Rowena now pointed out a beautiful glen across the loch.
A stack of chimneys rose up behind some trees.
"That's where we're going," she said.
Ellen gave a gentle sigh.
"It seems the end of the world," she said, and Rowena's low mellow laugh rang out.
"You'll be in dear noisy Glasgow again to-morrow, Ellen. Cheer up!"
The steamer put in at the small pier at the foot of the glen. There was a grey-bearded Highlander standing very straight and still upon the pier. Rowena greeted him with a radiant smile. Duncan Cameron had helped her many a time to stalk a stag. He had also been with her when she had caught her first salmon many years ago. He was her brother's head keeper, and had been in his employ for over twenty years.
"Granny was sayin' that you would be wantin' a hand up," he said. "Is it ill ye are, Miss Rowena?"
"I'm an infirm old woman, Duncan—jumped into my dotage in one black day! Why, what is that you've got there?"
"'Tis a cheer, miss—a cheer which the Ker-enel ordered to be brought for ye, an' tis I will be pushin' it up the wee bit brae!"