Alas! there was no conclusion to this matter.  The little, violent-faced minister warmed to his work, insomuch that several times he used a Gaelic phrase the better to impress those patient listeners at the door, while he paid less and less attention to the congregation in the room.  Indeed, the hopeless resignation that had at first settled down on some of their faces had given place to a most obvious resentment; but what did that matter to Mr. MacNachten, who was not looking their way?  Again and again Sir Hugh Cunyngham forlornly pulled out his watch, but the hint was not taken.  Lord Fareborough was beside himself with unrest; he drummed his fingers on the table-cloth; he crossed one leg, and then the other; while more than once he made a noise between his tongue and his teeth, which fortunately could not be heard far amid the rolling periods of the sermon.  Captain Waveney, who was master of the ceremonies in all that concerned the shooting—­even as he was Sir Hugh’s right-hand man in the matter of cattle-breeding at the Braes—­on several occasions, when a momentary pause occurred, jumped to his feet as if on the assumption that the discourse was finished; but this ruse was quite ineffectual, for the preacher took no notice of him.  And meanwhile the huge figure of Roderick Munro could be seen marching up and down outside the windows, while a pair of wrathful eyes glared in from time to time; and Lady Adela, noticing these baleful glances, began to hope that the irate head keeper would not secretly instruct a gillie to go and throw the minister into the river as he was crossing the ford on his way home.

“May God forgive the scoundrel!” cried Lord Fareborough, when, the long sermon at length being over and the small crowd allowed to disperse, he was free to hasten along to the gun-room to get his boots.  “And I am expected to shoot after having my nerves tortured like this!  Who are going with me?  Rockminster and Lestrange?  Well, they must understand that I will not be hurried and flurried—­I say I will not be hurried and flurried.  I don’t want to fall down dead—­my heart won’t recover this morning’s work for months to come?  God bless my soul, who asked that insolent scoundrel to stay the night?  And what’s that, Waveney—­the ladies coming out to lunch?  The ladies coming out to lunch on the Twelfth—­and the day half over; they must be out of their senses!”

“That is the arrangement,” Captain Waveney said, with rather a rueful laugh, as he, too, was lacing up his boots.  “Lady Rosamund is going to take a sketch of the luncheon-party.”

“Let her take a sketch of the devil!” said this very angry and inconsiderate papa.  “Why can’t she do it some other day?—­why the Twelfth?  Good heavens! is everything conspiring to vex and annoy me so that I sha’n’t be able to hit a haystack?”

“Sir Hugh never says ‘no’ to anything that Lady Rosamund asks,” observed Captain Waveney, with much good-humor.