"Käthchen," she said, one morning, "the proofs of the photographs should come to-day, and if they turn out well I mean to have the whole of them enlarged, every one of them, to make a handsome series for Mrs. Armour. Don’t you think they should be very interesting to those people away over there—’where wild Altama murmurs to their woe’? Woe, indeed! I wish we could import some of their woeful circumstances into this neighbourhood. Forty bushels of wheat to the acre: what do you say to that? A hundred and sixty acres of land for two pounds! I don’t like to think of it, Käthchen: to tell you the truth, I just hate to hear Mr. Ross begin and talk about emigration: it all sounds so horribly reasonable, and practicable, and right. Sometimes I lie awake convincing myself that the very next day or the next again he will make his appearance with the announcement that he has decided to go back to his original intention; and then—then he will say good-bye to Lochgarra—he and half the people from about here—and be off to the Gilbert Plains or the Lake Dauphin District——" "You need not be afraid," said Käthchen, quietly. "It is neither wheat-fields nor gold-fields that are likely to allure Mr. Ross. There’s metal more attractive nearer home. By the way, Mamie," she continued, with a certain significance, "you remember there was a group taken on the banks of the Connan—and you and Mr. Ross are standing together. When you get the pictures enlarged, are you going to send any copies of that one to your friends in the south?" "Why not?" said she, boldly. "They may draw conclusions," said Kate Glendinning, looking at her. "They are welcome to draw a cart-load of conclusions!" she retorted; but all the same she changed the subject quickly. "Do you know, Käthchen, it is quite wonderful how easily things go forward when Donald Ross is helping me. Look at the wood-carving class—started in a moment, almost; and that left-handed rascal turning out the cleverest of any of them. And then he is quite of a mind with me about corrugated iron——" "You mean Mr. Ross, Mamie?" said Kate, demurely. "Of course. Quite of a mind with me as to corrugated iron; and I won’t have a square yard of it in the place. If, as he says, thatch takes too much time and labour, then they may have slates for their roofs, in place of the turf that I hope to see the last of before I have done with them; but not an inch of corrugated iron—not an inch. Oh, I tell you we will have Lochgarra smartened up in course of time, and Minard and Cruagan too. And I will never rest, Käthchen, I tell you I will never rest until Lochgarra has taken the first prize at the Inverness Exhibition—I mean for the best suit of men’s clothes made from the wool of sheep fed on the croft, and carded, dyed, spun, hand-loom woven, and cut and sewn in the family. There! It may be a long time yet, but I mean Lochgarra to have it in the end."