just as much as ever you have a mind to. Meanwhile, buy a boat; I know where there is one to sell that will suit us in every way—a grand, big, strong, open boat. She belongs to Duncan Forbes, of Fort Augustus, and can be bought for an old song. We can have her round into the loch here. I’m a bit of a sailor, as Allan knows, and I’ll show you how to deck her over, set up rigging and mast, and make her complete, and I’ll make bold to say that before we have done with her she will be as neat and pretty a little craft as ever hauled the wind.”

“I say, boys,” said Rory, “I think the idea is a glorious one.”

“I must say, I like it immensely,” said Ralph.

“And so do I,” said Allan, “if—if we can all afford it.”

“Oh! but stop a little,” said McBain, “you haven’t heard all my proposal yet; the best of it is to come. Your cruising ground will be all up and down among the Western Islands, where the wildest and finest scenery in Europe exists. You’ll get any amount of fishing and shooting too, for wherever you three smart-looking young yachtsmen land on the coast, people will vie with each other in offering you Highland hospitality. And all the while you can make your pleasure pay you.”

“How—how—tell us how?”

“Why,” continued McBain, “around the rocky and rugged islands where you will be cruising are the finest lobsters in the world. You have only to sink a few cages every night when at anchor; you will draw them up full in the morning, and place them in a well in your hold. As soon as you have enough to make a paying voyage, round you will run to Greenock, where is always a ready market and good prices.”

Here Ralph jumped up and rubbed his hands; and Rory, forgetting his bruised shoulder and still bandaged head, hopped off the sofa to cry “Hurrah!” and this made Kooran bark, and of course Bran chimed in for company’s sake, and McBain wagged his beard and laughed with delight at the pleasure his suggestion seemed to afford the three young men; and, indeed, for the time being he felt quite as youthful as either of them.

“And I’ll be the crew of the craft,” said McBain. “Allan ought to be captain, and you others naval cadets.”

“Yes,” said Rory, “that will suit us excellently, and we can take lessons from you and Allan in seamanship, and by-and-bye be just as clever sailors as either of you.”

“Ay, that you can,” said McBain.

Allan laid his hand on Ralph’s shoulder, for the latter was gazing quietly and dreamily firewards.

“What are you thinking about?” said Allan.

Ralph smiled as he made reply.

“I was thinking,” he said, “that our adventures as amateur yachtsmen will not begin and end with cruising among the Western Isles of Scotland, pleasant and romantic enough though that may be. Listen to me, boys. It has been the one dream of my life to be able to be master of a beautiful yacht, and to sail away to far countries, and to see the world in earnest. Now I know I shall have an opportunity of doing so. My good, kind old father will baulk me in nothing that is reasonable; and if, after a few months’ cruising in this boat, I can convince him that I have mastered the rudiments of seamanship, he will, I believe, let me have a real yacht, capable of voyaging to any part of the world!”

“Ah! that would indeed be glorious, boys,” cried Rory, with enthusiasm.

“If we could only arrange it,” said Allan, “so as to all go together.”

“Of course,” said Ralph; “there would not be half the pleasure else. And we would sail to some country, if possible, where Englishmen had never been, or never lived before.”

“To the countries and islands around the Pole, for example,” suggested McBain.

“Yes,” Ralph said; “from all I have read of the Sea of Ice, it seems to me the most fascinating place in the world.”

“Ay,” said McBain; “to me it possesses a strange charm; for everything connected with the countries and seas beyond the Arctic circle is as different from anything one sees elsewhere as though it belonged to some other planet.”

For hours before retiring to rest they talked about Greenland; and McBain told them of many a wild adventure in which he himself had been the principal hero. And among other things he told them of the mammoth caves of Alba Isle, where an untold wealth of ivory lay buried.

For hours after they had retired Allan lay awake, thinking only of that buried treasure. Then he slept, and dreamt he had returned from the far north a wealthy man—that Arrandoon was re-furnished and re-roofed, that he had regained all the proud acres which his fathers had squandered, and that his dear mother and sister were reinstated in the rank of life they, were born to adorn, and which was the right of birth of the chiefs of Glentroom.

Do dreams ever come true? At times.