"Archie! Archie McCrane!" he cried; "is it possible you do not know me, that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?" Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak. "Man!" he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; "is it possible it is you, Kennie?" The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree holding each other's hands. "God has heard my prayer," said Kenneth at last. "And mine. "But how you have altered, Kenneth! How you must have suffered to make you look so old!" "You forget I _am_ old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a year less. But what wind blew _you_ here? I thought, Archie, you had settled down as an engineer on shore." "Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth. I determined to see the world. I took the first appointment I could get. On a Frenchman. I haven't had much luck. We have been wrecked at Domingo, and I came here last night in a boat. But come, tell us your own adventures. I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man." Kenneth _was_ brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his beauty very much. No, he had not cultivated his moustache. It had cultivated itself. "Come down to the hotel," said Archie. "I am not poor. We saved everything. It was a most unromantic shipwreck." "No," replied Kenneth, "not to the hotel to-night. Come up the mountain with me to my cottage." "Up the mountain?" "Yes, my lad," said Kenneth, smiling. "Up the mountain. Haven't forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as brown as I look, I am an invalid." "What!" cried Archie, in some alarm. "Nothing serious, I sincerely hope." "Nothing, old man, nothing. But when they left me here six weeks ago, I thought that no power could have saved me. I had yellow-Jack. That's all. I could not have lived in the hotel. Good as it is, it is too low. But come; old Senor Gasco waits supper for me." Up and up they struggled, arm in arm. Kenneth knew every foot of the pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage. The French windows were open, and they entered _sans ceremonie_. It was a lofty, large room, furnished with almost Oriental splendour, with brackets, ottomans, and suspended lamps, that shed a soft light over everything around. And here were books, and even musical instruments _galore_, among the latter a flute. It was not the flute Kenneth used to play in Glen Alva, and up among the mountains, while herding his sheep; it was a far better one, but the sight of it brought back old times to Archie's memory.