We stood for the best part of an hour watching the bonny craft, and then, as the sun was lying low on a cloudbank and there was a nip in the evening air, we turned back to West Inch.
As you come to the farmhouse from the front, you pass up a garden, with little enough in it, which leads out by a wicket-gate to the road; the same gate at which we stood on the night when the beacons were lit, the night that we saw Walter Scott ride past on his way to Edinburgh.
On the right of this gate, on the garden side, was a bit of a rockery which was said to have been made by my father's mother many years before.

She had fashioned it out of water-worn stones and sea shells, with mosses and ferns in the chinks.

Well, as we came in through the gates my eyes fell upon this stone heap, and there was a letter stuck in a cleft stick upon the top of it.

I took a step forward to see what it was, but Edie sprang in front of me, and plucking it off she thrust it into her pocket.
"That's for me," said she, laughing.

But I stood looking at her with a face which drove the laugh from her lips.
"Who is it from, Edie ?" I asked.
She pouted, but made no answer.
"Who is it from, woman ?" I cried.