So to Golspie they went, and Evelyn's prophecy as regards the journey was sufficiently fulfilled to make anybody believe that there must have been something in it. He, at any rate, before they arrived at even Inverness, was engaged in conversation with an agreeable female opposite, a conversation which was not, however, so engrossing but that he could observe with secret glee the fact that Madge was reading the _Scotsman_, provided for her by an equally agreeable young man, who sat opposite, and hoped that his cigarette would not be disagreeable. Then, luck was really on his side that day, important people stepped out of first-class carriages at Golspie, and, by the usages of this cruel world, these acquaintances so pleasantly begun were rudely interrupted. A cart waited for their travelling companions, and the swift motor received them and the strangers, before whom their own travelling acquaintances were but dust and ashes. It was, in fact, but a short week after Lady Ellington's arrival at Glen Callan that her daughter and son-in-law got there, and though she would, as previously arranged, have gone on to her next house the day before their arrival, she put off her departure for two days in order to have the pleasure of seeing them. The party, in fact, was unaltered, and so was their way of life; Mr. Osborne's flow of humour showed no signs of running dry, nor was the blank amazement with which Lord Ellington regarded him in the least abated. Mr. Dennison was getting steadily on towards the completion of his panorama of Sutherland, and Lady Dover found fresh lights and shadows on the purple heather every day.