"A foregone conclusion, if you wish it, of course; but in that case you will simply add my services to your possessions. And in like manner you will dispense with them when I cease to be amusing. Woman all over!"

"Thanks, Gleneira!" laughed Will. "It does me good to hear Marjory kept in order. She bullies me awfully about shooting seals, and I fully expected her to sneeze or cough. She generally does."

"I knew you wouldn't hit," retorted Marjory, scornfully, "and it pleased you."

"'Pleased 'er and didn't 'urt me,' as the navvy said when his wife beat him," put in Paul. "By Jove! Miss Carmichael, if I had known what you thought, I would have put a bullet----"

"Hist!" cried Marjory, holding up her hand. There, within a stone's throw, was the smooth brown head, with large, liquid, confiding eyes turned towards the boat. Not a ripple, not a sound, showed that it was in motion, and yet it slipped past rapidly.

"Gorsh me! but the beast's tame," whispered John, unable to contain himself in the inaction; but the whisper might as well have been a clap of thunder, for the round head sank noiselessly into the water, leaving scarcely a ripple behind it.

"Why didn't you shoot, Captain Macleod?" asked Marjory, with an odd little tremor in her voice, at which she herself was dimly surprised; "you might have hit that time, for it couldn't have been more than fifteen yards off."

"I never thought of it," he replied quietly; "the beast looked so jolly."

"It looked quite as jolly when it was far away, no doubt."

"But I couldn't see it. And if we discuss that point I shall find it as much out of my range as the seal was. So give me a good mark for refraining when I did see its jolliness."

"Besides, it would have been no good trying. It would have been down like a shot if we had stirred a finger," said Will, philosophically.

Paul Macleod sighed. "There goes my last claim to saintship. You are a perfect devil's advocate, Cameron."

"But, really, Miss Marjory," put in the Reverend James, who had, as usual, been left far behind in the quick interchange of thought, "I do not see why you should object to shooting a seal. Man is permitted by a merciful Creator to destroy animal life----"

"In order to preserve his own, and even then it seems a pity,"

interrupted the girl, eagerly. "Oh, I daresay, Captain Macleod, the feeling isn't strong enough to make me turn vegetarian, but it _is_ wanton cruelty to kill a poor seal which is of no use to anyone!"

"There you go!" grumbled Will. "Why! I wanted its paws awfully for tobacco pouches--mine is quite worn out."

"Your remark, Cameron, is childish and unreasonable," replied Paul, from his lounge. "You cannot expect Miss Carmichael's tolerance of humanity to extend to tobacco pouches. Let us be thankful it concedes mutton chops."

"A seal is a ferry clever beast, whatever," put in Donald. "It wa.s.s John Roy wa.s.s walking on the rocks at Craignish, and he wa.s.s seeing a big seal, and heavin' stones at it, and--gorsh me!--but it wa.s.s takin'

the stones and fro'ing them back at John. And, tamn me! but the creature wa.s.s a better shot than John--oo--aye! a far better shot whatever."

"And that is a fact, Donald?" asked Will, solemnly.

"Not a fack at all, sir; but John Roy he wa.s.s tellin' it to me."

"Not so clever as the Kashmir bear, Donald?" put in Paul. "When it has to cross a stream in flood it carries a big boulder on its head to keep itself steady."

"An' is that a fack, sir," asked Donald, readily.

"The people were telling it to me, anyhow!"

"Then they were big liars whatever," said Donald, with such an inimitable air of shocked conviction that a general shout of laughter rose on the sunny air.

Oh, bright, glad day! Oh, careless, foolish talk! Oh, deep abiding sense of peace and good-will in all that sea-girt mountain world which rose around them, havening their little boat! Could it be that there was trouble, or toil, or tears, yonder where the mist floated so tenderly, or there, where cottage and castle, meadow and moor, wheat and tares were blended into one purple glory? There were not many such days in life, so let us cherish the mere memory of them!

The mackerel, it is true, were not to be beguiled, but what matter?

The boat skimmed over the blue water; two red-brown sails stood out to the West or East.

"No use trying any more," said Will at last, with a shake of the head over Paul's placid repose; for lunch had come to fill up the measure of content, and the laird was back among the ballast with a large basket of strawberries. "I think, Donald, we might try the big lythe off Shuna."

"The tide will no be answerable awhile, sir, but there will be no excuse for the _bedach ruachs_ at the rocks; no excuse at all."

"Let us hope the fish will have a sense of duty," murmured Paul from the strawberries; "cold-blooded creatures generally have."

They anch.o.r.ed out of the tide race in a backwater of the current, and Marjory, looking over the side, could see far down into the green depth where pale, pulsating Medusas came floating by, and every now and again a flash of light told of a pa.s.sing fish.

"Too much tide," began Paul, eyeing the set of the lines from his retreat, when four mighty and coincident strikes silenced his wisdom for a while. But only for a while, since amid the rasp and rub of wet lines against the side came Will's voice despondently.

"I'm in to some of you others."

"So am I--and I----" echoed Marjory and the Reverend James. Only Donald Post whispered softly, "It is the deevil is on mine whatever," and Paul, without stirring hand and foot, suggested the mainland of Scotland. But it was neither. The lines pa.s.sed to the stern produced conjointly a codling, which after swallowing two baits had tried at a third, and so hooked itself foul in the fourth.

"There's an object lesson for you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, teasingly. "How about your theory of the cruel hook and the poor fish?"

"It is not feeling a tamn, fish is," commented Donald, calmly disgorging the baits. "It was fishin' for _bodachs_ old John Boy was, and he was catchin' her foul by the eye, and the eye she come out. But John Roy wa.s.s leavin' it on the hook and the _bodach_ was comin' again an' takin' his own eye."

"And there is a fact for you," continued Paul.

"No! No! sir," protested Donald, with a twinkle in his eye; "it will no be a fack whatever, but John Roy he wa.s.s tellin' it to me." Whereat there was laughter again.

So, as the day drew down, they landed on Shuna to boil the kettle for tea with driftwood gathered from the sh.o.r.e, and wonder idly as the flames leapt up to shrivel the lowermost leaves of the rowan tree by the spring, whence the wreckage which burnt so bravely had come; for storm and stress seemed far from their world.

Then, while the boatmen took their turn at the scones and cake, the jam and toast, they climbed the gra.s.sy slopes, and, sitting down by the old tower, watched the sunset idly; for all things, even pleasure, seem idle on such days as these. The clouds had p.r.i.c.ked westwards, as if to aid the Atlantic in a coming storm, but below their heavy purple ma.s.ses lay a strip of greeny gold sky, into which the sun was just sinking from a higher belt of crimson-tinted bars.

"No Green Ray for us to-night," said Marjory, with a smile.

Paul raised his eyebrows. "No Green Ray on this or any other night, in my candid opinion."

The Reverend James looked puzzled. "I have often heard you mention this Green Ray, Miss Marjory, but I am not quite sure to what you allude."

"To a fiction of Jules Verne's, that is all," put in Paul, quickly.

"Nothing of the sort; people have seen it," corrected the girl, eagerly.

"Say they have seen it," murmured Paul, obstinately, and Marjory frowned.

"I will explain it to you, Mr. Gillespie," she went on, with a.s.sertion in her voice. "It is a green ray of light which shoots through the sea, just as the topmost curve of the sun touches the water. I watch for it often. I intend to watch for it till I see it, as others have done."

"And what good will it do to you when you have seen it?" asked Paul.

They were speaking to each other, despite the pretence of general conversation; but it was so often.

"I haven't the least idea," she answered airily; "for all that, I look forward to seeing it as a great event in my life."

"Great events are dangerous; like some very valuable medicines, uncertain in their effects. Birth, for instance--you may be born a fool or a wise man. Marriage--a chance of the die--so I'm told.

Death." He pointed dramatically upwards and downwards with a whimsical look on his anxious, gracious face.