float motionless upon it, a little way from shore. There, on its lonely island, dimly visible in the fading light, stands the gray ruin of Kilchurn. A faint whisper comes from the black woods that fringe the mountain base, and floating from far across this lonely, haunted water there is a drowsy bird-note that calls to silence and to sleep. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII HIGHLAND BEAUTIES Oban, September 17, 1889.--Seen in the twilight, as I first saw it, Oban is a pretty and picturesque seaside village, gay with glancing lights and busy with the movements of rapid vehicles and expeditious travellers. It is called the capital of the Western Highlands, and no doubt it deserves the name, for it is the common centre of all the trade and enterprise of this region, and all the threads of travel radiate from it. Built in a semicircle, along the margin of a lovely sheltered bay, it looks forth upon the wild waters of the Firth of Lorn, visible, southwesterly, through the sable sound of Kerrera, while behind and around it rises a bold range of rocky and sparsely wooded hills. On these are placed a few villas, and on a point toward the north stand the venerable, ivy-clad ruins of Dunolly Castle, in the ancestral domain of the ancient Highland family of Macdougall. The houses of Oban are built of gray stone and are mostly modern. There are many hotels fronting upon the Parade, which extends for a long distance upon the verge of the sea. The opposite shore is Kerrera, an island about a mile distant, and beyond that island, and beyond Lorn water, extends the beautiful island of Mull, confronting iron-ribbed Morven. In many ways Oban is suggestive of an American seaport upon the New England coast. Various characteristics mark it that may be seen at Gloucester, Massachusetts [although that once romantic place has been spoiled by the Irish peasantry], and at Mount Desert in Maine. The surroundings, indeed, are different; for the Scottish hills have a delicious colour and a wildness all their own; while the skies, unlike those of blue and brilliant America, lower, gloom, threaten, and tinge the whole world beneath them,--the moors, the mountains, the clustered gray villages, the lonely ruins, and the tumbling plains of the desolate sea,--with a melancholy, romantic, shadowy darkness, the perfect twilight of poetic vision. No place could be more practical than Oban is, in its everyday life, nor any place more sweet and dreamlike to the pensive mood of contemplation and the roving gaze of fancy. Viewed, as I viewed it, under the starlight and the drifting cloud, between two and three o'clock this morning, it was a picture of beauty, never to be forgotten. A few lights were twinkling here and there among the dwellings, or momentarily flaring on the deserted Parade. No sound was heard but the moaning of the night-wind and the plash of waters softly surging on the beach. Now and then a belated