"I should imagine," says the Youth, in an undertone, to his hostess, as we are working out the narrow entrance to Loch Speliv, "that your doctor-friend must have given those men a liberal pour-boire when he left."
"Oh, I am sure not," said she, quickly, as if that was a serious imputation. "That is very unlikely."
"They seem very anxious to have everything put right against his coming," he says; "at all events, your captain seems to think that every good breeze he gets is merely thrown away on us."
"Dr. Sutherland and he," she says, laughing, "were very good friends. And then Angus had very bad luck when he was on board: the glass wouldn't fall. But I have promised to bottle up the equinoctials for him—he will have plenty of winds before we have done with him. You must stay too, you know, Mr. Smith, and see how the White Dove rides out a gale."
He regarded her—with some suspicion. He was beginning to know that this lady's speech—despite the great gentleness and innocence of her eyes—sometimes concealed curious meanings. And was she now merely giving him a kind and generous invitation to go yachting with us for another month; or was she, with a cruel sarcasm, referring to the probability of his having to remain a prisoner for that time, in order to please his uncle?
However, the conversation had to be dropped, for at this moment the Laird and his protégée made their appearance; and, of course, a deck-chair had to be brought for her, and a foot-stool, and a sunshade, and a book. But what were these attentions, on the part of her elderly slave, compared with the fact that a young man, presumably enjoying a sound and healthy sleep, should have unselfishly got up at an unholy hour of the morning, and should have risked blowing up the yacht with spirits of wine in order to get her a cup of tea?
It was a fine sailing day. Running before a light topsail breeze from the south-east, the White Dove was making for the Lynn of Morven, and bringing us more and more within view of the splendid circle of mountains, from Ben Cruachan in the east to Ben Nevis in the north; from Ben Nevis down to the successive waves of the Morven hills. And we knew why, among all the sunlit yellows and greens—faint as they were in the distance—there were here and there on slope and shoulder stains of a beautiful rose-purple that were a new feature in the landscape. The heather was coming into bloom—the knee-deep, honey-scented heather, the haunt of the snipe, and the muircock, and the mountain hare. And if there was to be for us this year no toiling over the high slopes and crags—looking down from time to time on a spacious world of sunlit sea and island—we were not averse from receiving friendly and substantial messages from those altitudes. In a day or two now the first crack of the breechloader would startle the silence of the morning air. And Master Fred's larder was sorely in want of variety.
Northward, and still northward, the light breeze tempering the scorching sunlight that glares on the sails and the deck. Each long ripple of the running blue sea flashes in diamonds; and when we look to the south, those silver lines converge and converge, until at the horizon they become a solid blaze of light unendurable to the eye. But it is to the north we turn—to the land of Appin, and Kingairloch, and Lochaber: blow, light wind; and carry us onward, gentle tide; we have an appointment to keep within shadow of the mountains that guard Glencoe.
The Laird has discovered that these two were up early this morning: he becomes facetious.
"Not sleepy yet, Miss Mary?" he says.