A somewhat awkward pause followed as we stood on the beach, listening to the creak of the thole-pins in the departing boat.  After a minute our new acquaintance turned to us with a slightly constrained laugh.

“Mr. Gillespie omitted some of the formalities,” said he.  “My name is Mackenzie—­David Mackenzie; and I live at Ardlaugh Castle, scarcely half a mile up the glen behind us.  I warn you that its hospitality is rude, but to what it affords you are heartily welcome.”

He spoke with a high, precise courtliness which contrasted oddly with his boyish face (I guessed his age at nineteen or twenty), and still more oddly with his clothes, which were threadbare and patched in many places, yet with a deftness which told of a woman’s care.  We introduced ourselves by name, and thanked him, with some expressions of regret at inconveniencing (as I put it, at hazard) the family at the Castle.

“Oh!” he interrupted, “I am sole master there.  I have no parents living, no family, and,” he added, with a slight sullenness which I afterwards recognised as habitual, “I may almost say, no friends:  though to be sure, you are lucky enough to have one fellow-guest to-night—­the minister of the parish, a Mr. Saul, and a very worthy man.”

He broke off to give Donald some instructions about the boat, watched us while we found our plaids and soaked valises, and then took the lantern from the old man’s hand.  “I ought to have explained,” said he, “that we have neither cart here nor carriage:  indeed, there is no carriage-road.  But Donald has a pony.”

He led the way a few steps up the beach, and then halted, perceiving my lameness for the first time.  “Donald, fetch out the pony.  Can you ride bareback?” he asked:  “I fear there’s no saddle but an old piece of sacking.”  In spite of my protestations the pony was led forth; a starved little beast, on whose over-sharp ridge I must have cut a sufficiently ludicrous figure when hoisted into place with the valises slung behind me.

The procession set out, and I soon began to feel thankful for my seat, though I took no ease in it.  For the road climbed steeply from the cottage, and at once began to twist up the bottom of a ravine so narrow that we lost all help of the young moon.  The path, indeed, resembled the bed of a torrent, shrunk now to a trickle of water, the voice of which ran in my ears while our host led the way, springing from boulder to boulder, avoiding pools, and pausing now and then to hold his lantern over some slippery place.  The pony followed with admirable caution, and my brother trudged in the rear and took his cue from us.  After five minutes of this the ground grew easier and at the same time steeper, and I guessed that we were slanting up the hillside and away from the torrent at an acute angle.  The many twists and angles, and the utter darkness (for we were now moving between trees) had completely baffled my reckoning when—­at the end of twenty minutes, perhaps—­Mr. Mackenzie halted and allowed me to come up with him.