“It is my cousin who would show me the way:  has he not been to London more times than I have been to Stornoway?”

“But the streets of London—­they would cover all the ground between here and Loch Scridain; and how would you carry the young lady through them?”

“We would carry her,” said Hamish, curtly.

“With the bagpipes to drown her screams?”

“I would drown her screams myself,” said Hamish, with a sudden savageness; and he added something that Macleod did not hear.

“Do you know that I am a magistrate, Hamish?”

“I know it, Sir Keith.”

“And when you come to me with this proposal, do you know what I should do?”

“I know what the old Macleods of Dare would have done,” said Hamish, proudly, “before they let this shame come on them.  And you, Sir Keith—­you are a Macleod, too; ay, and the bravest lad that ever was born in Castle Dare!  And you will not suffer this thing any longer, Sir Keith; for it is a sore heart I have from the morning till the night; and it is only a serving-man that I am; but sometimes when I will see you going about—­and nothing now cared for, but a great trouble on your face—­oh, then I say to myself, ’Hamish, you are an old man, and you have not long to live; but before you die you will teach the fine English madam what it is to bring a shame on Sir Keith Macleod!’”

“Ah, well, good-night-now, Hamish; I am tired,” he said; and the old man slowly left.

He was tired—­if one might judge by the haggard cheeks and the heavy eyes; but he did not go to sleep.  He did not even go to bed.  He spent the livelong night, as he had spent too many lately, in nervously pacing to and fro within this hushed chamber; or seated with his arms on the table, and the aching head resting on the clasped hands.  And again those wild visions came to torture him—­the product of a sick heart and a bewildered brain; only now there was a new element introduced.  This mad project of Hamish’s at which he would have laughed in a saner mood, began to intertwist itself with all these passionate longings and these troubled dreams of what might yet be possible to him on earth; and wherever he turned it was suggested to him; and whatever was the craving and desire of the moment, this, and this only, was the way to reach it.  For if one were mad with pain, and determined to crush the white adder that had stung one, what better way than to seize the hateful thing and cage it so that it should do no more harm among the sons of men?  Or if one were mad because of the love of a beautiful white Princess—­and she far away, and dressed in bridal robes:  what better way than to take her hand and say, “Quick, quick, to the shore!  For the summer seas are waiting for you, and there is a home for the bride far away in the North?” Or if it was only one wild, despairing effort—­one last means of trying—­to bring her heart back again?  Or if there was but the one fierce, captured kiss of those lips no longer laughing at all?  Men had ventured more for far less reward, surely?  And what remained to him in life but this?  There was at least the splendid joy of daring and action!