"Very much so, indeed." Captain Macleod's voice was absent, and his eyes were not on the fish. "You killed him splendidly." The light went out of the girl's face; she rose to her feet slowly. "I wish I had given you the rod," she said, still looking down on the palpitating, quivering bar of silver. "That is most forgiving of you!" She turned upon him almost indignantly. "Oh! I wasn't thinking of all that--that stuff! I was thinking--it seems so cruel." "Many things seem so afterwards. One might spend a lifetime in regretting, if it was worth it; but it isn't." "Isn't it? I wish anyhow that I hadn't killed that fish." "Why not go further back, and wish you hadn't interfered to safe my cast? for, as it happens, the one you chose out was the very one Fate had ordained should remain in an alder bush----" "Perhaps I do," she replied stiffly, realising how he had played upon her for the first time. The knowledge, rather to her own surprise, brought tears to her eyes. "I don't wonder that you regret having helped me," he said with a sudden change of manner. "If you will tell me where to leave the fish I will no longer trouble you. I am sorry for having given you so much already." There was no mistaking the hidden depth of his apology. As he stood there in the sunlight, looking at her gravely, Marjory felt to the full the charm of his gracious presence. Who could really be angry with him for such a trifle? For it was a trifle after all. "My name is Marjory Carmichael," she said briefly, "and I live at the Lodge with the Camerons. But I don't want the fish. I don't indeed." "Then you shall not have it. I owe you some obedience, do I not?--and thanks beyond measure." He stood there with his cap off smiling at her, and she, feeling apologetic in her turn, hesitated. After all, if he was going her way it would be foolishness itself to tramp that mile and a half with an interval of fifty yards or so between them. "And now I must emulate your skill," he said cheerfully, "though I can't expect your luck." And as she moved away she saw his flies settle softly as thistledown in the right place. Well! that was better than keeping up the pretence. As for him, though he continued to fish conscientiously, his thoughts were with the figure of the retreating girl. She had amused him and interested him greatly. A relation, he supposed, of Dr. Carmichael's; in fact, he had a dim recollection of a curly-haired child scampering about on a Sheltie ten years before; though he had never known the doctor, who had lived as a recluse. But how came she here still, and with the Camerons? A cut above them surely! By Jove! how she had hung on to that grilse, and how nearly she had cried over it afterwards. Maudlin sentimentality, of course, and yet he had felt the same a hundred times over a wounded deer. The look in her eyes had been like that, somehow; uncommonly pretty eyes they were, too, into the bargain! CHAPTER V.