"You took precious good care not to find out!" Fred Stanley said, for he was grievously disappointed. "If you had come up with me you might have compelled them to stop and declare themselves: even if you had fired in the air, that would have brought them to reason fast enough. When shall we get such another chance? I knew things like this were going on—knew it quite well. And it’s your place to stop it—it’s your business. It is a monstrous thing that the fishing in the rivers should be destroyed by those thieves." He continued looking out to sea; but the boat had disappeared in the dark. "No, we shall not get another chance like that," said he, turning to his friend Meredyth. "And it is a thousand pities—for I would have given anything to have caught that fellow red-handed: I hate to think of my sister being imposed upon." "Well, I suppose we’d better be getting back," said Frank Meredyth, who had displayed no great interest in this expedition. "And I dare say Hector can show us some inland way—I don’t want to go round those infernal rocks again." "Hector?" said Fred Stanley, in a savage undertone, "I’m pretty sure of this—that when Hector took us all round those rocks, he knew precious well where the scringers were!" And very indignant was he, and sullenly resentful, when he carried this story home to Lochgarra House and to his sister. He roundly accused the keepers of connivance. They could put down the scringeing if they chose; but it was all part and parcel of the poaching system that existed for the benefit of Donald Ross. He it was who had the fishing and shooting of this estate. A fine condition of affairs, truly! "I am afraid," said Mary Stanley, who seemed to take this stormy complaint with much composure, "that Mr. Ross has not quite enough skill to make much of a poacher, even if he were inclined that way. If you had been here yesterday, you would have heard himself say that he was a very indifferent shot, and a very poor fisherman also——" "And you believed him, of course!" her brother said, with contempt. "Of course he would say that! That is the very thing he would profess——" "But, you see, Fred," she continued, without taking any offence, "he gave us a very good reason why he should be but a poor sportsman. There is neither fishing nor shooting on Heimra Island." He laughed scornfully. "Fishing and shooting on Heimra Island?" he repeated. "What need has he of them, when he has the fishing and shooting of Lochgarra?" "You may be mistaken, Fred," Frank Meredyth interposed—careful to be on Miss Stanley’s side, as usual. "You may be going too much by what Purdie said that evening at Inverness. At the same time, I quite know this, that when once you suspect any one of poaching, it is desperately difficult to get the idea out of your head. All kinds of small things are constantly happening that seem to offer confirmation——"