loud, severe voice from
fifty yards away.

"Coming, father!" shouted the lad, leaping up, giving himself a shake to
rearrange his dark green kilt, and holding up his fist threateningly at
the bare-legged, grinning lad before him. "Just you wait till after
breakfast, Master Scood, and I'll make you squint."

The lad ran up the steep slope to the garden surrounding the ancient
castle of Dunroe, which had been built as a stronghold somewhere about
the fourteenth century, and still stood solid on its rocky foundation; a
square, keep-like edifice, with a round tower at each corner,
mouldering, with portions of the battlements broken away, but a fine
monument still of the way in which builders worked in the olden time.

The portion Kenneth Mackhai approached had for inhabitants only the
jackdaws, which encumbered the broken stairs by the loopholes with their
nests; but, after passing beneath a gloomy archway and crossing the open
interior, he left the old keep by another archway, to enter the
precincts of the modern castle of Dunroe, a commodious building, erected
after the style of the old, and possessing the advantages of a roof and
floors, with large windows looking across the dazzling sea.

Kenneth entered a handsome dining-room, where the breakfast was spread,
and where his father, The Mackhai, a tall, handsome man of fifty, was
pacing angrily up and down.

"Sorry I kept you, father. Scood said there was a seal on the lower
rocks, and--"

"The scoundrel! How dare he?" muttered The Mackhai. "To take such a
mean advantage of his position. I will not suffer it. I'll--"

"I'm very sorry, father!" faltered Kenneth, crossing slowly toward his
frowning elder. "I did not mean to--"

"Eh! what, Ken, my boy?" cried The Mackhai, with his countenance
changing. "I've only just come in. Sit down, my lad. You must be
half-starved, eh?"

"I thought you were cross with me, sir."

"Cross? Angry? Not a bit. Why?"

"You said--"

"Tchah! nonsense! Thinking aloud. What did you say?--a seal?"

"Yes, father. Scood said there was one, but it had gone."

"Then you didn't shoot it? Well, I'm not sorry. They're getting scarce
now, and I like to see the old things about the old place. Hah!" he
continued, after a pause that had been well employed by both at the
amply-supplied, handsomely-furnished table; "and I like the old porridge
for breakfast. Give me some of that salmon, Ken. No; I'll have a
kipper."

"Mo