And soon they were afloat again. But what was this that was coming over the brief winter afternoon? The sultry south wind did not die away, nor yet did any manifest clouds appear in the heavens, but a strange gloom began to fill the skies, obscuring the sun, and gradually becoming darker and darker. It was very strange; for, while the skies overhead were thus unnaturally black, and the lapping water around the boats similarly livid, the low-lying hills at the horizon were singularly keen and intense in colour. The air was hot and close, though the breeze still came blowing up Strath-Terry. There was a feeling as if thunder were imminent, though there were no clouds anywhere gathering along the purple mountain-tops. This unusual darkness seemed to affect the fishing. Round after round they made—touching nothing but one or two kelts; and this Ronald declared to be a bad sign, for that when the kelts began to take, there was small chance of a clean fish. However, Miss Carry did not care. She had caught her first salmon—that was enough. Nay, it was sufficient to make her very cheerful and communicative; and she told him a good deal about her various friends in the Garden City—but more especially, as it seemed to the respectful listener, of the young men who, from a humble beginning, had been largely successful in business; and she asked him many questions about himself, and was curious about his relations with Lord Ailine. Of course, she went on the assumption that the future of the world lay in America, and that the future of America lay in the bountiful lap of Chicago: and she half intimated that she could not understand how any one could waste his time anywhere else. Her father had been born in a log-cabin; but if he—that is, Ronald—could see the immense blocks devoted to ’Hodson’s reaper’ ’on Clinton and Canal Streets’ he would understand what individual enterprise could achieve out west. The ’manifest destiny’ of Chicago loomed large in this young lady’s mind; the eastern cities were ’not in it,’ so to speak; and Ronald heard with reverence of the trade with Montana, and Idaho, and Wyoming, and Colorado, and Utah, and Nevada. It is true that she was recalled from this imparting of information by a twenty-five minutes’ deadly struggle with a creature that turned out after all to be a veritable clean salmon: and with this triumph ended the day’s sport; for the afternoon was rapidly wearing to dusk. The gloom of the evening, by the way, was not decreased by a vast mass of smoke that came slowly rolling along between the black sky and the black lake; though this portentous thing—that looked as if the whole world were on fire—meant nothing further than the burning of the heather down Strath-Terry way. When both cobles were drawn up on the beach, it was found that Mr. Hodson had also added one clean salmon to his score; so that the five fish, put in a row on the grass, made a very goodly display, and were a