Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving

all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea, struck

right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.

I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from

an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a

poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in the

islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and when

she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had

remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means of

life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued;

he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a fresh

adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny.

Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither help

nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the lowlands;

there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my father was the

luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to die, but he left

a son to his name and a little money to support it. I was a student of

Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own charges, but without

kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to Uncle Gordon on the

Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held blood thicker than

water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence, and taught me to

count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in

that part of the country, so far from all society and comfort, between

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