"And I should like it," said the other woman, "so long as there is plenty of wind. But if Captain John takes me out into the middle of the Minch and keeps me rolling about on the Atlantic in a dead calm, then something will befall him that his mother knew nothing about." Here Captain John was emboldened to step forward, and to say, with an embarrassed politeness— "I not afraid of anything for the leddies; for two better sailors I never sah ahl my life lang." However, the final result of our confabulation that night was the resolve to get under way next morning, and proceed a certain distance until we should discover what the weather was like outside. With a fair wind, we might run the sixty miles to Stornoway before night; without a fair wind, there was little use in our adventuring out to be knocked about in the North Minch, where the Atlantic finds itself jammed into the neck of a bottle, and rebels in a somewhat frantic fashion. We must do our good friends in Portree the justice to say that they endeavoured to dissuade us; but then we had sailed in the _White Dove_ before, and had no great fear of her leading us into any trouble. And so, good-night!—good-night! We can scarcely believe that this is Portree Harbour, so still and quiet it is. All the summer fleet of vessels have fled; the year has gone with them; soon we, too, must betake ourselves to the south. Good-night!—good-night! The peace of the darkness falls over us; if there is any sound, it is the sound of singing in our dreams. [Illustration: Music fragment] *CHAPTER XVII.* *"A GOOD ONE FOR THE LAST."* "Ah, well, well," said the Laird, somewhat sadly, to his hostess, "I suppose we may now conseeder that we have started on our last day’s sailing in the _White Dove_?" "I suppose so," said she; and this was before breakfast, so she may have been inclined to be a bit sentimental too. "I’m thinking," said he, "that some of us may hereafter look back on this sailing as the longest and grandest holiday of their life, and will recall the name of the _White Dove_ with a certain amount of affection. I, for one, feel that I can scarcely justify myself for withdrawing so long from the duties that society demands from every man; and no doubt there will be much to set right when one goes back to Strathgovan. But perhaps one has been able to do something even in one’s idleness——" He paused here, and remained silent for a moment or two. "What a fine thing," he continued, "it must be for a doctor to watch the return of health to a patient’s face—to watch the colour coming back, and the eyes looking happy again, and the spirits rising; and to think that maybe he has helped. And if he happens to know the patient, and to be as anxious about her as if she were his own child, do not ye think he must be a proud man when he sees the results of what he has done for her, and when he hears her begin to laugh again?"