It was in a lady's hand of writ.

"_Maister Dauvit Balfour is informed a friend was speiring for him, and her eyes were of the grey_," it ran--and seemed so extraordinary a piece to come to my hands at such a moment and under cover of a Government seal, that I stood stupid.

Catriona's grey eyes shone in my remembrance.

I thought, with a bound of pleasure, she must be the friend.

But who should the writer be, to have her billet thus enclosed with Prestongrange's?
And of all wonders, why was it thought needful to give me this pleasing but most inconsequential intelligence upon the Bass?
For the writer, I could hit upon none possible except Miss Grant.