But we heard no more about Tom Galbraith. Queen Titania had uttered a slight exclamation as she glanced over the addresses of the letters directed to her. "From Angus!" she said, as she hurriedly opened one of the envelopes, and ran her eye over the contents. Then her face grew grave, and inadvertently she turned to the Laird. "In three days," she said, "he was to start for Italy." She looked at the date. "He must have left London already!" said she, and then she examined the letter further. "And he does not say where he is going." The Laird looked grave too—for a second. But he was an excellent actor. He began whistling the air that his hostess had been playing. He turned over his letters and papers carelessly. At length he said, with an air of fine indifference— "The grand thing of being away at sea is to teach ye the comparateevely trifling importance of anything that can happen on land." He tossed the unopened letters about, only regarding the addresses. "What care I what the people may have been saying about me in my absence?—the real thing is that we got food to eat and were not swept into Corrievrechan. Come, Miss Mary, I will just ask ye to go for a stroll through the garden wi’ me, until dinner-time; our good friends will not ask us to dress on an evening like this, just before we have got everything on shore. Twenty-five meenutes, ma’am? Very well. If anybody has been abusing me in my absence, we’ll listen to the poor fellow after dinner, when we can get the laugh made general, and so make some good out of him; but just now we’ll have the quiet of the sunset to ourselves. Dear, dear me! we used to have the sunset after dinner when we were away up about Canna and Uist." Mary Avon seemed to hesitate. "What! not a single letter for ye? That shows very bad taste on the pairt of the young men about England. But I never thought much o’ them. From what I hear, they are mostly given over to riding horses, and shooting pheasants, and what not. But never mind. I want ye to come out for a stroll wi’ me, my lass: ye’ll see some fine colour about the Morven hills presently, or I’m mistaken." "Very well, sir," said she, obediently; and together they went out into the garden. Now it was not until some minutes after the dinner-gong had sounded that we again saw these two, and then there was nothing in the manner of either of them to suggest to any one that anything had happened. It was not until many days afterwards that we obtained, bit by bit, an account of what had occurred, and even then it was but a stammering, and disjointed, and shy account. However, such as it was, it had better appear here, if only to keep the narrative straight.