“Up with the sails! Starboard the helm! Put the boat about, and fetch yon lad off the rocks,” is the quick command she hears given as the sailors heave her aloft on to the deck, and two other men push her into the cabin below. Then the hatch is battened down. There is a coarse laugh. Once more has Léonie won. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. “There is the smoke, Estcourt; Ravensdale must be in sight,” exclaims Flora Desmond, as she leans on her empty rifle and scans the peaceful scene far away below. “So soon?” inquires the young man looking up. “We must have strangely miscalculated the time.” “Well, there’s the smoke right enough, Estcourt; and Léonie is far too smart to make a mistake. However, no need to hurry; it is such a glorious evening, and the last for me on these dear old hills, perhaps for ever.” She says the last words sadly, and there is a yearning look in her fine eyes as they rove the familiar glens and corries, rugged crags and purple stretches which she and Archie Douglasdale learnt to know by heart in childhood, in their happy hunting excursions together long ago. Far away below, Loch Eilort and Glenuig Bay shimmer in the setting sun, whose light is gleaming across the grey waters of the open sea. These two have been away all day after deer, and Archie Douglasdale is still absent on the same quest. They have not seen him since they parted with him on the Black Crags some seven hours ago. Lord Estcourt rises and comes to her side. He is a tall, well-made man, with expressive features, and a pair of grey eyes which Society has declared to be magnificent. Plenty of women therein have been willing to fall in love with Nigel Estcourt; no end of scheming and would-be mothers-in-law have instructed their daughters in the virtues, wealth, and charming characteristics of that very nice young fellow, and charged the poor things to exert their utmost to win him. But Nigel Estcourt has never yet been seen to pay court to any woman, and Fashion marvels thereat. But since he was a boy of seventeen he has held love’s secret next his heart. It was at Ruglen Manor, long ago, when, as a mere lad, he first saw Flora Ruglen, that Nigel Estcourt first opened the book of love. It was to him that she, his first girl friend, had opened her heart, and it was to her that his boyish soul had responded. Born with a golden spoon in his mouth, with all that the world most covets, it was but natural that Fashion should court him. But Nigel Estcourt was not responsive to its adulation, and snubbed it most unmercifully. When Flora Ruglen had married Sir Reginald Desmond, young Nigel had sorely grieved; but his friendship for her had not abated, for he loved her just the same. He was still only a boy, of course, and no one would have seriously predicted that this, his first love, would be his last.