Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned. Opposite him began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that Kate . . . Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week, on Lord Kilspindie's birthday. A distant whistle came on the clear air from Muirtown station, where . . . and all this turmoil of hope and fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months. There is a bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank. With a thrill of sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of silver and plunged into the river. He had also been caught quite suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds. Why should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away? He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada and take charge of a parish fifty miles square. The idea had for a little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions. It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands--riding, camping, shooting, preaching--a free man and an apostle to the Scottish Dispersion.