'Don't say another word, but go aboard,' said Angus, proceeding down the steep slippery steps to the loch, leading Maggie gallantly by the hand. Speedily the rope was unloosed, the white sail spread to the breeze, and the boat moved gracefully and rapidly, under a glorious sunset sky, out into the loch. Maggie sat holding the tiller silently while Angus adjusted the ropes. The loch was radiant from shore to shore in the rich evening light; quickly the white houses of the town were left in the distance; and hardly a movement but the delicious ripple of water cleft by the boat's bow, or the cry of a sea-gull sailing lazily overhead, disturbed the stillness. Here and there in the pools among the boulders in lonely parts of the shore, a heron stood silent as its own shadow and solitary as a hermit; from the grassy hollows by the beach a thin white mist rose, softening the green wooded slopes, and adding a sense of distance to the heathery ridges in the background, glorified by the red autumn sunset. Maggie was supremely happy. When the sail was fairly set, Angus came and stretched himself by her side. 'And ye think she iss a nice poat, and ye like her?' he said, looking into Maggie's face. 'It wass fery kind of ye to think of giving me such a present as this, Angus; but I cannot possibly take it.' 'Maggie,' said Angus, taking her disengaged hand in his, 'I hef long wanted to tell you something--indeed I hef, Maggie--not that I'm a goot hand at telling anything I want, but--all the time I wass building her, and that wass longer than ye might think, Maggie--I hef looked to this moment as a reward--when I would see you sitting there, looking that happy and that peautiful--yes, Maggie, peautiful, and pleased with my work--and proud am I to see ye so pleased wi' a trifle'---- 'But it iss _not_ a trifle,' said the maiden interrupting him; 'it wass a great undertaking! I nefer saw anything I liked half so much.' 'But it iss nothing, I tell you, Maggie, to what I would gif you if you would be willing to take it--nothing! I would like you, Maggie, to take all I hef--and myself too. It iss true I am only a common sailor, but Maggie, my heart iss fery warm to you. Many's the time, when I wass a hundred and maybe thousants of miles away from here, I wad pe thinking of you--many a time in the middle of the night, when I wass on the deck alone, watching and looking at the stars under a foreign sky, I would single out a particular star and call it Maggie's eye, and watch it lovingly, cass I thocht you might pe looking at it too, even if you wass not thinking of me thousants of miles off; and it makes me fery unhappy when I'm a long way off, to think that maybe I am forgotten, and some other man iss trying to get your love, and maybe I losing my chance of happiness for life, cass, like a fool, I held my peace, when by speaking a word my happiness and yours might pe secure.'