The collie uttered a whine and a loud bark.
“Yes, it’s boat day, lad. Be off!”
The dog stopped short, and only the little ugly grey terrier followed his master, wagging a short stump of a tail the while, till Kenneth noted his presence.
“No, not to-day,” he said sharply.
“Wuph!”
“No. Can’t take you. Go back, old chap. Another time!”
Sneeshing uttered a low whine, but he dropped down on the shingle which took the place of gravel, and Kenneth went slowly on along a path formed like a shelf of the huge rock, which, a peninsula at low, an island at high water, towered up from the blue sea an object of picturesque beauty, and a landmark for the sailors who sailed among the fiords and rocks of the western shore.
The scene around was glorious. Where the soft breeze did not turn the water into dazzling, rippling molten silver which sent flashes of light darting through the clear air, there were broad bands of still water of a brilliant blue; others beneath the shelter of the land were of a deep transparent amethyst, while every here and there mountainous islands rose from the sea, lilac, purple, and others of a delicate softened blue, which died away into the faintest film.
Shoreward, glorified by the sunshine, the mountains rose from the water’s edge; grey masses of stone tumbled in confusion from a height of four thousand feet to the shore, with clusters of towering pine and larch and groups of pensile birches in every sheltered nook. Here the mountain showed patches of dark green and purple heath; there brilliant green and creamy beds of bog moss, among which seemed to run flashing veins of silver, which disappeared and came into sight, and in one place poured down with a deep, loud roar, while a mist, looking like so much smoke, slowly rose from the fall, and floated away with a rainbow upon its breast.
On every side, as Kenneth Mackhai gazed around from the rocky foot of the mouldering old castle, there were scenes of beauty which would have satisfied the most exacting. Cloud shadow, gleaming sunshine, purple heather, yellow ragwort like dusts of gold upon the mountain side, and at his feet the ever-changing sea.