"You are going up the hill on Monday," said she briefly. "Both you and Mr. Meredyth. I want some grouse for the kitchen; and as many more to send away as you can get for me." "Pardon me, Miss Stanley," Meredyth said, and he spoke with a certain quiet decision, "you are asking a little too much. It is impossible for us to go away shooting and leave you at the mercy of what may turn out to be a riotous mob. It is quite impossible: you have no right to ask it." "Yes, but I do ask it!" she said, somewhat petulantly—for she wished to be left free to follow her own designs on that fateful Monday. "You are my guest; you are here for the Twelfth; and I particularly want you—both you and Fred—to go away after the grouse; and never mind about this—this lecture, or whatever it is——" "I for one, cannot," he said, firmly; "and I know Fred will not." Mary glanced half-imploringly at Käthchen. But Käthchen sate mute. Perhaps she was considering that, whether Mary went to the meeting or not, it was just as well the two gentlemen were to be within hail. Besides, before then it was just possible Mary might be induced to confess to them her mad resolve: in which case it would become their duty to reason and remonstrate, seeing that Käthchen’s protests had been of no avail. Or would they insist on accompanying her to the meeting, if she was determined to go? For one thing, Käthchen did not at all like Fred Stanley’s reference to his Colt’s revolver; if there was going to be any serious disturbance, that was not likely to prove a satisfactory means of quelling it. CHAPTER VIII. A REVOLUTION THAT FAILED. But at first the two young men—especially when they were in the society of the young women—professed to make light of the threatened invasion. What harm could come of allowing a parcel of notoriety-hunting adventurers to air their eloquence—and their ignorance? The crofters would at once perceive that Ogden, M.P., knew no more about them and their ways of life than he knew about the inhabitants of the moon. As for Mademoiselle Ernestine—the fiery Ernestine would find it difficult to set the Highland peat-bogs in a blaze with her little tin can of paraffin. And as for Mrs. Jackson Noyes of Connecticut—but here the young men had to confess that they knew nothing of Mrs. Jackson Noyes; and so, to amuse themselves, at dinner, they set to work to construct an imaginary Mrs. Noyes out of a series of guesses. "She is a passionate sympathiser with all suffering races—especially married women," said Mr. Meredyth, confidently. "Men are brutes," observed Fred Stanley. "She will denounce the hideous cruelty of landlords stalking grouse with express rifles," said Meredyth, keeping the ball rolling. "She will call on the crofters to arise in their wrath and demand that of every stag killed two haunches must be delivered over to them, the remaining two to be retained by the landlord."