7Beatrice Wrexham looked out of the coach window as the horses began to move slowly downhill. Below she saw Skaig Castle and the evening mist rising from the loch, so that the battlements and the pinnacles of the turrets seemed to be but a figment of the imagination which might vanish at any moment and become but one with the mists.
Beatrice had seen too many castles for the magnificence or beauties of Skaig to move her or awake any emotion other than a sense of relief that the end of her long journey was in sight.
The habitations of people never aroused her curiosity, were they palaces or cottages. It was the people who lived in them upon whom her interest was centred and more particularly of course the men.
As she thought of Niall MacCraggan her eyelids drooped a little and her red li
