onless, sailing slowly in the far blue overhead. And no doubt she
looked at all these things with a forced interest; and she herself now
could name the distant islands out in the tossing Atlantic; and she had
in a great measure got accustomed to the amphibious life at Dare. But as
she listened to the booming of the waves around those awful recesses;
and as she saw the jagged and angry rocks suddenly appear through the
liquid mass of the falling sea: and as she looked abroad on the unknown
distances of that troubled ocean, and thought of the life on those
remote and lonely islands, the spirit of a summer holiday forsook her
altogether, and she was silent.

"And you will have no fear of the beast when you go into Mackinnon's
cave," said Janet Macleod to her, with a friendly smile, "because no one
has ever heard of it again. Do you know, it was a strange thing? They
saw in the sand the footprint of an animal that is not known to any one
about here; even Keith himself did not know what it was--"

"I think it was a wild-cat," said he.

"And the men they had nothing to do then; and they went all about the
caves, but they could see nothing of it. And it has never come back
again."

"And I suppose you are not anxious for its coming back?" Miss White
said.

"Perhaps you will be very lucky and see it some day, and I know that
Keith would like to shoot it, whatever it is."

"That is very likely," Miss White said, without any apparent sarcasm.

By and by they paused opposite the entrance to a cave that seemed even
larger and blacker than the others; and then Miss White discovered that
they were considering at what point they could most easily effect a
landing. Already through the singularly clear water she could make out
vague green masses that told of the presence of huge blocks of yellow
rock far below them; and as they cautiously went farther toward the
shore, a man at the bow calling out to them, these blocks of rock became
clearer and clearer, until it seemed as if those glassy billows that
glided under the boat, and then went crashing in white foam a few yards
beyond, must inevitably transfix the frail craft on one of these jagged
points. But at length they managed to run the bow of the gig into a
somewhat sheltered place, and two of the men, jumping knee-deep into the
water, hauled the keel still farther over the grating shell-fish of the
rock; and then Macleod, scrambling out, assisted Miss White to land.

"Do you