“Haunted! that’s a pack of havers. I’m not minding about haunted. But I tell ye what, sir, that bit lassie (and a bonnie bit lassie she is) is all her lane there, like a lily flower in the wilderness; for Lily she’s called, and Lily she is--a bit willowy slender creature, bowing her head like a flower on the stalk.” The landlord, who was short and red and stout, leaned his own head to one side to simulate the young lady’s attitude. “She’s there and never sees a single soul, and it’s mair than her life’s worth if ye take my opinion. If there was any body to keep her company, or even a lot of sportsmen coming and going, it would be something; but there she is, all her lane.” “Miss Ramsay! I have met her in Edinburgh,” Ronald said. “Then, if I were you, I would just take my foot in my hand and gang ower the moor and pay her a visit. She will have a grand tocher and she is a bonnie lass, and nowadays ye canna pick up an heiress at every roadside. It would be just a charity to give the poor thing a little diversion and make a fool o’ yon old sneck-drawer to his very beard. Lord! but I wouldna waste a meenit if I were a young man.” Ronald laughed, but put on a virtuous mien. He said he had come for the fishing, not to pay visits, and to the fishing he would go. But when he had spent the morning on the river, it occurred to him that he might take “a look at the moor”; and this was how it was that he stole under the shadow of the bank when the last rays of the sunset were fading, and suddenly came out upon the heather under Dalrugas Tower. CHAPTER X