f their fellow
pleasure-seekers, and it appeared that Miss Elsie had even overcome her
hilarity at the discovery of what "might have been" a relative in
the person of the porter Donald. "I had a long talk with him before
breakfast this morning," she said gayly, "and I know all about him. It
appears that there are hundreds of him--all McHulishes--all along the
coast and elsewhere--only none of them ever lived ON the island,
and don't want to. But he looks more like a 'laird' and a chief than
Malcolm, and if it comes to choosing a head of the family, remember,
maw, I shall vote solid for him."

"How can you go on so, Elsie?" said Mrs. Kirkby, with languid protest.
"Only I trust you didn't say anything to him of the syndicate. And,
thank Heaven! the property isn't here."

"No; the waiter tells me all the lovely things we had for breakfast came
from miles away. And they don't seem to have ever raised anything on
the island, from its looks. Think of having to row three miles for the
morning's milk!"

There was certainly very little appearance of vegetation on the sterile
crags that soon began to lift themselves above the steely waves ahead.
A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and writhed like vines
around the square tower and crumbling walls of an irregular but angular
building, looked in their brown shadows like part of the debris.

"It's just like a burnt-down bone-boiling factory," said Miss Elsie
critically; "and I shouldn't wonder if that really was old McHulish's
business. They couldn't have it on the mainland for its being a
nuisance."

Nevertheless, she was one of the first to leap ashore when the yawl's
bow grated in a pebbly cove, and carried her pretty but incongruous
little slippers through the seaweed, wet sand, and slimy cobbles with a
heroism that redeemed her vanity. A scrambling ascent of a few moments
brought them to a wall with a gap in it, which gave easy ingress to
the interior of the ruins. This was merely a little curving hollow from
which the outlines of the plan had long since faded. It was kept green
by the brown walls, which, like the crags of the mainland valleys,
sheltered it from the incessant strife of the Atlantic gales. A few
pale flowers that might have grown in a damp cellar shivered against
the stones. Scraps of newspapers, soda-water and beer bottles, highly
decorated old provision tins, and spent cartridge cases,--the remains
of chilly picnics and damp shooting luncheons,