as pure, as the silver of the shining clouds that were
streaking the peaks of Hecla. His face was my last memento of the
mystery of the Outer Isles.

The rest of our journeyings lay among scenes better known to tourists.
We visited Skye and Rum, the latter of which islands was once occupied
as a deer forest by the present Lord Salisbury's grandfather. Rum is
infested by mosquitoes, which almost stung us to death. Lord Salisbury
told a friend that he protected himself from their assaults by
varnishing his person completely with castor oil. The friend asked him
if this was not very expensive. "Ah," he replied, "but I never use the
best." The present owner has built there a great, inappropriate castle.
We wondered whether its walls were proof against these winged enemies.
Pursuing our southward course, we watched the Paps of Jura as they rose
into the sky like sugar loaves. Plunging through drifts of spray we
doubled the Mall of Cantyre, and got into waters familiar to half the
population of Glasgow. We lay for a night off Arran. The following day
we had returned to our original starting point. We were hardly more than
a cable's length from Greenock, and once again we heard the whistling of
locomotive engines. At Greenock we separated.

The Nobles were bound for England. I was myself going north to stay once
more with Sir John and Lady Guendolen Ramsden. By the West Highland
railway I reached the diminutive station of Tulloch, and a drive of
twenty miles brought me to the woods, the waters, and the granite
turrets of Ardverikie. After two months' acquaintance with the narrow
quarters of a yacht there was something odd and agreeable in spacious
halls and staircases. Especially agreeable was my bedroom, equipped with
a great, hospitable writing table, on which a pile of letters and postal
packets was awaiting me. Of these I opened a few which alone promised to
be interesting, allowing the others to keep for a more convenient
season. By the following morning, which I spent with Lady Guendolen,
sketching, I had, indeed, almost forgotten them, and not till the
evening did I give them any attention. One of them I had recognized at
once as the proofs of an article which I had just finished, before I
joined the yacht, on "The Intellectual Position of the Labor Party in
Parliament." The number of this party had been doubled at the last
election, and my mind, in consequence, had again begun to busy itself
with the question of mere