Willina smiled.

"Who will that be now? And is it twenty or twenty-one you are next month? Twenty-one, is it--yes: time passes. Then as you are so near man's estate it won't be Maclead's niece from Glasgow; she is too red in the face. Nor Katie Macqueen; you've seen her too often. Nor me, either, Rick, though I used to be called that sometimes."

The transparent vanity in her tone made her nephew smile in his turn.

"It's no home-grown beauty, Aunt Will. It's a London belle,--Lady Maud Wilson. You should just--"

The sudden upset of a lamb, whose four pointed toes strove for foothold against his legs, checked further speech. His aunt, however, waving the teapot in her excitement, filled up the pause, aided by a sick gosling which had fluttered down from her lap as she rose.

"The Wilsons! Why didn't you tell me at once? Have they come at last? And why didn't they come before? And where are their servants? Why didn't they send word to the factor? And goody gracious me, Rick! what are they going to do?"

"If you'll put that teapot at a safer distance and prevent Baalam from making me curse utterly, I'll try and explain."

A minute of frantic shoving, joined by a chorus of hounds from within, and Miss Will Macdonald returned breathless to her seat on the steps, while the sick gosling fluttered to her lap once more.

"This is what I could gather. They have been deer-stalking with friends, because the grouse here were reported late. So they are, Aunt Will, I saw a covey yesterday--"

"Skip, please."

"Ahem! Well, their servants came by last Clansman; or rather they didn't, because--"

"Skip again. I know--too rough for her to put in--won't come till return trip. Go on, dear."

"How you do bustle a fellow! They expected cooks and scullions. All the show, in fact, including a but--"

"Oh! do skip!"

"My dear aunt! you should have been a telegraph clerk. Well. Wrote for a machine to Carbost. Came along. Place shut up. Rick Halmar fishing sea pool. Saw signals of distress. Piloted 'em to harbour. Found Kirsty stacking peats. Lit the fire. Put on the kettle. Came home to tell his aunt. That is all, except that the factor is away to the Alan market and Kirsty has no English to speak of."

"They have servants with them of course?"

"A French maid. She is more solid than she looks. You see I had to help her out of the machine. She hadn't recovered the boat. They have been visiting about, and Mr. Wilson's man got left behind at Inverness, looking for lost luggage. Wired to say he would come on by the afternoon boat. Ha! ha! good joke, isn't it? Afternoon boat to Roederay. Now then, jump aboard! a penny all the way."

Miss Willina's sympathetic soul saw no cause for mirth in the vision conjured up by her housewifely imagination. She put on the deer-stalker cap lying on the step beside her. It was a signal for action, since, within the home precincts, she dispensed with any head covering save the thick masses of dark hair, which were still her greatest pride.

"I'll go over. Kirsty is an idiot, at best. She was six whole months learning the 'Happy Land' at Sunday-school.

"Besides it's not far--then your uncle's official position."

"Skip, please!" interrupted Rick, laughing. "You don't want excuses for being a trump. Come along."

His aunt's blue eyes flashed and sparkled. "Oh! my dear! was she so pretty as all that? You won't be wanted! her husband is there, of course."

"Aye! and her cousin, I think. At least, she called him Eustace."

"Two of them! Then preserve us from a third man. Go you and fish like a Christian."

"Leaving you to roam the moors alone, when I may be appointed to a ship tomorrow and not see you again for--don't laugh in that rude way, Aunt Will! Look here! Let's compromise. I'll go so far and fish Loch-na-buie till you return."

They passed the slight hollow where Eval House sought a faint shelter, and the farm-yard whence, after depositing the sick gosling, Miss Willina had to escape at a run from a motley following of birds and beasts. So to the level stretches of moor and the full force of the blustering wind. A strange landscape to southern eyes. Earth, air, and water blent in a triple alliance so close as to destroy individuality. The sea lay landwards, the land seawards, and over both the nor'wester swept unrestrained, cresting green waves of heather as water with an edging of white foam or purple blossom. Were those hills, eastward across the Minch, or clouds? Was that level streak of light westwards the Atlantic or a glint of sky? Was the water showing at your feet between miniature cliffs of sphagnum moss salt or fresh? And did the land really sway before the wind? or was it only your footstep making the spongy soil rise and fall? This, however, was in the low ground eastward. Westward the rocks began to pile themselves gregariously in cairns, and the moorland rose gradually, so gradually that when its edge was reached you were surprised to find yourself so far above the shining plain of sea.

Here on a promontory commanding a magnificent view, and also a perfect exposure to all the winds of heaven, stood the modern shooting-box of Roederay Lodge.

Substantial enough for the nineteenth century, yet reminding one irresistibly of those Swiss châlets in boxes which are to be bought for a sixpence in the Lowther Arcade. The fault, no doubt, of its surroundings; above all, of a sound which seemed to monopolize the whole landscape,--the sound of the Atlantic rolling in upon two miles of shelving sand a little to the southward. A sound that went on night and day, day and night, without a pause. Rhythmically true to a second, not to be shut out by any device of man. The strongest must put up with it or go away. On this particular September day, with the keen bright nor'wester sending a cross sea round the point, its voice had a querulous ring in it very different from the roar which echoed for fifteen miles across the island when the Atlantic was in a southwesterly mood.

Rick Halmar, however, being a sailor accustomed to the sea in all tempers, took little heed of its tone. He sat to leeward of a cairn which tradition said marked the grave of a Viking, and whittled away at a piece of wood he had found close by, the pretence of fishing having been set aside when Miss Willina's decided little figure disappeared from sight. He whittled with more than the sailor's ordinary dexterity; for his father had been a Norwegian sprung from a long line of ancestors who had whiled away the winter days when their ships were in dock with wood-carving. Not much else save that trick of the knife, a straight Norse nose, and a passion for the sea had Eric Halmar inherited from the father he had never seen. For within a year of that hasty marriage between the shipwrecked sailor and Miss Willina's younger sister, pretty little Mrs. Halmar was in Eval House once more, weeping and waiting. Weeping for her handsome husband; waiting for her child to be born. She wept even after the waiting was over, till consolation came in the shape of another husband; for she was not a person of great steadfastness, and even her land prejudice against the sea as a profession had given way before Miss Willina's stern common sense.

"The laddie thinks of nothing else," said his aunt; "indeed, why should he, seeing he comes of pure Viking blood on the one side, and something of it on the other, if old tales be true? Send him to the navy; then if he is drowned, it will be decently in the Queen's uniform."

So into the navy he went, and, having