"Dear me!" said the Laird, "that is extremely interesting. It is a novel view—a most novel view. But then the remains—what of the remains? The earthen cups and platters: they must have belonged to a very preemitive race?" "Not a bit," said the profound scientific authority, with a laugh. "They were the things the children amused themselves with, when their nurses took them down there to be out of the heat and the dust. They were a very advanced race indeed. Even the children could make earthen cups and saucers, while the children now-a-days can only make mud-pies." "Don’t believe him, sir!" their hostess called out; "he is only making a fool of us all." "Ay, but there’s something in it—there’s something in it," said the Laird seriously; and he took a step or two up and down the deck, in deep meditation. "There’s something in it. It’s plausible. If it is not sound, it is an argument. It would be a good stick to break over an ignorant man’s head." Suddenly the Laird began to laugh aloud. "Bless me," said he, "if I could only inveigle Johnny Guthrie into an argument about that! I would give it him! I would give it him!" This was a shocking revelation. What had come over the Laird’s conscience that he actually proposed to inveigle a poor man into a controversy and then to hit him over the head with a sophistical argument? We could not have believed it. And here he was laughing and chuckling to himself over that shameful scheme. Our attention, however, was at this moment suddenly drawn away from moral questions. The rapidly driving clouds just over the wild mountains of Loch Hourn parted, and the moon glared out on the tumbling waves. But what a curious moon it was!—pale and watery, with a white halo around it, and with another faintly-coloured halo outside that again whenever the slight and vapoury clouds crossed. John of Skye came aft. "I not like the look of that moon," said John of Skye to the Doctor, but in an undertone, so that the women should not hear. "Nor I either," said the other, in an equally low voice. "Do you think we are going to have the equinoctials, John?" "Oh no, not yet. It is not the time for the equinoctials yet." And as we crept on through the night, now and again from amid the wild and stormy clouds above Loch Hourn the wan moon still shone out; and then we saw something of the silent shores we were passing, and of the awful mountains overhead, stretching far into the darkness of the skies. Then preparations were made for coming to anchor; and by and by the _White Dove_ was brought round to the wind. We were in a bay—if bay it could be called—just south of Kyle Rhea narrows. There was nothing visible along the pale moonlit shore. "This is a very open place to anchor in, John," our young Doctor ventured to remark. "But it is a good holding-ground; and we will be away early in the morning whatever."