An echo, indeed! and Marjory sat up among the dewberries, feeling indignant.
"Captain Macleod," she called aggressively, "have you caught anything?"
He turned, as if he had been unaware of her presence, and raised his cap. "It is not a question of my catching anything, Miss Carmichael, but of my being caught. There is a syren about somewhere; I heard her just now; did you?"
"I generally hear myself when I am singing," she replied coldly. "Where is Will?"
"Will," replied Paul, cheerfully, "is swearing round the corner. He has just had a splendid rise, and his hook drew. No further description necessary."
She laughed, and Captain Macleod went on in the easy familiar tone which had taken the sting out of so many other remarks which, to Marjory's unsophisticated ears, had savoured of impertinence.
"If we neither of us get another this round, we are going to start over the hills for the fence. I want to see it myself. You will find a splendid place for tea about a quarter of a mile down below the fall. Heaps of sticks--bits of the primeval forest washed out of the moss--so you will manage nicely; besides Gillespie will be here."
It was just such a careless, brotherly speech as Will might have made, and Marjory appreciated it. Besides the thought of an hour or two, absolutely to herself, in those solitudes had an indescribable charm; indescribable because, to those who know it not of themselves, words are useless, and those who do need them not. For her, with a stainless past and a hopeful future, it was bliss unalloyed to wander down the burn-side, resting here and there, watching the ring-ouzel skim from shelter, or an oak-eggar moth settle lazily on a moss-cushion. And yet, as she sate perched on a rock far down the valley above a deeper pool than usual, she amused herself by singing the "Lorelei" from beginning to end, secure from unwelcome echoes. So back on her traces to the baskets which had been hidden in the fern, and the preparations for tea. The relics of the primeval forest burnt bravely aided by some juniper branches, the kettle was filled, boiled, and set securely on a stony hob; and then, free from cares, Marjory chose out a springy nest among the short heather and curled herself round lazily to watch the sky line where before long two figures should come striding into sight, dark against the growing gold of the westering sun. Blissful indeed; extremely comfortable also.
When she woke Paul Macleod was calling her by name, and she started up in a hurry. "I came on as fast as I could lest you should be wearying," he said, and his face showed he spoke the truth. "It was further than we thought for. Where's Gillespie? He can't be fishing still, surely. I didn't see him on the shore as I came past."
Marjory, confused as she was by sudden awakening, remembered one thing, and one thing only--the boat--the old rotten-looking boat.