small
gloved hands toying with the cover. Yet there was no word of love
spoken. There was only a friendly conversation, and the idle passing of
a summer day. It was something to know that her breathing was near him.

Then the breeze died away altogether, and they were left altogether
motionless on the glassy blue sea. The great sails hung limp, without a
single flap or quiver in them; the red ensign clung to the jigger-mast;
Hamish, though he stood by the tiller, did not even put his hand on that
bold and notable representation in wood of the sea-serpent.

"Come now, Hamish," Macleod said, fearing this monotonous idleness would
weary his fair guest, "you will tell us now one of the old stories that
you used to tell me when I was a boy."

Hamish had, indeed, told the young Macleod many a mysterious tale of
magic and adventure, but he was not disposed to repeat any one of these
in broken English in order to please this lady from the South.

"It is no more of the stories I hef now, Sir Keith," said he. "It was a
long time since I had the stories."

"Oh, I could construct one myself," said Miss White, lightly. "Don't I
know how they all begin? '_There was once a king in Erin, and he had a
son and this son it was who would take the world for his pillow. But
before he set out on his travels, he took counsel of the falcon, and the
hoodie, and the otter. And the falcon said to him, go to the right; and
the hoodie said to him, you will be wise now if you go to the left; but
the otter said to him, now take my advice_,' etc., etc."

"You have been a diligent student," Macleod said, laughing heartily.
"And, indeed, you might go on with the story and finish it; for who
knows now when we shall get back to Dare?"

It was after a long period of thus lying in dead calm--with the
occasional appearance of a diver on the surface of the shining blue
sea--that Macleod's sharply observant eye was attracted by an odd thing
that appeared far away at the horizon.

"What do you think is that now?" said he, with a smile.

They looked steadfastly, and saw only a thin line of silver light,
almost like the back of a knife, in the distant dark blue.

"The track of a seal swimming under water," Mr. White suggested.

"Or a shoal of fish," his daughter said.

"Watch!"

The sharp line of light slowly spread; a trembling silver-gray took the
place of the dark blue; it looked as if invisible fingers were rushing
out and over the glassy surfac