END OF BOOK II.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
It is the last day of summer, and the evening hour is creeping on apace. A truly glorious day it has been, warmed by a brilliant sun, the heat of which has been tempered by one of those gentle zephyrs that love to play where all is warmth and sunshine.
But now the day is dying, fading, as it were, gradually away. Time, which the science of man can never stay, stalks slowly on his path. It is he who declares that the spell of life which has lit the day with its brilliance, must pass onward into the darkness of advancing night.
For what is life but a greater day of warmth and sunshine, storm and rain? What is death but the night which brings rest after the toils or pleasures of that day? What is the future life beyond, but a new day breaking into existence, perchance in a world more lovely than our own?
So thinks Gloria de Lara as she leans on her oars and watches the dying glories of this fading day vanish beneath the waves of the western sea. The zephyr which has played so joyously amidst the light and sunshine of earlier hours, has fled to his couch of rest, and now not a breath stirs the glassy waters of Glenuig Bay, which, lit by the radiance of the setting sun, blazes all around like a lake of molten gold.
Above its gleaming waters and those of Loch Eilort tower heather-girt mountains in their mantles of purple and of blue. Higher still above these well-clad slopes the grey stone of shaggy crags looks down, and higher yet above these lonely scenes the golden eagle hovers, secure from the destroying hand of man. Not altogether lonely though, if one may judge from a pale, thin line of smoke that suddenly curls upwards through the still air from one of those high grey crags. It catches the eye of Gloria de Lara as she leans upon her oars, and sends a flush of surprise to her thoughtful, dreaming face.
“So soon!” she exclaims, and there is a ring of wonder in her tone; but she settles herself to her oars, and sends the boat along with quick, powerful strokes. She has pointed its head for the open sea, straight, in fact, for the channel that joins the heaving swell of the grey Atlantic with the placid waters of Loch Eilort.