houses. There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor,
lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and
spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is
green under the shadow of each boat. Along the shore stand the tall
poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the
summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the
daylight shining through the empty windows. Beyond the houses, again,
lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of
sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors
of a late autumn. The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and
heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge
of other and varied hues. In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost
underneath the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins
stand, an artist has put a rough-and-ready easel, and is apparently
busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication
of the rich colors of the craft--their ruddy sails, brown nets and
bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls--already appears
on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills
in their soft autumnal tints and of the bold blue and white sky moving
overhead. Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of
the boats has been placed there on purpose. A boy seated on some nets
occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to
inquire when his penance will be over.

A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no
great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of
the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man
is painting. A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and
curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out,
"Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht?--about
eighty tons I should think."

"Yes," Lavender said, without turning round or taking his eyes off the
canvas.

"Whose is she?"

"Lord Newstead's."

"Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now and wanted to know
whether you were here, I said you were. The fellow asked me if I
was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for
you--that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you
would go out to them and take a run up to Ardishaig."

"I can't, Johnny."

"I'd take you