'Do ye see the two sheep?'
'I see two white specks—I suppose they're sheep.'
'Well—just above them.'
But the boat was slowly moving all this time; and presently the gradual change in their position brought one of the hinds clear into view on the sky-line. The beautiful creature, with its graceful neck, small head, and upraised ears, was evidently watching them, but with no apparent intention of making off; and presently Miss Carry, whose eyes were becoming better accustomed to the place, could make out the other two hinds, one of them lying on the grass, the other contentedly feeding, and paying no heed whatever to the passing boat.
'I thought you said the sheep drove them away,' she said to him.
'It's the men and the dogs mostly,' he answered. 'Sometimes they will come in among the sheep like that, if the feeding tempts them. My word, that would be an easy stalk now—if it was the season.'
Very soon they found that the three hinds were no longer in view; but there were plenty of other things to claim their attention on this solitary voyage. What, for example, was this great circular mass of stones standing on a projecting promontory? These were the remains, he explained to her, of a Pictish fort. Another, in better preservation, was on the opposite shore; and, if she cared to visit it, she might make her way into the hollow passages constructed between the double line of wall, if she were not afraid of adders, nor yet of some of the uncemented stones falling upon her.
'And what are these?' she said, indicating the ruins of certain circles formed on the hill-plateaux just above the loch.
'They're down in the Ordnance Survey as "hut-circles,"' he said, 'but that is all I know about them.'
'At all events, there must have been plenty of people living here at one time?'