"Good morning, ma’am; good morning! Breakfast ready? I’m just ravenous. That wild lassie has walked me up and down until I am like to faint. A beautiful morning again—splendid!—splendid! And do ye know where ye will be this day next year?" "I am sure I don’t," says his hostess, busy with the breakfast-things. "I will tell ye. Anchored in the Holy Loch, off Kilmun, in a screw-yacht. Mark my words now: _this very day next year!_" *CHAPTER IX.* *A PROTECTOR.* "Oh, ay," says John of Skye, quite proudly, as we go on deck after breakfast, "there will be no more o’ the dead calms. We will give Mr. Sutherland a good breeze or two when he comes back to the yat." It is all Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Sutherland now!—everything is to be done because Mr. Sutherland is coming. Each belaying pin is polished so that one might see to shave in it; Hector of Moidart has spent about two hours in scraping and rubbing the brass and copper of the galley stove-pipe; and Captain John, with many grins and apologies, has got Miss Avon to sew up a rent that has begun to appear in the red ensign. All that he wants now is to have the yacht beached for a couple of days, to have the long slender sea-grass scraped from her hull: then Mr. Sutherland will see how the _White Dove_ will sail! "I should imagine," says the Youth, in an undertone, to his hostess, as we are working out the narrow entrance to Loch Speliv, "that your doctor-friend must have given those men a liberal _pour-boire_ when he left." "Oh, I am sure not," said she, quickly, as if that was a serious imputation. "That is very unlikely." "They seem very anxious to have everything put right against his coming," he says; "at all events, your captain seems to think that every good breeze he gets is merely thrown away on us." "Dr. Sutherland and he," she says, laughing, "were very good friends. And then Angus had very bad luck when he was on board: the glass wouldn’t fall. But I have promised to bottle up the equinoctials for him—he will have plenty of winds before we have done with him. You must stay too, you know, Mr. Smith, and see how the _White Dove_ rides out a gale." He regarded her—with some suspicion. He was beginning to know that this lady’s speech—despite the great gentleness and innocence of her eyes—sometimes concealed curious meanings. And was she now merely giving him a kind and generous invitation to go yachting with us for another month; or was she, with a cruel sarcasm, referring to the probability of his having to remain a prisoner for that time, in order to please his uncle?