himself was deficient in. Thoroughly guileless was honest Ralph, and indeed, if the truth must be told, he was not a little proud of his companion, and he was never better pleased than when, along with Rory in the company of others, the Irishman was what Ralph called “in fine form.”

At such times Ralph would not have interrupted the flow of Rory’s wit for the world, but the quiet and happy glance he would give round the room occasionally, to see if other people were listening to and fully appreciating his adopted brother, spoke volumes.

McBain was right. The young blood in Rory’s veins soon reasserted itself, and after half-an-hour’s rest he seemed as well as ever. His first action on awaking was to put his hand to his brow, and his first words were,—

“What is it at all, and where am I? Have I been in any trouble?”

“Trouble, Rory?” said Allan, pressing his hand. “Well, you and Ralph went tumbling over a cliff.”

“Only fifty feet of a fall, Rory,” said Ralph.

Rory sat bolt upright now, and opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Och! now I remember,” he said, “that we had a bit of a fall—But fifty feet! do you tell me so? Indeed then it’s a wonder there is one single whole bone between the two of us. But where is my sketch-book?”

“Here you are,” said Allan.

“Oh!” said Rory, opening the book, “this is worse than all; the prettiest sketch ever I made in my life all spoiled with the snow.”

“Now, boys,” continued Rory, after a pause, “I grant you this is a very romantic situation—everything is romantic bar the smoke; but what are we waiting for? and is this your Castle of Arrandoon, my friend?”

“Not quite,” replied Allan, laughing. “We are waiting for you to recover, and—”

“Well, sure enough,” cried Rory, “I have recovered.”

He jumped up as he spoke, kicked out his legs, and stretched out his arms.

“No; never a broken bone,” he said.

Now it had been arranged between Allan and McBain that Rory should ride in the cart, while they and Ralph should walk.

But Rory was aghast at such a proposal.

“What,” he cried; “is it a procession you’d make of me? Would you put me on straw in the bottom of a cart, like an old wife coming from a fair?”

“But,” persisted Allan, “you must be weak from the loss of blood.”

“Loss of blood,” laughed Rory, “don’t be chaffing a poor boy. If you’d seen the blood I lost at the last election, and all in the cause of peace and honour, too! No, indeed; I’ll walk.”

The storm was at its very worst when they once more emerged from the pine-wood, but every now and then they could see the light glimmering from one of the castle turrets, to guide them through the darkness. They sent the dogs on before to give notice of their approach; then Peter tuned up, and high above the roaring of the snow rose the scream of the great Highland bagpipe.

A few hours afterwards, the three friends had all but forgotten their perilous adventure among the snow, or remembered it only to make merry over it. It is needless to say that Allan’s mother and sister welcomed his friends, or that Ralph and Rory were charmed with the reception they received.

“Well,” said Rory, after the ladies had retired for the night, “I fully understand now what your poet Burns meant when he said—

“‘In heaven itself I’ll ask nae mair Than just a Highland welcome.’”

And now they gathered round the cosy hearth, on which great logs were blazing. McBain was relegated to an armchair in a corner, being the oldest Rory, who still felt the effects of his fall, reclined on a couch in front, with Ralph seated on one side and Allan on the other. Bran, the deer-hound, thought this too good a chance to be thrown away, so he got upon the sofa and lay with his great, honest head on Rory’s knees, while Kooran curled himself up on the hearthrug, and Oscar watched the door.

“Well,” said Ralph, “I call this delightful; and the idea of doing the Highlands in mid-winter is decidedly a new one, and that is saying a great deal.”

“Yes,” said Rory, laughing; “and a beautiful taste we’ve had of it to begin with. I fall over a cliff in the snow and Ralph comes tumbling after, just like Jack and Jill, and then we go to sleep like lambs, and waken with a taste of spirits in our mouths. Indeed yes, boys, it is romantic entirely.”

“Everything now-a-days,” said Ralph, with half a yawn, “is so hackneyed, as it were. You go up the Rhine—that is hackneyed. You go down the Mediterranean—that is hackneyed. You go here, there, and everywhere, and you find here, there, and everywhere hackneyed. And if you go into a drawing-room and begin to speak of where you’ve been and what you’ve done, you soon find that every other fellow has been to the same places, and done precisely the same things.”

“Sure, you’re right, Ralph,” said Rory; “and I do believe if you were to go to the moon and come back, some fellow would meet you on your return and lisp out, ‘Oh, been to the moon, have you! awfly funny old place the moon. Did you call on the Looneys when you were there? Jolly family the Looneys.’”

“There is a kind of metaphorical truth in what you say, Rory,” Ralph replied; “but I say, Allan, wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere where no one—no white man—had ever been before, or do something never before accomplished?”

“It would indeed,” said Allan; “and I for one always looked upon Livingstone, and Stanley, and Gordon Cumming, and Cameron, and men like them, as the luckiest fellows in the world.”

“Now,” said Ralph, “I’m just nineteen. I’ve only two years more of what I call roving life, and if I don’t ride across some continent before I’m twenty-one, or embark at one end of some unknown river and come out into the sea at the other, I’ll never have a chance again.”

“Why, how is that?” said McBain.

“Well,” replied Ralph, “Sir Walter Leigh, my father, told me straight that we were as poor as Church mice, and that in order to retrieve our fortunes, as soon as I came of age I must marry my grandmother.”

“Marry your grandmother!” exclaimed McBain, half rising in his chair.

“Well, my cousin, then,” said Ralph, smiling; “she is five-and-forty, so it is all the same. But she has oceans of money, and my old father, bless him! is very, very good and kind. He doesn’t limit me in money now; though, of course, I don’t take advantage of all his generosity. ‘Go and travel, my boy,’ he said, ‘and enjoy yourself till you come of age. Just see all you can and thus have your fling. I know I can trust you.’”

“Have your fling?” cried Rory; “troth now that is exactly what my Irish tenants told me to do. ‘The sorra a morsel av rint have we got to give you,’ says they, ‘so go and have your fling, but ’deed and indeed, if we see you here again until times are mended, we’ll shoot ye as dead as a Ballyshannon rabbit.’”

“Well, young gentlemen,” said McBain, after a pause in the conversation, during which nothing was heard except the crackling of the blazing logs and the mournful moaning of the wind without, “you want to do something quite new. Well, I’ve got an