know that Malcolm has been sent home. He must just think that it is an ordinary leave of absence. Poor dear, it is not so hard to bamboozle him now as it once was! If he grasped the fact that Malcolm had been cashiered it would simply kill him. Now I shall be hard put to it, watching for other letters from India or from the War Office. Oh, Elspeth, I'm so tired of playing watch-dog! It's killing me. Sometimes I think I shall get up quite early one morning and go down to the little loch and just walk in, where it is all silvery with the dawn. Then everything would be over, and I should be at peace!"

"God forpid, my lamb, since ye are the one hope and salvation of Achree," said Elspeth Maclure fervently.

Isla shook her head.

"There is little hope for Achree now, and, so far as I can see, nothing can save it. My brother owes so much money, that, to get him clear, we ought to sell it. It is what he will do himself, without doubt, whenever he gets it into his own hands."

Elspeth Maclure stood, thunderstruck and horrified, staring vaguely in front of her.

"Sell Achree what hass peen the place of the Mackinnons for efer and efer!" she repeated slowly. "God forpid. He would nefer let it come to pass. Oh, Miss Isla, the laws made py men are not good laws. I'm only a plain woman, put this I see that, when a man iss like what Maister Malcolm iss, without the fear of God or man in hiss heart, he should not haf the power. I suppose he hass porrowed the money on the place, put it iss not him that will haf to pey," she added fiercely.

"No," repeated Isla, with a hard, far-away look on her face, "it is not he who will have to pay."

CHAPTER II

THE OLD HOME

Isla rose to her feet, and, suddenly, observing the baby clutching with his chubby hands at the side of his cage and smiling engagingly into her face, she stretched out her hands to him.

"Oh, you darling! Did Isla forget him, then? What a shame!"

She lifted him out, and his small chubby hands met tightly round her neck, and his cheek was laid against hers with a coo of delight. Elspeth stood smiling by, thinking of the wonder and gift of the child that can charm grief away.

"If only you had a good man of your own, Miss Isla, and a heap of little pairns, like me, things would pe easier," she said quaintly. "It's not for me to say, put I whiles think that if there had peen ither laddies in Achree, Maister Malcolm wouldna haf had it all his own wey, which would haf peen a good thing for him."

"Yes, Elspeth, what you say is true; but I shall never have a man or any little bairns," she said with a sigh. "My life-work is cut out plainly enough--and has been from the beginning. I have to save Achree somehow--and I will."

"That would be a fery good thing, no doubt, put the ither would pe petter, my lamb," said Elspeth with such yearning in her eyes that Isla, feeling her composure shaking again, hastily kissed the child and put him back in his little enclosure.

"Donald must positively patent this, Eppie--he would make money by it. It's the cleverest thing I've ever seen," she said lightly.

"It does the turn, and I'm not sayin' put that Donald is clever--clever with hiss hands. It makes up for the gift of the gab which he hass not got. I never saw a man speak less. I whiles ask him if his tongue pe not tired with too little wark."

"Ah, but his heart is of gold, Eppie. Don't you ever miscall Donald to me, for I won't listen."

"Wha's misca'in him, whatefer?" asked Elspeth with a small laugh which hid a tear. "Good-bye, Miss Isla, my ponnie dear, and may the good God go wi' ye and help ye ower this steep pit of the road."

Isla nodded and sped away, not daring to trust herself to further speech.

Left alone, Eppie Maclure sat down and incontinently began to cry. She came from one of the islands of the western seas, owned by kinsfolk of the Achree Mackinnons, and her heart was as soft as her speech, which had the roll of the western seas in its tone.

There were no tears in Isla's eyes as she breasted the hill bravely, brain and heart so busy that the good mile seemed but a stone's throw. It was half-past twelve when she stopped at the low doorway of the house, and with a wave of the hand dismissed the dogs, who went off with hanging heads, as if they were conscious of having missed something in their walk. They knew--for there are few people wiser than the dumb creatures that love us--that, though the body of their mistress had accompanied them down the familiar way, her heart was clean away from them and from all the little homely happenings that can make a country walk so pleasant.

She lifted the sneck softly and went in, closing the door behind her. It was rather a wide low hall, with a flagged stone floor washed as clean as hands and soft rain water could make it. A few deer-skins were scattered on it, some of them rather worn and bare, as it was a long time since a Mackinnon had stalked a deer in the forest of Achree. Some fine antlered heads stood out upon the wall between the stout wooden beams that supported it and were now black with age and shining with the peatreek. A fire of peat was burning now in the wide fireplace, in which there was no grate. On the oak mantelpiece there were queer, carved wooden pots, full of stag's moss and heather that had lost its bloom.

It was a bare, cold place, with very little beauty to arrest the eye, yet it had a dignity difficult to explain or to describe. The stair went up, wide and steep, from one end of the hall for a few steps, and then it became a winding one leading to all sorts of nooks and crannies having small and unexpected landings, with doors opening abruptly off them--a bewildering house, and very "ill-convenient" to quote once more the language of the glen. But Isla Mackinnon loved every stone and beam of it, and the heart of her was heavy, because she saw in the very near future the day approaching when the Mackinnons would be out of it, root and branch.

"But not before I've done my best to save it, please God," she said under her breath, as she cast her coat aside and went to look for her father.

An old serving-man in a shabby kilt emerged from the faded red-baize door that shut off the servants' quarters, bearing a tray with glasses in his hand.

"I suppose it is just on lunch time, Diarmid?" she said. "Where is the General?"

"I have just put him comfortable with the paper by the library fire, Miss Isla," said the man, as he scanned her face almost wistfully.

He, too, knew the day of the Indian mail. She motioned him to the dining-room, a long, narrow room furnished in what the irreverent called spindle-shanks, but what was in reality genuine and valuable furniture of the Chippendale period. Many old and very discoloured family portraits covered the walls, and the carpet, once a warm crimson but now almost threadbare, gave the only touch of colour to the place. The table was beautifully set, and the silver on it was fit for a king's table.

The Mackinnons were very poor, but there were certain