ee another very plainly, near the Ross side, where
the road comes down--an M."

"An M," he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: "An'
what wad ye make o' that?" he inquired.

"I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir," I answered, growing
somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the
threshold of a decisive explanation.

But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of
the other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hung
his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he
had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo
from my own.

"I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary," he observed, and began
to walk forward.

There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay where walking is
easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.
I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an
opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more
deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never
an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was
nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me
for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes
against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his
mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be
represented by the letter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the
like--I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was
still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the
direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be
had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on
the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward
blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood
staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand
on my arm.

"Ye think there's naething there?" he said, pointing with his pipe; and
then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: "I'll tell ye, man! The
deid are down there--thick like rattons!"

He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to
the house of Aros.

I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and
then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no
time bea