surprised at this suggestion, as she was not fond of music.
Nevertheless, there had been such an evident wish shown by her and
her father to lighten the monotony which had been creeping like a
mental fog over us all that I readily agreed to anything which might
perhaps for the moment give them pleasure.

We went up on deck accordingly, and on arriving there were all
smitten into awed silence by the wonderful beauty of the scene. We
were anchored in Loch Scavaig--and the light of the moon fell with a
weird splendour on the gloom of the surrounding hills, a pale beam
touching the summits here and there and deepening the solemn effect
of the lake and the magnificent forms of its sentinel mountains. A
low murmur of hidden streams sounded on the deep stillness and
enhanced the fascination of the surrounding landscape, which was
more like the landscape of a dream than a reality. The deep breadths
of dense darkness lying lost among the cavernous slopes of the hills
were broken at intervals by strange rifts of light arising as it
were from the palpitating water, which now and again showed gleams
of pale emerald and gold phosphorescence,--the stars looked large
and white like straying bits of the moon, and the mysterious
'swishing' of slow ripples heaving against the sides of the yacht
suggested the whisperings of uncanny spirits. We stood in a silent
group, entranced by the grandeur of the night and by our own
loneliness in the midst of it, for there was no sign of a
fisherman's hut or boat moored to the shore, or anything which could
give us a sense of human companionship. A curious feeling of
disappointment suddenly came over me,--I lifted my eyes to the vast
dark sky with a kind of mute appeal--and moon and stars appeared to
float up there like ships in a deep sea,--I had expected something
more in this strange, almost spectral-looking landscape, and yet I