well,' said he, 'if there's to be no Castle Stanley, I'll take care there shall be no Castle Heimra. Mr. Purdie, get the loch drained of its last drop of water, and have every stone of the useless old ruin hauled to the ground!' And that's precisely what ye saw this afternoon, Miss Stanley!"

Her reply somewhat astonished the vain-glorious factor, who had perhaps been expecting approval.

"It was shamelessly done!" said she—but as if she were not addressing him at all.

And then she rose, and Kate Glendinning rose also; so that Mr. Purdie practically found himself dismissed—or rather he dismissed himself, pleading that it was late. He made some appointment for the next morning, and presently left: no doubt glad enough to get a chance of lighting his pipe and having a comfortable smoke on his way home to the inn.

When the two girls went into the drawing-room—which was a large hexagonal room in the tower, with windows looking north, west, and south—they found that the lamps had not yet been brought in, and also perceived, to their surprise, that the night outside had cleared and was now brilliant with its thousands of throbbing stars. They went to one of the windows. The heavily-moaning sea was hardly visible, but the heavens were extraordinarily lustrous; they were even aware of a shimmer of light on the grey stone terrace without: perhaps it was from the gleaming belt of Orion that hung above a dark headland jutting out towards the west; while there, also, was the still more fiery Sirius, that burned and palpitated behind the black birch-woods in the south. And then they turned to seek the island of Heimra—out there on the mystic and sombre plain—under that far-trembling and shining canopy.

"Well," said Käthchen, with some vehemence of indignation (for her Highland blood had mounted to her head) "I know this, Mary: scapegrace or no scapegrace, if I were the young fellow living out there, I know what I should do—I would kill that factor! Isn't it perfectly clear it was he who goaded your uncle into pulling down the old castle and draining the loch?"

Mary was silent for a second or two. Then she said, in an absent kind of way—

"There are wrongs and injuries done that can never be undone. I can never rebuild Castle Heimra."