I sat down again and fell to considering the extraordinary circumstance. I was perfectly well and normal, I had not been thinking of Lord Colin, and yet in the midst of other thoughts a sound had attracted my attention, and looking round I had seen him enter with his dog. For the space of quite two minutes both had been visible. I got up again and timed the whole affair by my wrist watch. The room I sat in was very long. I was at one end, and the door at the other. It took me just one minute to walk leisurely forward over the ground they had covered, before they vanished from my sight. I sat down again and began to wonder if Lord Colin was ill, or was he dead, and why was he carrying lilacs? 'Phones were uncommon things in those days; I had no means of communication with Argyll Lodge. For an hour I sat considering the wonderful vividness of my curious experience. The daylight had faded into a close, soft twilight, but I wanted no artificial light. Then just as ten o'clock was striking I heard a voice in the hall below; a voice I was sure was Lord Colin's, and he was answered by one of my servants. Steps sounded on the stairs, and in another moment in he walked with Garry, and in his hand he carried a big bunch of white and mauve lilacs. I stood staring at him in the dim twilight. Was this the real man and dog at last? "I know it's awfully late to pay a call, but I thought you would like some lilac," he exclaimed; "it's so lovely in our garden just now," and he held out the flowers. I took them and bade him be seated. Garry came to me and rested his nose on my lap. For a moment I could not speak. "Aren't you well?" asked Colin. Then I recovered myself, but I did not tell him what had happened only an hour before. As we talked I discovered that he had intended to come at nine o'clock, and was just starting when a relative arrived and detained him. On another occasion he told me of a curious dream he had as a boy. Queen Victoria came to Inverary to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Lord Colin's parents, and it was arranged that the young sons of the house should act as pages to Her Majesty. The night of the day on which the Queen arrived, Colin dreamed that some one whom he did not know came to him and said, "To-morrow the Queen will give you twenty shillings." When the boy wakened up in the morning he remembered this dream, and all day long he was on the outlook for its fulfillment. The hours passed, but though he was often in her presence and kept as close to her as he dared, the Queen never produced her purse. Just before reëntering the house towards evening, she suddenly turned to John Brown, her constant attendant, and said something which Colin did not catch. What was his joy on perceiving that surly henchman extract from a shabby old purse a filthy Scotch one pound note, which he handed to Her Majesty.