no. I may believe a great deal, but I'm not likely to believe that."

"I see you are a critic, Symington; and do you read for the same reason
that you have been suggesting to me?--because you have too much to
occupy your thoughts?"

"Well, pairtly, my lord, and pairtly just in my idle hours to pass the
time. I have made up your fire and lighted the candles, and everything
is in order. Will I wait upon your lordship till you're inclined for
your bed? or will I----" Symington made a significant pause, which it
was not very difficult to interpret.

"You need not wait," Walter said; and then, with an instinct which he
was half ashamed of, he asked hurriedly, "Whereabouts do you sleep?"

"That is just about the difficulty," said old Symington. "I'm rather out
of call if your lordship should want anything. The only way will just be
to come down the stairs, if your lordship will take the trouble, and
ring the big bell. It would waken a' the seven sleepers if it was rung
at their lug: and I'm not so ill to waken when there is noise enough.
But ye have everything to your hand, my lord. If you'll just give a
glance into the other room, I can let you see where everything is. There
is the spirit-lamp, not to say a small kettle by the fire, and
there's----"

"That will do," said Walter. "I shall not want anything more to-night."

The old servant went away with a glance round the room, in which Walter
thought there was some anxiety, and stopped again at the door to say
"Good night, my lord. It's not that I am keen for my bed--if your
lordship would like me to bide, or even to take a doze upon a chair----"

"Go to bed, old Sym.," said the young man with a laugh. The idea of
finding a protector in Symington was somewhat ludicrous. But these
interruptions disturbed him once more, and brought back his excitement:
he felt a sort of pang as he heard the old servant's heavy step going
down the winding stair, and echoing far away, as it seemed, into the
bowels of the earth. Then that extreme and blighting silence which is
like a sort of conscious death came upon the place. The thick curtains
shut out every sound of wind and water outside as they shut out every
glimpse of light. Walter heard his pulse in his ears, his heart thumping
like the hammer of a machine. The whole universe seemed concentrated in
that only living breathing thing, which was himself. He tried to resume
his book, but the spell of the story was broken. He could no longer
follow the fortunes of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Walter Methven thrust
himself in front of these personages, and, though he was not half so
amusing, claimed a superior importance by right of those pulses that
clanged in his head like drums beating. He said to himself that he was
very comfortable, that he had never expected to be so well off. But he
could not regain his composure or sense of well-being. It was a little
better when he went into his bed-room, the mere movement and passage
from one room to another being of use to him. The sense of oppression
and stagnation, however, soon became almost greater here than in the
sitting-room. One side of the room was entirely draped in close-drawn
curtains, so that it was impossible to make out even where the windows
were. He drew them aside with some trouble, for the draperies were very
heavy, but not to much advantage. At first it seemed to him that there
were no windows at all; then he caught sight of something like a recess
high in the wall; and climbing up, found the hasp of a rough shutter,
which covered a small square window built into a cave of the deep
masonry. That this should be the only means of lighting an almost
luxurious sleeping chamber, bewildered him more and more; but it would
not open, and let in no air, and the atmosphere felt more stifling than
ever in this revelation of the impossibility of renewing it. Finally, he
went to bed with a sort of rueful sense that there was the last citadel
and refuge of a stranger beset by imaginations in so weird and
mysterious a place. He did not expect to sleep, but he determined that
he would not, at least, be the sport of his own fancies.

It astonished Walter beyond measure to find himself waking in broad
daylight, with Symington moving softly about the room, and a long
window, the existence of which he had never suspected, facing him as he
looked up from his pillows, after a comfortable night's sleep. Mingled
shame and amusement made him burst into an uneasy laugh, as he realised
this exceedingly easy end of his tribulations.

"Mrs. Macalister," said Symington, "would like well to know when your
lordship is likely to be ready, to put down the trout at the right
moment: for it's an awful pity to spoil a Loch Houran trout."

CHAPTER XI.

To insist upon the difference between an impression made when we arrive,
tired and excited at night, in a strange place, and that which the same
scene produces in the early freshness and new life of the morning, would
be to deliver ourselves over to the reign of the truism. It would,
however, have been impossible to feel this with more force than Walter
felt it. His sensations of alarm and excitement struck him not only as
unjustifiable but ludicrous. He laughed once more when he came out of
his chamber into the warm and genial room, which had seemed to him so
mysterious and dark on the previous night. There were windows upon
either side of the fire-place, each in a deep recess like a small room,
so great was the thickness of the wall. They looked out upon the
mountains, upon the narrow end of the loch, all bubbling and sparkling
in the sunshine, and down upon the little grassy slope rough and uncared
for, yet green, which was the only practicable entrance to the castle.
The windows were not large, and the room still not very light, though
the sunshine which poured in at one side made a most picturesque effect
of light and shade. The portraits on the wall were better than they had
seemed, and had lost the inquisitive air of dissatisfied inspection
which Walter's imagination had given them. The book-shelves at the end
gave relief to the room, with their cheerful gilding and the subdued
tone of their bindings. Walter thought of the chamber in the _Pilgrim's
Progress_ turned towards the sunrising, the name of which was Peace. But
peace was not the thing most suggested at Kinloch Houran by any of the
accessories about, and a vision of the chilliness of the gray light in
the afternoon, and the force of the east wind when it came, crossed his
mind in true nineteenth century criticism of the more poetical view. But
in the mean time, the policy of enjoying the present was undeniable,
especially when that present took the form of a Loch Houran trout, fresh
from the water, and cooked as fish only are under such conditions. He
looked back upon the agitations of the evening, and the reluctant angry
sentiment with which he had come to this old house of his family, with
amused incredulity and shame. To think that he could be such an
impressionable fool! He dismissed it all lightly from his mind as he
hurried over his breakfast, with the intention of getting out at once
and exploring everything about. He had even newspapers upon his table
along with the fresh scones, the new-made butter, all the fresh
provisions of the meal. To be sure, it was Glasgow and not London from
which they came--but the world's history was no less instant in them,
flashing from all parts of the world into this home of the ancient
ages.

His first inspection was of the castle itself, which he undertook under
the auspices of old Symington and old Macalister, both eager to explain
and describe what it had been, as well as what it was. What it was did
not consist of very much. "My lord's rooms," those in which he had spent
the night, were the only habitable portion of the great pile. He was led
through the roofless hall, with its musicians' gallery still perched
high up and overshadowed with canopies of ashen boughs, vigorous though
leafless; the guard-room, the supposed kitchen with its large chimney,
the oblong space from east to west which was supposed to have been the
chapel. All was a little incoherent in the completeness of ruin. There
was little of the stimulation of family pride to be got out of those
desolate places. The destruction was too complete to leave room even for
the facile web of imagination. The Crusader, about whom there was a
legend a little too picturesque and romantic to be true, or the lady who
was only saved by his sudden appearance from unfaithfulness, were not
more easy to conjure up within the inclosure of those shapeless walls
than on any unremarkable spot where the story might have been told.
Walter grew a little weary as Symington and the old guardian of the
house argued as to which was this division of the castle, and which
that. He left them discussing the question, and climbed up by a rude
stair which had been half improvised from the ruined projections of the
masonry, to the crumbling battlements above. From thence he looked down
upon a scene which was older than the oldest ruin, yet ever fresh in
perennial youth: the loch stretched out like a great mirror under the
wintry blue of the sky and the dazzling blaze of the sunshine,
reflecting everything, every speck of cloud above and every feathery
twig and minute island below. There was no need to make believe, to
simulate unfelt enthusiasm, or endeavour to connect with unreal
associations this wonderful and glorious scene. Perhaps there was in his
mind something more in harmony with the radiance of nature than with the
broken fragments of a history which he had no skill to piece up into
life again. He stood gazing upon the scene in a rapture of silent
delight. The hills in their robes of velvet softness, ethereal
air-garments more lovely than any tissue ever woven in mortal loom, drew
aside on either hand in the blue space and dazzling atmosphere to open
out this liquid vale of light, with its dark specks of islets, its
feathery banks, all rustling with leafless trees. Every outline and
detail within its reach was turned into a line, a touch, more sweet by
the flattering glory of the still water in which everything was double.
The morning freshness and sheen were still unbroken. It was like a new
creation lying contemplating itself in the first ecstasy of
consciousness. Walter was gazing upon this wonderful scene when the
sharp voice of old Macalister made him start, and take a step aside
which almost had serious consequences: for he stepped back unwarily
upon the crumbling wall, and might have fallen but for the violent grip
of the old man, who clutched him like a shaky Hercules, with a grasp
which was vigorous yet trembling.

"Lord's sake take care," he cried. His face flushed, then paled again
with genuine emotion. "Do you think we have a store of young lads like
you, that you will risk your life like yon? and just in the place where
the lady fell. You have given me such a start I canna breathe," he
cried.

To tell the truth, looking back upon it, Walter himself did not like the
look of the precipice which he had escaped.

"Where the lady fell?" he asked with a little eagerness, as he came to
the battlement.

"Oh ay. I seldom bother my head about what's happened, so to speak, two
or three days since. It was just there she fell. She has been bedridden
ever since, from a' I hear, which just shows the folly of venturing
about an auld place without somebody that knows how to take care of ye.
What would have come of you yoursel', that is the maister of a', if auld
Sandy Macalister had not been there?"

"Thank you, Macalister, you shall find me grateful," said Walter; "but
who was this lady? two or three days ago, did you say?"

"Years--years; did I no say years? Oh ay, it may be longer, twenty or
thirty. I'm meaning just naething in a life like mine. She had some
silly story of being frightened with a gentleman that she thought she
saw. They are keen about making up a story--women folk. She was just the
sister to the man of business, ye'll have heard of her--a pretty bit
thing, if that was of any consequence; but, Lord's sake, what's that
atween you and me, and you ignorant of everything?" the old man said.
"Do you see the chimneys yonder, and the gable end with the crow steps,
as they call it, just pushing out among the trees? That's just your ain
shooting-box--they call it Auchnasheen. I'll tell you the meanings of
the names another time. Out beyond yonder, the big house away at the
point, it's a new place built for his diversion by one of your new men.
Yon island far away that's bare and green is the island of Rest, where
all the loch was once buried: and atween us and that there's another
isle with a gable end among the trees which is just the last place
that's left to an auld race to plant their feet upon. It's a bonnie
piece of water; you that's come from the south you'll never have seen
the like. I'll tell you all the stories of the divers places, and how
they're connected with the Me'vens that are chiefs of Loch Houran; for I
wouldna give a button for that new-fangled title of the Lords Erradeen."

"It has lasted however for some centuries," said Walter, with a sudden
sense of displeasure which he felt to be absurd enough.

"And what is that in a family?" said old Macalister, "I think nothing of
it. A hundred years or two that never counts one way nor another; it's
nae antiquity. If that nonsense were true about the Warlock lord, he
would be but twa hundred and fifty at the present speaking, or
thereabouts, and a' that have ever thought they saw him represent him as
a fine personable man. I have never had that pleasure myself," the old
man said with his shrill laugh. "Where are you going, my young
gentleman? Ye'll just go down like a stane and end in a rattle of dust
and mortar, if you'll no be guided by me."

"Let you his lordship alone, Sandy," cried the voice of Symington,
intermingled with pants and sobs as he climbed up to the parapet. "Ye
must not occupy my lord's time with your old craiks. You would perhaps
like, my lord, to visit Auchnasheen, where the keeper will be on the
outlook: or may be it would be better to organise your day's shooting
for to-morrow, when you have lookit a little about you: or ye would
perhaps like to take a look at the environs, or see the factor, who is
very anxious as soon as your lordship has a moment--"

"Oh! and there is the minister that can tell ye a' about the
antiquities, my lord: and traces out the auld outline of the castle
grandly, till ye seem to see it in all its glory--"

"Or--" Symington had begun, when Walter turned at bay. He faced the old
men with a half-laughing defiance. "I see plenty of boats about," he
said. "I am going out to explore the loch. I want no attendance, or any
help, but that you will be good enough to leave me to myself."

"We'll do that, my lord. I will just run and cry upon Duncan that is
waiting about--"

The end of all this zeal and activity was that when Walter found himself
at last free and on the shining bosom of the loch, he was in a boat too
heavy for his own sole management, sharing the care of it with Duncan,
who was of a taciturn disposition and answered only when spoken to. This
made the arrangement almost as satisfactory as if he had been alone, for
Duncan was quite willing to obey and yield a hearty service without
disturbing his young master with either questions or remarks. He was a
large young man, strong and well knit though somewhat heavy, with a
broad smiling face, red and freckled, with honest blue eyes under sandy
eyelashes, and a profusion of strong and curly reddish hair. He beamed
upon Lord Erradeen with a sort of friendly admiration and awe,
answering, "Ay, my lord," and "No, my lord," always with the same smile
of general benevolence and readiness to comply with every desire. When
they had got beyond hail of the castle, from which Symington and
Macalister watched them anxiously, Duncan mutely suggested the elevation
of a mast and setting of the sail which the vessel was furnished with,
to which Walter assented with eagerness: and soon they were skimming
along before a light wind as if they had wings. And now began perhaps
the most pleasurable expedition that Walter had ever made in his life.
Escaped from the ruinous old pile, within which he had feared he knew
not what, escaped too from the observation and inspection of the two old
men so much better acquainted with the history of his family than
himself, whom he felt to be something between keepers and
schoolmasters--fairly launched forth upon the world, with nothing to
consult but his own pleasure, Walter felt his spirits rise to any height
of adventure. There was not indeed any very wild adventure probable, but
he was not much used to anything of the kind, and the sense of freedom
and freshness in everything was intoxicating to the young man. The small
boat, the rag of a sail, the lively wind that drove them along, the
rushing ripple under their keel, all delighted him. He held the helm
with a sense of pleasure almost beyond anything he had ever known,
feeling all the exhilaration of a discoverer in a new country, and for
the first time the master of himself and his fate. Duncan said nothing,
but grinned from ear to ear, when the young master in his inattention
to, or to tell the truth ignorance of, the capabilities of the boat,
turned the helm sharply, bringing her up to the wind in such a way as to
threaten the most summary end for the voyage. He kept his eye upon the
rash steersman, and Walter was not aware of the risks he ran. He
directed his little vessel now here, now there, with absolute enjoyment,
running in close ashore to examine the village, turning about again in a
wild elation to visit an island, running the very nose of the boat into
the rocky banks or feathery bushwood. How it was that no harm came as
they thus darted from point to point Duncan never knew. He stood up
roused to watchfulness, with his eyes intent on the movements of his
master ready to remedy any indiscretion. It was in the nature of such
undeserved vigilance that the object of it was never aware of it, but to
be sure Duncan had his own life to think of too.

They had thus swept triumphantly down the loch, the wind favouring, and
apparently watching over the rash voyager as carefully, as and still
more disinterestedly than Duncan. The motion, the air, the restless
career, the novelty, and the freedom enchanted Walter. He felt like a
boy in his first escapade, with an intoxicating sense of independence
and scorn of danger which gave zest to the independence. At every new
zigzag he made, Duncan but grinned the more. He uttered the Gaelic name
of every point and isle, briefly, with guttural depth, out of his chest,
as they went careering along before the wind. The boat was like an
inquisitive visitor, too open for a spy, poking in to every corner. At
length they came to an island standing high out of the water, with a
rocky beach, upon which a boat lay carefully hauled up, and a feathery
crest of trees, fine clumps of fir, fringed and surrounded by a
luxuriant growth of lighter wood. In the midst of this fine network of
branches, such as we call bare, being leafless, but which in reality are
all astir with life restrained, brown purple buddings eager to start and
held in like hounds in a leash--rose the solid outline of a house, built
upon the ridge of rock, and appearing like a shadow in the midst of all
the anatomy of the trees.

"That will be joost the leddy's," cried Duncan; at which Walter's heart,
so light in his bosom, gave an additional leap of pleasure. He steered
it so close that Duncan's vigilance was doubly taxed, for the least
neglect would have sent the little vessel ashore. Walter examined the
little landing, the rocky path that led up the bank, winding among the
trees, and as much as could be made out of the house, with keen
interest. The man with the red shirt, who had been the young lady's
boatman on the previous day, appeared at the further point as they went
on. He was fishing from a rock that projected into the water, and
turning to gaze upon the unwary boat, with astonished eyes, shouted
something in Gaelic to Duncan, who nodded good-humouredly a great many
times, and replied with a laugh in the same tongue--

"Yon will joost be Hamish," said Duncan.

"What is he saying?" cried Walter.

"He will just be telling us to mind where we are going," said Duncan,
imperturbable.

"Tell him to mind his own business," cried Walter, with a laugh. "And
who is Hamish, and who is the leddy? Come, tell me all about it." His
interest in the voyage flagged a little at this point.

Duncan thus interrogated was more put to it than by the dangerous course
they had hitherto been running.

"It will joost be the leddy," he said; "and Hamish that's her man: and
they will joost be living up there like ither persons, and fearing God:
fery decent folk--oh, joost fery decent folk."

"I never doubted that. But who are they, and what are they? And do you
mean to say they _live_ there, on that rock, in winter, so far north?"

Walter looked up at the dazzling sky, and repented his insinuation: but
he was, alas, no better than an Englishman, when all was said, and he
could not help a slight shiver as he looked back. Hamish, who had made a
fine point of colour on his projecting rock, had gone from that point,
and was visible in his red shirt mounting the high crest of the island
with hurried appearances and disappearances as the broken nature of the
ground made necessary. He had gone, there seemed little doubt, to
intimate to the inhabitants the appearance of the stranger. This gave
Walter a new thrill of pleasure, but it took away his eagerness about
the scenery. He lay back languidly, neglecting the helm, and as he
distracted Duncan's attention too, they had nearly run aground on the
low beach of the next island. When this difficulty was got over, Walter
suddenly discovered that they had gone far enough, and might as well be
making their way homeward, which was more easily said than done; for the
wind, which had hitherto served their purpose nobly, was no longer their
friend. They made a tack or two, and crept along a little, but
afterwards resigned themselves to ship the sail and take to the oars,
which was not so exhilarating nor so well adapted to show the beauty of
the landscape. It took them some time to make their way once more past
the rocky point, and along the edge of the island which attracted
Walter's deepest interest, but to which he could not persuade Duncan to
give any name.

"It will joost be the leddy's," the boatman insisted on saying, with a
beaming face; but either his English or his knowledge was at fault, and
he went no further.

Walter's heart beat with a kind of happy anxiety, a keen but pleasant
suspense, as he swept his oar out of the water, and glanced behind him
to measure how near they were to the landing, at which he had a
presentiment something more interesting than Hamish might be seen. And
as it turned out, he had not deceived himself. But what he saw was not
what he expected to see.

The lady on the bank was not his fellow-traveller of yesterday. She was
what Walter to himself, with much disappointment, called an old lady,
wrapped in a large furred mantle and white fleecy wrap about her head
and shoulders. She stood and waved her hand as Walter's boat came slowly
within range.

"You will be joost the leddy," said Duncan of the few words; and with
one great sweep of his oar he turned the boat towards the landing. It
was the man's doing, not the master's; but the master was not sorry to
take advantage of this sudden guidance. It was all done in a moment,
without intention. Hamish stood ready to secure the boat, and before he
had time to think, Walter found himself on the little clearing above the
stony bit of beach, hat in hand, glowing with surprise and pleasure, and
receiving the warmest of welcomes.

"You will forgive me for just stopping you on your way," the lady said;
"but I was fain to see you, Lord Erradeen, for your father and I were
children together. I was Violet Montrose. You must have heard him speak
of me."

"I hope," said Walter, with his best bow, and most ingratiating tone,
"that you will not consider it any fault of mine; but I don't remember
my father; he died when I was a child."

"Dear me," cried the lady; "how could I be so foolish! Looking at you
again, I see you would not be old enough for that: and, now I remember,
he married late, and died soon after. Well, there is no harm done. We
are just country neighbours, and as I was great friends with Walter
Methven some five-and-forty years ago----"

"I hope," said the young man with a bow and smile, "that you will be so
good as to be friends with Walter Methven now: for that is the name
under which I know myself."

"Oh, Lord Erradeen," the lady said with a little flutter of pleasure.
Such a speech would be pretty from any young man; but made by a young
lord, in all the flush of his novel honours, and by far the greatest
potentate of the district, there was no one up the loch or down the loch
who would not have been gratified. "It is just possible," she said,
after a momentary pause, "that having been brought up in England, and
deprived of your father so early, you may not know much about your
neighbours, nor even who we are, in this bit island of ours. We are the
Forresters of Eaglescairn, whom no doubt ye have heard of; and I am one
of the last of the Montroses--alas! that I should say so. I have but one
of a large family left with me; and Oona and me, we have just taken
advantage of an old family relic that came from my side of the house,
and have taken up our habitation here. I hear she must have travelled
with you yesterday on the coach, not thinking who it was. Oh, yes; news
travels fast at this distance from the world. I think the wind blows it,
or the water carries it. All the loch by this time is aware of Lord
Erradeen's arrival. Indeed," she added, with a little laugh, "you know,
my lord, we all saw the light."

She was a woman over fifty, but fair and slight, with a willowy figure,
and a complexion of which many a younger woman might have been proud;
and there was a little airiness of gesture and tread about her, which
probably thirty years before had been the pretty affectations,
half-natural, half-artificial, of a beauty, and which still kept up the
tradition of fascinating powers. The little toss of her head, the
gesture of her hands, as she said the last words, the half-apologetic
laugh as if excusing herself for a semi-absurdity, were all
characteristic and amusing.

"You know," she added, "in the Highlands we are allowed to be
superstitious," and repeated the little laugh at herself with which she
deprecated offence.

"What is it supposed to mean?" Walter asked somewhat eagerly. "Of course
there is some natural explanation which will be simple enough. But I
prefer to take the old explanation, if I knew what it was."

"And so do we," she said quickly. "We are just ready to swear to it, man
and woman of us on the loch. Some say it is a sign the head of the house
is coming--some that it is a call to him to come and meet--Dear me,
there is Oona calling. And where is Hamish? I will not have the child
kept waiting," said the lady, looking round her with a little nervous
impatience.

She had begun to lead the way upward by a winding path among the rocks
and trees, and now paused, a little breathless, to look down towards the
landing-place, and clap her hands impatiently.

"Hamish is away, mem," said the woman whom Walter had seen on the coach,
and who now met them coming down the winding path. She looked at him
with a cordial smile, and air of kindly welcome. It was evident that it
did not occur to Mysie that her salutations might be inappropriate.
"You're very welcome, sir, to your ain country," she said with a
courtesy, which was polite rather than humble. Walter felt that she
would have offered him her hand, on the smallest encouragement, with a
kindly familiarity which conveyed no disrespect.

"You should say my lord, Mysie," her mistress remarked.

"Deed, mem, and so I should; but when you're no much in the way o't, ye
get confused. I said, as soon as I heard the news, that it would be the
young gentleman on the coach, and I had just a feeling a' the time that
it was nae tourist, but a kent face. Hamish is away, mem. I tell him he
hears Miss Oona's foot on the bank, before ever she cries upon him; and
yonder he is just touching the shore, and her ready to jump in."

The party had reached a little platform on the slope. The path was
skilfully engineered between two banks, clothed with ferns and grasses,
and still luxuriant with a vivid green, though the overhanging trees
were all bare. Here and there a little opening gave a point of repose
and extended view. Mrs. Forrester paused and turned round to point out
to her visitor the prospect that now lay before them. She was a little
breathless and glad of the pause, but it did not suit her character to
say so. She pointed round her with a little triumph. They were high
enough to see the loch on either side, looking down upon it through the
fringe of branches. Opposite to this was the mainland which at that spot
formed a little bay, thickly wooded with the dark green of the fir
woods, amid which appeared the gables of a sort of ornamental cottage.
Nearer the eye was the road, and underneath the road on the beach stood
a little slight figure in the closely-fitting garb which Walter
recognised. She had evidently been set down from a waggonette full of a
lively party which waited on the high road to see her embark. It was
impossible to hear what they were saying, but the air was full of a
pleasant murmur of voices.

"It is the young Campbells of Ellermore," said Mrs. Forrester, waving
her handkerchief towards the group. "Oona has been spending last night
with them, and they have brought her back. They will all be astonished,
Mysie, to see me standing here with a gentleman. Dear me, they will all
be saying who has Mrs. Forrester got with her?"

"They will think," said Mysie, "just that it's Mr. James or Mr. Ronald
come home."

"Ah, Mysie, if that could be!" said the lady of the isle: and she put
her hands together, which were thin and white, and ornamented by a
number of rings, with a pretty conventional gesture of maternal regret.
Walter stood looking on with mingled amazement and pleasure: pleased as
if he were at a play with all the new indications of domestic history
which were opening to him, and with a sense of enjoyment through all his
being. When the girl sprang into the boat, and Hamish, conspicuous in
his red shirt, pushed off into the loch, the tumult of good-byes became
almost articulate. He laughed to himself under his breath, remembering
all the greetings he had heard along the line of railway, the
recognitions at every station.

"Your daughter seems to know everybody," he said.

"And how could she help knowing every person," cried Mysie, taking the
words, as it were, out of her mistress's mouth, "when she was born and
brought up on the loch, and never one to turn her back upon a neebor,
gentle or simple, but just adored wherever she goes?"

"Oh, whisht, Mysie, whisht! we are partial," said Mrs. Forrester with
her little antiquated graces; and then she invited Lord Erradeen to
continue his walk.

It was the full blaze of day, and the view extended as they went higher
up to the crest of rock upon which the house was set. It was built of
irregular reddish stone, all cropped with lichens where it was visible,
but so covered with clinging plants that very little of the walls could
be seen. The rustic porch was built something like a bee-hive, with
young, slim-growing saplings for its pillars, and chairs placed within
its shelter. There were some flower-beds laid out around, in which a few
autumn crocuses had struggled into pale bloom--and a number of china
roses hung half opened against the sides of the house. The roofs were
partly blue slates, that most prosaic of comfortable coverings, and
partly the rough red tiles of the country, which shone warm through the
naked boughs.

    "Every hardy plant could bear
     Loch Katrine's keen and searching air,"

was garlanded about the house, the little lawn was as green as velvet,
the china roses were pale but sweet. Behind the house were the mossed
apple-trees of a primitive orchard among the rocky shelves. It lay
smiling in the sun, with the silver mirror of the lake all round, and
every tint and outline doubled in the water. From the door the dark old
castle of Kinloch Houran stood out against the silent darkness of the
hill. Little rocky islets, like a sport of nature, too small to be
inhabited by anything bigger than rabbits, lay all reflected in broken
lines of rock and brushwood, between Walter's old castle and this
romantic house. They were so visible, one to the other, that the mere
position seemed to form a link of connection between the inhabitants.

"We cannot but take an interest in you, you see, Lord Erradeen, for we
can never get out of sight of you," said Mrs. Forrester.

"And I think the old place looks better from here than any other view I
have seen," Walter added almost in the same breath.

They laughed as they spoke together. It was not possible to be more
entirely "country neighbours." The young man had a fantastic feeling
that it was a sort of flattery to himself that his house should be so
entirely the centre of the landscape. He followed the lady into the
house with a little reluctance, the scene was so enchanting. Inside, the
roofs were low, but the rooms well-sized and comfortable. They were full
of curiosities of every kind: weapons from distant countries, trophies
of what is called "the chase," hung upon the wall of the outer hall.
The drawing-room was full of articles from India and China, carved
ivories, monsters in porcelain, all the wonders that people used to send
home before we got Japanese shops at every corner. An air of gentle
refinement was everywhere, with something, too, in the many ornaments,
little luxuries, and daintinesses which suggested the little
_minauderies_ of the old beauty, the old-fashioned airs and graces that
had been irresistible to a previous generation.

"You will just stay and eat your luncheon with us, Lord Erradeen. I
might have been but poor company, an old woman as I'm getting; but, now
that Oona is coming, I need not be too modest; for, though there will
not be a grand luncheon, there will be company, which is always
something. And sit down and tell me something about your father and the
lady he married, and where you have been living all this time."

Walter laughed. "Is it all my humble history you want me to tell you?"
he said. "It is not very much. I don't remember my father, and the lady
he married is--my mother, you know. The best mother----But I have not
been the best of sons. I was an idle fellow, good-for-nothing a little
while ago. Nobody knew what was going to come of me. I did nothing but
loaf, if you know what that means."

"Ah, that I do," said Mrs. Forrester; "that was just like my Jamie. But
now they tell me he is the finest officer----"

Walter paused, but the lady was once more entirely attention, listening
with her hands clasped, and her head raised to his with an ingratiating
sidelong look. He laughed. "They all made up their minds I was to be
good-for-nothing----"

"Yes," murmured Mrs. Forrester, softly, half closing her eyes and
shaking her head, "that was just like my Bob--till he took a thought:
and now he is planting coffee in Ceylon and doing well. Yes? and then?"

"An old man arrived one evening," said Walter, half laughing, "and told
me--that I was Lord Erradeen. And do you know, from that moment nobody,
not even I myself, would believe that I had ever loafed or idled or been
good-for-nothing."

There was a pause, in which Walter thought he heard some one move behind
him. But no sound reached Mrs. Forrester, who responded eagerly--

"My son, the present Eaglescairn, was just of the same kind," she said,
reflectively. She had a comparison ready for every case that could be
suggested--"till he came of age. It was in the will that they were to
come of age only at twenty-five, and till then I had a sore time. Oh,
Oona, my dear, is that you? And had you a pleasant evening. Here is
young Lord Erradeen that has come in, most kindly, I'm sure, to tell me
about his father, that I knew so well. And it appears you met upon the
coach yesterday. Come away, my dear, come away! And that was just most
curious that, knowing nothing of one another, you should meet upon the
coach."

Oona came in lightly, in her out-door dress. She gave Walter a look
which was very friendly. She had paused for a moment at the door, and
she had heard his confession. It seemed to Oona that what he said was
generous and manly. She was used to forming quick impressions. She had
been annoyed when she had heard from Hamish of the visitor, but her mind
changed when she heard what he said. She came up to him and held out her
hand. The fresh air was in her face, which Walter thought was like the
morning, all bright and fresh and full of life. She made him a little
curtsey with much gravity, and said in the pretty voice which was so
fresh and sweet, and with that novelty of accent which had amused and
delighted the young man, "You are welcome to your own country Lord
Erradeen."

"Now that is very pretty of you, Oona," cried her mother. "I never
thought you would remember to pay your little compliment, as a well-bred
person should; for, to tell the truth, she is just too brusque--it is
her fault."

"Hamish told me what to say," said Oona, with a glance of provocation.
"He is a very well-bred person. He told me I was to bid my lord welcome
to his own."

"Oh, my dear, you need not take away the merit of it, as if you had not
thought of it yourself," said the mother, aggrieved; "but run away and
take off your hat, and let us have our lunch, for Lord Erradeen has been
all the morning on the water and he will be hungry, and you are all
blown about with the wind."

The young people exchanged looks, while Mrs. Forrester made her little
protest. There was a sort of laughing interchange between them, in which
she was mocking and he apologetic. Why, neither could have said. They
understood each other, though they by no means clearly understood each
what he and she meant. There was to be a little war between them, all in
good-humour and good-fellowship, not insipid agreement and politeness.
The next hour was, Walter thought, the most pleasant he had ever spent
in his life. He had not been ignorant of such enjoyments before. When we
said that various mothers in Sloebury had with the first news of his
elevation suffered a sudden pang of self-reproach, to think how they had
put a stop to certain passages, the end of which might now have been to
raise a daughter to the peerage, it must have been understood that
Walter was not altogether a novice in the society of women; but this had
a new flavour which was delightful to him. It had been pleasant enough
in the cottage, when Julia Herbert sang, and on other occasions not
necessary to enter into. But on this romantic isle, where the sound of
the loch upon the rocks made a soft accompaniment to everything, in a
retirement which no vulgar interruption could reach, with the faded
beauty on one side, scarcely able to forget the old pretty mannerisms
of conquest even in her real maternal kindness and frank Highland
hospitality, and the girl, with her laughing defiance on the other, he
felt himself to have entered a new chapter of history. The whole new
world into which he had come became visible to him in their
conversation. He heard how he himself had been looked for, and how "the
whole loch" had known something about him for years before he had ever
heard of Loch Houran. "We used to know you as the 'English lad,'" Oona
said, with her glance of mischief. All this amused Walter more than
words can say. The sun was dropping towards the west before--escorted to
the landing-place by both the ladies, and taken leave of as an old
friend--he joined the slow-spoken Duncan, and addressed himself to the
homeward voyage. Duncan had not been slow of speech in the congenial
company of Hamish. They had discussed the new-comer at length, with many
a shaft of humour and criticism, during the visit which Duncan had paid
to the kitchen. He blushed not now, secure in the stronghold of his
unknown tongue, to break off in a witty remark at Walter's expense as he
turned to his master his beaming smile of devotion. They set off
together, master and man, happy yet regretful, upon their homeward way.
And it was a tough row back to Kinloch Houran against the fresh and not
too quiet Highland wind.

CHAPTER XII.

The castle looked more grim and ruined than ever as Walter set foot once
more upon the rough grass of the mound behind. He dismissed the smiling
Duncan with regret. As he went up to the door, which now stood open, he
thought to himself with relief that another day would finish his
probation here, and that already it was more than half over; but next
moment remembered that the end of his stay at Kinloch Houran would mean
also an end of intercourse with his new friends, which gave a different
aspect to the matter altogether. At the door of the castle old
Macalister was waiting with a look of anxiety.

"Ye'll have had no luncheon," he said, "and here's Mr. Shaw the factor
waiting to see ye."

Macalister had not the manners of Symington, and Walter already felt
that it was a curious eccentricity on the part of the old man to leave
out his title. The factor was seated waiting in the room up-stairs; he
was a middle-aged man, with grizzled, reddish locks, the prototype in a
higher class of Duncan in the boat. He got up with a cordial
friendliness which Walter began to feel characteristic, but which was
also perhaps less respectful than might have been supposed appropriate,
to meet him. He had a great deal to say of business which to Walter was
still scarcely intelligible. There were leases to renew, and there was
some question about a number of crofter families, which seemed to have
been debated with the former lord, and to have formed the subject of
much discussion.

"There is that question about the crofters at the Truach-Glas," Mr. Shaw
said.

"What crofters? or rather what are crofters? and what is the question
and where is the Truach-Glas?" Lord Erradeen said.

He pronounced it, alas! Truack, as he still called loch, lock--which
made the sensitive natives shudder. Mr. Shaw looked at him with a little
disapproval. He felt that the English lad should have been more
impressed by his new inheritance, and more anxious to acquire a mastery
of all the facts connected with it. If, instead of wandering about the
loch all the morning, he had been looking up the details of the business
and the boundaries of the estate, and studying the map! But that not
being the case, of course there was nothing to be done but to explain.

"I had thought that Mr. Milnathort would have put the needs of the
estate more clearly before you. There are several questions to be
settled. I don't know what may be your views as to a landlord's duties,
Lord Erradeen----"

"I have no views," said Walter; "I am quite impartial. You must
recollect that I have only been a landlord for a fortnight."

"But I suppose," said the factor somewhat severely, "that the heir to
such a fine property has had some kind of a little training?"

"I have had no training--not the slightest. I had no information even
that I was the heir to any property. You must consider me as entirely
ignorant, but ready to learn."

Shaw looked at him with some surprise, but severely still. "It is very
curious," he said, as if that too had been Walter's fault, "that you did
not know you were the heir. We knew very well here; but the late lord
was like most people, not very keen about his successor; and then he was
a comparatively young man when he died."

"I know nothing of my predecessor," said Walter. "What was the cause of
his death? I should like to hear something about him. Several of them
must have died young, I suppose, or I, so far off, could never have
become the heir."

The factor looked at him keenly, but with doubtful eyes. "There are
secrets in all families, my Lord Erradeen," he said.

"Are there? I thought that was rather an old-fashioned sentiment. I
don't think, except that I was not always virtuously occupied, that
there was any secret in mine."

"And I am sure there is no secret in mine," said Mr. Shaw,
energetically; "but then you see I am not, and you were not till a very
recent date, Lord Erradeen. There is a kind of something in the race
that I will not characterise. It is a kind of a melancholy turn; the
vulgar rumours ye will have heard, to which I attach no credence. It is
little worth while living in the nineteenth century," the factor said
with emphasis, "if ye are to be subject to delusions like that."

"I tell you I am quite ignorant; and, except by hints which I could not
understand, Mr. Milnathort did not give me any information. Speak
plainly, I want to know what the mystery is; why am I here in this
tumble-down old place?" Walter cried with an accent of impatience.

Shaw kept a watchful eye upon him, with the air of a man whom another is
trying to deceive.

"It is something in the blood, I'm thinking," the factor said. "They all
seem to find out there's a kind of contrariety in life, which is a thing
we all must do to be sure, but generally without any fatal effects.
After a certain age they all seem to give way to it. I hope that _you_,
my lord, being out of the direct line, will escape: the populace--if ye
can accept their nonsense--say it's a--well, something supernatural--a
kind of an influence from him they call the Warlock Lord." Shaw laughed,
but somewhat uneasily, apologetically. "I think shame to dwell upon such
absurdity," he said.

"It does sound very absurd."

"That is just it--nonsense! not worth the consideration of sensible men.
And I may say to you, that are, I hope, of a more wholesome mind, that
they are terribly given up to caprice in this family. The Truach-Glas
crofters have been up and down twenty times. The late lord made up his
mind he would let them stay, and then that they must go, and again that
he would just leave them their bits of places, and then that he would
help them to emigrate; and after all, I had the order that they were to
be turned out, bag and baggage. I could not find it in my heart to do
it. I just put off, and put off, and here he is dead; and another," said
Shaw, with a suppressed tone of satisfaction, "come to the throne. And
you're a new man and a young man, and belong to your own century, not to
the middle ages," the factor cried with a little vehemence. Then he
stopped himself, with a "I beg your pardon, my lord; I am perhaps saying
more than I ought to say."

Walter made no reply. He was not sure that he did not think the factor
was going too far, for though he knew so little of his family, he
already felt that it was something not to be subjected to discussion by
common men. These animadversions touched his pride a little; but he was
silent, too proud to make any remark. He said, after a pause--

"I don't know that I can give my opinion without a further acquaintance
with the facts. If I were to do so on so slight a knowledge, I fear you
might think that a caprice too."

The factor looked at him with a still closer scrutiny, and took the
hint. There is nothing upon which it is so necessary to understand the
permitted limit of observation as in the discussion of family
peculiarities. Though he was so little responsible for this, and even so
little acquainted with them, it was impossible that Lord Erradeen should
not associate himself with his race. Mr. Shaw got out his papers, and
entered upon the questions in which the opinion of the new proprietor
was important, without a word further about the late lord and the family
characteristics. He explained to Walter at length the position of the
crofters, with their small holdings, who in bad seasons got into arrears
with their rents, and sometimes became a burden upon the landlord, in
whom, so far north, there was some admixture of a Highland chief. The
scheme of the estate altogether was of a mixed kind. There were some
large sheep farms and extensive moors still intermingled with glens more
populated than is usual in these regions. Some of them were on lands but
recently acquired, and the crofters in particular were a burden
transmitted by purchase, which the father of the last lord had made. It
was believed that there had been some covenant in the sale by which the
rights of the poor people were secured, but this had fallen into
forgetfulness, and there was no reason in law why Lord Erradeen should
not exercise all the rights of a proprietor and clear the glen, as so
many glens had been cleared. This was the first question that the new
lord would have to decide. The humble tenants were all under notice to
leave, and indeed were subject to eviction as soon as their landlord
pleased. It was with a kind of horror that Walter listened to this
account of his new possibilities.

"Eviction!" he said; "do you mean the sort of thing that happens in
Ireland?" He held his breath in unfeigned dismay and repugnance. "I
thought there was nothing of the sort here."

"Ireland is one thing, and Scotland another," said the factor. "We are a
law-abiding people. No man will ever be shot down behind a hedge by a
Highlander: so if you should resolve to turn them out to-morrow, my
lord, ye need stand in no personal fear."

Walter put aside this somewhat contemptuous assurance with a wave of his
hand.

"I have been told of a great many things I could do," he said, "in this
last fortnight; but I never knew before that I could turn out a whole
village full of people if I chose, and make their houses desolate."

It was a new view altogether of his new powers. He could not help
returning in thought to all the prepossessions of his former
middle-class existence, where arbitrary power was unknown, and where a
mild, general beneficence towards "the poor" was the rule. He said, half
to himself, "What would my mother say?" and in the novelty of the idea,
half laughed. What a thrill it would send through the district
visitors, the managers of the soup kitchen, all the charitable people!
There suddenly came up before him a recollection of many a conversation
he had heard, and taken no note of--of consultations how to pay the rent
of a poor family here and there, how to stop a cruel landlord's mouth.
And that he should appear in the character of a cruel landlord! No doubt
it would have been easy to show that the circumstances were quite
different. But in the mean time the son of Mrs. Methven could not throw
off the traditions in which he had been brought up. He contemplated the
whole matter from a point of view altogether different even from that of
Mr. Shaw, the factor. Shaw was prepared to prove that on the whole the
poor crofters were not such bad tenants, and that sheep farms and deer
forests, though more easily dealt with, had some disadvantages too; for
there was Paterson of Inverchory that had been nearly ruined by a bad
lambing season, and had lost the half of his flock; and as for the
shootings, was there not the dreadful example before them of the moors
at Finlarig, where everything had been shot down, and the game fairly
exterminated by a set of fellows that either did not know what they were
doing, or else were making money of it, and not pleasure. The very veins
in Shaw's forehead swelled when he spoke of this.

"I would like to have had the ducking of him," he cried; "a man with a
grand name and the soul of a henwife, that swept out the place as if he
had done it with a broom, and all for the London market; grant me
patience! You will say," added Shaw, "that the thing to do at Inverchory
is to get a man with more capital now that John Paterson's tack is done;
and that there's few sportsmen like Sir John. That's all very true; but
it just shows there are risks to be run in all ways, and the poor folk
at Truach-Glas would never lead you into losses like that."

Walter, however, did not pay much attention even to this view. His mind
had not room at the moment for Paterson of Inverchory, who was behind
with the rent, or Sir John, who had devastated the moors. He did not get
beyond the primitive natural horror of what seemed to him an outrage of
all natural laws and kindness. He had not been a landowner long enough
to feel the sacred right of property. He turn the cottagers out of their
poor little homes for the sake of a few pounds more or less of which he
stood in no need? The very arguments against taking this step made him
angry. Could anybody suppose he could do it? he, Walter Methven! As for
the Erradeen business, and all this new affair altogether--good heavens,
if anybody thought he would purchase it by that! In short, the young
man, who was not born a grand seigneur, boiled up in righteous wrath,
and felt it high scorn and shame that it could be supposed of him that
he was capable, being rich, of oppressing the poor--which was the way
in which he put it, in his limited middle-class conditions of thought.

Mr. Shaw was half-gratified, half-annoyed by the interview. He said to
the minister with whom he stopped to dine, and who was naturally much
interested about the new young man, that assuredly the young fellow had
a great deal of good in him, but he was a trifle narrow in his way of
looking at a question, "which is probably just his English breeding,"
the factor said. "I would have put the Crofter question before him in
all its bearings; but he was just out of himself at the idea of
eviction--like what happened in Ireland, he said. I could not get him to
go into the philosophy of it. He just would not hear a word. Nothing of
the kind had ever come his way before, one could see, and he was just
horrified at the thought."

"I don't call that leemited, I call it Christian," the minister said,
"and I am not surprised he should have a horror of it. I will go and see
him in the morning, if you think it will be well taken, for I'm with him
in that, heart and soul."

"Yes, yes, that's all in your way," said Mr. Shaw; "but I am surprised
at it in a young man. There is a kind of innocence about it. But I would
not wonder after a little if he should change his mind, as others have
done."

"Do you form any theory in your own thoughts, Shaw," said the minister,
"as to what it is that makes them so apt to change?"

"Not I," cried the factor, with a shrug of his shoulders; and then he
added hurriedly, "you've given me a capital dinner, and that whisky is
just excellent: but I think I must be going my ways, for already it's
later than I thought."

Mr. Cameron, who was minister of the parish, was, like Walter, a
stranger to the district and its ways. He was a great antiquary and full
of curiosity about all the relics of the past, and he had an enlightened
interest in its superstitions too. But Shaw was a Loch Houran man. He
had a reverence for the traditions which of course he vowed he did not
believe, and though he was very ready to make this statement in his own
person he did not like to hear outsiders, as he called the rest of the
world, discussing them disrespectfully? So he desired his dog-cart to be
"brought round," and drove home in the clear, cold night, warm at his
heart, good man, because of the good news for the Crofters, but a little
dissatisfied in his mind that the new lord should be doing this simply
as a matter of sentiment, and not from a reasonable view of the
situation. "Provided even that he keeps of that mind," the factor said
to himself.

Walter subsided out of his just indignation when the business part of
the interview ended, and he came out to the open air to see Mr. Shaw
away.

"This must all be put in order," he said, as he accompanied his visitor
to the boat.

Shaw looked at him with a little curiosity mingled with a slight air of
alarm.

"Auchnasheen being so near," he said, "which is a very comfortable
place, there has never been much notice taken of the old castle."

"But I mean to take a great deal of notice of it," the young man said
with a laugh. "I shall have some of the antiquaries down and clear out
all the old places."

His laugh seemed to himself to rouse the echoes, but it called forth no
responsive sound from his companion, and he caught a glimpse of old
Macalister in the distance shaking his old head. This amused yet
slightly irritated Walter, in the sense of power which alternated with a
sense of novelty and unreality in his mind.

"So you object to that?" he said to the old man. "You don't like your
privileges invaded?"

"It's no that," said Macalister; "but ye'll never do it. I've a lang,
lang acquaintance with the place, and I've witnessed many a revolution,
if I may say sae. One was to pull down the auld wa's altogether; another
was to clean it a' out like you. But it's never been done. And it'll
never be done. I'm just as sure o' that as your young lordship is that
you have a' the power in your hands."

Walter turned away with a little disdain in his laugh. It was not worth
while arguing out the matter with Macalister. Who should prevent him
from doing what he liked with his old house? He could not but reflect
upon the curious contradictions with which he was beset. He was supposed
to be quite capable of turning out a whole village out of their homes,
and making them homeless and destitute; but he was not supposed capable
of clearing out the blocked-up passage and rooms of an old ruin! He
smiled with a kind of scornful indignation as he went up to his
sitting-room. By this time the afternoon had lost all light and colour.
It was not dark, but neither was it day. A greyness had come into the
atmosphere; the shadows were black, and had lost all transparency. The
two windows made two bars of a more distinct greyness in the room, with
a deep line of shade in the centre between, which was coloured, but
scarcely lighted up, by the fire. He could not but think with a sense of
relief that the three days which were all he believed that were
necessary for his stay at Kinloch Houran were half over at least.
Another night and then he would be free to go. He did not mean to go any
further than to Auchnasheen, which was exactly opposite to the island;
and then, with a smile creeping about the corners of his mouth, he said
to himself, that he could very well amuse himself for a few days, what
with the shooting and what with----

And it would be comfortable to get out of this place, where the air, he
could not tell why, seemed always insufficient. The wainscot, the dark
hangings, the heavy old walls, seemed to absorb the atmosphere. He threw
up the window to get a little air, but somehow the projecting masonry
of the old walls outside seemed to intercept it. He felt an oppression
in his breast, a desire to draw long breaths, to get more air into his
lungs. It was the same sensation which he had felt last night, and he
did not contemplate with any pleasure the idea of another long evening
alone in so strange an atmosphere. However, he must make the best of it.
He went to the bookshelf and got down again his _Trois Mousquetaires_.
When the candles were lighted, he would write a dutiful long letter to
his mother, and tell her all that had been going on about him,
especially that barbarous suggestion about the cottagers.

"Fancy me in the character of a rapacious landlord, turning a whole
community out of doors!" he said to himself, concocting the imaginary
letter, and laughed aloud with a thrill of indignation.

Next moment he started violently, and turned round with a wild rush of
blood to his head, and that sort of rallying and huddling together of
all the forces of his mind which one feels in a sudden catastrophe. It
was, however, no loud alarm that had sounded. It was the clear and
distinct vibration of a voice close to him, replying calmly to his
thought.

"Is there anything special in you to disqualify you for doing a
disagreeable duty?" some one said.

Walter had started back at the first sound, his heart giving a bound in
him of surprise--perhaps of terror. He had meant to take that great
chair by the fire as soon as he had taken his book from the shelf, so
that it must (he said to himself in instantaneous self-argument) have
been vacant then. It was not vacant now. A gentleman sat there, with his
face half turned towards the light looking towards the young man; his
attitude was perfectly easy, his voice a well-bred and cultivated voice.
There seemed neither hurry nor excitement about him. He had not the air
of a person newly entered, but rather of one who had been seated there
for some time at his leisure, observing what was going on. He lifted his
hand with a sort of deprecating yet commanding gesture.

"There is no occasion," he said, in his measured voice, "for alarm. I
have no intention of harming you, or any one. Indeed I am not aware that
I have any power of harm."

Never in his life before had Walter's soul been swept by such violent
sensations. He had an impulse of flight and of deadly overwhelming
terror, and then of sickening shame at his own panic. Why should he be
afraid? He felt dimly that this moment was the crisis of his life, and
that if he fled or retreated he was lost. He stood his ground, grasping
the back of a chair to support himself.

"Who are you?" he said.

"That is a searching question," said the stranger, with a smile. "We
will come to it by and by. I should like to know in the first place what
there is in you which makes it impossible to act with justice in certain
circumstances?"

The air of absolute and calm superiority with which he put this question
was beyond description.

Walter felt like a criminal at the bar.

"Who are you?" he repeated hoarsely. He stood with a curious sense of
being supported only by the grasp which he had taken of the back of the
chair, feeling himself a mere bundle of impulses and sensations, hardly
able to keep himself from flight, hardly able to keep from falling down
at the feet of this intruder, but holding to a sort of self-restraint by
his grasp upon the chair. Naturally, however, his nerves steadied as the
moments passed. The first extreme shock of surprise wore away. There was
nothing to alarm the most timid in the countenance upon which he gazed.
It was that of a handsome man who had scarcely turned middle age, with
grey but not white hair very thin on the forehead and temples, a high
delicate aquiline nose, and colourless complexion. His mouth closed
somewhat sternly, but had a faint melting of a smile about it, by
movements which were ingratiating and almost sweet. The chief thing
remarkable about the stranger, however, besides the extraordinary
suddenness of his appearance, was the perfect composure with which he
sat, like a man who not only was the most important person wherever he
went, but also complete master of the present scene. It was the young
man who was the intruder, not he.

"I will tell you presently who I am," he said. "In the mean time
explain to me why you should be horrified at a step which better men
than yourself take every day. Sit down." The stranger allowed himself to
smile with distinct intention, and then said in a tone of which it is
impossible to describe the refined mockery, "You are afraid?"

Walter came to himself with another sensible shock: his pride, his
natural spirit, a certain impulse of self-defence which never forsakes a
man, came to his aid. He was inclined to say "No," with natural denial
of a contemptuous accusation; but rallying more and more every moment,
answered with something like defiance, "Yes--or rather I am not afraid.
I am startled. I want to know how you come here, and who you are who
question me--in my own house."

"You are very sure that it is your own house? You mean to have it
restored and made into a piece of sham antiquity--if nothing prevents?"

"What can prevent? if I say it is to be done," cried the young man. His
blood seemed to curdle in his veins when he heard the low laugh with
which alone the stranger replied. "May I ask you--to withdraw or to tell
me who you are?" he said. His voice trembled in spite of himself. The
words left his lips quite sturdily, but quivered when they got into the
air, or so in the fantastic hurry of his mind he thought.

"If I refuse, what then?" the stranger said.

These two individuals confronted each other, defying each other, one
angry and nervous, the other perfectly calm. In such circumstances only
one result is sure: that he who retains his self-possession will have
the mastery. Walter felt himself completely baffled. He could not turn
out with violence a dignified and serious visitor, who assumed indeed an
intolerable superiority, and had come in without asking leave, but yet
was evidently a person of importance--if nothing more. He stared at him
for a moment, gradually becoming familiarized with the circumstances.
"You are master of the situation," he said, with a hard-drawn breath. "I
suppose I can do nothing but submit. But if politeness on my part
requires this of me, it requires on yours some information. Your name,
your object?"

They looked at each other once more for a moment.

"When you put it in that way, I have nothing to say," said the stranger,
with great courtesy; "but to acknowledge your right to require--"

At that moment the door opened hurriedly, and Symington came in.

"Your lordship will be wanting something?" he said. "I heard your voice.
Was it to light the lights? or would it be for tea, or----"

He gave a sort of scared glance round the room, and clung to the handle
of the door, but his eyes did not seem to distinguish the new-comer in
the failing twilight.

"I did not call; but you may light the candles," Walter said, feeling
his own excitement, which had been subsiding, spring up again, in his
curiosity to see what Symington's sensations would be.

The old man came in reluctantly. He muttered something uneasily in his
throat. "I would have brought a light if I had known. You might have
cried down the stairs. It's just out of all order to light the lights
this gate," he muttered. But he did not disobey. He went round the room
lighting one after another of the twinkling candles in the sconces. Now
and then he gave a scared and tremulous look about him; but he took no
further notice. The stranger sat quite composedly, looking on with a
smile while this process was gone through. Then Symington came up to the
table in front of which Walter still stood.

"Take a seat, my lord, take a seat," he said. "It's no canny to see you
standing just glowering frae ye, as we say in the country. You look just
as if you were seeing something. And take you your French fallow that
you were reading last night. It's better when you're by yourself in an
auld house like this, that has an ill-name, always to do something to
occupy your thoughts."

Walter looked at the stranger, who made a little gesture of intelligence
with a nod and smile; and old Symington followed the look, still with
that scared expression on his face.

"Your lordship looks for all the world as if you were staring at
something in that big chair; you must be careful to take no fancies in
your head," the old servant said. He gave a little nervous laugh, and
retreated somewhat quickly towards the door. "And talk no more to
yourself; it's an ill habit," he added, with one more troubled glance
round him as he closed the door.

CHAPTER XIII.

"And so you have made acquaintance with the young lord--tell us what
kind of person he is, Mrs. Forrester--tell us what you think of him,
Oona."

This was the unanimous voice which rose from the party assembled on the
second day after Walter's visit in the drawing-room in the Isle.

It was by no means out of the world, though to all appearances so far
removed from its commotions. A low cottage-mansion on the crest of a
rock, in the middle of Loch Houran, six miles from the railway at the
nearest spot on which you could land, and with a mile or so of water,
often rough, between you and the post-office, is it possible to imagine
a more complete seclusion? and yet it was not a seclusion at all. Oona
cared very little for the roughness of the water between the Isle and
the post-office, and Hamish nothing at all, and news came as constantly
and as regularly to the two ladies on their island as to any
newspaper--news from all quarters of the world. The mail days were
almost as important to them--in one way far more important than to any
merchant in his office. Budgets came and went every week, and both Oona
and her mother would be busy till late at night, the little gleam of
their lighted windows shining over the dark loch, that no one might miss
his or her weekly letter. These letters went up into the hill countries
in India, far away to the borders of Cashmere, round the world to
Australia, dropt midway into the coffee groves of Ceylon. When one of
the boys was quartered in Canada, to which there is a mail three times a
week, _that_ looked like next parish, and they thought nothing of it.
Neither need it be supposed that this was the only enlivenment of their
lives. The loch, though to the tourist it looks silent enough, was in
fact fringed by a number of houses in which the liveliest existence was
going on. The big new house at the point, which had been built by a
wealthy man of Glasgow, with every possible splendour, threw the
homelier houses of the native gentry a little into the shade; but nobody
bore him any malice, his neighbours being all so well aware that their
own "position" was known and unassailable, that his finery and his
costliness gave them no pang. They were all a little particular about
their "position:" but then nobody on the loch could make any mistake
about that, or for a moment imagine that Mr. Williamson from Glasgow
could rival the Scotts of Inverhouran, the Campbells of Ellermore, of
Glentruan, and half a dozen names beside, or the Forresters of
Eaglescairn, or the old Montroses, who, in fact, were a branch of the
Macnabs, and held their house on the Isle from that important but
extinct clan. This was so clearly understood that there was not an
exception made to the Williamsons, who knew their place, and were very
nice, and made a joke of their money, which was their social standing
ground. They had called their house, which was as big as a castle, in
the most unobtrusive manner, Birkenbraes, thus proving at once that they
were new people and Lowlanders: so much better taste, everybody said,
than any pretence at Highland importance or name. And this being once
acknowledged, the gentry of the loch adopted the Williamsons cordially,
and there was not a word to be said. But all the Campbells about, and
those excellent Williamsons, and a few families who were not Campbells,
yet belonged to Loch Houran, kept a good deal of life "on the loch,"
which was a phrase that meant in the district generally. And the Isle
was not a dull habitation, whatever a stranger might think. There was
seldom a day when a boat or two was not to be seen, sometimes for hours
together, drawn up upon the rocky beach. And the number of persons
entertained by Mrs. Forrester at the early dinner which was politely
called luncheon would have appeared quite out of proportion with her
means by any one unacquainted with Highland ways. There was trout from
the loch, which cost nothing except Hamish's time, a commodity not too
valuable, and there was grouse during the season, which cost still less,
seeing it came from all the sportsmen about. And the scones, of every
variety known in Scotland, which is a wide word, were home-made. So
that hospitality reigned, and yet Mrs. Forrester, who was a skilled
housekeeper, and Mysie, to whom the family resources were as her own,
and its credit still more precious than her own, managed somehow to make
ends meet.

On this particular afternoon the drawing-room with all its slim sofas
and old-fashioned curiosities was full of Campbells, for young Colin of
Ellermore was at home for his holiday, and it was a matter of course
that his sisters and Tom, the youngest, who was at home reading (very
little) for his coming examination, should bring him to the Isle. Colin
was rather a finer gentleman than flourished by nature upon the loch. He
had little company ways which made his people laugh; but when he had
been long enough at home to forget these he was very nice they all said.
He was in London, and though in trade, in "tea," which is rather
aristocratic, he was in society too.

"What kind of person is he, Mrs. Forrester? Tell us what you think of
him, Oona," was what this youthful band said.

"Well, my dears," said Mrs. Forrester, "he is just a very nice young
man. I don't know how I can describe him better, for young men
now-a-days are very like one another. They all wear the same
clothes--not but what," she added graciously, "I would know Colin
anywhere for a London gentleman with his things all so well made: but
Lord Erradeen was just in a kind of tweed suit, and nothing remarkable.
And his hands in his pockets, like all of ye. But he answered very
nicely when I spoke to him, and said he was more used to Walter Methven
than to any other name, and that to be neighbourlike would just be his
pleasure. It is not possible to be more pleasant and well-spoken than
the young man was."

"Oh, but I want a little more," cried Marjorie Campbell; "that tells
nothing; is he fair, or is he dark? is he tall or is he little--is he--"

"He couldn't be little," cried Janet, indignantly, "or he would not be a
hero: and I've made up my mind he's to be a hero. He'll have to do
something grand, but I don't know what: and to spoil it all with making
him small--"

"Heroes are all short," said Tom, "and all the great generals. You don't
want weedy, long-legged fellows like Colin and the rest of them. But you
know they all run to legs in our family, all but me."

"All this is irrelevant," said Colin with a smile which was somewhat
superior, "and you prevent Mrs. Forrester from giving us the masterly
characterisation which I know is on her lips."

"You are just a flatterer," said that simple lady, shaking her finger at
him; "there was no character coming from my lips. He is just a fine
simple-hearted young man. It appears he never knew what he was heir to,
and has no understanding even now, so far as I could learn, about the
Erradeens. He told me he had been a thoughtless lad, and, as well as I
could judge just a handful to his poor mother; but that all that was
over and gone."

"You are going too far, mamma," said Oona. "He said he had 'loafed.'
Loafing means no harm, does it, Colin? It means mere idleness, and no
more."

"Why should you think I am an authority on the subject?" said Colin. "I
never loaf: I go to the City every day. When I come back I have to keep
up society, so far as I can, and hunt about for invitations, otherwise I
should never be asked out. That is not loafing, it is hard work."

"Ask me, Oona," said young Tom; "I can tell you. It is the nicest thing
in the world. It means just doing nothing you are wanted to do, taking
your own way, watching nature, don't you know, and studying men, and
that sort of thing, which all the literary people say is better than
cramming. But only it does not pay in an exam."

"Oh, hold your tongue, Tommy," cried his sister. "You will fail again,
you know you will, and papa will be in despair. For you are not like
Colin, who is clever; you are good for nothing but soldiering, and next
year you will be too old."

"It's a shame," cried Tom hotly, "to make a fellow's commission depend
upon his spelling. What has spelling to do with it? But I'm going into
the militia, and then I shall be all right."

"And did Erradeen," said Colin to Mrs. Forrester, "let out any of the
secrets of his prison-house?"

"Bless me, he looked just as cheerful as yourself or even as Tom. There
was nothing miserable about him," Mrs. Forrester replied. "He had been
all the morning enjoying himself on the loch, and he came up and ate his
lunch just very hearty, and as happy as possible, with Oona and me. He
was just very like my own Ronald or Rob: indeed I think there's
something in his complexion and his way of holding himself that is very
like Rob; and took my opinion about the old castle, and what was the
meaning of the light on the tower. Indeed," added Mrs. Forrester with a
laugh, "I don't know if it is anything in me that draws people to tell
me their stories, but it is a very general thing, especially for young
persons, to ask for my advice."

"Because you're so kind," said Janet Campbell, who was romantic and
admired the old beauty.

"Because you're so clever," said Marjorie, who had a turn for satire.

Oona, whose ear was very quick for any supposed or possible ridicule,
such as her mother's little foibles occasionally laid her open to,
turned quickly round from Tom, leaving him speaking, and with a little
heightened colour interposed.

"We are opposite to the castle night and day," she said. "We cannot go
out to the door or gather a flower without seeing it; and at night there
it is in the moonlight. So naturally we are better acquainted with what
happens than anybody else can be."

"And do you really, really believe in the light?" said Marjorie.

Ellermore lay quite at the other end of the great loch, among another
range of hills, and was shut out from personal acquaintance with the
phenomena of Kinloch Houran. Colin gave a slight laugh, the faintest
possible indication of incredulity, to repeat with an increase of force
the doubt in his sister's tone. Oona was not without a healthful little
temper, which showed in the flash of her eye and the reddening of her
cheek. But she answered very steadily, with much suppressed feeling in
her tone--

"What do you call believing?" she said. "You believe in things you
cannot see? then I don't believe in the Kinloch Houran light. Because I
see it, and have seen it a hundred times as clear as day."

At this there was a little pause among the party of visitors, that pause
of half-amused superiority and scepticism, with which all believers in
the mysterious are acquainted. And then Marjorie, who was the boldest,
replied--

"Papa says it is a sort of phosphorescence, which is quite explainable:
and that where there is so much decaying matter, and so much damp, and
so much----"

"Faith, perhaps," said Colin, with that slight laugh; "but we are
outsiders, and we have no right to interfere with the doctrines of the
loch. Oona, give us that credit that we are outside the circle, and you
must not send us to the stake."

"Oh, my dears," said Mrs. Forrester, "and that is quite true. I have
heard very clever men say that there was nothing made so much difference
in what you believed as just the place you were born in, and that people
would go the stake, as you say, on one side of the border for a thing
they just laughed at on the other."

This, which was a very profound deliverance for Mrs. Forrester, she
carried off at the end with a pretty profession of her own disabilities.

"I never trust to my own judgment," she said. "But Oona is just very
decided on the subject, and so are all our people on the isle, and I
never put myself forward one way or another. Are you sure you will not
take a cup of tea before you go? a cup of tea is never out of place. It
is true that the day is very short, and Colin, after his town life, will
be out of the way of rowing. You are just going across by the ferry, and
then driving? Well, that is perhaps the best way. And in that case there
is plenty of time for a cup of tea. Just ring the bell, or perhaps it
will be safer, Oona, if you will cry upon Mysie and tell her to lose no
time. Just the tea, and a few of the cream scones, and a little cake.
She need not spread the table as there is so little time."

The interlude of the tea and the cream scones made it late before the
visitors got away. Their waggonette was visible waiting for them on the
road below Auchnasheen, and five minutes were enough to get them
across, so that they dallied over this refreshment with little thought
of the waning afternoon. Then there was a little bustle to escort them
down to the beach, to see them carefully wrapped up, to persuade
Marjorie that another "hap" would be desirable, and Janet that her
"cloud" should be twisted once more about her throat. The sunset was
waning when at last they were fairly off, and the loch lay in a still,
yellow radiance, against which every tree and twig, every rock and
stone, stood out dark in full significance of outline. It was cold, and
Mrs. Forrester shivered in her furred cloak.

"The shore looks so near that you could touch it," she said; "there will
be rain to-morrow, Oona."

"What does it matter about to-morrow?" cried the girl; "it's beautiful
to-night. Go in, mamma, to the fireside; but I will stay here and see
them drive away."

The mother consented to this arrangement, which was so natural; but a
moment afterwards came back and called from the porch, where she stood
sheltered from the keen and eager air.

"Oona! Come in, my dear. That Colin one, with his London ways, will
think you are watching him."

There was something sublime in the fling of Oona's head, and the
erection of her slim figure, as she rejected the possibility.

"Watching _him_!" She was too proud even to permit herself to resent it.

"Ah! but you never can tell what a silly lad may take into his head,"
said Mrs. Forrester; and, having thus cleared her conscience, she went
in and took off her cloak, and shut the drawing-room door, and made
herself very comfortable in her own cosy chair in the ruddy firelight.
She laid her head back upon the soft cushions and looked round her with
a quiet sense of content. Everything was so comfortable, so pretty and
homelike; and by-and-by she permitted herself, for ten minutes or so, to
fall into a soft oblivion. "I just closed my eyes," was Mrs. Forrester's
little euphemism to herself.

Meanwhile Oona stood and looked at sky and sea and shore. The soft plash
of the oars came through the great stillness, and, by-and-by, there was
the sound of the boat run up upon the shingle, and the noise of the
disembarkation, the voices swelling out in louder tones and laughter. As
they waved their hands in a final good-night to the watcher on the isle
before they drove away, the young people, as Mrs. Forrester had said,
laughed and assured Colin that it was not for them Oona stood out in the
evening chill. But, as a matter of fact, there was nothing so little in
Oona's mind. She was looking round her with that sort of exaltation
which great loneliness and stillness and natural beauty so naturally
give: the water gleaming all round, the sky losing its orange glow and
melting into soft primrose tints the colour of the daffodil.

    "The holy time is quiet as a nun
        Breathless with adoration."

All the sensations that belong to such a moment are exquisite; a
visionary elevation above the earth and all things earthly, a soft
pensiveness, an elation, yet wistful longing of the soul. Before her the
old castle of Kinloch Houran lay gloomy and dark on the edge of the
water. If she thought of anything it was of the young neighbour, to whom
she felt so strangely near in wonder and sympathy. Who might be with him
at that moment in the ghostly quiet? What thoughts, what suggestions,
were being placed before him? Oona put her hands together, and breathed
into the still air a wish of wondering and wistful pity which was almost
a prayer. And then, rousing herself with a slight shiver and shake, she
turned and went in, shutting out behind her the lingering glory of the
water and sky.

Mysie was lighting the candles when she went in, and Mrs. Forrester had
opened her eyes. Two candles on the mantelpiece and two on the table
were all the ladies allowed themselves, except on great occasions, when
the argand lamp, which was the pride of the household, was lighted in
honour of a visitor. The warmth of this genial interior was very welcome
after the cold of the twilight, and Oona brought her work to the table,
and the book from which her mother was in the habit of reading aloud.
Mrs. Forrester thought she improved her daughter's mind by these
readings; but, to tell the truth, Oona's young soul, with all the world
and life yet before it, often fled far enough away while her mother's
soft voice, with the pretty tricks of elocution, which were part of her
old-fashioned training, went on. Never was there a prettier indoor
scene. In the midst of that great solitude of woods and water, the
genial comfort of this feminine room, so warm, so softly lighted, so
peaceful and serene, struck the imagination like a miracle. Such a
tranquil retirement would have been natural enough safely planted amid
the safeguards and peaceful surroundings of a village: but in being here
there was a touching incongruity. The little play of the mother's voice
as she read with innocent artifice and the simple vanity which belonged
to her, the pretty work, of no great use, with which the girl was busy,
both heightened the sense of absolute trust with which they lived in the
bosom of nature. A sudden storm, one could not but think, might have
swept them away into the dark gleaming water that hemmed them round.
They were not afraid: they were as safe as in a citadel. They were like
the birds in their nests; warm and soft, though in the heart of Loch
Houran. Mrs. Forrester was reading a historical novel, one of the kind
which she thought so good for improving Oona's mind; amusing, yet
instructing her. But Oona's mind, refusing to be improved, was giving
only a mechanical attention. It was away making a little pilgrimage of
wonder about the mystic house which was so near them, longing to know,
and trying to divine, what was going on there.

But when the afternoon closes in at four o'clock, and the candles are
lighted shortly after, the night is long. It seemed endless on this
occasion, because of the too early tea, which Mrs. Forrester had thought
it would be "just a farce" to produce again at six o'clock, their usual
hour; and from half-past four till nine, when the small and light repast
known in the house under the pleasantly indefinite name of "the tray"
made its appearance, is a long time. There had been two or three
interruptions of a little talk, and the book had been laid down and
resumed again, and Oona's work had dropped two or three times upon her
knee, when Mysie, coming in, announced that it was just an uncommon fine
night, though all the signs (including the glass, which, however, does
not always count in the west of Scotland) pointed to rain, and that
Hamish was going to take advantage of the moonlight to do an errand at
the village above Auchnasheen. Would Miss Oona like to go? It was just
awfu' bonny, and with plenty of haps she could take no harm, Mysie said.
To see how the girl sprang from her seat was a proof of the gentle
tedium that had stolen upon her soul.

"But, my dear, it will be cold, cold. I am afraid of you catching cold,
Oona," Mrs. Forrester cried.

"Oh, mother, no. I never catch cold; and besides, if I did, what would
it matter? Tell him I'm coming, Mysie; tell him to wait for me. I'll put
on my thick ulster, or the fur cloak, if you like."

"Certainly, the fur cloak, Oona. I will not hear of it without that.
But, my dear, just think, Hamish will have to leave you in the boat
while he goes to the village; and what would you do, Oona, if there is
any one on the road?"

"Do, mamma? Look at them, to see if I knew them. And, if it was a
stranger, just sit still and say nothing."

"But, my dear! It might be somebody that would speak to you, and--annoy
you, Oona."

"There is no person up the loch or down the loch that would dare to do
that, mem," said Mysie, composedly.

"How can we tell? It might be some tourist or gangrel body."

"Annoy _me_!" said Oona, as if indeed this suggestion was too
far-fetched for possibility. "If anything so ridiculous happened I would
just push out into the loch. Don't you trouble, mother, about me."

Mrs. Forrester got up to envelop her child's throat in fold after fold
of the fleecy white "cloud." She shook her head a little, but she was
resigned, for such little controversies occurred almost daily. The
evening had changed when Oona ran lightly down the bank to the boat in
which Hamish was waiting. Everything about was flooded with the keen,
clear white moonlight, which in its penetrating chilly fashion was
almost more light than day. The loch was shining like silver, but with a
blackness behind the shining, and all the shadows were like midnight
profound in inky gloom. The boat seemed to hang suspended in the keen
atmosphere rather than to float, and the silence was shrill, and seemed
to cut into the soul. It was but a few minutes across the cold white
glittering strait that lay between the isle and the mainland. Hamish
jumped out with an exaggerated noise upon the slippery shingle, and
fastened the boat with a rattle of the ring to which it was attached,
which woke echoes all around both from land and water, everything under
the mingled influence of winter and night being so still. A chance
spectator would have thought that the mother had very good cause for her
alarm, and that to sit there in the rough boat absolutely alone, like
the one living atom in a world all voiceless and asleep, was not a
cheerful amusement for a girl. But Oona had neither fear nor sense of
strangeness in an experience which she had gone through so often. She
called out lightly to Hamish to make haste, and looked after him as he
set out on the white road, the peculiarities of his thick-set figure
coming out drolly in the curious dab of foreshortened shadow flung upon
the road by his side. She laughed at this to herself, and the laugh ran
all about with a wonderful cheerful thrill of the silence. How still it
was! When her laugh ceased, there was nothing but the steps of Hamish in
all the world--and by and by even the steps ceased, and that stillness
which could be felt settled down. There was not a breath astir, not
enough to cause the faintest ripple on the beach. Now and then a pebble
which had been pushed out of its place by the man's foot toppled over,
and made a sound as if something great had fallen. Otherwise not a
breath was stirring; the shadows of the fir-trees looked as if they
were gummed upon the road. And Oona held her breath; it seemed almost
profane to disturb the intense and perfect quiet. She knew every hue of
every rock, and the profile of every tree. And presently, which no doubt
was partly because of this perfect acquaintance, and partly because of
some mesmeric consciousness in the air, such as almost invariably
betrays the presence of a human being, her eyes fixed upon one spot
where the rock seemed higher than she had been used to. Was it possible
that somebody was there? She changed her place to look more closely; and
so fearless was the girl that she had nearly jumped out of the boat to
satisfy herself whether it was a man or a rock. But just when she was
about making up her mind to do so, the figure moved, and came down
towards the beach. Oona's heart gave a jump; several well-authenticated
stories which she had heard from her childhood came into her mind with a
rush. She took the end of the rope softly in her hand so as to be able
to detach it in a moment. To row back to the isle was easy enough.

"Is it you, Miss Forrester?" a voice said.

Oona let go the rope, and her heart beat more calmly. "I might with more
reason cry out, Is it you, Lord Erradeen? for if you are at the old
castle you are a long way from home, and I am quite near."

"I am at Auchnasheen," he said. A great change had come over his tone;
it was very grave; no longer the airy voice of youth which had jested
and laughed on the Isle. He came down and stood with his hand on the
bow of the boat. He looked very pale, very serious, but that might be
only the blackness of the shadows and the whiteness of the light.

"Did you ever see so spiritual a night?" said Oona. "There might be
anything abroad; not fairies, who belong to summer, but serious things."

"Do you believe then in--ghosts?" he said.

"Ghosts is an injurious phrase. Why should we call the poor people so
who are only--dead?" said Oona. "But that is a false way of speaking
too, isn't it? for it is not because they are dead, but living, that
they come back."

"I am no judge," he said, with a little shiver. "I never have thought on
the subject. I suppose superstition lingers longer up among the
mountains."

"Superstition!" said Oona, with a laugh. "What ugly words you use!"

Once more the laugh seemed to ripple about, and break the solemnity of
the night. But young Lord Erradeen was as solemn as the night, and his
countenance was not touched even by a responsive smile. His gravity
produced upon the girl's mind that feeling of visionary panic and
distrust which had not been roused by the external circumstances. She
felt herself grow solemn too, but struggled against it.

"Hamish has gone up with some mysterious communication to the
game-keeper," she said; "and in these long nights one is glad of a
little change. I came out with him to keep myself from going to sleep."

Which was not perhaps exactly true: but there had arisen a little
embarrassment in her mind, and she wanted something to say.

"And I came out--" he said; then paused. "The night is not so ghostly as
the day," he added, hurriedly; "nor dead people so alarming as the
living."

"You mean that you disapprove of our superstitions, as you call them,"
said Oona. "Most people laugh and believe a little; but I know some are
angry and think it wrong."

"I----angry! That was not what I meant. I meant----It is a strange
question which is living and which is----To be sure, you are right, Miss
Forrester. What is dead cannot come in contact with us, only what is
living. It is a mystery altogether."

"You are not a sceptic then?" said Oona. "I am glad of that."

"I am not----anything. I don't know how to form an opinion. How lovely
it is, to be sure," he burst out all at once; "especially to have some
one to talk to. That is the great charm."

"If that is all," said Oona, trying to speak cheerfully, "you will soon
have dozens of people to talk to, for everybody in the county--and that
is a wide word--is coming to call. They will arrive in shoals as soon as
they know."

"I think I shall go--in a day or two," he said.

At this moment the step of Hamish, heard far off through the great
stillness, interrupted the conversation. It had been as if they two were
alone in this silent world; and the far-off step brought in a third and
disturbed them. They were silent, listening as it came nearer and
nearer, the sound growing with every repetition. When Hamish appeared in
the broad white band of road coming from between the shadows of the
trees the young man dropped his hand from the bow of the boat. He had
not spoken again, nor did Oona feel herself disposed to speak. Hamish
quickened his pace when he saw another figure on the beach.

"Ye'll no' have been crying upon me, Miss Oona," he said, with a
suspicious look at the stranger.

"Oh no, Hamish!" cried Oona, cheerfully. "I have not been wearying at
all, for this is Lord Erradeen that has been so kind as to come and keep
me company."

"Oh, it'll be my Lord Erradeen?" said Hamish, with a curious look into
Walter's face.

Then there was a repetition of the noises with which the still loch
rang, the rattle of the iron ring, the grating of the bow on the shingle
as she was pushed off. Hamish left no time for leave-taking. There were
a few yards of clear water between the boat and the beach when Oona
waved her hand to the still figure left behind. "My mother will like to
see you to-morrow," she cried, with an impulse of sympathy. "Good
night."

He took his hat off, and waved his hand in reply, but said nothing, and
stood motionless till they lost sight of him round the corner of the
isle. Then Hamish, who had been exerting himself more than usual, paused
a little.

"Miss Oona," he said, "yon will maybe be the young lord, but maybe no. I
would not be speaking to the first that comes upon the loch side----"

"Oh, if you are beginning to preach propriety----" the girl cried.

"It'll not be propriety, it will just be that they're a family that is
not canny. Who will tell you if it's one or if it's the other? Did ye
never hear the tale of the leddy that fell off the castle wall?"

"But this is not the castle," cried Oona, "and I know him very well--and
I'm sorry for him, Hamish. He looks so changed."

"Oh, what would you do being sorry for him? He has nothing ado with
us--nothing ado with us," Hamish said.

And how strange it was to come in again from that brilliant whiteness
and silence--the ghostly loch, the visionary night--into the ruddy room
full of firelight and warmth, all shut in, sheltered, full of
companionship.

"Come away, come away to the fire; you must be nearly frozen, Oona, and
I fear ye have caught your death of cold," her mother said.

Oona remembered with a pang the solitary figure on the water's edge, and
wondered if he were still standing there forlorn. A whole chapter of
life seemed to have interposed between her going and coming, though she
had been but half an hour away.

CHAPTER XIV.

Two days after this night scene there was a gathering such as was of
weekly occurrence in the Manse of Loch Houran parish. The houses were
far apart, and those of the gentry who were old-fashioned enough to
remain for the second service, were in the habit of spending the short
interval between in the minister's house, where an abundant meal, called
by his housekeeper a cold collation, was spread in the dining-room for
whosoever chose to partake. As it was the fashion in the country to dine
early on Sunday, this repast was but sparingly partaken of, and most of
the company, after the glass of wine or milk, the sandwich or biscuit,
which was all they cared to take, would sit round the fire in the
minister's library, or examine his books, or, what was still more
prized, talk to him of their own or their neighbours' affairs. The
minister of Loch Houran was one of those celibates who are always
powerful ecclesiastically, though the modern mind is so strongly opposed
to any artificial manufacture of them such as that which the Church of
Rome in her wisdom has thought expedient. We all know the arguments in
favour of a married clergy, but those on the other side of the question
it is the fashion to ignore. He who has kept this natural distinction by
fair means, and without compulsion, has however an unforced advantage of
his own which the most Protestant and the most matrimonial of polemics
will scarcely deny. He is more safe to confide in, being one, not two.
He is more detached and individual; it is more natural that all the
world about him should have a closer claim upon the man who has no
nearer claims to rival those of his spiritual children. Mr. Cameron was
one of this natural priesthood. If he had come to his present calm by
reason of passion and disappointment in his past, such as we obstinately
and romantically hope to have founded the tranquillity of subdued,
sunny, and sober age, nobody could tell. An old minister may perhaps be
let off more easily in this respect than an old monk; but he was the
friend and consoler of everybody; the depositary of all the secrets of
the parish; the one adviser of whose disinterestedness and secrecy every
perplexed individual was sure. He did all that man could do to be
absolutely impartial and divide himself, as he divided his provisions,
among his guests as their needs required. But flesh is weak, and Mr.
Cameron could not disown one soft place in his heart for Oona Forrester,
of which that young person was quite aware. Oona was his pupil and his
favourite, and he was, if not her spiritual director, which is a
position officially unknown to his Church, at least her confidant in all
her little difficulties, which comes to much the same thing: and this
notwithstanding the fact that Mrs. Forrester attended the parish church
under protest, and prided herself on belonging to the Scottish Episcopal
community, the Church of the gentry, though debarred by providence from
her privileges. Mrs. Forrester at this moment, with her feet on the
fender, was employed in bewailing this sad circumstance with another
landed lady in the same position; but Oona was standing by the old
ministers side, with her hand laid lightly within his arm, which was a
pretty way she had when she was with her oldest friend. It did not
interfere with this attitude, that he was exchanging various remarks
with other people, and scarcely talking to Oona at all. He looked down
upon her from time to time with a sort of proud tenderness, as her
grandfather might have done. It pleased the old man to feel the girl's
slim small fingers upon his arm. And as there were no secrets discussed
in this weekly assembly her presence interrupted nothing. She added her
word from time to time, or the still readier comment of smiles and
varying looks that changed like the Highland sky outside, and were never
for two minutes the same. It was not, however, till Mr. Shaw, the
factor, came in, that the easy superficial interest of all the parish
talk quickened into something more eager and warm in her sympathetic
countenance. Shaw's ruddy face was full of care; this was indeed its
usual expression, an expression all the more marked from the blunt and
open simplicity of its natural mood to which care seemed alien. The
puckers about his hazel grey eyes, the lines on his forehead which
exposure to the air had reddened rather than browned, were more than
usually evident. Those honest eyes seemed to be remonstrating with the
world and fate. They had an appearance half-comic to the spectator, but
by no means comic to their own consciousness of grieved interrogation as
if asking every one on whom they turned, "Why did you do it?" "Why did
you let it be done?" It was this look which he fixed upon the minister,
who indeed was most innocent of all share in the cause of his trouble.

"I told you," he said, "the other day, about the good intentions of our
young lord. I left various things with him to be settled that would bide
no delay--things that had been waiting for the late Lord Erradeen from
day to day. And all this putting off has been bad, bad. There's those
poor crofters that will have to be put out of their bits of places
to-morrow. I can hold off no longer without his lordship's warrant. And
not a word from him--not a word!" cried the good man, with that
appealing look, to which the natural reply was, It is not my fault. But
the minister knew better, and returned a look of sympathy, shaking his
white head.

"What has become of the young man? they tell me he has left the castle."

"He is not far off--he is at Auchnasheen; but he is just like all the
rest, full of goodwill one day, and just inaccessible the next--just
inaccessible!" repeated the factor. "And what am I to do? I am just wild
to have advice from somebody. What am I to do?"

"Can you not get at him to speak to him?" the minister asked.

"I have written to know if he will see me. I have said I was waiting an
answer, but there's no answer comes. They say he's on the hill all day,
though the keepers know nothing about his movements, and he does not
even carry a gun. What am I to do? He sees nobody; two or three have
called, but cannot get at him. He's always out--he's never there. That
old Symington goes about wringing his hands. What says he? he says,
'This is the worst of a'; this is the worst of a'. He's just got it on
him----'"

"What does that mean?"

"Can I tell what that means? According to the old wives it is the weird
of the Methvens; but you don't believe such rubbish, nor do I. It has,
maybe, something to do with the drainage, or the water, or the sanitary
arrangements, one way or the other!" cried the factor with a harsh and
angry laugh.

Then there was a momentary pause, and the hum of the other people's talk
came in, filling up with easier tones of conversation the somewhat
strained feeling of this: "He's a good shot and a fine oar, and just a
deevil for spunk and courage: and yet because he's a little vague in his
speaking!" "But, I say, we must put up with what we can get, and though
it's a trial the surplice is not just salvation." "And it turned out to
be measles, and not fever at all, and nothing to speak of; so we just
cheated the doctors." These were the broken scraps that came in to fill
up the pause.

"I saw Lord Erradeen the other night," said Oona, whose light grasp on
the old minister's arm had been tightening and slackening all through
this dialogue, in the interest she felt. Both of the gentlemen turned to
look at her inquiringly, and the girl blushed--not for any reason, as
she explained to herself indignantly afterwards, but because it was a
foolish way she had; but somehow the idea suggested to all their minds
was not without an effect upon the events of her after-life.

"And what did he say to you? and what is he intending? and why does he
shut himself up and let all the business hang suspended like yon fellow
Machomet's coffin?" cried the factor, with a guttural in the prophet's
name which was due to the energy of his feelings. He turned upon Oona
those remonstrating eyes of his, as if he had at last come to the final
cause of all the confusion, and meant to demand of her, without any
quibbling, an answer to the question, Why did you do it? on the spot.

"Indeed, he said very little to me, Mr. Shaw. He looked like a ghost,
and he said--he was going away in a day or two."

Sudden reflection in the midst of what she was saying made it apparent
to Oona that it was unnecessary to give all the details of the
interview. Mr. Cameron, for his part, laid his large, soft old hand
tenderly upon hers which was on his arm, and said, in the voice which
always softened when he addressed her--

"And where would that be, my bonnie Oona, that you met with Lord
Erradeen?"

"It was on the beach below Auchnasheen," said Oona, with an almost
indignant frankness, holding her head high, but feeling, to her anger
and distress, the blush burn upon her cheek. "Hamish had some errand on
shore, and I went with him in the boat. I was waiting for him, when some
one came down from the road and spoke to me. I was half-frightened, for
I did not know any one was there. It was Lord Erradeen."

"And what?--and why?--and--"

The factor was too much disturbed to form his questions reasonably, even
putting aside the evident fact that Oona had no answer to give him. But
at this moment the little cracked bell began to sound, which was the
warning that the hour of afternoon service approached. The ladies rose
from their seats round the fire, the little knots of men broke up.
"Oona, my dear, will ye come and tie my bonnet? I never was clever at
making a bow," said Mrs. Forrester; and the minister left his guests to
make his preparations for church. Mr. Shaw felt himself left in the
lurch. He kept hovering about Oona with a quick decision in his own
mind, which was totally unjustified by any foundation; he went summarily
through a whole romance, and came to its conclusion in the most
matter-of-fact and expeditious way. "If that comes to pass now!" he said
to himself. "_She's_ no Me'ven; there's no weird on her; he can give her
the management of the estates, and all will go well. She has a head upon
her shoulders, though she is nothing but a bit girlie--and there will be
me to make everything plain!" Such was the brief epitome of the
situation that passed in the factor's mind. He was very anxious to get
speech of Oona on the way to church, and it is to be feared that Mr.
Cameron's excellent afternoon discourse (which many people said was
always his best, though as it was listened to but drowsily the fact may
be doubted) made little impression upon Shaw, though he was a serious
man, who could say his say upon religious subjects, and was an elder,
and had sat in the Assembly in his day. He had his opportunity when the
service was over, when the boats were being pushed off from the beach,
and the carriages got under way, for those who had far to go. Mrs.
Forrester had a great many last words to say before she put on her
furred mantle and her white cloud, and took her place in the boat; and
Mysie, who stood ready with the mantle to place it on her mistress's
shoulders, had also her own little talks to carry on at that genial
moment when all the parish--or all the loch, if you like the expression
better--stood about exchanging friendly greetings and news from outlying
places. While all the world was thus engaged, Oona fell at last into the
hands of the factor, and became his prey.

"Miss Oona," he said, "if ye will accord me a moment, I would like well,
well, to know what's your opinion about Lord Erradeen."

"But I have no opinion!" cried Oona, who had been prepared for the
attack. She could not keep herself from blushing (so ridiculous! but I
will do it, she said to herself, as if that "I" was an independent
person over whom she had no control), but otherwise she was on her
guard. "How could I have any opinion when I have only seen Lord Erradeen
twice--thrice?" she added, with a heightening of the blush, as she
remembered the adventure of the coach.

"Twice--thrice; but that gives you facilities--and ladies are so
quick-witted. I've seen him but once," said the factor. "I was much
taken with him, that is the truth, and was so rash as to think our
troubles were over; but here has everything fallen to confusion in the
old way. Miss Oona, do you use your influence if you should see his
lordship again."

"But, Mr. Shaw, there is no likelihood that I shall see him again--and I
have no influence."

"Oh no, you'll not tell me that," said the factor, shaking his head,
with a troubled smile. "Them that are like you, young and bonnie, have
always influence, if they like to use it. And as for seeing him again,
he will never leave the place, Miss Oona, without going at least to bid
you good-bye."

"Lord Erradeen may come to take leave of my mother," said Oona, with
dignity. "It is possible, though he did not say so; but even if he
does, what can I do? I know nothing about his affairs, and I have no
right to say anything to him--no right, more than any one else who has
met him three times."

"Which is just no person--except yourself, so far as I can learn," the
factor said.

"After all, when you come to think of it, it is only once I have seen
him," said Oona, "for the night on the loch was by chance, and the day
on the coach I did not know him; so that after all I have only, so to
speak, seen him once, and how could I venture to speak to him about
business? Oh no, that is out of the question. Yes, mamma, I am quite
ready. Mr. Shaw wishes, if Lord Erradeen comes to bid us good-bye that
we should tell him----"

"Yes?" said Mrs. Forrester, briskly, coming forward, while Mysie
arranged around her her heavy cloak. "I am sure I shall be very glad to
give Lord Erradeen any message. He is a very nice young man, so far as I
can judge; people think him very like my Ronald, Mr. Shaw. Perhaps it
has not struck you? for likenesses are just one of the things that no
two people see. But we are very good friends, him and me: he is just a
nice simple gentlemanly young man--oh, very gentlemanly. He would never
go away without saying good-bye. And I am sure I shall be delighted to
give him any message. That will do, Mysie, that will do; do not
suffocate me with that cloak. Dear me, you have scarcely left me a
corner to breathe out of. But, Mr. Shaw, certainly--any message----"

"I am much obliged to you; but I will no doubt see Lord Erradeen myself,
and I'll not trouble a lady about business," said the factor. He cast a
look at Oona, in which with more reason than usual his eyes said, How
could you do it? And the girl was a little compunctious. She laughed,
but she felt guilty, as she took her mother's arm to lead her to the
boat. Mrs. Forrester had still a dozen things to say, and waved her
hands to the departing groups on every side, while Shaw, half-angry,
stood grimly watching the embarkation.

"There are the Kilhouran Campbells driving away, and I have not had a
word with them: and there is old Jess, who always expects to be taken
notice of: and the Ellermore folk, that I had no time to ask about Tom's
examination: and Mr. Cameron himself, that I never got a chance of
telling how well I liked the sermon. Dear me, Oona, you are always in
such a hurry! And take care now, take care; one would think you took me
for your own age. But I am not wanting to be hoisted up either, as if I
were too old to know how to step into a boat. Good-bye, Mr. Shaw,
good-bye," Mrs. Forrester added cheerfully, waving her hand as she got
herself safely established in the bow, and Hamish, not half so
picturesque as usual in his Sunday clothes, pushed off the boat.
"Good-bye, and I'll not forget your message." She even kissed her hand,
if not to him, to the parish in general, in the friendliness of her
heart.

Mr. Shaw had very nearly shaken his clenched fist in reply. Old fool he
called her in his heart, and even launched an expletive (silently) at
Oona, "the heartless monkey," who had betrayed him to her mother. He
went back to the manse with Mr. Cameron, when all the little talks and
consultations were over and everybody gone, and once more poured out the
story of his perplexities.

"If I do not hear from him, I'll have to proceed to extremities
to-morrow, and it is like to break my heart," he said. "For the poor
folk have got into their heads that I will stand their friend whatever
happens, and they are just keeping their minds easy."

"But, man, they should pay their rents," said Mr. Cameron, who, when all
was said that could be said in his favour, was not a Loch Houran man.

"Rents! where would you have them get the siller? Their bit harvest has
failed, and the cows are dry for want of fodder. If they have a penny
laid by they must take it to live upon. They have enough ado to live,
without thinking of rents."

"But in that case, Shaw," said the minister, gravely--"you must not
blame me for saying so, it's what all the wise men say--would they not
do better to emigrate, and make a new start in a new country, where
there's plenty of room?"

"Oh, I know that argument very well," said Shaw, with a snort of
indignation. "I have it all at my fingers' ends. I've preached it many a
day. But what does it mean, when all's done? It means just sheep or it
means deer, and a pickle roofless houses standing here and there, and
not a soul in the glen. There was a time even when I had just an
enthusiasm for it--and I've sent away as many as most. But after all,
they're harmless, God-fearing folk; the land is the better of them, and
none the worse. There's John Paterson has had great losses with his
sheep, and there's yon English loon that had the shooting, and shot
every feather on the place; both the one and the other will be far more
out of his lordship's pocket than my poor bit crofters. I laid all that
before him; and he showed a manful spirit, that I will always say. No,
minister, it was not to argue the case from its foundations that I came
to you. I know very well what the economists say. I think they're not
more than half right, though they're so cocksure. But if you'll tell me
what I should do----"

This, however, was what Mr. Cameron was not capable of. He said, after
an interval, "I will go to-morrow and try if I can see him, if you think
it would not be ill taken."

"To-morrow is the last day," said the factor gloomily: and after a
little while he followed the example of all the others, and sent for his
dog-cart and drove himself away. But a more anxious man did not traverse
any road in Great Britain on that wintry afternoon: and bitter thoughts
were in his heart of the capricious family, whose interests were in his
hands, and to whom he was almost too faithful a servant. "Oh, the weird
of the Me'vens!" said Mr. Shaw to himself, "if they were not so taken up
with themselves and took more thought for other folk we would hear
little of any weirds. I have no time for weirds. I have just my work to
do and I do it. The Lord preserve us from idleness, and luxury, and
occupation with ourselves!" Here the good man in his righteous wrath and
trouble and disappointment was unjust, as many a good man has been
before.

When Hamish had pushed off from the beach, and the little party were
afloat, Oona repented her of that movement of mingled offence and
_espièglerie_ which had made her transfer the factor's appeal from
herself to her mother: and it was only then that Mrs. Forrester
recollected how imperfect the communication was. "Bless me," Mrs.
Forrester said, "I forgot to ask after all what it was he wanted me to
say. That was a daft like thing, to charge me with a message and never
to tell me what it was. And how can I tell my Lord Erradeen! I suppose
you could not put back, Hamish, to inquire?--but there's nobody left
yonder at the landing that I can see, so it would be little use. How
could you let me do such a silly thing, Oona, my dear?"

"Most likely, mamma, we shall not see Lord Erradeen and so no harm will
be done."

"Not see Lord Erradeen! Do ye think then, Oona, that he has no manners,
or that he's ignorant how to behave? I wonder what has made ye take an
ill-will at such a nice young man. There was nothing in him to justify
it, that I could see. And to think I should have a message for him and
not know what it is! How am I to give him the message when it was never
given to me? I just never heard of such a dilemma. Something perhaps of
importance, and me charged to give it, and not to know what it was!"

"Maybe, mem," said Mysie from the other end of the boat, with that
serene certainty that her mistress's affairs were her own, which
distinguishes an old Scotch family retainer, "maybe Miss Oona will ken."

"Oh, yes, I suppose I know," said Oona, reluctantly. "It is something
about the cotters at the Truach-Glas, who will be turned out to-morrow
unless Lord Erradeen interferes; but why should we be charged with that?
We are very unlikely to see Lord Erradeen, and to-morrow is the day."

This piece of information caused a great excitement in the little party.
The cotters to be turned out!

"But no, no, that was just to frighten you. He will never do it," said
Mrs. Forrester, putting on a smile to reassure herself after a great
flutter and outcry. "No, no; it must just have been to give us all a
fright. John Shaw is a very decent man. I knew his father perfectly
well, who was the minister at Rannoch, and a very good preacher. No, no,
Oona, my dear--he could never do it; and yon fine lad that is so like
my Ronald (though you will not see it) would never do it. You need not
look so pale. It is just his way of joking with you. Many a man thinks
it pleasant to tell a story like that to a lady just to hear what she
says."

"Eh, but it's ill joking with poor folks' lives," cried Mysie, craning
over Hamish's shoulder to hear every word.

"It's none joking," said Hamish, gruffly, between the sweep of his oars.

"It's none joking, say ye? Na, it's grim earnest, or I'm sair mistaken,"
said the woman. "Eh, Miss Oona, but I would gang round the loch on my
bare feet, Sabbath though it be, rather than no give a message like
yon."

"How can we do it?" cried Oona; "how are we to see Lord Erradeen? I am
sure he will not come to call; and even if he did come to-morrow in the
afternoon it would be too late."

"My dear," said Mrs. Forrester, "we will keep a look out in the morning.
Hamish will just be fishing at the point, and hail him as soon as he
sees him. For it was in the morning he came before."

"Oh, mem!" cried Mysie, "but would you wait for that? It's ill to lippen
to a young man's fancy. He might be late of getting up (they're mostly
lazy in the morning), or he might be writing his letters, or he might be
seeing to his guns, or there's just a hundred things he might be doing.
What would ye say if, may-be, Miss Oona was to write one of her bonnie
little notties on that awfu' bonnie paper, with her name upon't, and
tell him ye wanted to see him at ten o'clock or eleven o'clock, or
whatever time you please?"

"Or we might go over to-night in the boat," said Hamish, laconically.

Mrs. Forrester was used to take much counsel. She turned from one to the
other with uncertain looks. "But, Oona," she said, "you are saying
nothing! and you are generally the foremost. If it is not just nonsense
and a joke of John Shaw's----"

"I think," said Oona, "that Mr. Shaw will surely find some other way;
but it was no joke, mother. Who would joke on such a subject? He said if
Lord Erradeen called we were to use our influence."

"That would I," said Mrs. Forrester, "use my influence. I would just tell
him, You must not do it. Bless me, a young man new in the country to
take a step like that and put every person against him! No, no, it is
not possible: but a lady," she added, bridling a little with her smile
of innocent vanity, "a lady may say anything--she may say things that
another person cannot. I would just tell him, You must not do it! and
that would be all that would be needed. But bless me, Oona, how are we
to use our influence unless we can see him?--and I cannot see how we are
to get at him."

"Oh, mem!" cried Mysie, impeding Hamish's oars as she stretched over his
shoulder, "just one of Miss Oona's little notties!"

But this was a step that required much reflection, and at which the
anxious mother shook her head.

CHAPTER XV.

It had rained all night, and the morning was wet and cold; the water
dull like lead, the sky a mass of clouds; all the bare branches of the
trees dropping limp in the humid air. Mrs. Forrester, on further
thought, had not permitted Oona to write even the smallest of her "bit
notties" to Lord Erradeen; for, though she lived on an isle in Loch
Houran, this lady flattered herself that she knew the world. She indited
a little epistle of her own, in which she begged him to come and see her
upon what she might call a matter of business--a thing that concerned
his own affairs. This was carried by Hamish, but it received no reply.
Lord Erradeen was out. Where could he be out on a Sabbath day at night,
in a place where there were no dinner parties, nor any club, nor the
temptations of a town, but just a lonely country place? Nor was there
any answer in the morning, which was more wonderful still. It was
ill-bred, Mrs. Forrester thought, and she was more than ever glad that
her daughter had not been involved in the matter. But Hamish had
information which was not communicated to the drawing-room, and over
which Mysie and he laid their heads together in the kitchen. The poor
young gentleman was off his head altogether, the servants said. The door
was just left open, and he came in, nobody knew when. He could not bear
that anybody should say a word to him. There had been thoughts among
them of sending for his mother, and old Symington showed to Hamish a
telegram prepared for Mr. Milnathort, acquainting him with the state of
affairs, which he had not yet ventured to send--"For he will come to
himself soon or syne," the old man said; "it's just the weird of the
Me'vens that is upon him." Symington was indifferent to the fate of the
poor crofters. He said "the factor will ken what to do." He was not a
Loch Houran man.

On the Monday, however, the feeling of all the little population on the
isle ran very high. The wet morning, the leaden loch, the low-lying
clouds oppressed the mental atmosphere, and the thought of the poor
people turned out of their houses in the rain, increased the misery of
the situation in a way scarcely to be expected in the west, where it is
supposed to rain for ever. At eleven o'clock Oona appeared in her
thickest ulster and her strongest boots.

"I am going up to see old Jenny," she said, with a little air of
determination.

"My dear, you will be just wet through; and are you sure your boots are
thick enough? You will come back to me with a heavy cold, and then what
shall we all do? But take some tea and sugar in your basket, Oona,"
said her mother. She went with the girl to the door in spite of these
half-objections, which did not mean anything. "And a bottle of my ginger
cordial might not be amiss--they all like it, poor bodies! And, Oona,
see, my dear, here are two pound notes. It's all I have of change, and
it's more than I can afford; but if it comes to the worst----But surely,
surely John Shaw, that is a very decent man, and comes of a good family,
will have found the means to do something!"

The kind lady stood at the door indifferent to the wet which every
breath of air shook from the glistening branches. It had ceased to rain,
and in the west there was a pale clearness, which made the leaden loch
more chilly still, yet was a sign of amelioration. Mrs. Forrester wrung
her hands, and cast one look at the glistening woods of Auchnasheen, and
another at the dark mass, on the edge of the water, of Kinloch Houran.
She did not know whether to be angry with Lord Erradeen for being so
ill-bred, or to compassionate him for the eclipse which he had
sustained. But, after all, he was a very secondary object in her mind in
comparison with Oona, whose course she watched in the boat, drawing a
long line across the leaden surface of the water. She was just like the
dove out of the ark, Mrs. Forrester thought.

The little hamlet of Truach-Glas was at some distance from the loch.
Oona walked briskly along the coach road for two miles or thereabouts,
then turned up to the left on a road which narrowed as it ascended till
it became little more than a cart track, with a footway at the side. In
the broader valley below a substantial farmhouse, with a few outlying
cottages, was the only point of habitation, and on either side of the
road a few cultivated fields, chiefly of turnips and potatoes, were all
that broke the stretches of pasture, extending to the left as high as
grass would grow, up the dark slopes of the hills. But the smaller glen
on the right had a more varied and lively appearance, and was broken
into small fields bearing signs of cultivation tolerably high up, some
of them still yellow with the stubble of the late harvest, the poor
little crop of oats or barley which never hoped to ripen before October,
if then. A mountain stream, which was scarcely a thread of water in the
summer, now leaped fiercely enough, turbid and swollen, from rock to
rock in its rapid descent. The houses clustered on a little tableland at
some height above the road, where a few gnarled hawthorns, rowans, and
birches were growing. They were poor enough to have disgusted any social
reformer, or political economist; grey growths of rough stones, which
might have come together by chance, so little shape was there in the
bulging walls. Only a few of them had even the rough chimney at one end
wattled with ropes of straw, which showed an advanced civilisation. The
others had nothing but the hole in the roof, which is the first and
homeliest expedient of primitive ventilation. It might have been