ed to dress my ankle again, but Thora had
bound it up so skilfully that there was nothing more to be done.

"I wonder that the otter should bite you like that, Halcro," Jessie
said. "Why, I thought the old viking's stone was to save ye frae
the like o' that!"

I had myself wondered at the same circumstance.

"Ah! but, Jessie," I said, suddenly comforting myself with an
excuse for the apparent failure of the charm, "Mr. Drever didna
tell me that the stone would be o' any use against such a beast as
an otter."

"No, I ken that. But did he not say it would protect ye from all
harm? Surely an otter shouldna be left out o' the reckoning."

But here Colin Lothian, to whom the virtues of the viking's
talisman had been explained, suggested that I perhaps needed to
have some secret communication with the stone in my own mind--that
I perhaps needed to think of the charm at the very moment of
danger, and to call upon it for aid. He had heard of such things,
he said.

This explanation appeared to me very reasonable, and with the
suggestion in my mind I determined, should I ever have another
opportunity, to put it in practice.

Such an opportunity presented itself sooner than I could have
expected.

Chapter XVIII. The Wreck Of The "Undine."

Colin Lothian remained at Lyndardy until the following Monday
morning. He slept out in the byre, where such wayfarers as he were
always welcome to a supper and a bed, and in the evenings he would
come in to the kitchen to sit with my uncle and talk over the
affairs of the island, or to read us a chapter out of the well-worn
Testament that he carried with him on his wanderings. For Colin was
a religious man and loved his Bible. He knew most of the Psalms by
heart, and often gathered groups of islanders about him to hear him
repeat them. Idlers sometimes scoffed at his fondness for the
epistle on Charity; but no one who heard him repeat it could fail
to be impressed by its teaching or to recognize the poor wanderer's
sincerity.

Colin was the recognized newsmonger of the Mainland, and it was his
habit to travel from parish to parish retailing the gossip of the
countryside. At farm towns which were situated in remote places he
was always a welcome guest. He was well acquainted with the
condition of the markets and the state of the fishing and the
crops. He knew the price of butter and of oatmeal, of cattle and of
sheep, and his information was often of great value to the farmer