The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

Through the open window she heard Malcolm go off with the dogs, whistling as if he had not a care in the world. The things which daunted her and lay like a nightmare on her white, sensitive soul, had no power over him. Frankly selfish, he lived from day to day, extracting the honey from the hours, and stoically enduring what he could not evade. Perhaps, she said to herself, his was no bad philosophy. She wished somebody had taught it to her sooner; now it was a difficult lesson, baffling her intelligence at every point.

By and by she grew calmer, and her distracted thoughts began to collect themselves. It was not possible to run away in a hurry without telling any one, and her orderly mind shrank from taking such a foolish and unnecessary step. No--whatever she did, she would not forget herself or the dignity of the Mackinnons. She would put no occasion for talk into people's mouths.

In an hour's time she had decided what to do, and, after making a sort of preliminary division of her possessions, she dressed herself and went out. Margaret, having the feeling that Miss Isla wished to be alone, did not intercept her this time.

It was a fine, clear, hard morning in September, with a touch of frost in the air after a night's rain. But the clouds on the far horizon were still watery, and Isla's keen eyes decided that the deluge had not spent itself. She would, however, get fair weather as far as Lochearnhead, which was her present destination, seeing that she had to give a certain order to Jamie Forbes concerning the morrow.

Of a set purpose, she kept to the sheep tracks on the hills, thus avoiding the vicinity of Achree. She had been there very few times since her father's death, and as Mrs. Rosmead had had a somewhat serious illness in the interval, her daughters had been too much engaged in looking after her to pay distant calls. But Isla knew that Malcolm was constantly there--if not every day, at least several times a week.

About half a mile beyond Achree gates, on the Lochearn side of the Glen, she had to come out on the road again, because the sheep track ended suddenly with Donald Maclure's pasture. The heavy rains had washed every superfluous particle of earth from the roads, and left the gravelled bottom bare, while there were delicious runnels of water here and there, all making swiftly for the burn, which was swollen far beyond its ordinary limits. There had been very little fair weather in Glenogle or in the valley of the Earn since the Lammas floods.

Isla paused for a moment on the Darrach Brig to watch the brown swirl of the water below, which fascinated her. Her eyes and ears were ever quick and keen to note every change in the aspect of the landscape, and she was more weather-wise than most. She had fallen into a kind of brown study, from which she was awakened very suddenly by the sound of a voice speaking a few yards away.

It was a woman's voice, and when Isla swung round upon her with quickly-uplifted head she saw a lady on the road dressed in garments such as were not often seen in Glenogle. She wore a gown which, Isla decided, was more fitted for an afternoon function than a quiet country road. It was of a somewhat vivid purple hue, trimmed profusely about the bodice with string-coloured lace. The skirt was long, but she had it gathered in her hand, and held high enough to show the froth of white, lace-trimmed petticoats and a mauve stocking against the clear, patent leather of the high-heeled shoes. A large black hat, surmounted with feathers and swathed in a veil like a spider's web, through which the vivid colour of the face appeared somewhat softened, completed the costume, which was certainly a startling one in that remote place, though such a common sight in London streets as to excite no remark.

Isla grew hot and cold, and started back with a little gesture of aversion, for she recognized the woman whose face she had seen once in the flesh, and once again in a photograph in her brother's room.

"Good day," said the stranger quite pleasantly. "Could you tell me whether there is a place close by here called Achree?"