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But the interior of the hotel, bright with the latest fastidiousness in modern decoration and art-furniture, and gay with pictured canvases and color, seemed to mock the sullen landscape, and the sterile crags amid which the building was set. An attempt to make a pleasance in this barren waste had resulted only in empty vases, bleak statuary, and iron settees, as cold and slippery to the touch as the sides of their steamer.

“It’ll be a fine morning to-morra, and ther’ll be a boat going away to Kelpie for a peekneek in the ruins,” said the porter, as the consul and his fair companions looked doubtfully from the windows of the cheerful hall.

A picnic in the sacred ruins of Kelpie! The consul saw the ladies stiffening with indignation at this trespass upon their possible rights and probable privileges, and glanced at them warningly.

“Do you mean to say that it is common property, and ANYBODY can go there?” demanded Miss Elsie scornfully.

“No; it’s only the hotel that owns the boat and gives the tickets–a half-crown the passage.”

“And do the owners, the McHulishes, permit this?”

The porter looked at them with a puzzled, half-pitying politeness. He was a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a certain naive and gentle courtesy of manner that relieved his strong accent, “Oh, ay,” he said, with a reassuring smile; “ye’ll no be troubled by THEM. I’ll just gang away noo, and see if I can secure the teekets.”

An elderly guest, who was examining a time-table on the wall, turned to them as the porter disappeared.

“Ye’ll be strangers noo, and not knowing that Tonalt the porter is a McHulish hissel’?” he said deliberately.

“A what?” said the astonished Miss Elsie.

“A McHulish. Ay, one of the family. The McHulishes of Kelpie were his own forebears. Eh, but he’s a fine lad, and doin’ well for the hotel.”

Miss Elsie extinguished a sudden smile with her handkerchief as her mother anxiously inquired, “And are the family as poor as that?”

“But I am not saying he’s POOR, ma’am, no,” replied the stranger, with native caution. “What wi’ tips and gratooities and percentages on the teekets, it’s a bit of money he’ll be having in the bank noo.”

The prophecy of Donald McHulish as to the weather came true. The next morning was bright and sunny, and the boat to Kelpie Island–a large yawl–duly received its complement of passengers and provision hampers. The ladies had apparently become more tolerant of their fellow pleasure-seekers, and it appeared that Miss Elsie had even overcome her hilarity at the discovery of what “might have been” a relative in the person of the porter Donald. “I had a long talk with him before breakfast this morning,” she said gayly, “and I know all about him. It appears that there are hundreds of him–all McHulishes–all along the coast and elsewhere–only none of them ever lived ON the island, and don’t want to. But he looks more like a ‘laird’ and a chief than Malcolm, and if it comes to choosing a head of the family, remember, maw, I shall vote solid for him.”

“How can you go on so, Elsie?” said Mrs. Kirkby, with languid protest. “Only I trust you didn’t say anything to him of the syndicate. And, thank Heaven! the property isn’t here.”

“No; the waiter tells me all the lovely things we had for breakfast came from miles away. And they don’t seem to have ever raised anything on the island, from its looks. Think of having to row three miles for the morning’s milk!”

There was certainly very little appearance of vegetation on the sterile crags that soon began to lift themselves above the steely waves ahead. A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and writhed like vines around the square tower and crumbling walls of an irregular but angular building, looked in their brown shadows like part of the debris.

“It’s just like a burnt-down bone-boiling factory,” said Miss Elsie critically; “and I shouldn’t wonder if that really was old McHulish’s business. They couldn’t have it on the mainland for its being a nuisance.”