"Coming home! Leave again! Far too much leave in the service now. They have no time to lick them into shape. Seventeen years I served in Northern India without a break--and never a murmur; and I’ve known men who served thirty. Now it’s leave every third or fourth year. It doesn’t look like five since he was last here, but I suppose it is. Well, when is he coming?" "In about a month." "A bad time of year, too--nothing to kill but a stray rabbit. I think I’ll write to them at the War Office and stir them up about this perpetual leave business. It’s bad for the men, bad for the officers, bad for the service all through, and accounts for its unpopularity and inefficiency. In my day the Army was a man’s business--the serious business of his life. Now it’s his play. How can a country be kept together on these lines?" Isla betrayed no weariness, though she knew that he had started on his interminable theme. It was the only one in which he retained any active interest, for Mackinnon had been born a soldier, and the medals he had won could not be pinned all at one time on his breast. But his failing powers prevented him from being able to adjust his mind to the new conditions of things. In his estimation, the old style of warfare was best, and all the new methods were fit only to be criticized and partly abolished. "He doesn’t say anything about the duration of his leave. I, too, am rather sorry he is coming home just now, father, for, as you say, there is nothing to kill and Malcolm isn’t a man of resource. I think I’ll go and see Cattanach and ask his advice." "Cattanach? Oh, yes. What did he write about, did you say? Anything to sign? Or was he writing only for his own amusement to earn six-and-eightpence? Terrible fellows these lawyers--even the best of them are worth watching." He laughed gently but quite mirthlessly, and his eyes glued themselves again to his paper, in which he at once became completely absorbed. Isla, knitting her brows slightly, turned away to the table to glance through her father’s letters, which he had not so much as touched. Everything was in her hands. Something whispered that she, and she alone, must be the saviour of Achree. CHAPTER III ISLA TAKES ACTION Isla, already dressed for a journey, took in her father’s breakfast-tray next morning. "You are surely early afield, my dear?" he said, looking at the trim figure with quick approbation. "Yes, dear. I am going to Glasgow to see Mr. Cattanach, because I found when I started out to answer his letter that I couldn’t say half I wanted." "His letter wasn’t very clear, I thought. Ask him why he doesn’t learn to express himself better. I thought that was a lawyer’s business. But it seems a long way to go to Glasgow to say that to him. When do you get your train?"