passenger came wandering along the pavement and disappeared in a turn of the road. The air was sweet with the mingled fragrance of the heathery hills and the salt odours of the sea. Upon the glassy bosom of the bay, dark, clear, and gently undulating with the pressure of the ocean tide, more than seventy small boats, each moored at a buoy and all veered in one direction, swung careless on the water; and mingled with them were upward of twenty schooners and little steamboats, all idle and all at peace. Many an hour of toil and sorrow is yet to come, before the long, strange journey of life is ended; but the memory of that wonderful midnight moment, alone with the majesty of Nature, will be a solace in the darkest of them. [Illustration: _Oban._] The Highland journey, from first to last, is an experience altogether novel and precious, and it is remembered with gratitude and delight. Before coming to Oban I gave two nights and days to Loch Awe,--a place so beautiful and so fraught with the means of happiness that time stands still in it, and even "the ceaseless vulture" of care and regret ceases for a while to vex the spirit with remembrance of anything that is sad. Looking down from the summit of one of the great mountains that are the rich and rugged setting of this jewel, I saw the crumbling ruin of Kilchurn upon its little island, gray relic first of the Macgregors and then of the Campbells, who dispossessed them and occupied their realm. It must have been an imperial residence once. Its situation,--cut off from the mainland and commanding a clear view, up the lake and down the valleys, southward and northward,--is superb. No enemy could approach it unawares, and doubtless the followers of the Macgregor occupied every adjacent pass and were ambushed in every thicket on the heights. Seen from the neighbouring mountain-side the waters of Loch Awe are of such crystal clearness that near some parts of the shore the white sands are visible in perfect outline beneath them, while all the glorious engirdling hills are reflected in their still and shining depth. Sometimes the sun flashed out and changed the waters to liquid silver, lighting up the gray ruin and flooding the mountain slopes with gold; but more often the skies kept their sombre hue, darkening all beneath them with a lovely gloom. All around were the beautiful hills of Glen Orchy, and far to the eastward great waves of white and leaden mist, slowly drifting in the upper ether, now hid and now disclosed the Olympian head of Ben Lui and the tangled hills of Glen Shirra and Glen Fyne. Close by, in its sweet vale of Sabbath stillness, was couched the little town of Dalmally, sole reminder of the presence of man in these remote solitudes, where Nature keeps the temple of her worship, and where words are needless to utter her glory and her praise. All day long the peaceful lake slumbered in placid beauty under the solemn sky,--a few tiny boats and two little