Presently the passage ended, and Wat came out again on a broader stretch of water, over which the free, light breezes of the night played chilly. He found himself quite close to the beach of Suliscanna. There was a scent of peat-reek and cheerful human dwellings in the air--of cattle also, the acrid tang of goats, and, sweetest of all to a shipwrecked man, the indescribable kindly something by which man advertises his permanent residence to his fellows amid all the world of inhuman things. After the darkness of the "goë" it seemed almost lucid twilight here, and Wat could see a black tower relieve itself against the sky, darker than the intense indigo padding in which the stars were set that moonless night. He stood on shore and rubbed himself briskly all over with the rough cloth of his knee-breeches before clothing himself in them. Then he donned the shirt and belt which he had brought over with him on his head by way of that perilous passage through the rocky gateway of Suliscanna, whose virgin defences had probably never been violated in such a manner before. Being now clothed and in the dignity of his right mind, Wat cautiously directed his way upward towards the bulk of a tower which he saw loom dark above him. CHAPTER XXXI BESS LANDSBOROUGH'S CATECHISM As he went his unshod feet sometimes rasped on the sharp edges of slaty rocks, and anon trod with a pleasantly tickling sensation on the shaggy bull's-fell of the inland heather. Wat drew his breath instinctively shorter and more anxiously, not so much from any increased consciousness of danger as because he knew that at last he trod the isle whereon his love lay asleep, all unconscious of his living presence so near her. Climbing steadily, he surmounted the steep slope, and came to the angle of the castle wall. Here Wat peered stealthily round. A fire of peat, nearly extinct, smoked sulkily in front of an arched doorway which led underneath the masonry, and stretched out with his bare feet towards it, and barring all passage into the vault, lay a gigantic Highlander with a naked claymore by his side. It was Alister McAlister on guard over his prisoner. Wat drew back. "Surely," he thought, "it cannot be in this morose dungeon that they have shut my love?" At the thought he grasped the dagger which was his sole weapon, and glanced at the prostrate form of the unconscious sentinel, with the tangled locks thrown back from the broad brow. "Never yet did Wat Gordon slay a sleeping man," he muttered, somewhat irresolutely, and took a backward step to consider the matter. But at that instant a thick plaid was thrown over his head and he was pulled violently to the ground. Limber Wat twisted like an eel and struck at his assailant with his dagger. But a hand clasped his arm and a voice whispered in his ear, "Down with your blade, man. I am a friend. If ye love Kate McGhie, you endanger both her life and yours by the least noise."