-apparently a Letter of Marque of sorts. At eleven she chased a pink ashore near La Hogue. A few hours later another sail was sighted, chased, and captured. She proved to be an English ship recently taken by a St Malo privateer, and with the latter's prize-crew on board.

A curious comedy of errors occurred in the Channel in October 1709. On the morning of the 18th, Sir George Byng's squadron, homeward bound, was almost becalmed, when two sail were sighted to windward. They were, in fact, a French privateer and a Bristol sloop, which the former had just taken. Byng, being to leeward with hardly any wind at all and his ships very foul, did not think it worth while to give chase the less so that he was persuaded they were West Indiamen, homeward bound like himself. The privateer, on the other hand, took Byng's ships to be the squadron of DuguayTrouin (who was then at sea), and, having a momentary little breeze, she stood towards them with her prize. The little breeze, however, kept her a long way astern, so that two days passed in this manner: Byng drifting majestically on his course, the two little vessels slowly gaining on him.

On the 20th a couple of 54's, the Gloucester and Falmouth, standing down Channel, met the Admiral. They fired the usual salute on seeing his flag, and were then ordered to sail in company with him. This little episode occasioned great jubila tion on board the still distant

privateer, whose people, seeing the smoke and hearing the reports, believed they had witnessed an engagement, in which their gallant countryman had captured two English warships. They stood still closer, until, the wind at length freshening from another quarter, one of the rearmost ships, the Chichester, bore down on them. At this the privateer realised her mistake and sheered off, leaving the sloop to be recaptured.

And, finally, let us turn to Christchurch Bay, in the same year. Here, on the 13th of June, the Cruiser, of 12 guns, and the Monck's Prize (an ex-French privateer), of 16, which were patrolling the coast between Poole and the Needles, discovered inshore of them one of the enemy's small Letters of Marque. The latter, being to leeward of her pursuers, despaired of getting out of the bay, and so attempted a remarkable enterprise. She made all sail for the Needles passage, with the intention (as it was supposed) of running the gauntlet of Sir George Byng's whole fleet, then lying at Spithead, and so escaping by St Helens. However, the Dispatch brigantine, of 10 guns, was lying as guardship just inside the Solent, off the beacon which then (as now) was known as "Jack in the Basket," at the mouth of the Lymington river; and this vessel, hearing firing from Hurst and the bay beyond, and seeing the sails of the daring fugitive gliding past the fort, instantly weighed or slipped and headed her off. She was found to carry only

His dream dispelled of a poetic world surviving in the hills, he got malicious and secret joy in stripping every rag of false heroics from such gentry. From some one he had learned that Castleheather was no friend of Lovat; that day in The Aird, as he came with him brandishing his schemes for making money fast for Æneas (with of course a fat share for himself), the young man, in a mood of mischief, ventured an opinion that no Fraser schemes could flourish in that shire unless Lord Lovat fathered them.

As he was saying so, they were in sight of Castle Dounie. "Look at it!" hissed Fraser, boiling. "Tell me did ye ever see an uglier! It's like the man himself; get you into the grip of Simon wi' your money, and he'll squeeze ye like a

lemon."

of what he was,—a letter of Sim's own that showed he had a share in Grange's business and trepanned the lady. They had it in good time to stop his marriage with their niece, but na!-it didna stop it; knowing what they knew, they let him take her! Lovat has put salt upon MacCailein's tail; he'll never want a pleader now in London, seeing that he's married on a Campbell."

"The thing's incredible of Islay

or his Grace," said Eneas stoutly, yet a little shaken in his loyalty, and thereupon the Major, like a man who feared he had been too outspoken, half retracted, saying that at least the thing was rumoured. "Do not breathe," said he, "a word of what I've mentioned; I'm too ill-neighbours as it is with Sim to make things worse by clattering."

Those three days Eneas spent with Saul Mackay brought down on him in Inverness attentions that he could not understand: he never guessed the pious Saul had magnified three hundred pounds into so many thousands. The street folk sometimes jostled him to see if he would chink. A horde of beggars followed him-in fishing-bothies, on the quays, among the skippers, even in the shops. The inn that he and Ninian dwelt in had at times a row in front of it of idle citizens who seemed to find some satisfaction just to look at walls behind which all that wealth-to judge by smell was supping sheep's

With beachdair business of his own that kept him less in Inverness than in the landward parishes about it, where he spent from morn till all hours of the night in seeming useless sauntering round mills and smithies, hamlets, farmtowns, inns-any place at all in which he could get folk to gossip,-Ninian knew nothing of his friend's celebrity till one night he came home, himself, a good deal earlier than usual, and from some casual talk among a group upon the causeway, grasped the situa

tion.

"They're talking of ye there as if ye had the wealth of India in your belt," he said peevishly to Eneas when he got in. "Your man Mackay's a fool-he has been bragging, or ye have been flourishing your uncle's money far too free. It's something of a pity, lad, ye ever dropped dropped the kilt; they never would jalouse a man in kilts had more than sixpence. Whatever o't, it's close on time that we were shifting home: if we were only done wi' old MacShimi, I'm quite ready for the road, whatever you may be."

ously forbore to question him, half-fearful that some wild, half-daft surmises of his own might be confirmed.

"Not so much a light as just an ember here and there," said Ninian, and took a fishingline, all tangled in a mass, from out his pocket. They had a room between them, lit by tallow dips; he held the line up to a candle so that Eneas could see how badly it was ravelled.

"That's your father's business," he said, his deep eyes glittering. "Ye see it's gey and tousy-scarce an ell of it unfankled." He dived his hand into another pocket, and produced a line rolled neatly on a stick, with just some yards of tangled end to clear of it.

"That," said he, "is my own affair; I'll get what twists are left, from that, before I'm two days older," and he put it back into his pouch. "But this one here's a far more kittle task to deal wi'; now it's in a knot wi' me I canna loose another finger-length until the two of us have seen his lordship."

He pulled a chair up to the table, sat, and set the twine before him, glowering at it like a man gripped in a spell. There seemed in him some notion of the thing as more than symbol-as a mystery and problem in itself; over and over he turned it lightly with a finger, muttering to himself in Gaelic. Then he took his small black knife, and with its point for bodkin gently pryed the ravelling.

"Hach!" said he at last, disgusted, and thrust it in his