He rowed away and left us.  As the boat began to disappear round the corner of the island, White Heather—­so she looked—­stood up in the stern and shouted aloud through her pretty hands to us.  “By-bye, dear Sir Charles!” she cried.  “Do wrap the rug around you!  I’ll send the men to fetch you as soon as ever I possibly can.  And thank you so much for those lovely flowers!”

The boat rounded the crags.  We were alone on the island.  Charles flung himself on the bare rock in a wild access of despondency.  He is accustomed to luxury, and cannot get on without his padded cushions.  As for myself, I climbed with some difficulty to the top of the cliff, landward, and tried to make signals of distress with my handkerchief to some passer-by on the mainland.  All in vain.  Charles had dismissed the crofters on the estate; and, as the shooting-party that day was in an opposite direction, not a soul was near to whom we could call for succour.

I climbed down again to Charles.  The evening came on slowly.  Cries of sea-birds rang weird upon the water.  Puffins and cormorants circled round our heads in the gray of twilight.  Charles suggested that they might even swoop down upon us and bite us.  They did not, however, but their flapping wings added none the less a painful touch of eeriness to our hunger and solitude.  Charles was horribly depressed.  For myself, I will confess I felt so much relieved at the fact that Colonel Clay had not openly betrayed me in the matter of the commission, as to be comparatively comfortable.

We crouched on the hard crag.  About eleven o’clock we heard human voices.  “Boat ahoy!” I shouted.  An answering shout aroused us to action.  We rushed down to the landing-place and cooee’d for the men, to show them where we were.  They came up at once in Sir Charles’s own boat.  They were fishermen from Niggarey, on the shore of the Firth opposite.

A lady and gentleman had sent them, they said, to return the boat and call for us on the island; their description corresponded to the two supposed Grantons.  They rowed us home almost in silence to Seldon.  It was half-past twelve by the gatehouse clock when we reached the castle.  Men had been sent along the coast each way to seek us.  Amelia had gone to bed, much alarmed for our safety.  Isabel was sitting up.  It was too late, of course, to do much that night in the way of apprehending the miscreants, though Charles insisted upon dispatching a groom, with a telegram for the police at Inverness, to Fowlis.

Nothing came of it all.  A message awaited us from Lord Craig-Ellachie, to be sure, saying that his son had not left Glen-Ellachie Lodge; while research the next day and later showed that our correspondent had never even received our letter.  An empty envelope alone had arrived at the house, and the postal authorities had been engaged meanwhile, with their usual lightning speed, in “investigating the matter.”  Césarine had posted the letter herself at Fowlis, and brought back the receipt; so the only conclusion we could draw was this—­Colonel Clay must be in league with somebody at the post-office.  As for Lord Craig-Ellachie’s reply, that was a simple forgery; though, oddly enough, it was written on Glen-Ellachie paper.