the mighty
mountains aglow in the evening light.  And this
remote and solitary little bay, with its green
headlands, and its awkward rocks at the mouth,
and the one house presiding over it amongst
that shining wilderness of shrubs and flowers?
Here is fair shelter for the night.

After dinner, in the lambent twilight, we set
out with the gig; and there was much preparation
of elaborate contrivances for the entrapping
of fish.  But the Laird's occult and intricate
tackle—the spinning minnows, and spoons, and
india-rubber sand-eels—proved no competitor
for the couple of big white flies that Angus
Sutherland had busked.  And of course Mary
Avon had that rod; and when some huge
lithe dragged the end of the rod fairly under
water, and when she cried aloud, "Oh! oh!
I can't hold it; he'll break the rod!" then
arose our Doctor's word of command:—

"Haul him in!  Shove out the butt!  No
scientific playing with a lithe!  Well done!—well
done!—a five-pounder I'll bet ten farthings!"

It was not scientific fishing; but we got big
fish—which is of more importance in the eyes
of Master Fred.  And then, as the night fell,
we set out again for the yacht; and the Doctor
pulled stroke; and he sang some more verses
of the *biorlinn* song as the blades dashed fire
into the rushing sea:—

.. class:: italics

   |  Proudly o'er the waves we'll bound her,
   |  As the staghound bounds the heather!
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |
   |  Through the eddying tide we'll guide her,
   |  Round each isle and breezy headland,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!

The yellow lamp at the bow of the yacht
grew larger and larger; the hull of the boat
looked black between us and the starlit
heavens; as we clambered on board there
was a golden glow from the saloon skylight.
And then, during the long and happy evening,
amid all the whist-playing and other amusements
going forward, what about certain timid
courtesies and an occasional shy glance between
those two young people?  Some of us began
to think that if the Laird's scheme was to
come to anything, it was high time that
Mr. Howard Smith put in an appearance.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A WILD STUDIO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A WILD STUDIO.

.. vspace:: 2

There is a fine bustle of preparation next
morning—for the gig is waiting by the side
of the yacht; and Dr. Sutherland is carefully
getting our artist's materials into the stern;
and the Laird is busy with shawls and
waterproofs; and Master Fred brings along the
luncheon-basket.  Our Admiral-in-chief prefers
to stay on board; she has letters to write;
there are enough of us to go and be tossed
on the Atlantic swell off the great caves of
Canna.

And as the men strike their oars in the
water and we wave a last adieu, the Laird
catches a glimpse of our larder at the stern of
the yacht.  Alas! there is but one remaining
piece of fresh meat hanging there, under the
white canvas.

"It reminds me," says he, beginning to laugh
already, "of a good one that Tom Galbraith
told me—a real good one that was.  Tom
had a little bit yacht that his man and himself
sailed when he was painting, ye know; and
one day they got into a bay where Duncan—that
was the man's name—had some friends
ashore.  Tom left him in charge of the yacht;
and—and—ha! ha! ha!—there was a leg of
mutton hanging at the stern.  Well, Tom
was rowed ashore; and painted all day; and
came back to the yacht in the afternoon.
*There was no leg of mutton*!  'Duncan,' says
he, 'where is the leg of mutton?'  Duncan
pretended to be vastly surprised.  'Iss it
away?' says he.  'Away?' says Tom.  'Don't
you see it is away?  I want to know who
took it!'  Duncan looked all round him—at
the sea and the sky—and then says he—then
says he, 'Maybe it wass a
dog!'—ha! ha! hee! hee! hee!—'maybe
it wass a dog,' says
he; and they were half a mile from the shore!
I never see the canvas at the stern of a yacht
without thinking o' Tom Galbraith and the
leg of mutton;" and here the Laird laughed
long and loud again.

"I have heard you speak once or twice
about Tom Galbraith," remarked our young
Doctor, without meaning the least sarcasm;
"he is an artist, I suppose?"

The Laird stopped laughing.  There was a
look of indignant wonder—approaching to
horror—on his face.  But when he proceeded,
with some dignity and even resentment, to
explain to this ignorant person the immense
importance of the school that Tom Galbraith
had been chiefly instrumental in forming; and
the high qualities of that artist's personal
work; and how the members of the Royal
Academy shook in their shoes at the mere
mention of Tom Galbraith's name, he
became more pacified; for Angus Sutherland
listened with great respect, and even promised
to look out for Mr. Galbraith's work if he
passed through Edinburgh on his way to the
south.

The long, swinging stroke of the men soon
took us round the successive headlands until
we were once more in the open, with the
mountains of Skye in the north, and, far
away at the horizon, a pale line which we
knew to be North Uist.  And now the green
shores of Canna were becoming more
precipitous; and there was a roaring of the sea
along the spurs of black rock; and the long
Atlantic swell, breaking on the bows of the
gig, was sending a little more spray over us
than was at all desirable.  Certainly no one
who could have seen the Doctor at this
moment—with his fresh-coloured face dripping with
the salt water and shining in the sunlight—would
have taken him for a hard-worked and
anxious student.  His hard work was pulling
stroke-oar, and he certainly put his shoulders
into it, as the Laird had remarked; and his
sole anxiety was about Mary Avon's
art-materials.  That young lady shook the water
from the two blank canvases, and declared
it did not matter a bit.

These lonely cliffs!—becoming more grim
and awful every moment, as this mite of a boat
still wrestles with the great waves, and makes
its way along the coast.  And yet there are
tender greens where the pasturage appears on
the high plateaus; and there is a soft ruddy
hue where the basalt shines.  The gloom of
the picture appears below—in the caves washed
out of the conglomerate by the heavy seas; in
the spurs and fantastic pillars and arches of the
black rock; and in this leaden-hued Atlantic
springing high over every obstacle to go
roaring and booming into the caverns.  And these
innumerable white specks on the sparse green
plateaus and on this high promontory: can
they be mushrooms in millions?  Suddenly one
of the men lifts his oar from the rowlock, and
rattles it on the gunwale of the gig.  At this
sound a cloud rises from the black rocks; it
spreads; the next moment the air is darkened
over our heads; and almost before we know
what has happened, this vast multitude of
puffins has wheeled by us, and wheeled again
further out to sea—a smoke of birds!  And
as we watch them, behold! stragglers come
back—in thousands upon thousands—the air is
filled with them—some of them swooping so
near us that we can see the red parrot-like
beak and the orange-hued web-feet, and then
again the green shelves of grass and the
pinnacles of rock become dotted with those
white specks.  The myriads of birds; the
black caverns; the arches and spurs of rock;
the leaden-hued Atlantic bounding and
springing in white foam: what says Mary Avon to
that?  Has she the courage?

"If you can put me ashore?" says she.

"Oh, we will get you ashore, somehow,"
Dr. Sutherland answers.

But, indeed, the nearer we approach that
ugly coast the less we like the look of it.
Again and again we make for what should be
a sheltered bit; but long before we can get to
land we can see through the plunging sea great
masses of yellow, which we know to be the
barnacled rock; and then ahead we find a shore
that, in this heavy surf, would make match-wood
of the gig in three seconds.  Our Doctor,
however, will not give in.  If he cannot get
the gig on to any beach or into any creek, he
will land our artist somehow.  And at last—and
in spite of the remonstrances of John of
Skye—he insists on having the boat backed
in to a projecting mass of conglomerate, all
yellowed over with small shell-fish, against
which the sea is beating heavily.  It is an ugly
landing-place; we can see the yellow rock go
sheer down in the clear green sea; and the
surf is spouting up the side in white jets.  But
if she can watch a high wave, and put her
foot there—and there—will she not find herself
directly on a plateau of rock at least twelve
feet square?

"Back her, John!—back her!—" and therewith
the Doctor, watching his chance, scrambles
out and up to demonstrate the feasibility of the
thing.  And the easel is handed out to him;
and the palette and canvases; and finally
Mary Avon herself.  Nay, even the Laird will
adventure, sending on before him the luncheon-basket.

It is a strange studio—this projecting
shell-crusted rock, surrounded on three sides by the
sea, and on the fourth by an impassable cliff.
And the sounds beneath our feet—there must
be some subterranean passage or cave into
which the sea roars and booms.  But Angus
Sutherland rigs up the easel rapidly; and
arranges the artist's camp-stool; and sets her
fairly agoing; then he proposes to leave the
Laird in charge of her.  He and the humble
chronicler of the adventures of these people
mean to have some further exploration of this
wild coast.

But we had hardly gone a quarter of a mile
or so—it was hard work pulling in this heavy
sea—when the experienced eye of Sandy from
Islay saw that something was wrong.

"What's that?" he said, staring.

We turned instantly, and strove to look
through the mists of spray.  Where we had
left the Laird and Mary Avon there were now
visible only two mites, apparently not bigger
than puffins.  But is not one of the puffins
gesticulating wildly?

"Round with her, John!" the Doctor calls
out.  "They want us—I'm sure."

And away the gig goes again—plunging into
the great troughs and then swinging up to the
giddy crests.  And as we get nearer and
nearer, what is the meaning of the Laird's
frantic gestures?  We cannot understand him;
and it is impossible to hear, for the booming
of the sea into the caves drowns his voice.

"He has lost his hat," says Angus Sutherland;
and then, the next second, "Where's the easel?"

Then we understand those wild gestures.
Pull away, merry men! for has not a squall
swept the studio of its movables?  And there,
sure enough, tossing high and low on the
waves, we descry a variety of things—an easel,
two canvases, a hat, a veil, and what not.  Up
with the boat-hook to the bow; and gently
with those plunges, you eager Hector of
Moidart!

"I am so sorry," she says (or rather
shrieks), when her dripping property is
restored to her.

"It was my fault," our Doctor yells; "but
I will undertake to fasten your easel properly
this time"—and therewith he fetches a lump
of rock that might have moored a man-of-war.

We stay and have luncheon in this gusty
and thunderous studio—though Mary Avon
will scarcely turn from her canvas.  And there
is no painting of pink geraniums about this
young woman's work.  We see already that
she has got a thorough grip of this cold, hard
coast (the sun is obscured now, and the various
hues are more sombre than ever); and,
though she has not had time as yet to try to
catch the motion of the rolling sea, she has got
the colour of it—a leaden-grey, with glints of
blue and white, and with here and there a
sudden splash of deep, rich, glassy, bottle green,
where some wave for a moment catches, just
as it gets to the shore, a reflection from the
grass plateaus above.  Very good, Miss Avon;
very good—but we pretend that we are not
looking.

Then away we go again, to leave the artist
to her work; and we go as near as possible—the
high sea will not allow us to enter—the
vast black caverns; and we watch through the
clear water for those masses of yellow rock.
And then the multitudes of white-breasted,
red-billed birds perched up there—close to the
small burrows in the scant grass; they jerk
their heads about in a watchful way just like
the prairie-dogs at the mouth of their sandy
habitations on the Colorado plains.  And then
again a hundred or two of them come swooping
down from the rocky pinnacles and sail over
our heads—twinkling bits of colour between
the grey-green sea and the blue-and-white of
the sky.  They resent the presence of strangers
in this far-home of the sea-birds.

It is a terrible business getting that young
lady and her paraphernalia back into the gig
again; for the sea is still heavy, and, of course,
additional care has now to be taken of the
precious canvas.  But at last she, and the
Laird, and the luncheon-basket, and everything
else have been got on board; and away we go
for the yacht again, in the now clearing
afternoon.  As we draw further away from the roar
of the caves, it is more feasible to talk; and
naturally we are all very complimentary about
Mary Avon's sketch in oils.

"Ay," says the Laird, "and it wants but
one thing; and I am sure I could get Tom
Galbraith to put that in for you.  A bit of a
yacht, ye know, or other sailing vessel, put
below the cliffs, would give people a notion of
the height of the cliffs, do ye see?  I am
sure I could get Tom Galbraith to put that
in for ye."

"I hope Miss Avon won't let Tom Galbraith
or anybody else meddle with the picture."
says Angus Sutherland, with some emphasis.
"Why, a yacht!  Do you think anybody
would let a yacht come close to rocks like
these!  As soon as you introduce any making-up
like that, the picture is a sham.  It is the
real thing now, as it stands.  Twenty years
hence you could take up that piece of canvas,
and there before you would be the very day
that you spent here—it would be like finding
your old life of twenty years before opened up
to you with a lightning-flash.  The picture is—why
I should say it is invaluable, as it stands."

At this somewhat fierce praise, Mary Avon
colours a little.  And then she says with a
gentle hypocrisy—

"Oh, do you really think there is—there
is—some likeness to the place?"

"It is the place itself!" says he warmly.

"Because," she says, timidly, and yet with
a smile, "one likes to have one's work
appreciated, however stupid it may be.  And—and—if
you think that—would you like to have
it?  Because I should be so proud if you would
take it—only I am ashamed to offer my
sketches to anybody——"

"That!" said he, staring at the canvas as
if the mines of Golconda were suddenly opened
to him.  But then he drew back.  "Oh, no,"
he said; "you are very kind—but—but, you
know, I cannot.  You would think I had been
asking for it."

"Well," says Miss Avon, still looking down,
"I never was treated like this before.  You
won't take it?  You don't think it is worth
putting in your portmanteau?"

At this the young Doctor's face grew very
red; but he said boldly—

"Very well, now, if you have been playing
fast and loose, you shall be punished.  I *will*
take the picture, whether you grudge it me or
not.  And I don't mean to give it up now."

"Oh," said she, very gently, "if it reminds
you of the place, I shall be very pleased—and—and
it may remind you too that I am not
likely to forget your kindness to poor Mrs. Thompson."

And so this little matter was amicably
settled—though the Laird looked with a covetous
eye on that rough sketch of the rocks of Canna,
and regretted that he was not to be allowed to
ask Tom Galbraith to put in a touch or two.
And so back to the yacht, and to dinner in the
silver clear evening; and how beautiful looked
this calm bay of Canna, with its glittering
waters and green shores, after the grim rocks
and the heavy Atlantic waves!

That evening we pursued the innocent lithe
again—our larder was becoming terribly
empty—and there was a fine take.  But of more
interest to some of us than the big fish was
the extraordinary wonder of colour in sea and
sky when the sun had gone down; and there
was a wail on the part of the Laird that Mary
Avon had not her colours with her to put down
some jotting for further use.  Or if on paper:
might not she write down something of what
she saw; and experiment thereafter?  Well,
if any artist can make head or tail of words in
such a case as this, here they are for him—as
near as our combined forces of observation
could go.

The vast plain of water around us a blaze of
salmon-red—with the waves (catching the
reflection of the zenith) marked in horizontal
lines of blue.  The great headland of Canna,
between us and the western sky, a mass of
dark, intense olive-green.  The sky over that
a pale, clear lemon-yellow.  But the great
feature of this evening scene was a mass of
cloud that stretched all across the heavens—a
mass of flaming, thunderous, orange-red cloud
that began in the far pale mists in the east,
and came across the blue zenith overhead,
burning with a splendid glory there, and then
stretched over to the west, where it narrowed
down and was lost in the calm, clear gold of
the horizon.  The splendour of this great
cloud was bewildering to the eyes; one turned
gratefully to the reflection of it in the sultry
red of the sea below, broken by the blue lines
of waves.  Our attention was not wholly
given to the fishing or the boat on this lambent
evening; perhaps that was the reason we ran
on a rock, and with difficulty got off again.

Then back to the yacht again about eleven
o'clock.  What is this terrible news from
Master Fred, who was sent off with instructions
to hunt up any stray crofter he might
find, and use such persuasions in the shape of
Gaelic friendliness and English money as would
enable us to replenish our larder?  What! that
he had walked two miles and seen nothing
eatable or purchasable but an old hen?  Canna
is a beautiful place; but we begin to think
it is time to be off.

On this still night, with the stars coming
out, we cannot go below.  We sit on deck and
listen to the musical whisper along the shore,
and watch one golden-yellow planet rising over
the dusky peaks of Rum, far in the east.  And
our young Doctor is talking of the pathetic
notices that are common in the Scotch papers—in
the advertisements of deaths.  "*New
Zealand papers, please copy.*"  "*Canadian papers,
please copy.*"  When you see this prayer
appended to the announcement of the death of
some old woman of seventy or seventy-five,
do you not know that it is a message to loved
ones in distant climes, wanderers who may
forget but who have not been forgotten?
They are messages that tell of a scattered
race—of a race that once filled the glens of
these now almost deserted islands.  And surely,
when some birthday or other time of recollection
comes round, those far away,

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   |  Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe,

must surely bethink themselves of the old
people left behind—living in Glasgow or
Greenock now, perhaps—and must bethink
themselves too of the land where last they
saw the bonny red heather, and where last
they heard the pipes playing the sad *Farewell,
MacCruimin* as the ship stood out to sea.
They cannot quite forget the scenes of their
youth—the rough seas and the red heather
and the islands; the wild dancing at the
weddings; the secret meetings in the glen, with
Ailasa, or Morag, or Mairi, come down from the
sheiling, all alone, a shawl round her head to
shelter her from the rain, her heart fluttering
like the heart of a timid fawn.  They cannot
forget.

And we, too, we are going away; and it
may be that we shall never see this beautiful
bay or the island there again.  But one of
us carries away with him a talisman for the
sudden revival of old memories.  And twenty
years hence—that was his own phrase—what
will Angus Sutherland—perhaps a very great
and rich person by that time—what will he
think when he turns to a certain picture, and
recalls the long summer day when he rowed
with Mary Avon round the wild shores of Canna?





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.. _`"DUNVEGAN!—OH!  DUNVEGAN!"`:

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   CHAPTER X.


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   "DUNVEGAN!—OH!  DUNVEGAN!"

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Commander Mary Avon sends her orders
below: everything to be made snug in the
cabins, for there is a heavy sea running
outside, and the *White Dove* is already under way.
Farewell, then, you beautiful blue bay—all
rippled into silver now with the breeze—and
green shores and picturesque cliffs!  We should
have lingered here another day or two,
perhaps, but for the report about that one old
hen.  We cannot ration passengers and crew
on one old hen.

And here, as we draw away from Canna, is
the vast panorama of the sea-world around us
once more—the mighty mountain range of
Skye shining faintly in the northern skies;
Haleval and Haskeval still of a gloomy purple
in the east; and away beyond these leagues of
rushing Atlantic the clear blue line of North
Uist.  Whither are we bound, then, you small
captain with the pale face and the big, soft,
tender black eyes?  Do you fear a shower of
spray that you have strapped that tightly-fitting
ulster round the graceful small figure?  And
are you quite sure that you know whether the
wind is on the port or starboard beam?

"Look! look! look!" she calls, and our
F.R.S., who has been busy over the charts,
jumps to his feet.

Just at the bow of the vessel we see the
great shining black thing disappear.  What if
there had been a collision?

"You cannot call *that* a porpoise, any way,"
says she.  "Why, it must have been eighty
feet long!"

"Yes, yacht measurement," says he.  "But
it had a back fin, which is suspicious, and it
did not blow.  Now," he adds—for we have
been looking all round for the re-appearance
of the huge stranger—"if you want to see
real whales at work, just look over there, close
under Rum.  I should say there was a whole
shoal of them in the Sound."

And there, sure enough, we see from time to
time the white spoutings—rising high into the
air in the form of the letter V, and slowly
falling again.  They are too far away for us
to hear the sound of their blowing, nor can we
catch any glimpse, through the best of our
glasses, of their appearance at the surface.
Moreover, the solitary stranger that nearly
ran against our bows makes no reappearance;
he has had enough of the wonders of the
upper world for a time.

It is a fine sailing morning, and we pay but
little attention to the fact that the wind, as
usual, soon gets to be dead ahead.  So long
as the breeze blows, and the sun shines, and
the white spray flies from the bows of the
*White Dove*, what care we which harbour is
to shelter us for the night?  And if we cannot
get into any harbour, what then?  We carry
our own kingdom with us; and we are far from
being dependent on the one old hen.

But in the midst of much laughing at one
of the Laird's good ones—the inexhaustible
Homesh was again to the fore—a head appears
at the top of the companion-way; and there is
a respectful silence.  Unseemly mirth dies away
before the awful dignity of this person.

"Angus," she says, with a serious remonstrance
on her face, "do you believe what
scientific people tell you?"

Angus Sutherland starts, and looks up; he
has been deep in a chart of Loch Bracadaile.

"Don't they say that water finds its own
level?  Now do you call this water finding
its own level?"—and as she propounds this
conundrum, she clings on tightly to the side
of the companion, for, in truth, the *White
Dove* is curveting a good deal among those
great masses of waves.

"Another tumbler broken!" she exclaims.
"Now who left that tumbler on the table?"

"I know," says Mary Avon.

"Who was it then?" says the occupant of
the companion-way; and we begin to tremble
for the culprit.

"Why, you yourself!"

"Mary Avon, how can you tell such a
story!" says the other, with a stern face.

"Oh, but that is so," calls out our Doctor,
"for I myself saw you bring the tumbler out
of the ladies' cabin with water for the flowers."

The universal shout of laughter that
overwhelms Madame Dignity is too much for her.
A certain conscious, lurking smile begins to
break through the sternness of her face.

"I don't believe a word of it," she declares,
firing a shot as she retreats.  "Not a word
of it.  You are two conspirators.  To tell such
a story about a tumbler—-!"

But at this moment a further assault is made
on the majesty of this imperious small
personage.  There is a thunder at the bows; a
rattling as of pistol-shots on the decks forward;
and at the same moment the fag-ends of the
spray come flying over the after part of the
yacht.  What becomes of one's dignity when
one gets a shower of salt water over one's head
and neck?  Go down below, madam!—retreat,
retreat, discomfited!—go, dry your face and
your bonny brown hair—and bother us no
more with your broken tumbler!

And despite those plunging seas and the
occasional showers of spray, Mary Avon still
clings bravely to the rope that is round the
tiller; and as we are bearing over for Skye on
one long tack, she has no need to change her
position.  And if from time to time her face
gets wet with the salt water, is it not quickly
dried again in the warm sun and the breeze?
Sun and salt water and sea-air will soon chase
away the pallor from that gentle face: cannot
one observe already—after only a few days'
sailing—a touch of sun-brown on her cheeks?

And now we are drawing nearer and nearer
to Skye, and before us lies the lonely Loch
Breatal, just under the splendid Coolins.  See
how the vast slopes of the mountains appear
to come sheer down to the lake; and there is a
soft, sunny green on them—a beautiful, tender,
warm colour that befits a summer day.  But far
above and beyond those sunny slopes a
different sight appears.  All the clouds of this
fair day have gathered round the upper
portions of the mountains; and that solitary range
of black and jagged peaks is dark in shadow,
dark as if with the expectation of thunder.  The
Coolins are not beloved of mariners.  Those
beautiful sunlit ravines are the secret haunts
of hurricanes that suddenly come out to strike
the unwary yachtsman as with the blow of
a hammer.  *Stand by, forward, then, lads!
About ship!  Down with the helm, Captain
Avon!*—and behold! we are sailing away
from the black Coolins, and ahead of us there
is only the open sea, and the sunlight shining
on the far cliffs of Canna.

"When your course is due north," remarks
Angus Sutherland, who has relieved Mary Avon
at the helm, "and when the wind is due north,
you get a good deal of sailing for your money."

The profound truth of this remark becomes
more and more apparent as the day passes
in a series of long tacks which do not seem to
be bringing those far headlands of Skye much
nearer to us.  And if we are beating in this
heavy sea all day and night, is there not a
chance of one or other of our women-folk
collapsing?  They are excellent sailors, to be
sure—but—but—

Dr. Sutherland is consulted.  Dr. Sutherland's
advice is prompt and emphatic.  His
sole and only precaution against sea-sickness
is simple: resolute eating and drinking.  Cure
for sea-sickness, after it has set in, he declares
there is none: to prevent it, eat and drink,
and let the drink be *brut* champagne.  So our
two prisoners are ordered below to undergo
that punishment.

And, perhaps, it is the *brut* champagne, or
perhaps it is merely the snugness of our little
luncheon-party that prompts Miss Avon to
remark on the exceeding selfishness of yachting
and to suggest a proposal that fairly takes away
our breath by its audacity.

"Now," she says, cheerfully, "I could tell
you how you could occupy an idle day on
board a yacht so that you would give a great
deal of happiness—quite a shock of delight—to
a large number of people."

Well, we are all attention.

"At what cost?" says the financier of our party.

"At no cost."

This is still more promising.  Why should
not we instantly set about making all those
people happy?

"All that you have got to do is to get a copy of
the *Field* or of the *Times* or some such paper."

Yes; and how are we to get any such thing?
Rum has no post-office.  No mail calls at
Canna.  Newspapers do not grow on the rocks
of Loch Bracadaile.

"However, let us suppose that we have the paper."

"Very well.  All you have to do is to
sit down and take the advertisements, and
write to the people, accepting all their
offers on their own terms.  The man who
wants 500*l.* for his shooting in the autumn;
the man who will sell his steam-yacht for
7,000*l,*; the curate who will take in another
youth to board at 200*l.* a year; the lady who
wants to let her country-house during the
London season; all the people who are anxious
to sell things.  You offer to take them all.  If a
man has a yacht to let on hire, you will pay for
new jerseys for the men.  If a man has a house
to be let, you will take all the fixtures at his
own valuation.  All you have to do is to write
two or three hundred letters—as an anonymous
person, of course—and you make two or three
hundred people quite delighted for perhaps a
whole week!"

The Laird stared at this young lady as if she
had gone mad; but there was only a look of
complacent friendliness on Mary Avon's face.

"You mean that you write sham letters?"
says her hostess.  "You gull those unfortunate
people into believing that all their wishes are
realised?"

"But you make them happy!" says Mary
Avon, confidently.

"Yes—and the disappointment afterwards!"
retorts her friend, almost with indignation.
"Imagine their disappointment when they find
they have been duped!  Of course they would
write letters and discover that the anonymous
person had no existence."

"Oh, no!" says Mary Avon, eagerly.
"There could be no such great disappointment.
The happiness would be definite and real for
the time.  The disappointment would only be
a slow and gradual thing when they found no
answer coming to their letter.  You would
make them happy for a whole week or so by
accepting their offer; whereas by not answering
their letter or letters you would only puzzle
them, and the matter would drop away into
forgetfulness.  Do you not think it would be
an excellent scheme?"

Come on deck, you people; this girl has got
demented.  And behold! as we emerge once
more into the sunlight and whirling spray and
wind, we find that we are nearing Skye again
on the port tack, and now it is the mouth of
Loch Bracadaile that we are approaching.  And
these pillars of rock, outstanding from the cliffs,
and worn by the northern seas?

"Why, these must be Macleod's Maidens!"
says Angus Sutherland, unrolling one of the
charts.

And then he discourses to us of the curious
fancies of sailors—passing the lonely coasts
from year to year—and recognising as old
friends, not any living thing, but the strange
conformations of the rocks—and giving to these
the names of persons and of animals.  And he
thinks there is something more weird and
striking about these solitary and sea-worn rocks
fronting the great Atlantic than about any
comparatively modern Sphinx or Pyramid; until
we regard the sunlit pillars, and their fretted
surface and their sharp shadows, with a sort of
morbid imagination; and we discover how the
sailors have fancied them to be stone women;
and we see in the largest of them—her head
and shoulder tilted over a bit—some resemblance
to the position of the Venus discovered
at Milo.  All this is very fine; but suddenly the
sea gets darkened over there; a squall comes
roaring out of Loch Bracadaile; John of Skye
orders the boat about; and presently we are
running free before this puff from the
north-east.  Alas! alas! we have no sooner got
out of the reach of the squall than the wind
backs to the familiar north, and our laborious
beating has to be continued as before.

But we are not discontented.  Is it not
enough, as the golden and glowing afternoon
wears on, to listen to the innocent prattle of
Denny-mains, whose mind has been fired by
the sight of those pillars of rock.  He tells
us a great many remarkable things—about
the similarity between Gaelic and Irish, and
between Welsh and Armorican; and he discusses
the use of the Druidical stones, as to
whether the priests followed serpent-worship
or devoted those circles to human sacrifice.
He tells us about the Picts and Scots; about
Fingal and Ossian; about the doings of Arthur
in his kingdom of Strathclyde.  It is a most
innocent sort of prattle.

"Yes, sir," says our Doctor—quite gravely—though
we are not quite sure that he is not
making fun of our simple-hearted Laird, "there
can be no doubt that the Aryan race that first
swept over Europe spoke a Celtic language,
more or less akin to Gaelic, and that they were
pushed out, by successive waves of population,
into Brittany, and Wales, and Ireland, and the
Highlands.  And I often wonder whether it
was they themselves that modestly call themselves
the foreigners or strangers, and affixed
that name to the land they laid hold of, from
Galicia and Gaul to Galloway and Galway?
The Gaelic word *gall*, a stranger, you find
everywhere.  Fingal himself is only *Fionn-gall*—the
Fair Stranger; *Dubh-gall*—that is, the
familiar Dugald—or the Black Stranger—is
what the Islay people call a Lowlander.
*Ru-na-Gaul*, that we passed the other day—that
is the Foreigner's Point.  I think there
can be no doubt that the tribes that first
brought Aryan civilisation through the west
of Europe spoke Gaelic or something like
Gaelic."

"Ay," said the Laird, doubtfully.  He was
not sure of this young man.  He had heard
something about Gaelic being spoken in the
Garden of Eden, and suspected there might be
a joke lying about somewhere.

However, there was no joking about our
F.R.S. when he began to tell Mary Avon how,
if he had time and sufficient interest in such
things, he would set to work to study the
Basque people and their language—that
strange remnant of the old race who inhabited
the west of Europe long before Scot, or Briton,
or Roman, or Teuton had made his appearance
on the scene.  Might they not have traditions,
or customs, or verbal survivals to tell us of
their pre-historic forefathers?  The Laird
seemed quite shocked to hear that his favourite
Picts and Scots—and Fingal and Arthur and
all the rest of them—were mere modern
interlopers.  What of the mysterious race that
occupied these islands before the great Aryan
tide swept over from the East?

Well, this was bad enough; but when the
Doctor proceeded to declare his conviction that
no one had the least foundation for the various
conjectures about the purposes of those so-called
Druidical stones—that it was all a matter
of guess-work whether as regarded council-halls,
grave-stones, altars, or serpent-worship—and
that it was quite possible these stones were
erected by the non-Aryan race who inhabited
Europe before either Gaul or Roman or
Teuton came west, the Laird interrupted him,
triumphantly—

"But," says he, "the very names of those
stones show they are of Celtic origin—will ye
dispute that?  What is the meaning of *Carnac*,
that is in Brittany—eh?  Ye know Gaelic?"

"Well, I know that much," said Angus,
laughing.  "Carnac means simply the place of
piled stones.  But the Celts may have found
the stones there, and given them that name."

"I think," says Miss Avon, profoundly,
"that when you go into a question of names,
you can prove anything.  And I suppose
Gaelic is as accommodating as any other
language."

Angus Sutherland did not answer for a
moment; but at last he said, rather shyly—

"Gaelic is a very complimentary language,
at all events.  Beau is 'a woman;' and
bean-nachd is 'a blessing.'  *An ti a bheannaich
thu*—that is, 'the one who blessed you.'"

Very pretty; only we did not know how
wildly the young man might not be falsifying
Gaelic grammar in order to say something nice
to Mary Avon.

Patience works wonders.  Dinner-time finds
us so far across the Minch that we can make
out the lighthouse of South Uist.  And all
these outer Hebrides are now lying in a flood
of golden-red light; and on the cliffs of Canna,
far away in the south-east, and now dwarfed so
that they lie like a low wall on the sea, there is
a paler red, caught from the glare of the sunset.
And here is the silver tinkle of Master Fred's bell.

On deck after dinner; and the night air is
cooler now; and there are cigars about; and
our young F.R.S. is at the tiller; and Mary
Avon is singing, apparently to herself,
something about a Berkshire farmer's daughter.
The darkness deepens, and the stars come out;
and there is one star—larger than the rest, and
low down, and burning a steady red—that we
know to be Ushinish lighthouse.  And then
from time to time the silence is broken by,
"*Stand by, forrard!  'Bout ship!*" and there
is a rattling of blocks and cordage and then the
head-sails fill and away she goes again on the
other tack.  We have got up to the long
headlands of Skye at last.

Clear as the night is, the wind still comes in
squalls, and we have the topsail down.  Into
which indentation of that long, low line of dark
land shall we creep in the darkness?

But John of Skye keeps away from the land.
It is past midnight.  There is nothing visible
but the black sea and the clear sky, and the
red star of the lighthouse; nothing audible but
Mary Avon's humming to herself and her
friend—the two women sit arm-in-arm under
half-a-dozen of rugs—some old-world ballad
to the monotonous accompaniment of the
passing seas.

One o'clock: Ushinish light is smaller now,
a minute point of red fire, and the black line of
land on our right looms larger in the dusk.
Look at the splendour of the phosphorous-stars
on the rushing waves.

And at last John of Skye says in an
undertone to Angus—

"Will the leddies be going below now?"

"Going below!" he says in reply.  "They
are waiting till we get to anchor.  We must be
just off Dunvegan Loch now."

Then John of Skye makes his confession.

"Oh, yes; I been into Dunvegan Loch more
as two or three times; but I not like the dark
to be with us in going in; and if we lie off till
the daylight comes, the leddies they can go
below to their peds.  And if Dr. Sutherland
himself would like to see the channel in
going in, will I send below when the daylight
comes?"

"No, no, John; thank you," is the answer.
"When I turn in, I turn in for good.  I will
leave you to find out the channel for yourself."

And so there is a clearance of the deck, and
rugs and camp-stools handed down the
companion.  *Deoch-an-doruis* in the candle-lit
saloon?  To bed—to bed!

It is about five o'clock in the morning that
the swinging out of the anchor-chain causes the
yacht to tremble from stem to stern; and the
sleepers start in their sleep, but are vaguely
aware that they are at a safe anchorage at last.
And do you know where the brave *White Dove*
is lying now?  Surely if the new dawn brings
any stirring of wind—and if there is a sound
coming over to us from this far land of legend
and romance—it is the wild, sad wail of
Dunvegan!  The mists are clearing from the hills;
the day breaks wan and fair; the great grey
castle, touched by the early sunlight, looks
down on the murmuring sea.  And is it the
sea, or is it the cold wind of the morning, that
sings and sings to us in our dreams—

.. class:: italics

   |  Dunvegan—oh!  Dunvegan!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DRAWING NEARER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   DRAWING NEARER.

.. vspace:: 2

She is all alone on deck.  The morning
sun shines on the beautiful blue bay; on
the great castle perched on the rocks over
there; and on the wooded green hills beyond.
She has got a canvas fixed on her easel; she
sings to herself as she works.

Now this English young lady must have
beguiled the tedium of her long nursing in
Edinburgh by making a particular acquaintance
with Scotch ballads; or how otherwise could
we account for her knowledge of the "Song of
Ulva," and now of the "Song of Dunvegan?"

.. class:: italics

   |  Macleod the faithful, and fearing none!
   |    Dunvegan—oh!  Dunvegan!

—she hums to herself as she is busy with this
rough sketch of sea and shore.  How can she
be aware that Angus Sutherland is at this
very moment in the companion way, and not
daring to stir hand or foot lest he should
disturb her?

.. class:: italics

   |  Friends and foes had our passion thwarted,

she croons to herself, though, indeed, there is
no despair at all in her voice, but a perfect
contentment—

.. class:: italics

   |  But true, tender, and lion-hearted,
   |  Lived he on, and from life departed,
   |    Macleod, whose rival is breathing none!
   |      Dunvegan—oh, Dunvegan!

She is pleased with the rapidity of her work.
She tries to whistle a little bit.  Or, perhaps
it is only the fresh morning air that has put
her in such good spirits?

.. class:: italics

   |  Yestreen the Queen had four Maries.

What has that got to do with the sketch of
the shining grey castle?  Among these tags
and ends of ballads, the young Doctor at last
becomes emboldened to put in an appearance.

"Good morning, Miss Avon," says he; "you
are busy at work again?"

She is not in the least surprised.  She has
got accustomed to his coming on deck before
the others; they have had a good deal of quiet
chatting while as yet the Laird was only adjusting
his high white collar and satin neckcloth.

"It is only a sketch," said she, in a rapid
and highly business-like fashion, "but I think
I shall be able to sell it.  You know most
people merely value pictures for their
association with things they are interested in
themselves.  A Yorkshire farmer would rather have
a picture of his favourite cob than any Raphael
or Titian.  And the ordinary English squire:
I am sure that you know in his own heart he
prefers one of Herring's farm yard pieces to
Leonardo's *Last Supper*.  Well, if some
yachting gentleman, who has been in this loch,
should see this sketch, he will probably buy it,
however bad it is, just because it interests
him——"

"But you don't really mean to sell it?" said he.

"That depends," said she demurely, "on
whether I get any offer for it."

"Why," he exclaimed, "the series of pictures
you are now making should be an invaluable
treasure to you all your life long: a permanent
record of a voyage that you seem to enjoy
very much.  I almost shrink from robbing you
of that one of Canna; still, the temptation is
too great.  And you propose to sell them all?"

"What I can sell of them," she says; and
then she adds, rather shyly, "You know I
could not very well afford to keep them all
for myself.  I—I have a good many almoners
in London; and I devote to them what I can
get for my scrawls—that is, I deduct the cost
of the frames, and keep the rest for them.  It
is not a large sum."

"Any other woman would spend it in jewellery
and dresses," says he bluntly.

At this, Miss Mary Avon flushes slightly,
and hastily draws his attention to a small boat
that is approaching.  Dr. Sutherland does not
pay any heed to the boat.

He is silent for a second or so; and then
he says, with an effort to talk in a cheerful
and matter-of-fact way—

"You have not sent ashore yet this morning:
don't you know there is a post-office at
Dunvegan?"

"Oh, yes; I heard so.  But the men are
below at breakfast, I think, and I am in no
hurry to send, for there won't be any letters
for me, I know."

"Oh, indeed," he says, with seeming carelessness,
"it must be a long time since you
have heard from your friends."

"I have not many friends to hear from," she
answers, with a light laugh, "and those I have
don't trouble me with many letters.  I
suppose they think I am in very good hands at
present."

"Oh, yes—no doubt," says he, and suddenly
he begins to talk in warm terms of the
delightfulness of the voyage.  He is quite charmed
with the appearance of Dunvegan Loch and
castle.  A more beautiful morning he never
saw.  And in the midst of all this enthusiasm
the small boat comes alongside.

There is an old man in the boat, and when
he has fastened his oars, he says a few words
to Angus Sutherland, and hands up a big black
bottle.  Our young Doctor brings the bottle
over to Mary Avon.  He seems to be very
much pleased with everything this morning.

"Now, is not that good-natured?" says he.
"It is a bottle of fresh milk, with the
compliments of ——, of Uginish.  Isn't it
good-natured?"

"Oh, indeed it is," says she, plunging her
hand into her pocket.  "You must let me give
the messenger half-a-crown."

"No, no; that is not the Highland custom,"
says the Doctor; and therewith he goes below,
and fetches up another black bottle, and pours
out a glass of whiskey with his own hand, and
presents it to the ancient boatman.  You
should have seen the look of surprise in the
old man's face when Angus Sutherland said
something to him in the Gaelic.

And alas! and alas!—as we go ashore on
this beautiful bright day, we have to give up
for ever the old Dunvegan of many a dream—the
dark and solitary keep that we had
imagined perched high above the Atlantic
breakers—the sheer precipices, the awful
sterility, the wail of lamentation along the lonely
shores.  This is a different picture altogether
that Mary Avon has been trying to put down
on her canvas—a spacious, almost modern-looking,
but nevertheless picturesque castle,
sheltered from the winds by softly wooded
hills, a bit of smooth, blue water below, and
further along the shores the cheerful evidences
of fertility and cultivation.  The wail of
Dunvegan?  Why, here is a brisk and thriving
village, with a post-office, and a shop, and a
building that looks uncommonly like an inn;
and there, dotted all about, and encroaching
on the upper moorland, any number of those
small crofts that were once the pride of the
Highlands and that gave to England the most
stalwart of her regiments.  Here are no ruined
huts and voiceless wastes; but a cheerful, busy
picture of peasant-life; the strapping wenches
at work in the small farm-yards, well-built and
frank of face; the men well clad; the children
well fed and merry enough.  It is a scene that
delights the heart of our good friend of
Denny-mains.  If we had but time, he would fain go
in among the tiny farms, and inquire about the
rent of the holdings, and the price paid for
those picturesque little beasts that the artists
are for ever painting—with a louring sky
beyond, and a dash of sunlight in front.  But
our Doctor is obdurate.  He will not have
Mary Avon walk further; she must return
to the yacht.

But on our way back, as she is walking
by the side of the road, he suddenly puts his
hand on her arm, apparently to stop her.
Slight as the touch is, she naturally looks
surprised.

"I beg your pardon," he says, hastily, "but
I thought you would rather not tread on it——"

He is regarding a weed by the wayside—a
thing that looks like a snapdragon of some
sort.  We did not expect to find a hard-headed
man of science betray this trumpery sentiment
about a weed.

"I thought you would rather not tread upon
it when you knew it was a stranger," he says,
in explanation of that rude assault upon her
arm.  "That is not an English plant at all;
it is the *Mimulus*, its real home is in America."

We began to look with more interest on
the audacious small foreigner that had boldly
adventured across the seas.

"Oh," she says, looking back along the
road, "I hope I have not trampled any of
them down."

"Well, it does not *much* matter," he admits,
"for the plant is becoming quite common now
in parts of the West Highlands; but I thought
as it was a stranger, and come all the way
across the Atlantic on a voyage of discovery,
you would be hospitable.  I suppose the
Gulf-stream brought the first of them over."

"And if they had any choice in the matter,"
says Mary Avon, looking down, and speaking
with a little self-conscious deliberation, "and
if they wanted to be hospitably received, they
showed their good sense in coming to the
West Highlands."

After that there was a dead silence on the
part of Angus Sutherland.  But why should
he have been embarrassed?  There was no
compliment levelled at him that he should
blush like a schoolboy.  It was quite true that
Miss Avon's liking—even love—for the West
Highlands was becoming very apparent; but
Banffshire is not in the West Highlands.
What although Angus Sutherland could speak
a few words in the Gaelic tongue to an old
boatman?  He came from Banff.  Banffshire
is not in the West Highlands.

Then that afternoon at the great castle
itself: what have we but a confused recollection
of twelfth-century towers; and walls nine
feet thick; and ghost-chambers; and a certain
fairy-flag, that is called the *Bratach-Sith*; and
the wide view over the blue Atlantic; and of
a great kindness that made itself visible in the
way of hothouse flowers and baskets of fruit,
and what not?  The portraits, too: the
various centuries got mixed up with the old
legends, until we did not know in which face
to look for some transmitted expression that
might tell of the Cave of Uig or the Uamh-na-Ceann.
But there was one portrait there, quite
modern, and beautiful, that set all the tourist-folk
a raving, so lovely were the life-like eyes
of it; and the Laird was bold enough to say
to the gentle lady who was so good as to be
our guide, that it would be one of the greatest
happinesses of his life if he might be allowed
to ask Mr. Galbraith, the well-known artist of
Edinburgh, to select a young painter to come
up to Dunvegan and make a copy of this
picture for him, Denny-mains.  And
Dr. Sutherland could scarcely come away from
that beautiful face; and our good Queen T. was
quite charmed with it; and as for Mary
Avon, when one of us regarded her, behold! as
she looked up, there was a sort of moisture
in the soft black eyes.

What was she thinking of?  That it must
be a fine thing to be so beautiful a woman, and
charm the eyes of all men?  But now—now
that we had had this singing-bird with us on
board the yacht for so long a time—would any
one of us have admitted that she was rather
plain?  It would not have gone well with any
one who had ventured to say so to the Laird
of Denny-mains, at all events.  And as for our
sovereign-lady and mistress, these were the
lines which she always said described Mary Avon:—

   |  Was never seen thing to be praised derre,[#]
   |  Nor under blacke cloud so bright a sterre,
   |  As she was, as they saiden, every one
   |  That her behelden in her blacke weed;
   |  And yet she stood, full low and still, alone,
   |  Behind all other folk, in little brede,[#]
   |  And nigh the door, ay under shame's drede;
   |  Simple of bearing, debonair of cheer,
   |  With a full surë[#] looking and mannere.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

[#] *derre*, dearer.

.. class:: noindent small

[#] *in little brede*, without display.

.. class:: noindent small

[#] *surë*, frank.

.. vspace:: 2

How smart the saloon of the *White Dove*
looked that evening at dinner, with those
geraniums, and roses, and fuchsias, and what
not, set amid the tender green of the maidenhair
fern!  But all the same there was a serious
discussion.  Fruit, flowers, vegetables, and
fresh milk, however welcome, fill no larder;
and Master Fred had returned with the doleful
tale that all his endeavours to purchase a sheep
at one of the neighbouring farms had been
of no avail.  Forthwith we resolve to make
another effort.  Far away, on the outer shores
of Dunvegan Loch, we can faintly descry, in
the glow of the evening, some crofter's huts
on the slopes of the hill.  Down with the gig,
then, boys; in with the fishing-rods; and
away for the distant shores, where haply, some
tender ewe-lamb, or brace of quacking duck,
or some half-dozen half-starved fowls may be
withdrawn from the reluctant tiller of the
earth!

It is a beautiful clear evening, with
lemon-gold glory in the north-west.  And our
stout-sinewed Doctor is rowing stroke, and there is
a monotonous refrain of

.. class:: italics

   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |

"We must give you a wage as one of the
hands, Angus," says Queen T.

"I am paid already," says he.  "I would
work my passage through for the sketch of
Canna that Miss Avon gave me."

"Would you like to ask the other men
whether they would take the same payment?"
says Miss Avon, in modest depreciation of
her powers.

"Do not say anything against the landscape
ye gave to Dr. Sutherland," observes the
Laird.  "No, no; there is great merit in it.
I have told ye before I would like to show
it to Tom Galbraith before it goes south; I
am sure he would approve of it.  Indeed, he
is jist such a friend of mine that I would take
the leeberty of asking him to give it a bit
touch here and there—what an experienced
artist would see amiss ye know——"

"Mr. Galbraith may be an experienced
artist," says our Doctor friend with unnecessary
asperity, "but he is not going to touch
that picture."

"Ah can tell ye," says the Laird, who is
rather hurt by this rejection, "that the advice
of Tom Galbraith has been taken by the
greatest artists in England.  He was up in
London last year, and was at the studio of
one of the first of the Acadameecians, and that
very man was not ashamed to ask the opeenion
of Tom Galbraith.  And says Tom to him,
'The face is very fine, but the right arm is out
of drawing.'  You would think that impertinent?
The Acadameecian, I can tell you,
thought differently.  Says he, 'That has been
my own opeenion, but no one would ever tell
me so; and I would have left it as it is had
ye no spoken.'"

"I have no doubt the Academacian who did
not know when his picture was out of drawing
was quite right to take the advice of Tom
Galbraith," says our stroke-oar.  "But Tom
Galbraith is not going to touch Miss Avon's
sketch of Canna——" and here the fierce
altercation is stopped, for stroke-oar puts a
fresh spurt on, and we hear another sound—

.. class:: italics

   |  Soon the freshening breeze will blow.
   |  Well show the snowy canvas on her,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |    A long, strong pull together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |

Well, what was the result of our quest?
After we had landed Master Fred, and sent
him up the hills, and gone off fishing for lithe
for an hour or so, we returned to the shore
in the gathering dusk.  We found our
messenger seated on a rock, contentedly singing
a Gaelic song, and plucking a couple of fowls
which was all the provender he had secured.
It was in vain that he tried to cheer us by
informing us that the animals in question had
cost only sixpence a-piece.  We knew that
they were not much bigger than thrushes.
Awful visions of tinned meats began to rise
before us.  In gloom we took the steward and
the microscopic fowls on board, and set out
for the yacht.

But the Laird did not lose his spirits.  He
declared that self-preservation was the first law
of nature, and that, despite the injunctions of
the Wild Birds' Protection Act, he would get
out his gun and shoot the first brood of
"flappers" he saw about those lonely lochs.
And he told us such a "good one" about
Homesh that we laughed nearly all the way
back to the yacht.  Provisions?  We were
independent of provisions!  With a handful
of rice a day we would cross the Atlantic—we
would cross twenty Atlantics—so long as
we were to be regaled and cheered by the
"good ones" of our friend of Denny-mains.

Dr. Sutherland, too, seemed in no wise
depressed by the famine in the land.  In the
lamp-lit saloon, as we gathered round the
table, and cards and things were brought out,
and the Laird began to brew his toddy, the
young Doctor maintained that no one on land
could imagine the snugness of life on board a
yacht.  And now he had almost forgotten to
speak of leaving us; perhaps it was the
posting of the paper on Radiolarians, along with
other MSS., that had set his mind free.  But
touching that matter of the Dunvegan
post-office: why had he been so particular in
asking Mary Avon if she were not expecting
letters; and why did he so suddenly grow
enthusiastic about the scenery on learning that
the young lady, on her travels, was not
pestered with correspondence?  Miss Avon was
not a Cabinet Minister.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE OLD SCHOOL AND THE NEW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE OLD SCHOOL AND THE NEW.

.. vspace:: 2

The last instructions given to John of Skye
that night were large and liberal.  At break
of day he was to sail for any port he might
chance to encounter on the wide seas.  So
long as Angus Sutherland did not speak of
returning, what did it matter to us?—Loch
Boisdale, Loch Seaforth, Stornaway, St. Kilda,
the North Pole were all the same.  It is true
that of fresh meat we had on board only two
fowls about the size of wrens; but of all
varieties of tinned meats and fruit we had an
abundant store.  And if perchance we were
forced to shoot a sheep on the Flannen Islands,
would not the foul deed be put down to the
discredit of those dastardly Frenchmen?
When you rise up as a nation and guillotine
all the respectable folk in the country, it is
only to be expected of you thereafter that you
should go about the seas shooting other
people's sheep.

And indeed when we get on deck after breakfast,
we find that John of Skye has fulfilled
his instructions to the letter; that is to say,
he must have started at daybreak to get away
so far from Dunvegan and the headlands of
Skye.  But as for going farther?  There is
not a speck of cloud in the dome of blue;
there is not a ripple on the dazzling sea; there
is not a breath of wind to stir the great white
sails all aglow in the sunlight; nor is there
even enough of the Atlantic swell to move
the indolent tiller.  How John of Skye has
managed to bring us so far on so calm a
morning remains a mystery.

"And the glass shows no signs of falling,"
says our young Doctor quite regretfully: does
he long for a hurricane, that so he may exhibit
his sailor-like capacities?

But Mary Avon, with a practical air, is
arranging her easel on deck, and fixing up a
canvas, and getting out the tubes she
wants—the while she absently sings to herself
something about

.. class:: italics

   |      Beauty lies
   |      In many eyes,
   |  But love in yours, my Nora Creina.

And what will she attack now?  Those long
headlands of Skye, dark in shadow, with a
glow of sunlight along their summits; or those
lonely hills of Uist set far amid the melancholy
main; or those vaster and paler mountains of
Harris, that rise on the north of the dreaded
Sound?

"Well, you *have* courage," says Angus
Sutherland, admiringly, "to try to make a
picture out of *that*!"

"Oh," she says, modestly, though she is
obviously pleased, "that is a pet theory of
mine.  I try for ordinary every-day effects,
without any theatrical business; and if I had
only the power to reach them, I know I
should surprise people.  Because you know
most people go through the world with a sort
of mist before their eyes; and they are awfully
grateful to you when you suddenly clap a pair
of spectacles on their nose and make them see
things as they are.  I cannot do it as yet,
you know; but there is no harm in trying."

"I think you do it remarkably well," he
says; "but what are you to make of
that?—nothing but two great sheets of blue, with
a line of bluer hills between?"

But Miss Avon speedily presents us with
the desired pair of spectacles.  Instead of the
cloudless blue day we had imagined it to be,
we find that there are low masses of white
cloud along the Skye cliffs, and these throw
long reflections on the glassy sea, and
moreover we begin to perceive that the calm
vault around us is not an uninterrupted blue,
but melts into a pale green as it nears the
eastern horizon.  Angus Sutherland leaves the
artist to her work.  He will not interrupt her
by idle talk.

There is no idle talk going forward where
the Laird is concerned.  He has got hold of
an attentive listener in the person of his
hostess, who is deep in needlework; and he
is expounding to her more clearly than ever
the merits of the great Semple case, pointing
out more particularly how the charges in the
major proposition are borne out by the
extracts in the minor.  Yes; and he has caught
the critics, too, on the hip.  What about
the discovery of those clever gentlemen that
Genesis X. and 10 was incorrect?  They
thought they were exceedingly smart in
proving that the founders of Babel were the
descendants, not of Ham, but of Shem.  But
when the ruins of Babel were examined,
what then?

"Why, it was distinctly shown that the
founders were the descendants of Ham, after
all!" says Denny-mains, triumphantly.  "What
do ye think of that, Dr. Sutherland?"

Angus Sutherland starts from a reverie: he
has not been listening.

"Of what?" he says.  "The Semple case?"

"Ay."

"Oh, well," he says, rather carelessly, "all
that wrangling is as good an occupation as
any other—to keep people from thinking."

The Laird stares, as if he had not heard
aright.  Angus Sutherland is not aware of
having said anything startling.  He continues
quite innocently—

"Any occupation is valuable enough that
diverts the mind—that is why hard work is
conducive to complete mental health; it does
not matter whether it is grouse-shooting, or
commanding an army, or wrangling about
major or minor propositions.  If a man were
continually to be facing the awful mystery of
existence—asking the record of the earth and
the stars how he came to be here, and getting
no answer at all—he must inevitably go mad.
The brain could not stand it.  If the human
race had not busied itself with wars and
commerce, and so forth, it must centuries ago
have committed suicide.  That is the value
of hard work—to keep people from thinking
of the unknown around them; the more a
man is occupied, the happier he is—it does
not matter whether he occupies himself with
School Boards, or salmon-fishing, or the
prosecution of a heretic."

He did not remark the amazed look on the
Laird's face, nor yet that Mary Avon had
dropped her painting and was listening.

"The fact is," he said, with a smile, "if you
are likely to fall to thinking about the real
mysteries of existence anywhere, it is among
solitudes like these, where you see what a
trivial little accident human life is in the
history of the earth.  You can't think about such
things in Regent Street; the cigar-shops, the
cabs, the passing people occupy you.  But
here you are brought back as it were to all
sorts of first principles; and commonplaces
appear somehow in their original freshness.
In Regent Street you no doubt know that
life is a strange thing, and that death is a
strange thing, because you have been told so,
and you believe it, and think no more about
it.  But here—with the seas and skies round
you, and with the silence of the night making
you think, you *feel* the strangeness of these
things.  Now just look over there; the blue
sea, and the blue sky, and the hills—it is a
curious thing to think that they will be shining
there just as they are now—on just such
another day as this—and you unable to see
them or anything else—passed away like a
ghost.  And the *White Dove* will be sailing
up here; and John will be keeping an eye on
Ushinish lighthouse; but your eyes won't be
able to see anything——"

"Well, Angus, I do declare," exclaims our
sovereign mistress, "you have chosen a
comforting thing to talk about this morning.  Are
we to be always thinking about our coffin?"

"On the contrary," says the young Doctor;
"I was only insisting on the wholesomeness of
people occupying themselves diligently with
some distraction or other, however trivial.  And
how do you think the Semple case will end, sir?"

But our good friend of Denny-mains was far
too deeply shocked and astounded to reply.
The great Semple case a trivial thing—a
distraction—an occupation to keep people from
serious thinking!  The public duties, too, of the
Commissioner for the Burgh of Strathgovan;
were these to be regarded as a mere plaything?
The new steam fire-engine was only a toy,
then?  The proposed new park and the addition
to the rates were to be regarded as a piece
of amiable diversion?

The Laird knew that Angus Sutherland had
not read the *Vestiges of Creation*, and that
was a hopeful sign.  But, *Vestiges* or no
*Vestiges*, what were the young men of the day
coming to if their daring speculations led them
to regard the most serious and important
concerns of life as a pastime?  The
Commissioners for the Burgh of Strathgoven were
but a parcel of children, then, playing on the
sea-shore, and unaware of the awful deeps
beyond?

"I am looking at these things only as a
doctor," says Dr. Sutherland, lightly—seeing
that the Laird is too dumbfounded to answer
his question, "and I sometimes think a doctor's
history of civilisation would be an odd thing,
if only you could get at the physiological facts
of the case.  I should like to know, for example,
what Napoleon had for supper on the night
before Waterloo.  Something indigestible, you
may be sure; if his brain had been clear on the
15th, he would have smashed the Allies, and
altered modern history.  I should have greatly
liked, too, to make the acquaintance of the man
who first announced his belief that infants dying
unbaptised were to suffer eternal torture: I
think it must have been his liver.  I should like
to have examined him."

"I should like to have poisoned him," says
Mary Avon, with a flash of anger in the soft eyes.

"Oh, no; the poor wretch was only the
victim of some ailment," said our Doctor,
charitably.  "There must have been something
very much the matter with Calvin, too.  I
know I could have cured Schopenhauer of his
pessimism if he had let me put him on a
wholesome regimen."

The Laird probably did not know who
Schopenhauer was; but the audacity of the
new school was altogether too much for him.

"I—I suppose," he said, stammering in his
amazement, "ye would have taken Joan of Arc,
and treated her as a lunatic?"

"Oh, no; not as a confirmed lunatic," he
answered, quite simply.  "But the diagnosis of
that case is obvious; I think she could have
been cured.  All that Joanna Southcote wanted
was a frank physician."

The Laird rose and went forward to where
Mary Avon was standing at her easel.  He
had had enough.  The criticism of landscape
painting was more within his compass.

"Very good—very good," says he, as if his
whole attention had been occupied by her
sketching.  "The reflections on the water are
just fine.  Ye must let me show all your
sketches to Tom Galbraith before ye go back
to the south."

"I hear you have been talking about the
mysteries of existence," she says, with a smile.

"Oh, ay, it is easy to talk," he says, sharply—and
not willing to confess that he has been
driven away from the field.  "I am afraid there
is an unsettling tendency among the young
men of the present day—a want of respect for
things that have been established by the
common sense of the world.  Not that I am
against all innovation.  No, no.  The world
cannot stand still.  I myself, now; do ye know
that I was among the first in Glasgow to hold
that it might be permissible to have an organ
to lead the psalmody of a church?"

"Oh, indeed," says she, with much respect.

"That is true.  No, no; I am not one of the
bigoted.  Give me the Essentials, and I do not
care if ye put a stone cross on the top of the
church.  I tell ye that honestly; I would not
object even to a cross on the building if all was
sound within."

"I am sure you are quite right, sir," says
Mary Avon, gently.

"But no tampering with the Essentials.
And as for the millinery, and incense, and
crucifixes of they poor craytures that have not
the courage to go right over to Rome—who
stop on this side, and play-act at being
Romans—it is seeckening—perfectly seeckening.  As
for the Romans themselves, I do not condemn
them.  No, no.  If they are in error, I doubt
not they believe with a good conscience.  And
when I am in a foreign town, and one o' their
processions of priests and boys comes by, I
raise my hat.  I do indeed."

"Oh, naturally," says Mary Avon.

"No, no," continues Denny-mains, warmly,
"there is none of the bigot about me.  There
is a minister of the Episcopalian Church that I
know; and there is no one more welcome in
my house: I ask him to say grace just as I
would a minister of my own Church."

"And which is that, sir?" she asked meekly.

The Laird stares at her.  Is it possible that
she has heard him so elaborately expound
the Semple prosecution, and not be aware to
what denomination he belongs?

"The Free—the Free Church, of course,"
he says, with some surprise.  "Have ye not
seen the *Report of Proceedings* in the Semple
case?"

"No, I have not," she answers, timidly.
"You have been so kind in explaining it that—that
a printed report was quite unnecessary."

"But I will get ye one—I will get ye one
directly," says he.  "I have several copies in
my portmanteau.  And ye will see my name in
front as one of the elders who considered it fit
and proper that a full report should be
published, so as to warn the public against these
inseedious attacks against our faith.  Don't
interrupt your work, my lass; but I will get
ye the pamphlet; and whenever you want to
sit down for a time, ye will find it most
interesting reading—most interesting."

And so the worthy Laird goes below to fetch
that valued report.  And scarcely has he
disappeared than a sudden commotion rages
over the deck.  Behold! a breeze coming swiftly
over the sea—ruffling the glassy deep as it
approaches!  Angus Sutherland jumps to the
tiller.  The head-sails fill; and the boat begins
to move.  The lee-sheets are hauled taut; and
now the great mainsail is filled too.  There is
a rippling and hissing of water; and a new
stir of life and motion throughout the vessel
from stem to stern.

It seems but the beginning of the day now,
though it is near lunch-time.  Mary Avon puts
away her sketch of the dead calm, and sits
down just under the lee of the boom, where
the cool breeze is blowing along.  The Laird,
having brought up the pamphlet, is vigorously
pacing the deck for his morning exercise; we
have all awakened from these idle reveries
about the mystery of life.

"Ha, ha," he says, coming aft, "this is
fine—this is fine now.  Why not give the men a
glass of whiskey all round for whistling up such a
fine breeze?  Do ye think they would object?"

"Better give them a couple of bottles of
beer for their dinner," suggests Queen T., who
is no lover of whiskey.

But do you think the Laird is to be put off
his story by any such suggestion?  We can
see by his face that he has an anecdote to fire
off; is it not apparent that his mention of
whiskey was made with a purpose?

"There was a real good one," says he—and
the laughter is already twinkling in his eyes,
"about the man that was apologising before
his family for having been drinking whiskey
with some friends.  'Ay,' says he, 'they just
held me and forced it down my throat.'  Then
says his son—a little chap about ten—says he,
'I think I could ha' held ye mysel',
feyther'—ho! ho! ho!' says he, 'I think I could ha'
held ye mysel', feyther;'" and the Laird
laughed, and laughed again, till the tears came
into his eyes.  We could see that he was still
internally laughing at that good one when we
went below for luncheon.

At luncheon, too, the Laird quite made up his
feud with Angus Sutherland, for he had a great
many other good ones to tell about whiskey
and whiskey drinking; and he liked a
sympathetic audience.  But this general merriment
was suddenly dashed by an ominous suggestion
coming from our young Doctor.  Why,
he asked, should we go on fighting against
these northerly winds?  Why not turn and run
before them?

"Then you want to leave us, Angus," said
his hostess reproachfully.

"Oh, no," he said, and with some colour in
his face.  "I don't want to go, but I fear I
must very soon now.  However, I did not
make that suggestion on my own account; if I
were pressed for time, I could get somewhere
where I could catch the *Clansman*."

Mary Avon looked down, saying nothing.

"You would not leave the ship like that,"
says his hostess.  "You would not run away,
surely?  Rather than that we will turn at once.
Where are we now?"

"If the breeze lasts, we will get over to
Uist, to Loch na Maddy, this evening, but you
must not think of altering your plans on my
account.  I made the suggestion because of
what Captain John was saying."

"Very well," says our Admiral of the Fleet,
taking no heed of properly constituted
authority.  "Suppose we set out on our return
voyage to-morrow morning, going round the
other side of Skye for a change.  But you
know, Angus, it is not fair of you to run
away when you say yourself there is nothing
particular calls you to London."

"Oh," says he, "I am not going to London
just yet.  I am going to Banff, to see my
father.  There is an uncle of mine, too, on a
visit to the manse."

"Then you will be coming south again?"

"Yes."

"Then why not come another cruise with us
on your way back?"

It was not like this hard-headed young
Doctor to appear so embarrassed.

"That is what I should like very much
myself," he stammered, "if—if I were not in
the way of your other arrangements."

"We shall make no other arrangements,"
says the other definitely.  "Now that is a
promise, mind.  No drawing back.  Mary will
put it down in writing, and hold you to it."

Mary Avon had not looked up all this time.

"You should not press Dr. Sutherland too
much," she says shyly; "perhaps he has other
friends he would like to see before leaving
Scotland."

The hypocrite!  Did she want to make
Angus Sutherland burst a blood-vessel in
protesting that of all the excursions he had made
in his life this would be to him for ever the
most memorable; and that a repetition or
extension of it was a delight in the future
almost too great to think of?  However, she
seemed pleased that he spoke so warmly, and
she did not attempt to contradict him.  If he
had really enjoyed all this rambling idleness, it
would no doubt the better fit him for his work
in the great capital.

We beat in to Loch na Maddy—that is, the
Lake of the Dogs—in the quiet evening; and
the rather commonplace low-lying hills, and the
plain houses of the remote little village, looked
beautiful enough under the glow of the western
skies.  And we went ashore, and walked
inland for a space, through an intricate
network of lagoons inbranching from the sea;
and we saw the trout leaping and making
circles on the gold-red pools, and watched the
herons rising from their fishing and winging
their slow flight across the silent lakes.

And it was a beautiful night, too, and we
had a little singing on deck.  Perhaps there
was an under-current of regret in the knowledge
that now—for this voyage, at least—we
had touched our farthest point.  To-morrow we
were to set out again for the south.





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.. _`FERDINAND AND MIRANDA`:

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   CHAPTER XIII.


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   FERDINAND AND MIRANDA.

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The wind was laughing at Angus Sutherland.
All the time we had been sailing north
it had blown from the north; how that we
turned our faces eastward, it wheeled round
to the east, as if it would imprison him for
ever in this floating home.

"*You would fain get away*"—this was the
mocking sound that one of us seemed to hear
in those light airs of the morning that blew
along the white canvas—"*the world calls;
ambition, fame, the eagerness of rivalry, the spell
that science throws over her disciples, all these
are powerful, and they draw you, and you
would fain get away.  But the hand of the
wind is uplifted against you; you may fret as
you will, but you are not round Ru Hunish yet!*"

And perhaps the imaginative small creature
who heard these strange things in the light
breeze against which we were fighting our way
across the Minch may have been forming her
own plans.  Angus Sutherland, she used often
to say, wanted humanising.  He was too proud
and scornful in the pride of his knowledge;
the gentle hand of a woman was needed to
lead him into more tractable ways.  And then
this Mary Avon, with her dexterous, nimble
woman's wit, and her indomitable courage, and
her life and spirit, and abounding cheerfulness;
would she not be a splendid companion for
him during his long and hard struggle?  This
born match-maker had long ago thrown away
any notion about the Laird transferring our
singing-bird to Denny-mains.  She had almost
forgotten about the project of bringing Howard
Smith, the Laird's nephew, and half-compelling
him to marry Mary Avon: that was preposterous
on the face of it.  But she had grown
accustomed, during those long days of tranquil
idleness, to see our young Doctor and Mary
Avon together, cut off from all the distractions of
the world, a new Paul and Virginia.  Why—she
may have asked herself—should not these two
solitary waifs, thus thrown by chance together
on the wide ocean of existence, why should
they not cling to each other and strengthen
each other in the coming days of trial and
storm?  The strange, pathetic, phantasmal
farce of life is brief; they cannot seize it and
hold it, and shape it to their own ends; they
know not whence it comes, or whither it goes;
but while the brief, strange thing lasts, they
can grasp each other's hand, and make
sure—amid all the unknown things around them,
the mountains, and the wide seas, and the
stars—of some common, humble, human
sympathy.  It is so natural to grasp the hand
of another in the presence of something
vast and unknown.

The rest of us, at all events, have no time
for such vague dreams and reveries.  There
is no idleness on board the *White Dove* out
here on the shining deep.  Dr. Sutherland
has rigged up for himself a sort of gymnasium
by putting a rope across the shrouds to the
peak halyards; and on this rather elastic
cross-bar he is taking his morning exercise by going
through a series of performances, no doubt
picked up in Germany.  Miss Avon is busy
with a sketch of the long headland running
out to Vaternish Point; though, indeed, this
smooth Atlantic roll makes it difficult for her
to keep her feet, and introduces a certain
amount of haphazard into her handiwork.
The Laird has brought on deck a formidable
portfolio of papers, no doubt relating to the
public affairs of Strathgovan; and has put on
his gold spectacles; and has got his pencil in
hand.  Master Fred is re-arranging the cabins;
the mistress of the yacht is looking after her
flowers.  And then is heard the voice of John
of Skye—"*Stand by, boys!*" and "*Bout ship!*"
and the helm goes down, and the jib and
foresail flutter and tear at the blocks and
sheets, and then the sails gently fill, and the
*White Dove* is away on another tack.

"Well, I give in," says Mary Avon, at last,
as a heavier lurch than usual threatens to
throw her and her easel together into the
scuppers.  "It *is* no use."

"I thought you never gave in, Mary," says
our Admiral, whose head has appeared again
at the top of the companion-stairs.

"I wonder who could paint like this," says
Miss Avon, indignantly.  And indeed she is
trussed up like a fowl, with one arm round
one of the gig davits.

"Turner was lashed to the mast of a vessel
in order to see a storm," says Queen T.

"But not to paint," retorts the other.
"Besides, I am not Turner.  Besides, I am tired."

By this time, of course, Angus Sutherland
has come to her help; and removes her easel
and what not for her; and fetches her a
deck-chair.

"Would you like to play chess?" says he.

"Oh, yes," she answers dutifully, "if you
think the pieces will stay on the board."

"Draughts will be safer," says he, and
therewith he plunges below, and fetches up
the squared board.

And so, on this beautiful summer day, with
the shining seas around them, and a cool breeze
tempering the heat of the sun, Ferdinand and
Miranda set to work.  And it was a pretty
sight to see them—her soft dark eyes so full
of an anxious care to acquit herself well; his
robust, hard, fresh-coloured face full of a sort
of good-natured forbearance.  But nevertheless
it was a strange game.  All Scotchmen are
supposed to play draughts; and one brought
up in a manse is almost of necessity a good
player.  But one astonished onlooker began
to perceive that, whereas Mary Avon played
but indifferently, her opponent played with a
blindness that was quite remarkable.  She
had a very pretty, small, white hand; was he
looking at that that he did not, on one occasion,
see how he could have taken three pieces and
crowned his man all at one fell swoop?  And
then is it considered incumbent on a
draught-player to inform his opponent of what would
be a better move on the part of the latter?
However that may be, true it is that, by dint
of much advice, opportune blindness, and
atrocious bad play, the Doctor managed to
get the game ended in a draw.

"Dear me," said Mary Avon, "I never
thought I should have had a chance.  The
Scotch are such good draught-players."

"But you play remarkably well," said he—and
there was no blush of shame on his face.

Draughts and luncheon carry us on to the
afternoon; and still the light breeze holds out;
and we get nearer and nearer to the most
northerly points of Skye.  And as the evening
draws on, we can now make out the hilly line
of Ross-shire—a pale rose-colour in the far
east; and nearer at hand is the Skye coast,
with the warm sunlight touching on the ruins
of Duntulme, where Donald Gorm Mor fed
his imprisoned nephew on salt beef, and then
lowered to him an empty cup—mocking him
before he died; and then in the west the
mountains of Harris, a dark purple against
the clear lemon-golden glow.  But as night
draws on, behold! the wind dies away altogether;
and we lie becalmed on a lilac-and-silver
sea, with some rocky islands over there
grown into a strange intense green in the
clear twilight.

Down with the gig, then, John of Skye!—and
hurry in all our rods, and lines, and
the occult entrapping inventions of our
patriarch of Denny-mains.  We have no scruple
about leaving the yacht in mid-ocean, in charge
of the steward only.  The clear twilight shines
in the sky; there is not a ripple on the sea;
only the long Atlantic swell that we can hear
breaking far away on the rocks.  And surely
such calms are infrequent in the Minch; and
surely these lonely rocks can have been visited
but seldom by passing voyagers?

Yet the great rollers—as we near the
forbidding shores—break with an ominous thunder
on the projecting points and reefs.  The Doctor
insists on getting closer and closer—he knows
where the big lithe are likely to be found—and
the men, although they keep a watchful eye
about them, obey.  And then—it is Mary Avon
who first calls out—and behold!  her rod is
suddenly dragged down—the point is hauled below
the water—agony and alarm are on her face.

"Here—take it—take it!" she calls out.
"The rod will be broken."

"Not a bit," the Doctor calls out.  "Give
him the butt hard!  Never mind the rod!
Haul away!"

And indeed by this time everybody was
alternately calling and hauling; and John of
Skye, attending to the rods of the two ladies,
had scarcely time to disengage the big fish,
and smooth the flies again; and the Laird
was declaring that these lithe fight as hard
as a twenty-pound salmon.  What did we care
about those needles and points of black rock
that every two or three seconds showed their
teeth through the breaking white surf?

"Keep her close in, boys!" Angus Sutherland
cried.  "We shall have a fine pickling
to-morrow."

Then one fish, stronger or bigger than his
fellows, pulls the rod clean out of Mary Avon's
hands.

"Well, I have done it this time," she says.

"Not a bit!" her companion cries.  "Up
all lines!  Back now, lads—gently!"

And as the stern of the boat is shoved over
the great glassy billows, behold! a thin dark
line occasionally visible—the end of the lost
rod!  Then there is a swoop on the part of
our Doctor; he has both his hands on the
butt; there elapses a minute or two of fighting
between man and fish; and then we can see
below the boat the wan gleam of the captured
animal as it comes to the surface in slow
circles.  Hurrah! a seven-pounder!  John of
Skye chuckles to himself as he grasps the
big lithe.

"Oh, ay!" he says, "the young leddy knows
ferry well when to throw away the rod.  It
is a gran' good thing to throw away the rod
when there will be a big fish.  Ay, ay, it iss
a good fish."

But the brutes that fought hardest of all
were the dog-fish—the snakes of the sea; and
there was a sort of holy Archangelic joy on
the face of John of Skye when he seized a
lump of stick to fell these hideous creatures
before flinging them back into the water again.
And yet why should they have been killed on
account of their snake-like eyes and their cruel
mouth?  The human race did not rise and
extirpate Frederick Smethurst because he was
ill-favoured.

By half-past ten we had secured a good
cargo of fish; and then we set out for the
yacht.  The clear twilight was still shining
above the Harris hills; but there was a dusky
shadow along the Outer Hebrides, where the
orange ray of Scalpa light was shining; and
there was dusk in the south, so that the yacht
had become invisible altogether.  It was a long
pull back; for the *White Dove* had been carried
far by the ebb tide.  When we found her, she
looked like a tall grey ghost in the gathering
darkness; and no light had as yet been put
up; but all the same we had a laughing
welcome from Master Fred, who was glad to have
the fresh fish wherewith to supplement our
frugal meals.

Then the next morning—when we got up
and looked around—we were in the same
place!  And the glass would not fall; and the
blue skies kept blue; and we had to encounter
still another day of dreamy idleness.

"The weather is conspiring against you,
Angus," our sovereign lady said, with a smile.
"And you know you cannot run away from the
yacht: it would be so cowardly to take the
steamer."

"Well, indeed," said he, "it is the first time
in my life that I have found absolute idleness
enjoyable; and I am not so very anxious it
should end.  Somehow, though, I fear we are
too well off.  When we get back to the
region of letters and telegrams, don't you
think we shall have to pay for all this selfish
happiness?"

"Then why should we go back?" she says
lightly.  "Why not make a compact to forsake
the world altogether, and live all our life on
board the *White Dove*?"

Somehow, his eyes wandered to Mary Avon;
and he said—rather absently—

"I, for one, should like it well enough; if it
were only possible."

"No, no," says the Laird, brusquely, "that
will no do at all.  It was never intended that
people should go and live for themselves like
that.  Ye have your duties to the nation and to
the laws that protect ye.  When I left
Denny-mains I told my brother Commissioners that
what I could do when I was away to further
the business of the Burgh I would do; and I
have entered most minutely into several
matters of great importance.  And that is why I
am anxious to get to Portree.  I expect
most important letters there."

Portree!  Our whereabouts on the chart last
night was marked between 45 and 46 fathoms
W.S.W. from some nameless rocks; and here,
as far as we can make out, we are still between
these mystical numbers.  What can we do but
chat, and read, and play draughts, and twirl
round a rope, and ascend to the cross-trees to
look out for a breeze, and watch and listen to
the animal-life around us?

"I do think," says Mary Avon to her hostess,
"the calling of those divers is the softest and
most musical sound I ever heard; perhaps
because it is associated with so many beautiful
places.  Just fancy, now, if you were suddenly
to hear a diver symphony beginning in an
opera—if all the falsetto recitative and the
blare of the trumpets were to stop—and if you
were to hear the violins and flutes beginning,
quite low and soft, a diver symphony, would
you not think of the Hebrides, and the *White
Dove*, and the long summer days?  In the
winter, you know, in London, I fancy we
should go once or twice to see *that* opera!"

"I have never been to an opera," remarks
the Laird, quite impervious to Mary Avon's
tender enthusiasm.  "I am told it is a fantastic
exhibeetion."

One incident of that day was the appearance
of a new monster of the deep, which approached
quite close to the hull of the *White Dove*.
Leaning over the rail we could see him clearly
in the clear water—a beautiful, golden,
submarine insect, with a conical body like that of a
land-spider, and six or eight slender legs, by
the incurving of which he slowly propelled
himself through the water.  As we were
perfectly convinced that no one had ever been in
such dead calms in the Minch before, and had
lain for twenty-four hours in the neighbourhood
of 45 and 46, we took it for granted that this
was a new animal.  In the temporary absence
of our F.R.S., the Laird was bold enough to
name it the *Arachne Mary-Avonensis*; but did
not seek to capture it.  It went on its golden way.

But we were not to linger for ever in these
northern seas, surrounded by perpetual summer
calms—however beautiful the prospect might
be to a young man fallen away, for the moment,
from his high ambitions.  Whatever summons
from the far world might be awaiting us at
Portree was soon to be served upon us.  In
the afternoon a slight breeze sprung up that
gently carried us away past Ru Hunish, and
round by Eilean Trodda, and down by Altavaig.
The grey-green basaltic cliffs of the Skye coast
were now in shadow; but the strong sunlight
beat on the grassy ledges above; and there
was a distant roar of water along the rocks.
This other throbbing sound, too: surely that
must be some steamer far away on the other
side of Rona?

The sunset deepened.  Darker and darker
grew the shadows in the great mountains
above us.  We heard the sea along the solitary
shores.

The stars came out in the twilight: they
seemed clearest just over the black mountains.
In the silence there was the sound of a
waterfall somewhere—in among those dark cliffs.
Then our side-lights were put up; and we sate
on deck; and Mary Avon, nestling close to her
friend, was persuaded to sing for her

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   |  Yestreen the Queen had four Maries

—just as if she had never heard the song
before.  The hours went by; Angus Sutherland
was talking in a slow, earnest, desultory
fashion; and surely he must have been
conscious that one heart there at least was eagerly
and silently listening to him.  The dawn was
near at hand when finally we consented to go
below.

What time of the morning was it that we
heard John of Skye call out "*Six or seven
fathoms 'll do?*"  We knew at least that we
had got into harbour; and that the first golden
glow of the daybreak was streaming through
the skylights of the saloon.  We had returned
from the wilds to the claims and the cares of
civilisation; if there was any message to us, for
good or for evil, from the distant world we had
left for so long, it was now waiting for us on
shore.





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.. _`EVIL TIDINGS`:

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   CHAPTER XIV.


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   EVIL TIDINGS.

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We had indeed returned to the world: the
first thing we saw on entering the saloon in
the morning was a number of letters—actual
letters, that had come through a post-office—lying
on the breakfast-table.  We stared at
these strange things.  Our good Queen T. was
the first to approach them.  She took
them up as if she expected they would bite her.

"Oh, Mary," she says, "there is not one for
you—not one."

Angus Sutherland glanced quickly at the
girl.  But there was not the least trace of
disappointment on her face.  On the contrary,
she said, with a cheerful indifference—

"So much the better.  They only bother people."

But of course they had to be opened and
read—even the bulky parcel from Strathgovan.
The only bit of intelligence that came from that
quarter was to the effect that Tom Galbraith
had been jilted by his lady-love; but as the
rumour, it appeared, was in circulation among
the Glasgow artists, the Laird instantly and
indignantly refused to believe it.  Envy is the
meanest of the passions; and we knew that the
Glasgow artists could scarcely sleep in their
bed at night for thinking of the great fame of
Mr. Galbraith of Edinburgh.  However, amid
all these letters one of us stumbled upon one
little item that certainly concerned us.  It was
a clipping from the advertisement column of a
newspaper.  It was inclosed, without word or
comment, by a friend in London who knew
that we were slightly acquainted, perforce, with
Mr. Frederick Smethurst.  And it appeared
that that gentleman, having got into difficulties
with his creditors, had taken himself off, in a
surreptitious and evil manner, insomuch that this
newspaper clipping was nothing more nor less
than a hue and cry after the fraudulent bankrupt.
That letter and its startling inclosure
were quickly whipped into the pocket of the
lady to whom they had been sent.

By great good luck Mary Avon was the first
to go on deck.  She was anxious to see this
new harbour into which we had got.  And
then, with considerable dismay on her face, our
sovereign mistress showed us this ugly thing.
She was much excited.  It was so shameful of
him to bring this disgrace on Mary Avon!
What would the poor girl say?  And this
gentle lady would not for worlds have her told
while she was with us—until at least we got
back to some more definite channel of
information.  She was, indeed, greatly distressed.

But we had to order her to dismiss these idle
troubles.  We formed ourselves into a
committee on the spot; and this committee
unanimously, if somewhat prematurely, and recklessly,
resolved—

First, that it was not of the slightest
consequence to us or any human creature where
Mr. Frederick Smethurst was, or what he
might do with himself.

Secondly, that if Mr. Frederick Smethurst
were to put a string and a stone round his neck
and betake himself to the bottom of the sea, he
would earn our gratitude and in some measure
atone for his previous conduct.

Thirdly, that nothing at all about the matter
should be said to Mary Avon: if the man had
escaped, there might probably be an end of the
whole business.

To these resolutions, carried swiftly and
unanimously, Angus Sutherland added a sort
of desultory rider, to the effect that moral or
immoral qualities do sometimes reveal
themselves in the face.  He was also of opinion
that spare persons were more easy of detection
in this manner.  He gave an instance of a
well-known character in London—a most
promising ruffian who had run through the whole
gamut of discreditable offences.  Why was
there no record of this brave career written in
the man's face?  Because nature had
obliterated the lines in fat.  When a man attains
to the dimensions and appearance of a
scrofulous toad swollen to the size of an ox, moral
and mental traces get rubbed out.  Therefore,
contended our F.R.S., all persons who set out
on a career of villany, and don't want to be
found out, should eat fat-producing foods.
Potatoes and sugar he especially mentioned as
being calculated to conceal crime.

However, we had to banish Frederick
Smethurst and his evil deeds from our minds;
for the yacht from end to end was in a bustle
of commotion about our going ashore; and as
for us—why, we meant to run riot in all the
wonders and delights of civilisation.  Innumerable
fowls, tons of potatoes and cabbage and
lettuce, fresh butter, new loaves, new milk:
there was no end to the visions that rose before
the excited brain of our chief commissariat
officer.  And when the Laird, in the act of
stepping, with much dignity, into the gig,
expressed his firm conviction that somewhere
or other we should stumble upon a Glasgow
newspaper not more than a week old, so that
he might show us the reports of the meetings
of the Strathgovan Commissioners, we knew of
no further luxury that the mind could desire.

And as we were being rowed ashore, we
could not fail to be struck by the extraordinary
abundance of life and business and activity in
the world.  Portree, with its wooded crags and
white houses shining in the sun, seemed a large
and populous city.  The smooth waters of the
bay were crowded with craft of every
description; and the boats of the yachts were coming
and going with so many people on board of
them that we were quite stared out of
countenance.  And then, when we landed, and walked
up the quay, and ascended the hill into the
town, we regarded the signs over the
shop-doors with the same curiosity that regards the
commonest features of a foreign street.  There
was a peculiarity about Portree, however, that
is not met with in continental capitals.  We
felt that the ground swayed lightly under our
feet.  Perhaps these were the last oscillations
of the great volcanic disturbance that shot the
black Coolins into the sky.

Then the shops: such displays of beautiful
things, in silk, and wool, and cunning
woodwork; human ingenuity declaring itself in a
thousand ways, and appealing to our purses.
Our purses, to tell the truth, were gaping.  A
craving for purchase possessed us.  But, after
all, the Laird could not buy servant girls'
scarves as a present for Mary Avon; and Angus
Sutherland did not need a second waterproof
coat; and though we reached the telegraph
office, there would have been a certain monotony
in spending innumerable shillings on
unnecessary telegrams, even though we might be
rejoicing in one of the highest conveniences of
civilisation.  The plain truth must be told.  Our
purchases were limited to some tobacco and a
box or two of paper collars for the men; to
one or two shilling novels; and a flask of
eau-de-Cologne.  We did not half avail ourselves
of all the luxuries spread out so temptingly
before us.

"Do you think the men will have the water
on board yet?" Mary Avon says, as we walk
back.  "I do not at all like being on land.
The sun scorches so, and the air is stifling."

"In my opeenion," says the Laird, "the
authorities of Portree are deserving of great
credit for having fixed up the apparatus to let
boats get water on board at the quay.  It was
a public-spirited project—it was that.  And I
do not suppose that any one grumbles at
having to pay a shilling for the privilege.  It is a
legeetimate tax.  I am sure it would have been
a long time or we could have got such a thing
at Strathgovan, if there was need for it there;
ye would scarcely believe it, ma'am, what a
spirit of opposition there is among some o' the
Commissioners to any improvement, ye would
not believe it."

"Indeed," she says, in innocent wonder; she
quite sympathises with this public-spirited
reformer.

"Ay, it's true.  Mind ye, I am a Conservative
myself; I will have nothing to do with
Radicals and their Republics; no, no, but a
wise Conservative knows how to march with
the age.  Take my own poseetion: for
example, as soon as I saw that the steam
fire-engine was a necessity, I withdrew my
opposition at once.  I am very thankful to you,
ma'am, for having given me an opportunity of
carefully considering the question.  I will never
forget our trip round Mull.  Dear me! it is
warm the day," added the Laird, as he raised
his broad felt hat, and wiped his face with his
voluminous silk handkerchief.

Here come two pedestrians—good-looking
young lads of an obviously English type—and
faultlessly equipped from head to heel.  They
look neither to the left nor right; on they go
manfully through the dust, the sun scorching
their faces; there must be a trifle of heat
under these knapsacks.  Well, we wish them
fine weather and whole heels.  It is not the
way some of us would like to pass a holiday.
For what is this that Miss Avon is singing
lightly to herself as she walks carelessly on,
occasionally pausing to look in at a shop—

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   |  And often have we seamen heard how men are killed or undone,
   |  By overturns of carriages, and thieves, and fires in London.

Here she turns aside to caress a small terrier;
but the animal, mistaking her intention, barks
furiously, and retreats, growling and ferocious,
into the shop.  Miss Avon is not disturbed.
She walks on, and completes her nautical
ballad—all for her own benefit—

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   |  We've heard what risk all landsmen run, from noblemen to tailors,
   |  So, Billy, let's thank Providence that you and I are sailors!
   |

"What on earth is that, Mary?" her friend
behind asks.

The girl stops with a surprised look, as if
she had scarcely been listening to herself; then
she says lightly:—

"Oh, don't you know the sailor's song—I
forget what they call it:—

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   |  A strong sou-wester's blowing, Billy, can't you hear it roar now,
   |  Lord help 'em, how I pities all unhappy folks on shore now.
   |

"You have become a thorough sailor, Miss
Avon," says Angus Sutherland, who has
overheard the last quotation.

"I—I like it better—I am more interested,"
she says, timidly, "since you were so kind as
to show me the working of the ship."

"Indeed," says he, "I wish you would take
command of her, and order her present captain
below.  Don't you see how tired his eyes are
becoming?  He won't take his turn of sleep
like the others; he has been scarcely off the
deck night or day since we left Canna; and I
find it is no use remonstrating with him.  He
is too anxious; and he fancies I am in a hurry
to get back; and these continual calms prevent
his getting on.  Now the whole difficulty would
be solved, if you let me go back by the steamer;
then you could lie at Portree here for a night
or two, and let him have some proper rest."

"I do believe, Angus," says his hostess,
laughing in her gentle way, "that you threaten
to leave us just to see how anxious we are to
keep you."

"My position as ship's doctor," he retorts,
"is compromised.  If Captain John falls ill on
my hands whom am I to blame but myself?"

"I am quite sure I can get him to go below,"
says Mary Avon, with decision—"quite sure of
it.  That is, especially," she adds, rather shyly,
"if you will take his place.  I know he would
place more dependence on you than on any of
the men."

This is a very pretty compliment to pay to
one who is rather proud of his nautical knowledge.

"Well," he says, laughing, "the responsibility
must rest on you.  Order him below,
to-night, and see whether he obeys.  If we
don't get to a proper anchorage, we will
manage to sail the yacht somehow among
us—you being captain, Miss Avon."

"If I am captain," she says, lightly—though
she turns away her head somewhat,
"I shall forbid your deserting the ship."

"So long as you are captain, you need not fear
that," he answers.  Surely he could say no less.

But it was still John of Skye who was
skipper when, on getting under way, we nearly
met with a serious accident.  Fresh water and
all provisions having been got on board, we
weighed anchor only to find the breeze die
wholly down.  Then the dingay was got out to
tow the yacht away from the sheltered harbour;
and our young Doctor, always anxious for
hard work, must needs jump in to join in this
service.  But the little boat had been straining
at the cable for scarcely five minutes when a
squall of wind came over from the north-west
and suddenly filled the sails.  "Look out there,
boys!" called Captain John, for we were
running full down on the dingay.  "Let go the
rope!  Let go!" he shouted: but they would
not let go, as the dingay came sweeping by.
In fact, she caught the yacht just below the
quarter, and seemed to disappear altogether.
Mary Avon uttered one brief cry; and then
stood pale—clasping one of the ropes—not
daring to look.  And John of Skye uttered
some exclamation in the Gaelic; and jumped
on to the taffrail.  But the next thing we saw,
just above the taffrail, was the red and shining
and laughing face of Angus Sutherland, who
was hoisting himself up by means of the mizen
boom; and directly afterwards appeared the
scarlet cap of Hector of Moidart.  It was
upon this latter culprit that the full force of
John of Skye's wrath was expended.

"Why did you not let go the rope when I
wass call to you?"

"It is all right, and if I wass put into the
water, I have been in the water before," was
the philosophic reply.

And now it was, as we drew away from
Portree, that Captain Mary Avon endeavoured
to assume supreme command and would have
the deposed skipper go below and sleep.  John
of Skye was very obedient, but he said:—"Oh,
ay.  I will get plenty of sleep.  But that
hill there, that is Ben Inivaig; and there is not
any hill in the West Highlands so bad for
squalls as that hill.  By and by I will get
plenty of sleep."

Ben Inivaig let us go past its great, gloomy,
forbidding shoulders and cliffs without visiting
us with anything worse than a few variable
puffs; and we got well down into the Raasay
Narrows.  What a picture of still summer
loveliness was around us!—the rippling blue
seas, the green shores, and far over these the
black peaks of the Coolins now taking a purple
tint in the glow of the afternoon.  The shallow
Sound of Scalpa we did not venture to attack,
especially as it was now low water; we went
outside Scalpa, by the rocks of Skier Dearg.
And still John of Skye evaded, with a gentle
Highland courtesy, the orders of the captain.
The silver bell of Master Fred summoned us
below for dinner, and still John of Skye was
gently obdurate.

"Now, John," says Mary Avon, seriously, to
him, "you want to make me angry."

"Oh, no, mem; I not think that," says he,
deprecatingly.

"Then why won't you go and have some
sleep?  Do you want to be ill?"

"Oh, there iss plenty of sleep," says he.
"Maybe we will get to Kyle Akin to-night;
and there will be plenty of sleep for us."

"But I am asking you as a favour to go and
get some sleep *now*.  Surely the men can take
charge of the yacht!"

"Oh, yes, oh, yes!" says John of Skye.
"They can do that ferry well."

And then he paused—for he was great
friends with this young lady, and did not like
to disoblige her.

"You will be having your dinner now.
After the dinner, if Mr. Sutherland himself
will be on deck, I will go below and turn in
for a time."

"Of course Dr. Sutherland will be on deck,"
says the new captain, promptly; and she was so
sure of one member of her crew that she added,
"and he will not leave the tiller for a moment
until you come to relieve him."

Perhaps it was this promise—perhaps it was
the wonderful beauty of the evening—that
made us hurry over dinner.  Then we went
on deck again; and our young Doctor, having
got all his bearings and directions clear in his
head, took the tiller, and John of Skye at length
succumbed to the authority of Commander
Avon and disappeared into the forecastle.

The splendour of colour around us on that
still evening!—away in the west the sea of
a pale yellow green, with each ripple a flash
of rose-flame, and over there in the south
the great mountains of Skye—the Coolins,
Blaven, and Ben-na-Cailleach—become of a
plum-purple in the clear and cloudless sky.
Angus Sutherland was at the tiller contemplatively
smoking an almost black meerschaum;
the Laird was discoursing to us about the
extraordinary pith and conciseness of the Scotch
phrases in the Northumbrian Psalter; while
ever and anon a certain young lady, linked
arm-in-arm with her friend, would break the
silence with some aimless fragment of ballad
or old-world air.

And still we glided onwards in the beautiful
evening; and now ahead of us in the dusk
of the evening, the red star of Kyle Akin
lighthouse steadily gleamed.  We might get
to anchor, after all, without awaking John of
Skye.

"In weather like this," remarked our
sovereign lady, "in the gathering darkness,
John might keep asleep for fifty years."

"Like Rip Van Winkle," said the Laird,
proud of his erudition.  "That is a wonderful
story that Washington Irving wrote—a verra
fine story."

"Washington Irving!—the story is as old
as the Coolins," says Dr. Sutherland.

The Laird stared as if he had been Rip Van
Winkle himself: was he for ever to be
checkmated by the encyclopædic knowledge of
Young England—or Young Scotland rather—and
that knowledge only the gatherings and
sweepings of musty books that anybody with
a parrot-like habit might acquire?

"Why, surely you know that the legend
belongs to that common stock of legends that
go through all literatures?" says our young
Doctor.  "I have no doubt the Hindoos have
their Epimenides; and that Peter Klaus turns
up somewhere or other in the Gaelic stories.
However, that is of little importance; it is
of importance that Captain John should get
some sleep.  Hector, come here!"

There was a brief consultation about the
length of anchor-chain wanted for the little
harbour opposite Kyle Akin; Hector's instructions
were on no account to disturb John of
Skye.  But no sooner had they set about
getting the chain on deck than another figure
appeared, black among the rigging; and there
was a well-known voice heard forward.  Then
Captain John came aft, and, despite all
remonstrances, would relieve his substitute.  Rip
Van Winkle's sleep had lasted about an hour
and a half.

And now we steal by the black shores; and
that solitary red star comes nearer and nearer
in the dusk; and at length we can make out
two or three other paler lights close down by
the water.  Behold! the yellow ports of a
steam-yacht at anchor; we know, as our own
anchor goes rattling out in the dark, that
we shall have at least one neighbour and
companion through the still watches of the
night.





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.. _`TEMPTATION`:

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   CHAPTER XV.


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   TEMPTATION.

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But the night, according to John of Skye's
chronology, lasts only until the tide turns or
until a breeze springs up.  Long before the
wan glare in the east has arisen to touch the
highest peaks of the Coolins, we hear the
tread of the men on deck getting the yacht
under way.  And then there is a shuffling
noise in Angus Sutherland's cabin; and we
guess that he is stealthily dressing in the
dark.  Is he anxious to behold the wonders
of daybreak in the beautiful Loch Alsh, or
is he bound to take his share in the sailing
of the ship?  Less perturbed spirits sink back
again into sleep, and contentedly let the *White
Dove* go on her own way through the expanding
blue-grey light of the dawn.

Hours afterwards there is a strident shouting
down the companion-way; everybody is
summoned on deck to watch the yacht shoot the
Narrows of Kyle Rhea.  And the Laird is
the first to express his surprise: are these the
dreaded Narrows that have caused Captain
John to start before daybreak so as to shoot
them with the tide?  All around is a dream
of summer beauty and quiet.  A more perfect
picture of peace and loveliness could not be
imagined than the green crags of the mainland,
and the vast hills of Skye, and this placid
channel between shining in the fair light of
the morning.  The only thing we notice is
that on the glassy green of the water—this
reflected, deep, almost opaque green is not
unlike the colour of Niagara below the
Falls—there are smooth circular lines here and
there; and now and again the bows of the
*White Dove* slowly swerve away from her
course as if in obedience to some unseen and
mysterious pressure.  There is not a breath
of wind; and it needs all the pulling of the
two men out there in the dingay and all the
watchful steering of Captain John to keep her
head straight.  Then a light breeze comes
along the great gully; the red-capped men
are summoned on board; the dingay is left
astern; the danger of being caught in an
eddy and swirled ashore is over and gone.

Suddenly the yacht stops as if she had run
against a wall.  Then, just as she recovers,
there is an extraordinary hissing and roaring
in the dead silence around us, and close by
the yacht we find a great circle of boiling
and foaming water, forced up from below and
overlapping itself in ever-increasing folds.  And
then, on the perfectly glassy sea, another and
another of those boiling and hissing circles
appears, until there is a low rumbling in the
summer air like the breaking of distant waves.
And the yacht—the wind having again died
down—is curiously compelled one way and then
another, insomuch that John of Skye quickly
orders the men out in the dingay again; and
once more the long cable is tugging at her bows.

"It seems to me," says Dr. Sutherland to our
skipper, "that we are in the middle of about a
thousand whirlpools."

"Oh, it iss ferry quate this morning," says
Captain John, with a shrewd smile.  "It iss not
often so quate as this.  Ay, it iss sometimes
ferry bad here—quite so bad as Corrievreckan;
and when the flood-tide is rinnin, it will be
rinnin like—shist like a race-horse."

However, by dint of much hard pulling, and
judicious steering, we manage to keep the
*White Dove* pretty well in mid-current; and
only once—and that but for a second or two—get
caught in one of those eddies circling in to
the shore.  We pass the white ferry-house; a
slight breeze carries us by the green shores
and woods of Glenelg; we open out the
wider sea between Isle Ornsay and Loch
Hourn; and then a silver tinkle tells us
breakfast is ready.

That long, beautiful, calm summer day:
Ferdinand and Miranda playing draughts on
deck—he having rigged up an umbrella to
shelter her from the hot sun; the Laird busy
with papers referring to the Strathgovan Public
Park; the hostess of these people overhauling
the stores and meditating on something recondite
for dinner.  At last the Doctor fairly burst
out a-laughing.

"Well," said he, "I have been in many a
yacht; but never yet in one where everybody
on board was anxiously waiting for the glass
to fall."

His hostess laughed too.

"When you come south again," she said,
"we may be able to give you a touch of
something different.  I think that, even with all
your love of gales, a few days of the equinoctials
would quite satisfy you."

"The equinoctials!" he said, with a surprised look.

"Yes," said she boldly.  "Why not have a
good holiday while you are about it?  And a
yachting trip is nothing without a fight with the
equinoctials.  Oh, you have no idea how
splendidly the *White Dove* behaves!"

"I should like to try her," he said, with a
quick delight; but directly afterwards he
ruefully shook his head.  "No, no," said he, "such
a tremendous spell of idleness is not for me.
I have not earned the right to it yet.  Twenty
years hence I may be able to have three months'
continued yachting in the West Highlands."

"If I were you," retorted this small person,
with a practical air, "I would take it when I
could get it.  What do you know about twenty
years hence?—you may be physician to the
Emperor of China.  And you have worked
very hard; and you ought to take as long a
holiday as you can get."

"I am sure," says Mary Avon very timidly,
"that is very wise advice."

"In the meantime," says he, cheerfully, "I
am not physician to the Emperor of China, but
to the passengers and crew of the *White Dove*.
The passengers don't do me the honour of
consulting me; but I am going to prescribe for
the crew on my own responsibility.  All I want
is, that I shall have the assistance of Miss
Avon in making them take the dose."

Miss Avon looked up inquiringly with the
soft black eyes of her.

"Nobody has any control over them but
herself—they are like refractory children.
Now," said he, rather more seriously, "this
night-and-day work is telling on the men.
Another week of it and you would see *Insomnia*
written in large letters on their eyes.  I want
you, Miss Avon, to get Captain John and the
men to have a complete night's rest to-night—a
sound night's sleep from the time we finish
dinner till daybreak.  We can take charge of the yacht."

Miss Avon promptly rose to her feet.

"John!" she called.

The big brown-bearded skipper from Skye
came aft—putting his pipe in his
waistcoat-pocket the while.

"John," she said, "I want you to do me a
favour now.  You and the men have not been
having enough sleep lately.  You must all go
below to-night as soon as we come up from
dinner; and you must have a good sleep till
daybreak.  The gentlemen will take charge of
the yacht."

It was in vain that John of Skye protested
he was not tired.  It was in vain that he
assured her that, if a good breeze sprung up,
we might get right back to Castle Osprey by
the next morning.

"Why, you know very well," she said, "this
calm weather means to last for ever."

"Oh, no!  I not think that, mem," said John
of Skye, smiling.

"At all events we shall be sailing all night;
and that is what I want you to do, as a favour
to me."

Indeed, our skipper found it was of no use to
refuse.  The young lady was peremptory.  And
so, having settled that matter, she sate down to
her draught-board again.

But it was the Laird she was playing with
now.  And this was a remarkable circumstance
about the game: when Angus Sutherland
played with Denny-mains, the latter was
hopelessly and invariably beaten; and when
Denny-mains in his turn played with Mary Avon, he
was relentlessly and triumphantly the victor;
but when Angus Sutherland played with
Miss Avon, she, somehow or other, generally
managed to secure two out of three games.  It
was a puzzling triangular duel: the chief
feature of it was the splendid joy of the Laird
when he had conquered the English young
lady.  He rubbed his hands, he chuckled, he
laughed—just as if he had been repeating one
of his own "good ones."

However, at luncheon the Laird was much
more serious; for he was showing to us how
remiss the Government was in not taking up
the great solan question.  He had a newspaper
cutting which gave in figures—in rows of
figures—the probable number of millions of
herrings destroyed every year by the
solan-geese.  The injuries done to the
herring-fisheries of this country, he proved to us, was
enormous.  If a solan is known to eat on an
average fifty herrings a day, just think of the
millions on millions of fish that must go to feed
those nests on the Bass Rock!  The Laird
waxed quite eloquent about it.  The human
race were dearer to him far than any gannet or
family of gannets.

"What I wonder at is this," said our young
Doctor with a curious grim smile, that we had
learned to know, coming over his face, "that
the solan, with that extraordinary supply of
phosphorus to the brain, should have gone
on remaining only a bird, and a very ordinary
bird, too.  Its brain-power should have been
developed; it should be able to speak by this
time.  In fact, there ought to be solan
schoolboards and parochial boards on the Bass
Rock; and commissioners appointed to
inquire whether the building of nests might
not be conducted on more scientific principles.
When I was a boy—I am sorry to say—I
used often to catch a solan by floating out
a piece of wood with a dead herring on it: a
wise bird, with its brain full of phosphorus, ought
to have known that it would break its head
when it swooped down on a piece of wood."

The Laird sate in dignified silence.  There
was something occult and uncanny about many
of this young man's sayings—they savoured
too much of the dangerous and unsettling
tendencies of these modern days.  Besides, he
did not see what good could come of likening
a lot of solan-geese to the Commissioners of
the Burgh of Strathgovan.  His remarks on the
herring-fisheries had been practical and
intelligible; they had given no occasion for jibes.

We were suddenly startled by the rattling
out of the anchor-chain.  What could it
mean?—were we caught in an eddy?  There was
a scurrying up on deck, only to find that,
having drifted so far south with the tide, and
the tide beginning to turn, John of Skye
proposed to secure what advantage we had gained
by coming to anchor.  There was a sort of
shamed laughter over this business.  Was the
noble *White Dove* only a river barge, then, that
she was thus dependent on the tides for her
progress?  But it was no use either to laugh
or to grumble; two of us proposed to row the
Laird away to certain distant islands that lie
off the shore north of the mouth of Loch
Hourn; and for amusement's sake we took
some towels with us.

Look now how this long and shapely gig
cuts the blue water.  The Laird is very
dignified in the stern, with the tiller-ropes in
his hand; he keeps a straight course
enough—though he is mostly looking over the side.
And, indeed, this is a perfect wonder-hall over
which we are making our way—the water so
clear that we notice the fish darting here and
there among the great brown blades of the
tangle and the long green sea-grass.  Then
there are stretches of yellow sand, with shells
and star-fish shining far below.  The sun
burns on our hands; there is a dead
stillness of heat; the measured splash of the
oars startles the sea-birds in there among
the rocks.

.. class:: italics

   |  Send the biorlinn on careering,
   |  Cheerily and all together,
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long, strong pull together!
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!

Look out for the shallows, most dignified of
coxswains: what if we were to imbed her
bows in the silver sand?—

.. class:: italics

   |  Another cheer!  Our isle appears—
   |  Our biorlinn bears her on the faster!
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |  A long strong pull together!
   |      Ho, ro, clansmen!
   |

"Hold hard!" calls Denny-mains; and
behold! we are in among a network of channels
and small islands lying out here in the calm
sea; and the birds are wildly calling and
screaming and swooping about our heads,
indignant at the approach of strangers.  What
is our first duty, then, in coming to these
unknown islands and straits?—why, surely,
to name them in the interests of civilisation.
And we do so accordingly.  Here—let it be
for ever known—is John Smith Bay.  There,
Thorley's Food for Cattle Island.  Beyond
that, on the south, Brown and Poison's Straits.
It is quite true that these islands and bays
may have been previously visited; but it was
no doubt a long time ago; and the people
did not stop to bestow names.  The latitude
and longitude may be dealt with afterwards;
meanwhile the discoverers unanimously resolve
that the most beautiful of all the islands shall
hereafter, through all time, be known as the
Island of Mary Avon.

It was on this island that the Laird achieved
his memorable capture of a young sea-bird—a
huge creature of unknown species that
fluttered and scrambled over bush and over
scaur, while Denny-mains, quite forgetting his
dignity and the heat of the sun, clambered
after it over the rocks.  And when he got
it in his hands, it lay as one dead.  He was
sorry.  He regarded the newly-fledged thing
with compassion; and laid it tenderly down
on the grass; and came away down again to
the shore.  But he had scarcely turned his
back when the demon bird got on its legs,
and—with a succession of shrill and sarcastic
"yawps"—was off and away over the higher
ledges.  No fasting girl had ever shammed
so completely as this scarcely-fledged bird.

We bathed in Brown and Poison's Straits,
to the great distress of certain sea-pyots that
kept screaming over our heads, resenting the
intrusion of the discoverers.  But in the midst
of it, we were suddenly called to observe a
strange darkness on the sea, far away in the
north, between Glenelg and Skye.  Behold! the
long-looked-for wind—a hurricane swooping
down from the northern hills!  Our toilette
on the hot rocks was of brief duration; we
jumped into the gig; away we went through
the glassy water!  It was a race between us
and the northerly breeze which should reach
the yacht first; and we could see that John
of Skye had remarked the coming wind, for
the men were hoisting the fore-staysail.  The
dark blue on the water spreads; the reflections
of the hills and the clouds gradually disappear;
as we clamber on board the first puffs of the
breeze are touching the great sails.  The
anchor has just been got up; the gig is hoisted
to the davits; slack out the main sheet, you
shifty Hector, and let the great boom go out!
Nor is it any mere squall that has come down
from the hills; but a fine, steady, northerly
breeze; and away we go with the white foam
in our wake.  Farewell to the great mountains
over the gloomy Loch Hourn; and to the
lighthouse over there at Isle Ornsay; and to
the giant shoulders of Ard-na-Glishnich.  Are
not these the dark green woods of Armadale
that we see in the west?  And southward,
and still southward we go with the running
seas and the fresh brisk breeze from the
north: who knows where we may not be tonight
before Angus Sutherland's watch begins?

There is but one thoughtful face on board.
It is that of Mary Avon.  For the moment, at
least, she seems scarcely to rejoice that we have
at last got this grateful wind to bear us away to
the south and to Castle Osprey.





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.. _`THROUGH THE DARK`:

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   CHAPTER XVI.


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   THROUGH THE DARK.

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   |  *Ahead she goes! the land she knows!*

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What though we see a sudden squall
come tearing over from the shores of Skye,
whitening the waves as it approaches us?  The
*White Dove* is not afraid of any squall.  And
there are the green woods of Armadale, dusky
under the western glow; and here the sombre
heights of Dun Bane; and soon we will open
out the great gap of Loch Nevis.  We are
running with the running waves; a general
excitement prevails; even the Laird has
dismissed for the moment certain dark suspicions
about Frederick Smethurst that have for the
last day or two been haunting his mind.

And here is a fine sight!—the great steamer
coming down from the north—and the sunset is
burning on her red funnels—and behold! she
has a line of flags from her stem to her
top-masts and down to her stern again.  Who is
on board?—some great laird, or some gay
wedding-party?

"Now is your chance, Angus," says Queen
T., almost maliciously, as the steamer slowly
gains on us.  "If you want to go on at once, I
know the captain would stop for a minute and
pick you up."

He looked at her for a second in a quick,
hurt way; then he saw that she was only
laughing at him.

"Oh, no, thank you," he said, blushing like a
schoolboy; "unless you want to get rid of me.
I have been looking forward to sailing the
yacht to-night."

"And—and you said," remarked Miss Avon,
rather timidly, "that we should challenge them
again after dinner this evening."

This was a pretty combination: "we"
referred to Angus Sutherland and herself.  Her
elders were disrespectfully described as
"them."  So the younger people had not forgotten how
they were beaten by "them" on the previous
evening.

Is there a sound of pipes amid the throbbing
of the paddles?  What a crowd of people
swarm to the side of the great vessel!  And
there is the captain on the paddle-box—out all
handkerchiefs to return the innumerable
salutations—and good-bye, you brave Glencoe!—you
have no need to rob us of any one of our
passengers.

Where does the breeze come from on this
still evening?—there is not a cloud in the sky,
and there is a drowsy haze of heat all along the
land.  But nevertheless it continues; and, as
the *White Dove* cleaves her way through the
tumbling sea, we gradually draw on to the
Point of Sleat, and open out the great plain of
the Atlantic, now a golden green, where the
tops of the waves catch the light of the sunset
skies.  And there, too, are our old friends
Haleval and Haskeval; but they are so far
away, and set amid such a bewildering light,
that the whole island seems to be of a pale
transparent rose-purple.  And a still stranger
thing now attracts the eyes of all on board.
The setting sun, as it nears the horizon-line of
the sea, appears to be assuming a distinctly
oblong shape.  It is slowly sinking into a
purple haze, and becomes more and more oblong
as it nears the sea.  There is a call for all the
glasses hung up in the companion-way; and
now what is it that we find out there by the aid
of the various binoculars?  Why, apparently,
a wall of purple; and there is an oblong hole
in it, with a fire of gold light far away on the
other side.  This apparent golden tunnel
through the haze grows redder and more red;
it becomes more and more elongated; then it
burns a deeper crimson until it is almost a line.
The next moment there is a sort of shock to
the eyes; for there is a sudden darkness
all along the horizon-line: the purple-black
Atlantic is barred against that lurid haze low
down in the west.

It was a merry enough dinner-party: perhaps
it was the consciousness that the *White
Dove* was still bowling along that brightened
up our spirits, and made the Laird of
Denny-mains more particularly loquacious.  The
number of good ones that he told us was quite
remarkable—until his laughter might have
been heard through the whole ship.  And to
whom now did he devote the narration
of those merry anecdotes—to whom but Miss
Mary Avon, who was his ready chorus on all
occasions, and who entered with a greater zest
than any one into the humours of them.  Had
she been studying the Lowland dialect, then,
that she understood and laughed so lightly and
joyously at stories about a thousand years
of age?

"Oh, ay," the Laird was saying patronisingly
to her, "I see ye can enter into the peculiar
humour of our Scotch stories; it is not every
English person that can do that.  And ye
understand the language fine....  Well," he
added, with an air of modest apology, "perhaps
I do not give the pronunciation as broad as I
might.  I have got out of the way of talking
the provincial Scotch since I was a
boy—indeed, ah'm generally taken for an Englishman
maself—but I do my best to give ye the speerit
of it."

"Oh, I am sure your imitation of the
provincial Scotch is most excellent—most
excellent—and it adds so much to the humour of the
stories," says this disgraceful young hypocrite.

"Oh, ay, oh, ay," says the Laird, greatly
delighted.  "I will admit that some o' the
stories would not have so much humour but for
the language.  But when ye have both!  Did
ye ever hear of the laddie who was called in to
his porridge by his mother?"

We perceived by the twinkle in the Laird's
eyes that a real good one was coming.  He
looked round to see that we were listening, but
it was Mary Avon whom he addressed.

"A grumbling bit laddie—a philosopher,
too," said he.  "His mother thought he would
come in the quicker if he knew there was a fly
in the milk.  '*Johnny*,' she cried out, '*Johnny,
come in to your parritch; there's a flee in the
milk.*'  '*It'll no droon,*' says he.  '*What!*' she
says, '*grumblin again?  Do ye think there's no
enough milk?'  'Plenty for the parritch*,' says
he—*kee! kee! kee!*—sharp, eh, wasn't eh?—'*Plenty
for the parritch*,' says he—ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!"—and
the Laird slapped his thigh,
and chuckled to himself.  "Oh, ay, Miss Mary,"
he added, approvingly, "I see you are beginning
to understand the Scotch humour fine."

And if our good friend the Laird had been
but twenty years younger—with his battery of
irresistible jokes, and his great and obvious
affection for this stray guest of ours, to say
nothing of his dignity and importance as a
Commissioner of Strathgovan?  What chance
would a poor Scotch student have had, with his
test-tubes and his scientific magazines, his
restless, audacious speculations and eager
ambitions?  On the one side, wealth, ease, a pleasant
facetiousness, and a comfortable acceptance of
the obvious facts of the universe—including
water-rates and steam fire-engines; on the
other, poverty, unrest, the physical struggle
for existence, the mental struggle with the
mysteries of life: who could doubt what the
choice would be?  However, there was no
thought of this rivalry now.  The Laird had
abdicated in favour of his nephew, Howard,
about whom he had been speaking a good deal
to Mary Avon of late.  And Angus—though
he was always very kind and timidly attentive
to Miss Avon—seemed nevertheless at times
almost a little afraid of her; or perhaps it was
only a vein of shyness that cropped up from
time to time through his hard mental
characteristics.  In any case, he was at this moment
neither the shy lover nor the eager student; he
was full of the prospect of having sole command
of the ship during a long night on the Atlantic,
and he hurried us up on deck after dinner
without a word about that return-battle at bezique.

The night had come on apace, though there
was still a ruddy mist about the northern skies,
behind the dusky purple of the Coolin hills.
The stars were out overhead; the air around
us was full of the soft cries of the divers;
occasionally, amid the lapping of the water, we
could hear some whirring by of wings.  Then
the red port light and the green starboard light
were brought up from the forecastle, and fixed
in their place; the men went below; Angus
Sutherland took the tiller; the Laird kept
walking backwards and forwards as a sort of
look-out; and the two women were as usual
seated on rugs together in some invisible
corner—crooning snatches of ballads, or making
impertinent remarks about people much wiser
and older than themselves.

"Now, Angus," says the voice of one of
them—apparently from somewhere about the
companion, "show us that you can sail the
yacht properly, and we will give you complete
command during the equinoctials."

"You speak of the equinoctials," said he,
laughing, "as if it was quite settled I should be
here in September."

"Why not?" said she, promptly.  "Mary is
my witness you promised.  You wouldn't go
and desert two poor lone women?"

"But I have got that most uncomfortable
thing, a conscience," he answered; "and I
know it would stare at me as if I were mad if I
proposed to spend such a long time in idleness.
It would be outraging all my theories, besides.
You know, for years and years back I have
been limiting myself in every way—living, for
example, on the smallest allowance of food and
drink, and that of the simplest and cheapest—so
that if any need arose, I should have no
luxurious habits to abandon——"

"But what possible need can there be?" said
Mary Avon, warmly.

"Do you expect to spend your life in a jail?"
said the other woman.

"No," said he, quite simply.  "But I will
give you an instance of what a man who
devotes himself to his profession may have to
do.  A friend of mine, who is one of the highest
living authorities on *Materia Medica*, refused
all invitations for three months, and during the
whole of that time lived each day on precisely
the same food and drink, weighed out in exact
quantities, so as to determine the effect of
particular drugs on himself.  Well, you know,
you should be ready to do that——"

"Oh, how wrong you are!" says Mary Avon,
with the same impetuosity.  "A man who
works as hard as you do should not sacrifice
yourself to a theory.  And what is it?  It is
quite foolish!"

"Mary!" her friend says.

"It is," she says, with generous warmth.  "It
is like a man who goes through life with a
coffin on his back, so that he may be ready for
death.  Don't you think that when death
comes it will be time enough to be getting the coffin?"

This was a poser.

"You know quite well," she says, "that when
the real occasion offered, like the one you
describe, you could deny yourself any luxuries
readily enough; why should you do so now?"

At this there was a gentle sound of laughter.

"Luxuries—the luxuries of the *White
Dove*!" says her hostess, mindful of tinned
meats.

"Yes, indeed," says our young Doctor,
though he is laughing too.  "There is far too
much luxury—the luxury of idleness—on board
this yacht to be wholesome for one like me."

"Perhaps you object to the effeminacy of the
downy couches and the feather pillows," says
his hostess, who is always grumbling about the
hardness of the beds.

But it appears that she has made an exceedingly
bad shot.  The man at the wheel—one
can just make out his dark figure against the
clear starlit heavens, though occasionally he
gets before the yellow light of the binnacle—proceeds
to assure her that, of all the luxuries
of civilisation, he appreciates most a horse-hair
pillow; and that he attributes his sound sleeping
on board the yacht to the hardness of the
beds.  He would rather lay his head on a
brick, he says, for a night's rest than sink it in
the softest feathers.

"Do you wonder," he says, "that Jacob
dreamed of angels when he had a stone for his
pillow?  I don't.  If I wanted to have a
pleasant sleep and fine dreams that is the sort of
pillow I should have."

Some phrase of this catches the ear of our
look-out forward; he instantly comes aft.

"Yes, it is a singular piece of testimony," he
says.  "There is no doubt of it; I have myself
seen the very place."

We were not startled; we knew that the
Laird, under the guidance of a well-known
Free Church minister, had made a run through
Palestine.

"Ay," said he, "the further I went away
from my own country the more I saw nothing
but decadence and meesery.  The poor
craytures!—living among ruins, and tombs, and
decay, without a trace of public spirit or private
energy.  The disregard of sanitary laws was
something terrible to look at—as bad as their
universal beggary.  That is what comes of
centralisation, of suppressing local government.
Would ye believe that there are a lot of silly
bodies actually working to get our Burgh of
Strathgovan annexed to Glasgow—swallowed
up in Glasgow!"

"Impossible!" we exclaim.

"I tell ye it is true.  But no, no!  We are
not ripe yet for those Radical measures.  We
are constituted under an Act of Parliament.
Before the House of Commons would dare to
annex the free and flourishing Burgh of Strathgovan
to Glasgow, I'm thinking the country far
and near would hear something of it!"

Yes; and we think so, too.  And we think
it would be better if the hamlets and towns of
Palestine were governed by men of public
spirit like the Commissioners of Strathgovan;
then they would be properly looked after.  Is
there a single steam fire-engine in Jericho?

However, it is late; and presently the
women say good-night and retire.  And the
Laird is persuaded to go below with them also;
for how otherwise could he have his final glass
of toddy in the saloon?  There are but two of
us left on deck, in the darkness, under the stars.

It is a beautiful night, with those white and
quivering points overhead, and the other white
and burning points gleaming on the black
waves that whirl by the yacht.  Beyond the
heaving plain of waters there is nothing visible
but the dusky gloom of the Island of Eigg, and
away in the south the golden eye of Ardnamurchan
lighthouse, for which we are steering.
Then the intense silence—broken only when
the wind, changing a little, gybes the sails and
sends the great boom swinging over on to the
lee tackle.  It is so still that we are startled by
the sudden noise of the blowing of a whale;
and it sounds quite close to the yacht, though
it is more likely that the animal is miles away.

"She is a wonderful creature—she is indeed,"
says the man at the wheel; as if every one
must necessarily be thinking about the same
person.

"Who?"

"Your young English friend.  Every minute
of her life seems to be an enjoyment to her;
she sings just as a bird sings, for her own
amusement, and without thinking."

"She can think, too; she is not a fool."

"Though she does not look very strong,"
continues the young Doctor, "she must have
a thoroughly healthy constitution, or how could
she have such a happy disposition?  She is
always contented; she is never put out.  If
you had only seen her patience and cheerfulness
when she was attending that old woman—many
a time I regretted it—the case was
hopeless—a hired nurse would have done
as well."

"Hiring a nurse might not have satisfied
the young lady's notions of duty."

"Well, I've seen women in sick-rooms, but
never any one like her," said he, and then he
added, with a sort of emphatic wonder, "I'm
hanged if she did not seem to enjoy that, too!
Then you never saw any one so particular
about following out instructions."

It is here suggested to our steersman that
he himself may be a little too particular about
following out instructions.  For John of Skye's
last counsel was to keep Ardnamurchan light
on our port bow.  That was all very well when
we were off the north of Eigg; but is
Dr. Sutherland aware that the south point of
Eigg—Eilean-na-Castle—juts pretty far out; and is
not that black line of land coming uncommonly
close on our starboard bow?  With some
reluctance our new skipper consents to alter his
course by a couple of points; and we bear
away down for Ardnamurchan.

And of what did he not talk during the long
starlit night—the person who ought to have
been lookout sitting contentedly aft, a mute
listener?—of the strange fears that must have
beset the people who first adventured out to sea;
of the vast expenditure of human life that must
have been thrown away in the discovery of
the most common facts about currents and
tides and rocks; and so forth, and so forth.
But ever and again his talk returned to
Mary Avon.

"What does the Laird mean by his
suspicions about her uncle?" he asked on one
occasion—just as we had been watching a
blue-white bolt flash down through the serene
heavens and expire in mid-air.

"Mr. Frederick Smethurst has an ugly face."

"But what does he mean about those relations
between the man with the ugly face and
his niece?"

"That is idle speculation.  Frederick
Smethurst was her trustee, and might have done her
some mischief—that is, if he is an out-and-out
scoundrel; but that is all over.  Mary is
mistress of her own property now."

Here the boom came slowly swinging over;
and presently there were all the sheets of the
head-sails to be looked after—tedious work
enough for amateurs in the darkness of the
night.

Then further silence; and the monotonous
rush and murmur of the unseen sea; and the
dark topmast describing circles among the stars.
We get up one of the glasses to make astronomical
observations, but the heaving of the boat
somewhat interferes with this quest after
knowledge.  Whoever wants to have a good idea of
forked lightning has only to take up a binocular
on board a pitching yacht, and try to fix it on
a particular planet.

The calm, solemn night passes slowly; the
red and green lights shine on the black
rigging; afar in the south burns the guiding star
of Ardnamurchan.  And we have drawn away
from Eigg now, and passed the open sound;
and there, beyond the murmuring sea, is the
doom of the Island of Muick.  All the people
below are wrapped in slumber; the cabins are
dark; there is only a solitary candle burning in
the saloon.  It is a strange thing to be
responsible for the lives of those sleeping
folk—out here on the lone Atlantic, in the stillness
of the night.

Our young Doctor bears his responsibility
lightly.  He has—for a wonder—laid aside his
pipe; and he is humming a song that he has
heard Mary Avon singing of late—something
about

   |  O think na lang, lassie, though I gang awa',
   |  For I'll come and see ye in spite o' them a',

and he is wishing the breeze would blow a bit
harder—and wondering whether the wind will
die away altogether when we get under the lee
of Ardnamurchan Point.

But long before we have got down to Ardnamurchan,
there is a pale grey light beginning to
tell in the eastern skies; and the stars are
growing fainter; and the black line of the land
is growing clearer above the wrestling seas.  Is
it a fancy that the first light airs of the morning
are a trifle cold?  And then we suddenly see,
among the dark rigging forward, one or two
black figures; and presently John of Skye
comes aft, rubbing his eyes.  He has had a
good sleep at last.

Go below, then, you stout-sinewed young
Doctor; you have had your desire of sailing the
*White Dove* through the still watches of the
night.  And soon you will be asleep, with your
head on the hard pillow of that little state-room
and though the pillow is not as hard as a stone,
still the night and the sea and the stars are
quickening to the brain; and who knows that
you may not perchance after all dream of
angels, or hear some faint singing far away?

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   |  There was Mary Beaton—and Mary Seaton——

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Or is it only a sound of the waves?

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   END OF VOL. I.

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   LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL.

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