"Good-bye, Ogilvie! Come up at Christmas."
The great bulk of the steamer soon floated away, and the lugsail was run up again, and the boat made slowly back for Castle Dare. "Fhir a bhata!" the men sung; but Macleod scarcely heard them. His last tie with the South had been broken.
But not quite. It was about ten o'clock that night that word came to Castle Dare that Dugald the Post had met with an accident that morning while starting from Bunessan; and that his place had been taken by a young lad who had but now arrived with the bag. Macleod hastily looked over the bundle of newspapers, etc., they brought him and his eager eyes fell on an envelope, the writing on which made his heart jump.
"Give the lad a half-crown," said he.
And then he went to his own room. He had the letter in his hand; and he knew the handwriting: but there was no wind of the night that could bring him the mystic message she had sent with it:
"Oh, here is, Glenogie, a letter for thee!"
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONFIDENCES.
For a second or two he held the letter in his hand, regarding the outside of it; and it was with more deliberation than haste that he opened it. Perhaps it was with some little tremor of fear—lest the first words that should meet his eye might be cruelly cold and distant. What right had he to expect anything else? Many a time, in thinking carefully over the past, he had recalled the words—the very tone—in which he had addressed her, and had been dismayed to think of their reserve, which had on one or two occasions almost amounted to austerity. He could expect little beyond a formal acknowledgment of the receiving of his letter, and the present that had accompanied it.