"By the time you get this I shall have started for home. I’m coming by the ’Jumna,’ a rotten slow boat, but I think it better for many reasons--chiefly those of economy. I shall be pleased to see the old place again, and I hope the governor won’t cut up too rough. Try and get the worst over for me before I come, because naturally I’m raw enough about the whole bally thing, and couldn’t stand much more. Fact is, it’s all right in a crack regiment for the chaps who have big allowances. There’s only one word to fit the case of poor, hard-up beggars like me, and that one I mustn’t use. Poverty opens the door to all sorts of mischief and misery that a girl who never needs any money can’t begin to understand. "I’d better make a clean breast of it while I’m at it, and you’ll have time to digest it before I get home. I’m in with the money-lenders both in London and in Calcutta. I owe about two thousand pounds, and how it’s to be paid is keeping me awake at night. Of course, it’s been advanced on Achree, so heaven only knows what will be the upshot. I’ll have to see that old starched stick Cattanach the minute I get back so that the old man may not be worried. "If only I had the place in my own hands I’d make things hum a bit. You know, Isla, everything has been shockingly neglected in the last five years, and a perfect horde of pensioners have been kept off the poor old place. The half of them ought to be chucked; it’s nothing but pauperizing the glen from end to end. A bit more could be screwed out of the tenants, as most of them have their places dirt-cheap. "Well, old girl, I’m beastly sorry, for you can’t be expected to like this. But suspend your judgment, for really I’m not half so bad as I’m painted, and if I had only half a chance I might prove it to you. I must try and get somebody to introduce me to the Stock Exchange. That seems to be the only way of turning an honest penny nowadays. There are hundreds of military men on it. "Don’t be too downhearted over this. You are such a one for taking things seriously, and there’s hardly anything in life worth worrying about, really. You have the best of it, for nobody expects anything of a girl, and she hasn’t a chap’s temptations. "Good-bye, old girl. I shall see you soon, if I don’t fancy on board the ’Jumna’ that the easiest way out would be to drop quietly over the rail some night when nobody’s looking.--Your affectionate, but down-on-his-luck, "MALCOLM." Just for the space of five minutes or so the world was a dark place to Isla Mackinnon. She had no mother, and for the last ten years she had borne a double burden--had experienced both a mother’s anxiety and a sister’s shame for the ne’er-do-weel. The history of Malcolm Mackinnon’s misdeeds in the glen, and out of it, would fill a book. But such a book would not be worth the writing. Through him evil had fallen on an old and honourable house--its revenues had been scattered, its very existence threatened.