There were just one or two little things that marred the pleasure of this wild and delightful tour. They were indeed little, but very wicked. First there were the midges. Among the bushes or in a garden in the glens, there is no going out of doors of an evening without muslin over one's face. If one neglects this, the face will be bitten all over, till it resembles badly pickled cabbage.

Then the gnats or mosquitoes are very venomous. Centipeds abound in some parts, great healthy greenish-brown brutes, and if they bite you in a tender part, it is nearly as bad as a snap from an adder. In the dark you may see these fellows hurrying through the short grass like miniature railway-trains, all aglow with a phosphorescence that streams out from both sides of them. Centipeds are nasty persons and have more legs than they know what to do with.

Away up on the moorlands, however, you don't find these things; only daddy-long-legs in millions in August. They are so tame that they are troublesome. Their favourite seat is a-straddle of one's nose.

"Give us a ride old chap," they seem to say. "I'm going the same way as you."

I believe myself that the best plan is to leave the duddy on your nose, though I confess it looks funny; but, as certain as sunrise, if you knock one off another gets on. So what are you to do?

Well, at long last the two young tourists, somewhat dusty and tired, and sadly in need of clean collars, bore round to Portree.

Here they rested one night.

Portree is a nice little town, and the people are kind and obliging. But there is a herring there, and you can scent him, either in boats or reclining in a frying-pan, wherever you go.

I forget how many miles it is from Portree round the northern portion of the island to Duntulm Castle. Perhaps thirty. The boys hired a boat to take them round, and a more delightful row or grander rock-and-mountain scenery it would indeed be difficult to conceive.

Willie wondered to see the tartan rocks, but he wondered still more to see a waterfall shoot right over a cliff many hundreds of feet in height, so that you could have sailed a boat between the rock and the linn, and hardly get wet even with the spray.