“I’ll back her to be right,” answers Flora, with a slight laugh. “She’s not likely to mislead Gloria, who, by-the-bye, I saw turning the point in her coracle quite ten minutes ago. They’ll be round in a second, I daresay.” The two scramble down the rough face of the mountain side in silence. The thoughts of both are busy. Suddenly, however, Estcourt brings himself to a halt and calls out to Flora, who is a little ahead of him, “Flora! who can that be?” Her eyes follow the direction in which his hand points, and she sees a four-oared boat coming out of Loch Eilort into the Sound of Arisaig at a rapid pace, and heading for Glenuig Bay. “It must be Archie,” she calls back. “I suppose he got to the far end of the lake, and has come back by water. The boat is Bruce Ruglen’s, and the oarsmen are his four sons. I know it and them well.” He comes running down to where she is standing. “Flora dear,” he says quickly, “use your eyes. The man in the stern is not Douglasdale. It’s Evie, as I live! What can Léonie have meant, and why does not Gloria come back? Surely there cannot have been treachery? My God! surely not?” But Flora never stops to surmise. Her face is deadly pale, and she has turned at his words, and is hurrying with fleet steps down the mountain side, with Estcourt following quickly in the rear. Fast, faster she goes. Flora Desmond is as nimble as a deer. No monstrous, tied-back petticoats encumber her. She is habited in the neat, graceful kilt in the tartan of her brother’s clan and her own, which suits to perfection her supple, well-made form. In it she is free to use the physical powers which Nature has given her, and which she has never sought to stunt or to curtail. She makes straight for the shore, and as she moves along she loads her rifle. Then as she reaches the water’s edge she fires it off. This attracts the inmates of the boat. They look her way, and perceive that she is signalling to them to come in shore. In a moment Evie Ravensdale has turned the boat’s nose in her direction, and she sees that he is urging the oarsmen to exert their utmost. The men endeavour to obey; they bend their backs, and send the boat hissing through the still waters. Foam flakelets fly before the racing keel propelled by irresistible force, and yet to Flora Desmond it appears to come but slowly. “Back water, men!” she shouts, as the boat nears the shore. “Don’t beach her. I want to push her off and jump in.” Estcourt is beside her now, and they are both up to their knees in the water. The men are resting on their oars as the boat glides slowly forward. But Flora and Estcourt have it by the prow. “Now, Estcourt, push off!” exclaims the former, as bending chest downwards she arrests its course. The edge of her kilt in front sinks into the water, in another moment her knee is on the boat’s edge, and she is standing in the bow with her companion by her side.