A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay and presents the letter before I get there!" She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!" A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" "It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. "Can you make it?" "The road--" he began. "I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you make it?" "I'm a married man," said he. "Ten pounds sterling if you make it." "And if we smash and are kilt?" "Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig O'Dread--that's all." She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them--" The car began to slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in a roaring smother of dust. "McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate--that is all." She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. III She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, and told her so.