"You didn't see him--and he hasn't been here! Oh! Captain Macleod, I do hope nothing has happened--the boat----"
"Nonsense!" replied Paul, decisively, "nothing can have happened. Still, it's late--you have been asleep some time, I expect. Perhaps he has missed you, and gone home."
"He could not miss the fire," she said quickly, "and he cannot swim. If he has taken the boat, and if----"
"There is no use imagining evil," put in Paul, drily; "as you are anxious I will go----"
"I will come with you," she said eagerly; "if I put some more wood on the fire----"
"It will be ready for us when we return," remarked Paul, cheerfully, "and Gillespie will want his tea. I expect he is in to the big trout or----" he paused before her anxious face and told her again that nothing could have happened. She surely did not believe in pixies? Still, he grew graver when a look at the boat-house proved it to be empty, and his first shout brought no answer, except a confused, resounding echo.
"If he had gone beyond that bluff into the inaccessible part, which he is likely to have done with the boat--he might not hear. Come on--and don't imagine the worst. If, when we can see all the water----"
He paused, and said no more, as, with her following fast at his heels, he hurried up the brae which hid the further reach of the lake. So, being a step or two ahead, and several inches taller than she was, a view halloo, followed by a laugh, was her first intimation that the search had come to an end. The next instant she had joined the laugh, for a more ridiculous sight than the Reverend James Gillespie presented as he stood up, in full clerical costume, on an uneven rock some two feet square, in the very middle of the loch, could scarcely be imagined. The cause, however, was clear in the half-sunk, water-logged boat, jammed on a jagged rock, which was just visible above the water close by.
"Have you been there long?" called Paul, recovering himself.
"All the afternoon," came back in hoarse and distinctly cross tones. "I shouted till I could shout no more. I thought you had all gone home!"