"Welcome-- Welcome to Raasay, my friend!" Then her eyes falling on the satin cockade so faded and so torn, there came a tremulous little catch to her voice, a fine light to her eyes. "It iss the good tale that my brothers have been telling me of Kenneth Montagu's brave devotion to hiss friends, but I wass not needing to hear the story from them. I will be thinking that I knew it all already," she said, a little timidly. I bowed low over her hand and kissed it. "My friends make much of nothing. Their fine courage reads their own spirit reflected in the eyes of others." "Oh, then I will have heard the story wrong. It would be Donald who went back to Drummossie Moor after you when you were wounded?" "Could a friend do less?" "Or more?" "He would have done as much for me. My plain duty!" I said, shrugging, anxious to be done with the subject. She looked at me with sparkling eyes, laughing at my discomposure, in a half impatience of my stolid English phlegm. "Oh, you men! You go to your death for a friend, and if by a miracle you escape: 'Pooh! 'Twas nothing whatever. Gin it rain to-morrow, I think 'twill be foul,' you say, and expect to turn it off so." I took the opening like a fox. "Faith, I hope it will not rain to-morrow," I said. "I have to keep watch outside. Does the sun never shine in Raasay, Aileen?" "Whiles," she answered, laughing. "And are all Englishmen so shy of their virtues?" Tony Creagh coming up at that moment, she referred the question to him. "Sure, I can't say," he answered unsmilingly. "'Fraid I'm out of court. Never knew an Englishman to have any." "Can't you spare them one at the least?" Aileen implored, gaily. He looked at her, then at me, a twinkle in his merry Irish eyes. "Ecod then, I concede them one! They're good sportsmen. They follow the game until they've bagged it." We two flushed in concert, but the point of her wit touched Creagh on the _riposte_. "The men of the nation being disposed of in such cavalier fashion, what shall we say of the ladies, sir?" she asked demurely. "That they are second only to the incomparable maidens of the North," he answered, kissing her hand in his extravagant Celtic way. "But I will not be fubbed off with your Irish blarney. The English ladies, Mr. Creagh?" she merrily demanded. "Come, Tony, you renegade! Have I not heard you toast a score of times the beauties of London?" said I, coming up with the heavy artillery. "Never, I vow. Sure I always thought Edinburgh a finer city--not so dirty and, pink me, a vast deal more interesting. Now London is built----" "On the Thames. So it is," I interrupted dryly. "And--to get back to the subject under discussion--the pink and white beauties of London are built to take the eye and ensnare the heart of roving Irishmen. Confess!" "Or be forever shamed as recreant knight," cried Aileen, her blue eyes bubbling with laughter.