"Well, perhaps so—perhaps so," said the Laird, who was greatly pleased. "And yet, let one work as hard as one can, it is singular how little one can do, and what little thanks ye get for doing it. I am sure those people in Strathgovan spend half their lives in fault-finding; and expect ye to do everything they can think of without asking them for a farthing. At the last meeting of the ratepayers in the Burgh Hall I heckled them, I can tell ye. I am not a good speaker—no, no; far from it; but I can speak plain. I use words that can be driven into people’s heads; and I will say this, that some o’ those people in Strathgovan have a skull of most extraordinar’ thickness. But said I to them, ’Do ye expect us to work miracles? Are we to create things out of nothing? If the rates are not to be increased, where are the new gas-lamps to come from? Do ye think we can multiply gas-lamps as the loaves and fishes were multiplied?’ I’m thinking," added the Laird, with a burst of hearty laughter, "that the thickest-skulled of them all understood that—eh?" "I should hope so," remarked Miss Avon. Then the measured rattle of the oars: it wants hard pulling against this fiercely running tide; indeed, to cheat it in a measure, we have to keep working along the coast and across the mouth of Loch Swen. _"There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,_ _And Mary Avon, and me"—_ says the Laird, as a playful introduction to another piece of talking. "I have been asking myself once or twice whether I know any one in the whole kingdom of Scotland better than you." "Than me, sir?" she says, with a start of surprise. "Yes," he says, sententiously. "That is so. And I have had to answer myself in the naygative. It is wonderful how ye get to know a person on board a yacht. I just feel as if I had spent years and years with ye; so that there is not any one I know with whom I am better acquaint. When ye come to Denny-mains, I shall be quite disappointed if ye look surprised or strange to the place. I have got it into my head that ye must have lived there all your life. Will ye undertake to say," he continues, in the same airy manner, "that ye do not know the little winding path that goes up through the trees to the flag-staff—eh?" "I’m afraid I don’t remember it," she says, with a smile.