At last the long pull was over; and the men, having landed the master at the slip, set out again for the yacht. Young Ross of Heimra went up to the house. But before going in, he paused at the porch, to have a final look at the wonderful glories of that vast firmament—the throbbing Sirius low down in the south, the gleaming belt and sword of Orion, the powdered diamond-dust of the Pleiades, the jewelled head of Medusa, Cassiopeia’s silver throne. And perhaps he was not thinking so much of those distant and shining worlds as of her who had first taught him their various names—of the worse than widowed woman who had shut herself up here in proud isolation, himself her only care. Well, she was at peace now; her wrongs and sufferings and bitter memories all come to an end; surely there was nothing but quiet and sweet slumber around that white grave-stone, far up there on the top of the cliff, overlooking the wide and lonely western seas. CHAPTER IV. THE BAINTIGHEARNA. Next morning Mary went eagerly and joyously to the window, for here indeed was a welcome change: no more louring heavens and streaming roads, but a vast expanse of wind-driven sea, blue as the very heart of a sapphire, and yet with innumerable sudden flashes of white from the crest of its swift-hurrying waves. The sky cloudless; the fresh breeze blowing straight in from the Atlantic; the world all shining around her; even those long spurs and headlands, sterile as they were, looked quite cheerful in the prevailing sunlight. And out yonder, too, was the island of Heimra, to which her eyes would go back again and again with a curious interest. She thought of the lone mother, and of the boy brought up like a wild goat among the rocks. And if he had turned out a reckless and unscrupulous ne’er-do-well, an Ishmael with his hand against every man, well, that was a deplorable thing, though perhaps not to be wondered at; moreover it could matter little to her what such an outcast might think of her or of her family; but, nevertheless, deep down in her heart, there was an odd and ever-recurring feeling of compunction. She wished to be able to say "I am sorry." Certainly it was not she who had destroyed the last relic and monument of the ancient name—who had drained the loch and levelled the old stronghold with the ground; and he must know that; but she wished him to know more; she wished him to know how indignant she had been when she first heard of that monstrous and iniquitous act of vandalism. And then again (as she still stood gazing at the island out there in the wide blue waters, with the white foam springing high in the sunlight along its southern coasts) it seemed to her that she rather feared meeting this man. Rude and lawless and mannerless, might he not laugh at her stumbling apologies? Or in his Highland pride he might scorn her southern birth, and