said was so beautiful, and
simple, and sweet! And day after day I said to myself that my interest
in this beautiful woman was nothing. Some one told me there had been
rumors: I laughed. Could any one suppose I was going to play Pendennis
over again? And then as the time came for me to leave, I was glad, and I
was miserable at the same time. I despised myself for being miserable.
And then I said to myself, 'This stupid misery is only the fancy of a
boy. Wait till you get back to Castle Dare, and the rough seas, and the
hard work of the stalking. There is no sickness and sentiment on the
side of Ben-an-Sloich.' And so I was glad to come to Castle Dare, and to
see the old mother, and Janet, and Hamish; and the sound of the pipes,
Ogilvie--when I heard them away in the steamer, that brought tears to my
eyes; and I said to myself, 'Now you are at home again, and there will
be no more nonsense of idle thinking.' And what has it come to? I would
give everything I possess in the world to see her face once more--ay, to
be in the same town where she is. I read the papers, trying to find out
where she is. Morning and night it is the same--a fire, burning and
burning, of impatience, and misery, and a craving just to see her face
and hear her speak."

Ogilvie did not know what to say. There was something in this passionate
confession--in the cry wrung from a strong man, and in the rude
eloquence that here and there burst from him--that altogether drove
ordinary words of counsel or consolation out of the young man's mind.

"You have been hard hit, Macleod," he said, with some earnestness.

"That is just it," Macleod said, almost bitterly. "You fire at a bird.
You think you have missed him. He sails away as if there was nothing the
matter, and the rest of the covey no doubt think he is as well as any
one of them. But suddenly you see there is something wrong. He gets
apart from the others; he towers; then down he comes, as dead as a
stone. You did not guess anything of this in London?"

"Well," said Ogilvie, rather inclined to beat about the bush, "I thought
you were paying her a good deal of attention. But then--she is very
popular, you know, and receives a good deal of attention; and--and the
fact is, she is an uncommonly pretty girl, and I thought you were
flirting a bit with her, but nothing more than that. I had no idea it
was something more serious than that."

"Ay," Macleod said, "if I myself had only known! If it was a plu