his native tongue,--

"Yes, I am going to find out where the leakage is, but perhaps it would
be easier to find out below where the leakage is. If there is something
the matter with the keel, is it the cross-trees you will go to to look
for it? But I do not know what has come to the young master of late."

When Keith Macleod was alone, he sat down on the wooden bench and took
out a letter, and tried to find there some assurance that this beautiful
vision of his would some day be realized. He read it and re-read it; but
his anxious scrutiny only left him the more disheartened. He went up on
deck. He talked to Hamish in a perfunctory manner about the smartening
up of the _Umpire_. He appeared to have lost interest in that already.

And then again he would seek relief in hard work, and try to forget
altogether this hated time of enforced absence. One night word was
brought by some one that the typhoid fever had broken out in the
ill-drained cottages of Iona, and he said at once that next morning he
would go round to Bunessan and ask the sanitary inspector there to be so
kind as to inquire into this matter, and see whether something could not
be done to improve these hovels.

"I am sure the duke does not know of it, Keith," his cousin Janet said,
"or he would have a great alteration made."

"It is easy to make alterations," said he, "but it is not easy to make
the poor people take advantage of them. They have such good health from
the sea-air that they will not pay attention to ordinary cleanliness.
But now that two or three of the young girls and children are ill,
perhaps it is a good time to have something done."

Next morning, when he rose before it was daybreak, there was every
promise of a fine day. The full moon was setting behind the western
seas, lighting up the clouds there with a dusky yellow; in the east
there was a wilder glare of steely blue high up over the intense
blackness on the back of Ben-an-Sloich; and the morning was still, for
he heard, suddenly piercing the silence, the whistle of a curlew, and
that became more and more remote as the unseen bird winged its flight
far over the sea. He lit the candles, and made the necessary
preparations for his journey; for he had some message to leave at
Kinloch, at the head of Loch Scridain, and he was going to ride round
that way. By and by the morning light had increased so much that he blew
out the candles.

No sooner had he done this than his eye caught s