’Jolly place, the Celtic Paradise!  Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of ale and new milk. Quel luxe!’

‘Is that the kind of entertainment you were offering me, Mr. Blake?’ asked Miss Macrae gaily.  ‘Mr. Blake,’ she went on, ’has been inviting me to fly to the undiscovered West beneath the waters, in the magic boat of Bran.’

‘Did Bran invent the submarine?’ asked Mr. Macrae, and then the company saw what they had never seen before, the bard blushing.  He seemed so discomposed that Miss Macrae took compassion on him.

‘Never mind my father, Mr. Blake,’ she said, ’he is a very good Highlander, and believes in Eachain of the Hairy Arm as much as the crofters do.  Have you heard of Eachain, Mr. Blake?  He is a spectre in full Highland costume, attached to our clan.  When we came here first, to look round, we had only horses hired from Edinburgh, and a Lowlander—­mark you, a Lowlander—­to drive.  He was in the stable one afternoon—­the old stable, we have pulled it down—­when suddenly the horses began to kick and rear.  He looked round to the open door, and there stood a huge Highlander in our tartans, with musket, pistols, claymore, dirk, skian, and all, and soft brogues of untanned leather on his feet.  The coachman, in a panic, made a blind rush at the figure, but behold, there was nobody, and a boy outside had seen no man.  The horses were trembling and foaming.  Now it was a Lowlander from Teviotdale that saw the man, and the crofters were delighted.  They said the figure was the chief that fell at Culloden, come to welcome us back.  So you must not despair of us, Mr. Blake, and you, that have “the sight,” may see Eachain yourself, who knows?’

This happy turn of the conversation exactly suited Blake.  He began to be very amusing about magic, and brownies, and ‘the downy she,’ as Miss Macrae called the People of Peace.  The ladies presently declared that they were afraid to go to bed; so they went, Miss Macrae indicating her displeasure to Merton by the coldness of her demeanour.

The men, who were rather dashed by the pleasant intelligence which the telegraph had communicated, sat up smoking for a while, and then retired in a subdued state of mind.

Next morning, which was Sunday, Merton appeared rather late at breakfast, late and pallid.  After a snatch of disturbed slumber, he had wakened, or seemed to waken, fretting a good deal over the rusticity of his bearing towards Blake, and over his hopeless affair of the heart.  He had vexed his lady.  ’If he is good enough for his hosts, he ought to be good enough for their guests,’ thought Merton.  ’What a brute, what a fool I am; I ought to go.  I will go!  I ought not to take coffee after dinner, I know I ought not, and I smoke too much,’ he added, and finally he went to breathe the air on the roof.

The night was deadly soft and still, a slight mist hid the furthest verges of the sea’s horizon.  Behind it, the summer lightning seemed like portals that opened and shut in the heavens, revealing a glory without form, and closing again.