’_Why, of cois_’ was what she really said; but all the man knew was that this American young lady spoke with a very pleasant voice; and seemed good-natured; and was well-meaning, too, for she would not have had the ostler suffer. Anyway, the mastiff, with as much dignity as was compatible with a muzzle and an iron chain, was conducted back to his kennel; and Miss Hodson went into the hotel, and expressed her profound sorrow that she had kept breakfast waiting; but explained to her father that it was not every morning she had the chance of exploring the Highlands all by herself—or rather accompanied by a huge creature apparently of amiable nature, but with really dark possibilities attached. In due course of time the waggonette and horses were brought round to the door of the little hotel; their baggage was put in; and presently they had set forth on their drive through the still, sunlit, solitary country. But this was a far more pleasant journey than his first venturing into these wilds. He had been warning his daughter of the bleak and savage solitude she would have to encounter; but now it appeared quite cheerful—in a subdued kind of way, as if a sort of Sunday silence hung over the landscape. The pale blue waters of Loch Shin, the beech-woods, the russet slopes of heather, the snow-touched azure hills along the horizon—all these looked pretty and were peacefully shining on this fair morning; and even after they had got away from the last trace of human habitation, and were monotonously driving through mile after mile of the wide, boggy, hopeless peatland, the winter colours were really brighter than those of summer, and the desolation far from overpowering. If they met with no human beings, there were other living objects to attract the eye. A golden plover—standing on a hillock not half a dozen yards off, would be calling to his mate; a wild duck would go whirring by; a red-plumed grouse-cock would cease dusting himself in the road, and would be off into the heather as they came along, standing and looking at them as they passed. And so on and on they went, mile after mile, along the fair shining Strath-Terry; the morning air blowing freshly about them; the sunlight lying placidly on those wide stretches of russet and golden bogland; and now and again a flash of dark blue showing where some mountain-tarn lay silent amid the moors. ’And you thought I should be disappointed, pappa dear?’ said Miss Carry, ’or frightened by the loneliness? Why, it’s just too beautiful for anything! And so this is where the Clan Mackay lived in former days?’ ’Is it?’ said her father. ’I wonder what they lived on. I don’t think we’d give much for that land in Illinois. Give for it? You couldn’t get a white man to trade for that sort of land; we’d have to ask Wisconsin to take it and hide it away somewhere.’ ’What are those things for?’ she asked, indicating certain tall poles that stood at intervals along the roadside.