The roaring out of the anchor chain was almost immediately followed by Master Fred’s bell. Mary Avon was silent and _distraite_ at dinner; but nothing more was said of her return to London. It was understood that, when Angus Sutherland came on board, we should go back to Castle Osprey, and have a couple of days on shore, to let the _White Dove_ get rid of her parasitic seaweed. Then, after dinner, a fishing excursion; but this was in a new loch, and we were not very successful. Or was it that most of us were watching, from this cup of water surrounded by the circle of great mountains, the strange movings of the clouds in the gloomy and stormy twilight, long after the sun had sunk? "It is not a very sheltered place," remarked the Laird, "if a squall were to come down from the hills." But by and by something appeared that lent an air of stillness and peace to this sombre scene around us. Over one of those eastern mountains a faint, smoky, suffused yellow light began to show; then the outline of the mountain—serrated with trees—grew dark; then the edge of the moon appeared over the black line of trees; and by and by the world was filled with this new, pale light, though the shadows on the hills were deeper than ever. We did not hurry on our way back to the yacht. It was a magical night—the black, overhanging hills, the white clouds crossing the blue vaults of the heavens, the wan light on the sea. What need for John of Skye to put up that golden lamp at the bow? But it guided us on our way back—under the dusky shadows of the hills. Then below, in the orange-lit cabin, with cards and dominoes and chess about, a curious thing overhead happens to catch the eye of one of the gamblers. Through the skylight, with this yellow glare, we ought not to see anything; but there, shining in the night, is a long bar of pale phosphorescent green light. What can this be? Why green? And it is Mary Avon who first suggests what this strangely luminous thing must be—the boom, wet with the dew, shining in the moonlight. "Come," says the Laird to her, "put a shawl round ye, and we will go up for another look round." And so, after a bit, they went on deck, these two, leaving the others to their bezique. And the Laird was as careful about the wrapping up of this girl as if she had been a child of five years of age; and when they went out on to the white deck, he would give her his arm that she should not trip over any stray rope; and they were such intimate friends now that he did not feel called upon to talk to her. But by and by the heart of the Laird was lifted up within him because of the wonderful beauty and silence of this moonlight night.