n the magic
boat of Bran! Ah see, the sky opens like a flower!'

Indeed, there was a sudden glow of summer lightning.

'That looks more like rain,' said Merton, who was standing with the Budes
at an opposite corner of the roof.

'I say, Merton,' asked Bude, 'how can you be so uncivil to that man? He
took it very well.'

'A rotter,' said Merton. 'He has just got that stuff by heart, the verse
and a lot of the prose, out of a book that I brought down myself, and
left in the smoking-room. I can show you the place if you like.'

'Do, Mr. Merton. But how foolish you are! _do_ be civil to the man,'
whispered Lady Bude, who shared his disbelief in Blake; and at that
moment the tinkle of an electric bell in the smoking-room below reached
the expectant ears of Mr. Macrae.

'Come down, all of you,' he said. 'The wireless telegraphy is at work.'

He waited till they were all in the smoking-room, and feverishly examined
the tape.

'Escape of De Wet,' he read. 'Disasters to the Imperial Yeomanry. Strike
of Cigarette Makers. Great Fire at Hackney.'

'There!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'We might have gone to bed in
London, and not known all that till we got the morning papers to-morrow.
And here we are fifty miles from a railway station or a telegraph
office--no, we're nearer Inchnadampf.'

'Would that I were in the Isle of Apples, Mell Moy, far, far from
civilisation!' said Blake.

"There shall be no grief there or sorrow," so sings the minstrel of _The
Wooing of Etain_.

"Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with
me then, fair lady," Merton read out from the book he had been speaking
of to the Budes.

'Jolly place, the Celtic Paradise! Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of ale
and new milk. _Quel luxe_!'

'Is that the kind of entertainment you were offering me, Mr. Blake?'
asked Miss Macrae gaily. 'Mr. Blake,' she went on, 'has been inviting me
to fly to the undiscovered West beneath the waters, in the magic boat of
Bran.'

'Did Bran invent the submarine?' asked Mr. Macrae, and then the company
saw what they had never seen before, the bard blushing. He seemed so
discomposed that Miss Macrae took compassion on him.

'Never mind my father, Mr. Blake,' she said, 'he is a very good
Highlander, and believes in Eachain of the Hairy Arm as much as the
crofters do. Have you heard of Eachain, Mr. Blake? He is a spectre in
full Highland costume, attached to our clan. When we came