a smile as Neil
came towards him.

'Good Neil--kind Neil,' he said, patting him on the arm.

'Now go away, Gibbie; there's a good lad,' said Neil. 'I will have no
time to be talking to you just now, and you must not be touching our
things. You had better go home, Gibbie; they will be looking for you.'

'Be quiet, Laddie,' said Reggie authoritatively to the dog, who was
still growling; 'he is not doing any harm.'

Laddie's remonstrances died away in a disapproving grumble, as though
he were saying that he wasn't satisfied yet, and would renew the
subject upon some future occasion.

'If you don't mind,' said Neil, who had been watching the retreating
form of the gipsy, 'I will be going a bit of the way with him. He iss
trying to cross the Shaking Bog now, and he might be coming to harm in
it.'

'All right, Neil; see you again later,' said the others.

'Tricksy, what's the matter with you?' cried Marjorie; 'you are
trembling like anything, and your teeth are chattering in your head.'

'Cold,' said the little girl, whose small dark face was beginning to
look pinched and unhappy; 'and I'm a little hungry too; we hadn't time
to get anything to eat when you and Hamish came for us so early.'

'Comes of leaving you up there so long,' said Marjorie; 'how careless
we were. Whatever will your mother say if you get ill.'

'Here, Tricksy,' said Hamish, 'take this coat, I don't want it; and
look, the steamer is not far from the pier; she is coming in at a rate.
We'll have to run if we want to get in as soon as she does. Take my
hand, and I'll help you along, and you'll be warm in half a jiff.'

Tricksy smiled in a consoled way as she put her hand into the big
outstretched one of the boy; and the whole party set off to race along
the top of the cliff and down to where the pier jutted out from a small
village nestled in a low part of the shore.

Laddie gave an excited bark and scampered beside the others, wondering
what was going to happen.

The steamer was coming in pretty fast, and the pier being encumbered
with nets and with crans of newly caught fish, they reached the
mooring-place just as the hawser was being thrown ashore.

A bright-looking boy of about fourteen years of age was standing on
deck with his hands in his pockets and a tweed cap on the back of his
head, and a tall, sunburnt gentleman was beside him.

'Hulloa, father! hulloa, Allan!' said Tricksy, dimpling and smiling.

Laddie looked up for a mi