Had Sheila come up this very line some dozen hours before? Lavender asked himself as he looked out on the hills and valleys and woods of Buckinghamshire. Had the throbbing of the engine and the rattle of the wheels kept the piteous eyes awake all through the dark night, until the pale dawn showed the girl a wild vision of northern hills and moors, telling her she was getting near to her own country? Not thus had Sheila proposed to herself to return home on the first holiday-time that should occur to them both. He began to think of his present journey as it might have been in other circumstances. Would she have remembered any of those pretty villages which she saw one early morning long ago when they were bathed in sunshine and scarcely awake to the new day? Would she be impatient at the delays at the stations, and anxious to hurry on to Westmoreland and Dumfries, to Glasgow, and Oban, and Skye, and then from Stornoway across the island to the little inn at Garra-na-hina? Here, as he looked out of the window, the first indication of the wilder country became visible in the distant Berkshire hills. Close at hand the country lay green and bright under a brilliant sun, but over there in the east some heavy clouds darkened the landscape, and the far hills seemed to be placed amid a gloomy stretch of moorland. Would not Sheila have been thrilled by this glimpse of the coming North? She would have fancied that greater mountains lay far behind these rounded slopes hidden in mist. She would have imagined that no human habitations were near those rising plains of sombre hue, where the red-deer and the fox ought to dwell. And in her delight at getting away from the fancied brightness of the South, would she not have been exceptionally grateful and affectionate toward himself, and striven to please him with her tender ways? It was not a cheerful journey, this lonely trip to the North. Lavender got to Glasgow that night, and next morning he went down, long before any passengers could have thought of arriving, to the Clansman. He did not go near the big steamer, for he was known to the captain and the steward, but he hung about the quays, watching each person who went on board. Sheila certainly was not among the passengers by the Clansman.