s dead round the other side of the hill."

"And indeed you were not making many misses," Macleod said. "But we will
try your nerve, Ogilvie, with a stag or two, I hope."

"I am on for anything. What with Hamish's flattery and the luck I had
to-day, I begin to believe I could bag a brace of tigers if they were
coming at me fifty miles an hour."

Dinner over, and Donald having played his best (no doubt he had learned
that the stranger was an officer in the Ninety-third), the ladies left
the dining-hall, and presently Macleod proposed to his friend that they
should go into the library and have a smoke. Ogilvie was nothing loath.
They went into the odd little room, with its guns and rods and stuffed
birds, and, lying prominently on the writing-table, a valuable little
heap of dressed otter-skins. Although the night was scarcely cold enough
to demand it, there was a log of wood burning in the fireplace; there
were two easy-chairs, low and roomy; and on the mantelpiece were some
glasses, and a big black broad-bottomed bottle, such as used to carry
the still vintages of Champagne even into the remote wilds of the
Highlands, before the art of making sparkling wines had been discovered.
Mr. Ogilvie lit a cigar, stretched out his feet towards the blazing log,
and rubbed his hands, which were not as white as usual.

"You are a lucky fellow, Macleod," said he, "and you don't know it. You
have everything about you here to make life enjoyable."

"And I feel like a slave tied to a galley oar," said he, quickly. "I
try to hide it from the mother--for it would break her heart--and from
Janet too; but every morning I rise, the dismalness of being alone
here--of being caged up alone--eats more and more into my heart. When I
look at you, Ogilvie--to-morrow morning you could go spinning off to any
quarter you liked, to see any one you wanted to see--"

"Macleod," said his companion, looking up, and yet speaking rather
slowly and timidly, "if I were to say what would naturally occur to any
one--you won't be offended? What you have been telling me is absurd,
unnatural, impossible, unless there is a woman in the case."

"And what then?" Macleod said, quickly, as he regarded his friend with a
watchful eye, "You have guessed?"

"Yes," said the other: "Gertrude White."

Macleod was silent for a second or two. Then he sat down.

"I scarcely care who knows it now," said he, absently "so long as I
can't fight it out of my own mind. I tried