things, Hamish. Do you know what a gentleman who has a yacht would
do when he got into Gravesend as we got in last night? Why, he would go
ashore, and have his dinner in a hotel, and drink four or five different
kinds of wine, and go to the theatre. But your master, Hamish, what does
he do? He stays on board, and sends ashore for time-tables and such
things; and what is more than that, he is on deck all night, walking up
and down. Oh yes; I heard him walking up and down all night, with the
yacht lying at anchor!"

"Sir Keith is not well. When a man is not well he does not act in an
ordinary way. But you talk of my master," Hamish answered, proudly.
"Well, I will tell you about my master, Colin--that he is a better
master than any ten thousand masters that ever were born in Greenock, or
in London either. I will not allow any man to say anything against my
master."

"I was not saying anything against your master. He is a wiser man than
you, Hamish. For he was saying to me last night, 'Now, when I am sending
Hamish to such and such places in London, you must go with him, and show
him the trains, and cabs, and other things like that.' Oh yes, Hamish,
you know how to sail a yacht; but you do not know anything about towns?"

"And who would want to know anything about towns? Are they not full of
people who live by telling lies and cheating each other?"

"And do you say that is how I have been able to buy my house at
Greenock," said Colin Laing, angrily, "with a garden, and a boathouse,
too?"

"I do not know about that," said Hamish; and then he called out some
order to one of the men. Macleod was at this moment down in the saloon,
seated at the table, with a letter enclosed and addressed lying before
him. But surely this was not the same man who had been in these still
waters of the Thames in the by-gone days--with gay companions around
him, and the band playing "A Highland Lad my Love was born," and a
beautiful-eyed girl, whom he called Rose-leaf, talking to him in the
quiet of the summer noon. This man had a look in his eyes like that of
an animal that has been hunted to death, and is fain to lie down and
give itself up to its pursuers in the despair of utter fatigue. He was
looking at this letter. The composition of it had cost him only a whole
night's agony. And when he sat down and wrote it in the blue-gray dawn,
what had he not cast away?

"Oh no," he was saying now to his own conscience, "she will not call it
de