heless, as he looked at the
girl in the tartan cloak, he heard within himself the war-cry of the
clan MacDonald, "Fraoch Eilean!" and he smelt the heather of the purple
isle of Dhrum.

It was many years since he had seen that strangely formed island-shape
cut in amethyst against the gold of sunset sky and sea; but the purple
and the gold were unforgettable, even for one who thought he had
forgotten and lost the magic long ago.

She was a beautiful girl in spite of the ugly tam and the bag of a
cloak. Her eyes had the deep light of clear streams that have never
reflected other things than trees, shadowing banks of wild flowers, and
skies arching above. There was something quaintly arresting about her,
apart from the odd clothes.

The man stopped. His porter lumbered on sturdily; but that was just as
well. The girl had asked him to wait: so he waited in silence to hear
what she would say.

"Will you please look at a thing I want very much to sell?" she began.
"Perhaps you'll like to buy it. Nobody else will--but," she added
hastily, "I think you'll admire it."

He looked her steadily in the eyes for a few seconds, and she returned
the look, in spite of herself rather than because she was determined to
give him gaze for gaze.

"Why do you ask me to buy what you have to sell?" he answered by a
question. "Is it for charity or the cause of the Suffragettes?"

"Oh, no, it's not for charity!" the girl exclaimed. "And I don't know
what you mean by Suffragettes."

The man laughed. "Where have you lived?" he questioned her.

She blushed for an ignorance which evidently struck strangers as
fantastic. "Near Carlisle with my grandmother," she explained; "but
she's never let me have friends, or make visits, or read the papers.
I've just left her house now, and I want to go to London. I _must_ go to
London, but I haven't any money, and they won't trust me to pay them for
my ticket when I get some. So I tried to sell a piece of jewellery I
have, and nobody would buy it. I thought when I saw you come out of the
train that maybe _you_ would. I don't know why--but you're different.
You look as if you'd know all about valuable things--and whether they're
real; and as if you'd be--not stupid, or like these other people."

"Thank you," he returned, and smiled his pleasant smile. If another man
had described such a meeting with a pretty and apparently ingenuous girl
in a railway station at ten o'clock at night, he would still have