each other across the driven loch, and sighing and sobbing away along the lonely Strath-Terry. But on this fair morning there was not a breath stirring; and the curving bays and promontories and birch-woods, and the far hills beyond, were all reflected in the magic mirror of the lake, as she sped along the highway, making for the Clebrig slopes. And soon she was mounting these—with the light step of one trained to the heather; and ever as she got higher and higher the vast panorama around her grew wider and more wide, until she could see hills and lochs and wooded islands that never were visible from Inver-Mudal. In the perfect silence, the sudden whirr of a startled grouse made her heart jump. A hare—that looked remarkably like a cat, for there was as much white as bluish-brown about it—got up almost at her feet and sped swiftly away over heath and rock until it disappeared in one of the numerous peat-hags. There was a solitary eagle slowly circling in the blue; but at so great a height that it was but a speck. At one moment she thought she had caught sight of the antlers of a stag; and for a second she stopped short, rather frightened; but presently she had convinced herself that these were but two bits of withered birch, appearing over the edge of a rock far above her. It was a little chillier here; but the brisk exercise kept her warm. And still she toiled on and on; until she knew, or guessed, that she was high enough; and now the question was to discover the whereabouts of the clump of rocks under shelter of which Ronald was accustomed to sit, when he had been up here alone, dreaming day-dreams, and scribbling the foolish rhymes that had won to her favour, whatever he might think of them. At first this seemed a hopeless task; for the whole place was a wilderness of moss and heather and peat-hags, with scarcely a distinctive feature anywhere. But she wandered about, watching the little terrier covertly; and at last she saw him put his nose in an inquiring way into a hole underneath some tumbled boulders. He turned and looked at her; she followed. And now there could be no doubt that this was Ronald’s halting-place and pulpit of meditation; for she forthwith discovered the hidden case at the back of the little cave—though the key of that now belonged to his successor. And so, in much content, she sate herself down on the heather; with all the wide, sunlit, still world mapped out before her—the silver thread of Mudal Water visible here and there among the moors, and Loch Meadie with its islands, and Ben Hope and Ben Loyal, and Bonnie Strath-Naver, and the far Kyle of Tongue close to the northern Sea.