t to be out in the open sea," she remarked,
looking at the long and shapely gig that was cleaving the summer waves.

"Not on a day like this, surely," said he, laughing. "But we will make a
good sailor of you before you leave Dare, and you will think yourself
safer in a boat like this than in a big steamer. Do you know that the
steamer you came in, big as it is, draws only five feet of water?"

If he had told her that the steamer drew five tons of coal she could
just as well have understood him. Indeed, she was not paying much
attention to him. She had an eye for the biggest of the waves that were
running by the side of the white boat.

But she plucked up her spirits somewhat on getting ashore; and she made
the prettiest of little courtesies to Lady Macleod; and she shook hands
with Major Stuart, and gave him a charming smile; and she shook hands
with Janet, too, whom she regarded with a quick scrutiny. So this was
the cousin that Keith Macleod was continually praising?

"Miss White has a headache, mother," Macleod said, eager to account
beforehand for any possible constraint in her manner. "Shall we send for
the pony?"

"Oh no," Miss White said, looking up at the bare walls of Dare. "I shall
be very glad to have a short walk now--unless you, papa, would like to
ride?"

"Certainly not--certainly not," said Mr. White, who had been making a
series of formal remarks to Lady Macleod about his impressions of the
scenery of Scotland.

"We will get you a cup of tea," said Janet Macleod, gently, to the
new-comer, "and you will lie down for a little time, and I hope the
sound of the waterfall will not disturb you. It is a long way you have
come: and you will be very tired, I am sure."

"Yes, it is a pretty long way," she said; but she wished this
over-friendly woman would not treat her as if she were a spoiled child.
And no doubt they thought, because she was English, she could not walk
up to the farther end of that fir-wood?

So they all set out for Castle Dare; and Macleod was now walking--as
many a time he had dreamed of his walking--with his beautiful
sweetheart; and there were the very ferns that he thought she would
admire; and here the very point in the fir-wood where he would stop her
and ask her to look out on the blue sea, with Inch Kenneth, and Ulva,
and Staffa, all lying in the sunlight, and the razor-fish of land--Coll
and Tiree--at the horizon. But instead of being proud and glad, he was
almost afraid. H