ry, and I made sure that
these strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient treasure and the
lost ship of the Armada. But the people living in outlying islands, such
as Aros, are answerable for their own security; there is none near by to
protect or even to help them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew
of foreign adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled me
with apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of his
daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed
over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last gleam
of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not heavily,
but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and already a
band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of Grisapol. The boat
was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of what had been hidden
from me lower down--a large, heavily sparred, handsome schooner, lying to
at the south end of Aros. Since I had not seen her in the morning when I
had looked around so closely at the signs of the weather, and upon these
lone waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear she must have
lain last night behind the uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved
conclusively that she was manned by strangers to our coast, for that
anchorage, though good enough to look at, is little better than a trap
for ships. With such ignorant sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming
gale was not unlikely to bring death upon its wings.

CHAPTER IV. THE GALE.

I found my uncle at the gable end, watching the signs of the weather,
with a pipe in his fingers.

'Uncle,' said I, 'there were men ashore at Sandag Bay--'

I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but even
my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped his
pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen, his
eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have looked
at one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made answer
in this extraordinary fashion: 'Had he a hair kep on?'

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at
Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come ashore alive. For the
first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor
and the father of the woman I hoped to