ytenses the daughter of the millionaire had
even been on friendly terms, but Mr. Macrae retired to Europe, and put a
stop to all that. To do so, indeed, was one of his motives for returning
to the home of his ancestors, the remote and inaccessible Castle Skrae.
_The Sportsman's Guide to Scotland_ says, as to Loch Skrae: 'Railway to
Lairg, then walk or hire forty-five miles.' The young van Huytenses were
not invited to walk or hire.

Van Huytens had been ostentatious, Mr. Macrae was the reverse. His
costume was of the simplest, his favourite drink (of which he took
little) was what humorists call 'the light wine of the country,' drowned
in Apollinaris water. His establishment was refined, but not gaudy or
luxurious, and the chief sign of wealth at Skrae was the great
observatory with the laboratory, and the surmounting 'pole with box on
top,' as Merton described the apparatus for the new kind of telegraphy.
In the basement of the observatory was lodged the hugest balloon known to
history, and a skilled expert was busied with novel experiments in aerial
navigation. Happily he could swim, and his repeated descents into Loch
Skrae did not daunt his soaring genius.

Above the basement of the observatory were rooms for bachelors, a smoking-
room, a billiard-room, and a scientific library. The wireless telegraphy
machine (looking like two boxes, one on the top of the other, to the eye
of ignorance) was installed in the smoking-room, and a wire to Mr.
Macrae's own rooms informed him, by ringing a bell (it also rang in the
smoking-room), when the machine began to spread itself out in tape
conveying the latest news. The machine communicated with another in the
establishment of its vendors, Messrs. Gianesi, Giambresi & Co., in Oxford
Street. Thus the millionaire, though residing nearly fifty miles from
the nearest station at Lairg, was as well and promptly informed as if he
dwelt in Fleet Street, and he could issue, without a moment's
procrastination, his commands to sell and buy, and to do such other
things as pertain to the nature of millionaires. When we add that a
steam yacht of great size and comfort, doing an incredible number of
knots an hour on the turbine system, lay at anchor in the sea loch, we
have indicated the main peculiarities of Mr. Macrae's rural
establishment. Wealth, though Merton thought so poorly of it, had
supplied these potentialities of enjoyment; but, alas! disease had
'decimated' the grouse on