A week he stayed, and still was loth to go, But she grew anxious and would have it so. Her time of service shortly would be o’er, And she would leave; her mistress knew before. Where would she go? To Glasgow, if she could; Her father’s sister would be kind and good; An only child she was, an orphan left, Of all her kindred, save of this, bereft. Said he, ‘Your guide to Glasgow let me be, You little know, you have not tried the sea; Say, at the ferry when are we to meet? Thither, I guess, you travel on your feet.’ She would be there on Tuesday next at three; ‘O dear, how glad and thankful she would be; But don’t,’ she said, ‘be troubled much for me.’ Punctual they met, a second class he took, More naturally to her wants to look, And from her side was seldom far away. So quiet, so indifferent yet, were they, As fellow-servants travelling south they seemed, And no one of a love-relation dreamed. At Oban, where the stormy darkness fell, He got two chambers in a cheap hotel. At Oban of discomfort one is sure, Little the difference whether rich or poor. Around the Mull the passage now to make, They go aboard, and separate tickets take, First-class for him, and second-class for her. No other first-class passengers there were, And with the captain walking soon alone, This Highland girl, he said, to him was known. He had engaged to take her to her kin; Could she be put the ladies’ cabin in? The difference gladly he himself would pay, The weather seemed but menacing to-day. She ne’er had travelled from her home before, He wished to be at hand to hear about her more. Curious it seemed, but he had such a tone, And kept at first so carefully alone, And she so quiet was, and so discreet, So heedful, ne’er to seek him or to meet, The first small wonder quickly passed away. And so from Oban’s little land-locked bay Forth out to Jura—Jura pictured high With lofty peaks against the western sky, Jura, that far o’erlooks the Atlantic seas, The loftiest of the Southern Hebrides. Through the main sea to Jura;—when we reach Jura, we turn to leftward to the breach, And southward strain the narrow channel through, And Colonsay we pass and Islay too; Cantire is on the left, and all the day A dull dead calm upon the waters lay. Sitting below, after some length of while, He sought her, and the tedium to beguile, He ventured some experiments to make, The measure of her intellect to take. Upon the cabin table chanced to lie A book of popular astronomy; In this he tried her, and discoursed away Of Winter, Summer, and of Night and Day. Still to the task a reasoning power she brought, And followed, slowly followed with the thought; How beautiful it was to see the stir Of natural wonder waking thus in her; But loth was he to set on books to pore An intellect so charming in the ore. And she, perhaps, had comprehended soon