ad nearly said
'for her.'

Mr. Macrae looked at him rather curiously. 'You are dying of fatigue,'
he said. 'All your ideas have been excellent, but I cannot let you kill
yourself. Ideas are what I want. You must stay with me to-day: I shall
be communicating with London and other centres by the Giambresi machine;
I shall need your advice, your suggestions. Now, do go to bed: you shall
be called if you are needed.'

He wrung Merton's hand, and Merton crept up to his bedroom. He took a
bath, turned in, and was wrapped in all the blessedness of sleep.

Before five o'clock the house was astir. Bude, in the yacht, steamed
down the coast, touching at Lochinver, and wherever there seemed a faint
hope of finding intelligence. But he learned nothing. Yachts and other
vessels came and went (on Sundays, of course, more seldom), and if the
heiress had been taken straight to sea, northwards or west, round the
Butt of Lewis, by night, there could be no chance of news of her.
Returning, Bude learned that the local search parties had found nothing
but the black ashes of a burned boat in a creek on the south side of the
cliffs. There the captors of Miss Macrae must have touched, burned their
coble, and taken to some larger and fleeter vessel. But no such vessel
had been seen by shepherd, fisher, keeper, or gillie. The grooms arrived
from Lairg, in the tandem, with the doctor and a rural policeman. Bude
had telegraphed to Scotland Yard from Lochinver for detectives, and to
Glasgow, Oban, Tobermory, Salen, in fact to every place he thought
likely, with minute particulars of Miss Macrae's appearance and dress.
All this Merton learned from Bude, when, long after luncheon time, our
hero awoke suddenly, refreshed in body, but with the ghastly blank of
misery and doubt before the eyes of his mind.

'I wired,' said Bude, 'on the off chance that yesterday's storm might
have deranged the wireless machine, and, by Jove, it is lucky I did. The
wireless machine won't work, not a word of message has come through; it
is jammed or something. I met Donald Macdonald, who told me.'

'Have you seen our host yet?'

'No,' said Bude, 'I was just going to him.'

They found the millionaire seated at a table, his head in his hands. On
their approach he roused himself.

'Any news?' he asked Bude, who shook his head. He explained how he had
himself sent various telegrams, and Mr. Macrae thanked him.

'You did well,' he said. 'Some electr