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9 
 
 
 
 
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Seventy-five Copies only of this Large Paper 
 Edition have been printed. 
 
 No. Z 
 
 Signed ij/^o-nei. /// &&&*>• &£„ 
 
DERBY 
 
 The Regent Library 
 
 PHARAIS 
 
 1894 
 
PHARAIS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 (In Preparation.) 
 
 The Mountain-Lovers : a Romance. 
 DarthOla: A Celtic Romance of the Past. 
 
J i J-J ^ J^ A [ ^ A KOM ANCE OF THE 
 
 .sles dv FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 Printed by Harpur and Murray 
 at the Moray Press in Okkby 
 May ,gg 4 and sold by FRANK 
 MURRAY at his Bookshops in 
 Derby Leicester and Nottingham 
 
 
" Mi thick domh triall gu tigh Pharais" 
 
 (It is time for me to go up unto the House of Paradise.) 
 Muireadhach Albannach. 
 
 "How many beautiful things have come to its from 
 Pharais." 
 
 " Bileag-na-Tosciiil." 
 
To 
 E. W. R. 
 
 Dear f lien J, — While you gratify vie by your 
 pleasure in this inscription, you modestly depre- 
 cate the dedication to you of this story of alien 
 life — of that unfamiliar island-life so alien in 
 all ways from the life of cities, and, let me add, 
 from that of the great mass of the nation to 
 which, in the communal sense, we both belong. 
 But in the Domhan-Tbir of friendship there 
 arc resting-places where all barriers of race, 
 training, and circumstance fall away in dust. 
 At one of these places of peace we met, a long 
 -while ago, and found that we loved the same 
 things, and in the same way. You have been 
 in the charmed West yourself : have seen the 
 gloom and shine of the mountains that throw 
 their shadow on the sea : have heard the wave 
 whisper a 'ong that haunted shore which none 
 loves save with passion, and none, loz'ing, can 
 bear to be long parted from. You, unlike so 
 many who delight only in the magic of sunshine 
 and cloud, love this dear laud when the mists 
 drive across the hillsides, and the brown tor- 
 rents are in sfatc, and the rain and the black 
 wind make a gloom upon every loch, and fill 
 with the dusk of storm every strath, and glen, 
 and corrie. Not otherwise can one love it 
 vii. 
 
aright: "Tir nam Beann s'nan gleann' s'nan 
 ghaisgach," as one of our ancient poets calls it 
 — " The land of hills, and glens, and heroes." 
 You, too, like Deirdre of old, have looked back 
 on "Alba" and, finding it passing fair and 
 dear, have, with the Celtic Helen, said in your 
 heart —   
 
 Inmain tir in tir ud thoir, 
 Al!>a cona lingantaibh ! . . . 
 I" Beloved is that eastern land, 
 Alba of the lochs."] 
 
 In the mythology of the Gael are three for- 
 gotten deities, children of Delbaith-Dana. 
 These are Seilhoir, Teithoir, and Keithoir. 
 One dicells throughout the sea, and beneath the 
 soles of the feet of another a.ve the highest clouds ; 
 and these tiuo may be held sacred for the 
 beauty they weave for the joy of eye and ear. 
 But now that, as surely none may gainsay, 
 Keithoir is blind and weary, let us worship at 
 his fane rather than give all our homage to 
 the others. For Keithoir is the god of the 
 earth ; dark-eyed, shadowy brother of Pan ; 
 and his fane is among the lonely glens and 
 mountains and lonelier isles of "Alba cona 
 lingantaibh." It is because you and I are of 
 the children of Keithoir that I wished to 
 grace my book with your name. 
 
 The most nature-wrought of the English 
 poets hoped he was not too late in transmuting 
 into his man verse soviet lung of the beautiful 
 mythology of Greece. But while Keats spun 
 from the inexhaustible loom of genius, a?id I 
 am but an obscure chronicler of obscure things, 
 viii. 
 
is it too presumptuous of me to hope that here, 
 and mayhap elsewhere, I, the latest comer 
 among older and -worthier celebrants and co- 
 enthusiasts, likewise may do something, how- 
 soever little, to win a further measure of heed 
 for, and more intimate sympathy with, that old 
 charm and stellar beauty of Celtic thought and 
 imagination, now, alas, like so many other 
 lovely things, growing more and more remote, 
 discoverable seldom in books, and elusive amid 
 the sayings and oral legends and fragmentary 
 songs of a passing race ? 
 
 A passing race : and yd, mayhap not so. 
 Change is inevitable ; and even if we could 
 hear the wind blowing along Magh JPell — the 
 Plain of Honey — we might list to a new note, 
 bitter-sweet : and, doubtless, the waves falling 
 over the green roof of Tir-na- Thonri murmur 
 drowsily of a shifting of the veils of circum- 
 stance, which Keithoir weaves blindly in his 
 dark place. But what was, surely is; and 
 what is, surely may yet be. The form changes ; 
 the essential abides. As the saying goes among 
 the islefolk : The shadow fleets beneath the 
 cloud driven by the wind, and the cloud falls in 
 rain or is sucked of the sun, but the wind 
 sways this way and that for ever. It may well 
 be that the Celtic Dream is not doomed to 
 become a memory merely. Were it so, there 
 would be less joy in all Springs to come, less 
 hope in all brown Autumns ; and the cold of a 
 dealhlier chill in all Winters still dreaming by 
 the Pole. For the Celtic joy in the life of 
 Nature — the Celtic vision — is a thing apart : it 
 ix. 
 
is a passion ; a visionary rapture. Tkire is 
 none like it among the peoples of our race. 
 
 Meanwhile, there are a few remote spots, as 
 yet inviolate. Here, Anima Celtica still lives 
 and breathes and hath her being. She dreams ; 
 but if she awake, it may not necessarily be to a 
 deepening twilight, or to a foi-lor7i passage to 
 Tir Taimgire — that Land of Promise whose 
 borders shine with the loveliness of all forfeited, 
 or lost, or banished dreams and realities of 
 Beauty. It may be that she will arise 
 to a wider sway, over a disfrontiered realm. 
 Blue are the hills that are far fro ?n us. Dear 
 saying of the Gael, whose soul as well as whose 
 heart speaks therein. Far hills, recede, recede ! 
 Dim veils of blue, woven from within and 
 without, haunt us, allure us, always, always I 
 
 But nozv, before I send you my last word of 
 greeting, let me add (rather for other readers 
 than for you, who already know of them) a 
 word concerning the Gaelic runes interpolated 
 in Pharais.* 
 
 The "Urnuigh Smalaidh Teine" (p.^o)and 
 "Altachadh Leapa" (p. j 2) — respectively a 
 prayer to be said at covering up the peat-fire 
 at bed-time and a Rest-blessing — are relics of 
 ancient Celtic folklore which were sent to the 
 Rev. Dr. Alexander Stewart, of " Nether 
 
 * A slightly anglicised lection of the Gaelic ivord 
 Paras = Paradise, Heaven. " Pharais," properly, 
 is the genitive and dative case of Paras, as in the 
 line from Muireadhach Albannach, quoted after tlie 
 title page, " Mithich domh triall gu tigh Pharais" — 
 "// is time for me to go up unto the House of Paradise." 
 X. 
 
Lochaber "fame, by Mr. A. A. Carmichael, of 
 South Uist, who took them down from the 
 recitation of a man living at Iocar of Uist. 
 From the same Hebridean source came the 
 "Rann Buachailleachd," or rune to be said 
 over cattle when led to pasture at morn, intro- 
 duced at p. 59. The English versions, by Dr. 
 Stewart, appeared first in " The Inverness 
 Courier," over twenty years ago. There are 
 several versions current of the authentic inci- 
 dent of the innocent old woman held to be a 
 witch, and of her prayer. I weave into my 
 story the episode as I heard it many years ago, 
 though with the rune rescued from oblivion by 
 Dr. Stewart, rather than with the longer and 
 commonly corrupted version still to be heard by 
 the croft-fire in many localities, all " the far 
 cry" from the Ord of Sutherland to the Rhinns 
 of /slay. The " Laoidh Mhnathan "—the 
 Chant of Women, at p. wj—is not ancient in 
 the actual form here given, which is from an 
 unpublished volume of " Orain' Spioradail." 
 
 The stveetest -voiced of the younger Irish 
 singers of to-day has spoken of the Celtic Twi- 
 light. A twilight it is ; but, if night follow 
 gloaming, so also does dawn succeed night. 
 Meanwhile, twilight voices are sweet, if faint 
 and far, and linger lovingly in the ear. 
 
 There is another Paras than that seen of 
 A las fair of Innisrbn—the Tir-na-h'Oigh of 
 friendship. Therein we both have seen beauti- 
 ful visions and dreamed dreams, lake, then, 
 out of my heart, this book of vision and dream. 
 FIONA MACLEOD. 
 
"O bilea°-geal, 
 O bileag-tia-Tosciiil, bileag Pharais, 
 O tha. e boidheach ! 
 Tha e boidheach ! " 
 
I. 
 
 3T was midway in the seventh month 
 of her great joy that the child 
 moved, while a rapture leaped to 
 her heart, within the womb of Lora, 
 daughter of the dead Norman Maclean, 
 minister of Innisrbn, in the Outer 
 Isles. 
 
 On the same eve the cruel sorrow 
 came to her that had lain waiting in 
 the dark place beyond the sunrise. 
 
 Alastair, her so dearly beloved, had 
 gone, three days earlier, by the Western 
 Isles steamer to the port of Greenock, 
 thence to fare to Glasgow, to learn 
 from a great professor of medicine con- 
 cerning that which so troubled him— 
 both by reason of what the islesmen 
 whispered among themselves, and for 
 what he felt of his own secret pain and 
 apprehension. 
 
There was a rocky spur on Innisrbn 
 whence the watcher could scan the 
 headland round which the Clansman 
 would come on her thrice - weekly 
 voyage : in summer, while the isles 
 were still steeped in the yellow shine; 
 in autumn, when the sky seaward 
 was purple, and every boulder in each 
 islet was as transparent amber amid a 
 vapour of amethyst rising from bases 
 and hollow caverns of a cold day-dawn 
 blue. 
 
 Hither Lora had come in the wane 
 of the afternoon. The airs were as 
 gentle and of as sweet balmy breath 
 as though it were Summersleep rather 
 than only the extreme of May. The girl 
 looked, shading her eyes, seaward ; and 
 saw the blue of the midmost sky laid 
 as a benediction upon the face of the 
 deep, but paler by a little, as the 
 darkest turquoise is pale beside the 
 lightest sapphire. She lifted her eyes 
 from the pearl-blue of the horizon 
 to the heart of the zenith, and saw 
 there the soul of Ocean gloriously 
 arisen. Beneath the weedy slabs of 
 rock whereon she stood, the green of 
 the sea-moss lent a yellow gleam to 
 the slow-waving dead-man's-hair which 
 the tide laved to and fro sleepily, as 
 though the bewitched cattle of Sheu- 
 mais the seer were drowsing there un- 
 
 2 
 
seen, known only of their waving tails, 
 swinging silently as the bulls dreamed 
 of the hill-pastures they should see 
 no more. Yellow-green in the sunlit 
 spaces as the sea-hair was, it was dark 
 against the shifting green light of the 
 water under the rocks, and till so far 
 out as the moving blue encroached. 
 
 To Lora's right ran a curved inlet, 
 ending in a pool fringed with dap- 
 pled fronds of sea-fern, mare's-tails, 
 and intricate bladder-wrack. In the 
 clear hollow were visible the wave-worn 
 stones at the bottom, many crowned 
 with spreading anemones, with here and 
 there a star-fish motionlessly agleam, or 
 a cloud of vanishing shrimps above the 
 patches of sand, or hermit crabs toil- 
 ing cumbrously from perilous shelter 
 to more sure havens. Looking down 
 she saw herself, as though her wraith 
 had suddenly crept therein and was 
 waiting to whisper that which, once 
 uttered and once heard, would mean 
 disunion no more. 
 
 Slipping softly to her knees, she 
 crouched over the pool. Long and 
 dreamily she gazed into its depths. 
 What was this phantasm, she won- 
 dered, that lay there in the green- 
 gloom as though awaiting her? Was 
 it, in truth, the real Lora, and she but 
 the wraith ? 
 
How strangely expressionless was 
 that pale face, looking upward with so 
 straightforward a mien, yet with so 
 stealthy an understanding, with dark 
 abysmal eyes filled with secrecy and 
 dread, if not, indeed, with something 
 of menace. 
 
 A thrill of fear went to the girl's 
 heart. A mass of shadow had sud- 
 denly obscured her image in the 
 water. Her swift fancy suggested that 
 her wraith had abruptly shrouded her- 
 self, fearful of revelation. The next 
 moment she realised that her own wealth 
 of dark hair had fallen down her neck 
 and upon her shoulders — hair dusky as 
 twilight, but interwrought with threads 
 of bronze that, in the shine of fire or 
 sun, made an evasive golden gleam. 
 
 She shuddered as she perceived the 
 eyes of her other self intently watch- 
 ing her through that cloudy shadow. 
 A breath came from the pool, salt and 
 shrewd, and cold as though arisen from 
 those sea-sepulchres whence the fish 
 steal their scales of gold and silver. A 
 thin voice was in her ears that was not 
 the lap of the tide or the cluck of 
 water gurgling in and out of holes and 
 crannies. 
 
 With a startled gesture she shrank 
 back. 
 
 "What is it? What is it?" she 
 
cried : but the sound of her own awed 
 voice broke the spell: and almost at 
 the same moment an eddy of wind 
 came circling over the rock-bastions 
 of the isle, and, passing as a tremulous 
 hand over the pool, ruffled it into a 
 sudden silvery sheen. 
 
 With a blithe laugh, Lora rose to 
 her feet. The sunlight dwelt about her 
 as though she were the sweetest flower 
 in that lost garden of Aodh the poet, 
 where the streams are unspanned rain- 
 bows flowing to the skiey cauldrons 
 below the four quarters, and where 
 every white flower has at dusk a voice, 
 a whisper, of surpassing sweetness. 
 
 " O Alastair, Alastair ! " she cried, 
 " will the boat never be coming that is 
 to bring you back to me ! " 
 
 Not a black spot anywhere, of wherry 
 or steamer, caught the leaping gaze. 
 Like a bird it moved across the sea, 
 and found no object whereon to alight. 
 
 The Clansman was often late ; but 
 her smoke could be seen across Dun- 
 more Head nigh upon quarter of an 
 hour before her prow combed the froth 
 from the Sound. 
 
 With a sigh, the girl moved slowly 
 back by the way she had come. Over 
 and over, as she went, she sang, croon- 
 ingly, lines from a sweet song of the 
 Gael, O, Till, a Leannain ! 
 
 5 
 
As she passed a place of birchen 
 undergrowth and tall bracken, she did 
 not see an old man, seated, grey and 
 motionless as a heron. He looked at 
 her with the dull eyes of age, though 
 there was pity in them and something 
 of a bewildered awe. 
 
 "Aye," he muttered below his breath, 
 " though ye sing for your dear one to 
 return, ye know not what I know. 
 Have I not had the vision of him with 
 the mist growin' up an' up, an' seen 
 the green grass turn to black mools at 
 his feet ? " 
 
 Lora, unwitting, passed ; and he 
 heard her voice wax and wane, as 
 falling water in a glen where the 
 baffled wind among the trees soughs 
 now this way and now that : — 
 
 " Mo chridhe-sa! 's tusa 'b/i/os truagh, 
 'bhios tritagh, 
 Mur pill r's' 'thog oirte gu chiaidh, gu 
 cluaidh /" 
 
 She went past the boulder on the 
 path that hid the clachan from view, 
 and within a net-throw of which was 
 the byre of Mrs. Maclean's cottage, 
 where, since her father's death, she 
 had dwelt. 
 
 A tall, gaunt, elderly woman, with 
 hair of the ivory white of the snow- 
 berry, was about to pass from behind 
 6 
 
the byre with a burthen of fresh 
 bracken for Ian Maclean's bed — for 
 the old islesman abode by the way of 
 his fathers, and was content to sleep 
 on a deerskin spread upon fresh- 
 gathered fern — when she caught sight 
 of Lora. She stopped, and with an 
 eager glance looked at the girl : then 
 beyond, and finally seaward, with her 
 long, thin, brown arm at an angle, and 
 her hand curved over her eyes against 
 the glare of the water. 
 
 Silence was about her as a garment. 
 Every motion of her, even, suggested 
 a deep calm. Mrs. Maclean spoke 
 seldom, and when she said aught it 
 was in a low voice, sweet and serene, 
 but as though it came from a distance 
 and in the twilight. She was of the 
 shadow, as the islesmen say ; and 
 strangers thought her to be austere in 
 look and manner, though that was only 
 because she gazed long before she re- 
 plied to one foreign to her and her 
 life : having the Gaelic, too, so much 
 more natively than the English, that 
 oftentimes she had to translate the 
 one speech into the other nearer to 
 her : that, and also because the quiet 
 of the sea was upon her, as often with 
 hill-folk there is a hushed voice and 
 mien. 
 
 Lora knew what was in her mind, 
 7 
 
when she saw her gaze go seaward 
 and then sweep hither and thither like 
 a hawk ere it settles. 
 
 " The boat is not yet in sight, Mary; 
 she is late," she said simply : adding 
 immediately, " I have come back to go 
 up Cnoc-an-Iolair ; from there I'll see 
 the smoke of the Clansman sooner. 
 She is often as late as this." 
 
 Mrs. Maclean looked compassion- 
 ately at the girl. 
 
 " Mayhap the Clansman will not be 
 coming this way at all to-night, Lora. 
 She may be going by Kyle-na-Sith." 
 
 A flush came into Lora's face. Her 
 eyes darkened, as a tarn under rain. 
 
 " And for why would she not be 
 sailing this way to-night, when Alastair 
 is coming home, and is to be here 
 before sundown ? " 
 
 " He may have been unable to leave. 
 If he does not come to-day, he will 
 doubtless be here to-morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow ! O Mary, Mary, have 
 you ever loved that you can speak like 
 that ? Think what Alastair went away 
 for ! Surely you do not know how the 
 pain is at my heart ?" 
 
 " Truly, muimean. But it is not 
 well to be sure of that which may easily 
 happen otherwise." 
 
 "To-morrow, indeed ! Why, Mary, 
 if the Clansman does not come by this 
 8 
 
evening, and has gone as you say by 
 k\Ie-na-Sith, she will not be here again 
 till the day after to-morrow ! " 
 
 " Alastair could come by the other 
 way, by the Inverary boat, and thence 
 by the herring-steamer from Dunmore, 
 after he had reached it from Uan Point 
 or by way of Craig-Sionnach." 
 
 " That may be, of course ; but I 
 think not. I cannot believe the boat 
 will not be here to-night." 
 
 Both stood motionless, with their 
 hands shading their eyes, and looking 
 across the wide Sound, where the tide 
 bubbled and foamed against the slight 
 easterly wind-drift. The late sunlight 
 fell full upon them, working its miracle 
 of gold here and there, and making 
 the skin like a flower. The outline of 
 each figure stood out darkly clear as 
 against a screen of amber. 
 
 For a time neither spoke. At last, 
 with a faint sigh, Mrs. Maclean turned. 
 
 ' Did you see Ian on your way, 
 Lora-mo-ghraidh ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Do not have speech with the old 
 man to-night, dear one. He is not 
 himself." 
 
 " Has he had the sight again ? " 
 
 " Ay, Lora." 
 
 Again a silence fell. The girl stood 
 moodily, with her eyes on the ground : 
 
 9 A I 
 
the elder watched her with a steadfast, 
 questioning look. 
 
 "Mary !" 
 
 Mrs. Maclean made no reply, but 
 her eyes brought Lora's there with the 
 answer that was in them. 
 
 " Ian has never had the sight again 
 upon . . . upon Alastair, has he ? " 
 
 "How can I say, Lora-gaolaicheV 
 
 " But do you know if he has ? If 
 you do not tell me, I will ask him." 
 
 " I asked him that only yester-morn- 
 ing. He shook his head." 
 
 " Do you believe he can foresee all 
 that is to happen ? " 
 
 "No. Those who have the vision 
 do not read all that is in the future. 
 Only God knows. They can see the 
 thing of peril, ay, and the evil of acci- 
 dent, and even Death — and what is 
 more, the nearness and sometimes the 
 way of it. But no man sees more than 
 this — unless, indeed, he has been to 
 Tir-na-h'Oigh." 
 
 Mrs. Maclean spoke the last words 
 almost in a whisper, and as though she 
 said them in a dream. 
 
 " Unless he has been to Tir-na- 
 h' Oigh, Mary ? " 
 
 " So it is said. Our people believe 
 
 that the Land of Eternal Youth lies far 
 
 yonder across the sea ; but Aodh, the 
 
 poet, is right when he tells us that that 
 
 10 
 
land is lapped by no green waves such 
 as we know here, and that those who go 
 thither do so in sleep, or in vision, or 
 when God has filled with dusk the 
 house of the brain." 
 
 "And when a man has been to Tir- 
 na-h' Oigh in sleep, or in dream, or in 
 mind-dark, does he see there what shall 
 soon happen here ? " 
 
 " It is said." 
 
 " Has Ian been beyond the West ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then what he sees when he has 
 the sight upon him is not beannaichte : 
 is not a thing out of heaven ? " 
 
 " I cannot say. I think not." 
 
 " Mary, is it the truth you are now 
 telling me ? " 
 
 A troubled expression came into the 
 woman's face, but she did not answer. 
 
 " And is it the truth, Mary, that Ian 
 has not had the sight upon Alastair 
 since he went away — that he did not 
 have it last night or this morning ? " 
 
 Lora leaned forward in her anxiety. 
 She saw that in her companion's eyes 
 which gave her the fear. But the next 
 moment Mrs. Maclean smiled. 
 
 "I too have the sight, Lor a-ghao Inch ; 
 and shall I be telling you that which it 
 will be giving you joy to hear ? " 
 
 " Aye, surely, Mary ! " 
 
 " Then I think you will soon be in 
 ii 
 
 UMVEHS1TY Ofr CAUhOKMlA LIBRARY 
 
the arms of him you love " — and, with 
 a low laugh, she pointed across the 
 sea to where a film of blue-grev smoke 
 rose over the ridge of Dunmore head- 
 land. 
 
 " Ah, the Clansman ! " cried Lora, 
 with a gasp of joy : and the next mo- 
 ment she was moving down the path 
 again towards the little promontory. 
 
 The wind had risen slightly. The 
 splash, splash, of the sunny green 
 waves against each other, the lapping 
 of the blue water upon the ledges to 
 the east, the stealthy whisper where the 
 emerald-green tide-flow slipped under 
 the hollowed sandstone, the spurtle of 
 the sea-wrack, the flashing fall and 
 foam-send of the gannets, the cries of 
 the gulls, the slap of wind as it came 
 over the forehead of the isle and struck 
 the sea a score of fathoms outward- 
 all gave her a sense of happiness. 
 The world seemed suddenly to have 
 grown young. The exultant Celtic joy 
 stood over against the brooding Celtic 
 shadow, and believed the lances of the 
 sunlight could keep at bay all the bat- 
 talions of gloom. 
 
 The breeze was variable, for the weft 
 of blue smoke which suddenly curled 
 round the bend of Dunmore had its 
 tresses blown seaward, though where 
 Lora stood the wind came from the 
 12 
 
west, and even caused a white foam 
 along the hither marge of the promon- 
 tory. 
 
 With eager eyes she watched the 
 vessel round the point. After all, it 
 was just possible she might not be 
 the Clansman. 
 
 But the last sunglow shone full 
 against Dunmore and upon the bows 
 of the steamer as she swung to the 
 helm ; and the moment the red funnel 
 changed from a dusky russet into a 
 flame of red, Lora's new anxiety was 
 assuaged. She knew every line of the 
 boat, and already she felt Alastair's 
 kisses on her lips. The usual long 
 summer-gloaming darkened swiftly — 
 for faint films of coming change 
 were being woven across the span 
 of the sky from mainland ocean- 
 ward. Even as the watcher on In- 
 nisron stood, leaning forward in her 
 eager outlook, she saw the extreme of 
 the light lift upward as though it were 
 the indrawn shaft of a fan. The con- 
 tours of the steamer grew confused : a 
 velvety duskiness overspread Dunmore 
 foreland. 
 
 The sky overhead had become a vast 
 lift of perishing yellow — a spent wave 
 of daffodil by the north and by the 
 south ; westward, of lemon, deepening 
 into a luminous orange glow shot 
 13 
 
with gold and crimson, and rising 
 as an exhalation from hollow cloud- 
 sepulchres of amethyst, straits of scar- 
 let, and immeasurable spaces of dove- 
 grey filled with shallows of the most 
 pale sea-green. 
 
 Lora stood as though wrought in 
 marble. She had seen that which 
 made the blood leap from her heart, 
 and surge in her ears, and clamour 
 against her brain. 
 
 No pennon flew at the peak of the 
 steamer's foremast. This meant there 
 was neither passenger nor freight to be 
 landed at Innisron, so that there was 
 no need for the ferry. 
 
 She could scarcely believe it pos- 
 sible that the Clansman could come, 
 after all, and yet not bring Alastair 
 back to her. It seemed absurd : some 
 ill-timed by-play; nay, a wanton cruelty. 
 There must be some mistake, she 
 thought, as she peered hungrily into 
 the sea-dusk. 
 
 Surely the steamer was heading too 
 much to the northward ! With a cry, 
 Lora instinctively stretched her arms 
 towards the distant vessel ; but no 
 sound came from her lips, for at that 
 moment a spurt of yellow flame rent 
 the grey gloom, as a lantern was swung 
 aloft to the mast-head. 
 
 In a few seconds she would know 
 14 
 
all ; for whenever the Clansman was 
 too late for her flag-signal to be easily 
 seen, she showed a green light a foot 
 or so beneath the yellow. 
 
 Lora heard the heavy pulse of the 
 engines, the churn of the beaten 
 waves, even the delirious surge and 
 suction as the spent water was driven 
 along the hull and poured over and 
 against the helm ere it was swept into 
 the wake that glimmered white as a 
 snow-wreath. So wrought was she 
 that, at the same time, she was keenly 
 conscious of the rapid tweet-tweet-tweet- 
 tweet-tweet — 0-0-/1 sweet ! — sweet I of a 
 yellowhammer among the whin close 
 by, and of the strange, mournful cry 
 of an oyster-opener as it flew with 
 devious swoops towards some twilight 
 eyrie. 
 
 The throb of the engines — the churn 
 of the beaten waves — the sough of 
 the swirling yeast — ever the churning, 
 swirling, under-tumult, and through it 
 and over it the heavy pulse, the deep 
 panting rhythmic throb : this she heard, 
 as it were the wrought surge of her 
 own blood. 
 
 Would the green light never swing 
 up to that yellow beacon ? 
 
 A minute passed : two minutes : 
 three ! It was clear that the steamer 
 had no need to call at Innisrbn. She 
 15 
 
was coming up the mid of the Sound, 
 and, unless the ferry-light signalled to 
 her to draw near, she would keep her 
 course north-westward. 
 
 Suddenly Lora realised this. At the 
 same time there flashed into her mind 
 the idea that perhaps Alastair was on 
 board after all, but that he was ill, and 
 had forgotten to tell the captain of 
 his wish to land by the island ferry. 
 
 She turned, and, forgetful or heed- 
 less of her condition, moved swiftly 
 from ledge to ledge, and thence by the 
 path to where, in the cove beyond the 
 clachan, the ferry-boat lay on the tide- 
 swell, moored by a rope fastened to an 
 iron clank fixt in a boulder. 
 
 " Ian ! Ian ! " she cried, as she 
 neared the cove ; but at first she saw 
 no one, save Mrs. Maclean, black 
 against the fire-glow from her cottage. 
 " Ian ! Ian ! " 
 
 A dark figure rose from beside the 
 ferry-shed. 
 
 " Is that you, Ian ? Am bheil am 
 bliata deas ? Is the boat ready ? Bi 
 ealamh ! bi ealamh / mack am bhata: 
 quick ! quick ! out with the boat ! " 
 
 In her eager haste she spoke both in 
 the Gaelic and the English : nor did 
 she notice that the old man did not 
 answer her, or make any sign of doing 
 as she bade him. 
 
 16 
 
" Oh, Tarty bi ealamh I bi ealamh I 
 Faigh am bhata deas ! rack a stigh do'n 
 
 bhctta ! " 
 
 Word for word, as is the wont of the 
 people, he answered her : — 
 
 " Why is it that I should be quick ? 
 Why should I be getting the boat 
 ready ? For what should I be going 
 into the boat? " 
 
 " The Clansman / Do you not see 
 her ? Bi ealamh ! bi ealamh ! or she 
 will go past us like a dream." 
 
 " She has flown no flag, she has no 
 green light at the mast. No one will 
 be coming ashore, and no freight ; and 
 there is no freight to go from here, 
 and no one who wants the ferry unless 
 it be yourself, Lora nighean Tormaid!" 
 
 " Alastair is there : he was to come 
 by the steamer to-day ! Be quick, Ian ! 
 Do you hear me ? " 
 
 " I hear," said the old man, as he 
 slowly moved towards the boulder to 
 his left, unloosed the rope from the 
 iron clank, and drew the boat into the 
 deep water alongside the landing-ledge. 
 
 " There is no good in going out, 
 Lora bhcin .' The wind is rising : ay, 
 I tell you, the wind goes high : we may 
 soon hear the howling of the sea-dogs." 
 
 But Lora, taking no notice, had 
 sprung into the boat, and was already 
 adjusting the long oars to the old- 
 17 
 
fashioned wooden thole-pins. Ian fol- 
 lowed, grumblingly repeating, " Tha ga- 
 oth ruhhr am! Tha coltas stairm' air!" 
 
 Once, however, that the wash of the 
 sea caught the wherry, and the shrewd 
 air sent the salt against their faces, the 
 old man appeared to realise that the girl 
 was in earnest. Standing, he laid hold 
 of the sloped mast, to steady himself 
 against the swaying as the tide sucked 
 at the keel and the short waves slapped 
 against the bows, and then gave a 
 quick calculating glance seaward and 
 at the advancing steamer. 
 
 Rapidly he gave his directions to 
 Lora to take the helm and to keep the 
 boat to windward : — 
 
 " Gabh an stiuir, Lora : cum ris a' 
 ghaoith if" 
 
 The next moment the long oars were 
 moving slowly, but powerfully, through 
 the water, and the ferry-boat drove into 
 the open, and there lay over a little with 
 the double swing of wind and tide. 
 
 The gloaming was now heavy upon 
 the sea ; for a mist had come up with 
 the dipping of the sun, and thickened 
 the dusk. 
 
 Suddenly Ian called to Lora to hold 
 the oars. As soon as she had caught 
 them, and was steadying the boat in 
 the cross surge of the water, he lifted a 
 lantern from under the narrow fore- 
 18 
 
deck, lighted the wick below the scat 
 (after the wind had twice blown the 
 flame into the dark), and then, grip- 
 ping the mast, waved the signal to and 
 fro overhead. 
 
 It was well he thought of this, for 
 the steamer was going at full speed, 
 and would not have slackened. 
 
 In a few minutes thereafter, the 
 heavy stertorous throb and splash was 
 close by them, while the screw revolved 
 now at quarter-speed. 
 
 A hoarse voice came from the Clans- 
 man : 
 
 " Ferry ahoy ! " 
 
 "Ay, ay, ta ferry she will pe," called 
 back Ian in the quaint English of which 
 he was so proud : though he thought 
 the language a poor, thin speech, and 
 fit only for folk who never left the 
 mainland. 
 
 " What are ye oot for, Ian ? Ha' ye 
 ony body comin' aboard ? " 
 
 " We've come out for Mr. Alastair 
 Macleod," Lora broke in eagerly : 
 " we've come to take him off." 
 
 " Hoots, my girl, what for d' ye fash 
 yersel an' us too for the like o' sic 
 havers. There's no one aboard who 
 wants to land at Innisrbn : an' as for 
 Alastair Macleod, he wasna' on the 
 Clansman when we left Greenock, so 
 he couldna' well be on her the now ! 
 19 
 
As for you, Ian Maclean, are ye doited, 
 when, wi' neither flag nor green light 
 aloft, ye stop the steamer like this, a' 
 for a lassie's haverin' ! Ye'll hear o' this 
 yet, my man, I'se telling ye ! Auld fule 
 that ye are, awa' wi' ye ! keep aff the 
 wash o' the steamer : . . . an' by 
 the Lord I'll ..." 
 
 But already the Clansman was forg- 
 ing ahead, and the second - officer's 
 menace was swallowed up in the 
 tumult of churned seas. 
 
 A minute later the steamer was a 
 dark mass to the nor'-west, with a 
 sheet of white writhing after her, and 
 a swirl of flaming cinders from her 
 funnel riding down the night like a 
 shoal of witch-lights. 
 
 The wherry rocked heavily, caught 
 as she was in the surge from the screw, 
 and lying adrift in the sliding hollow's 
 and rough criss-cross of the waves. 
 
 Lora sat motionless and speechless. 
 The old man stared down into the 
 darkness of the boat : but though his 
 lips moved continuously, no sound 
 came from them. 
 
 For a time it was as though a dere- 
 lict were the sport of the sea, which 
 had a dull moan in it, that partly was 
 from the stifled voice of the tide as it 
 forced its way from the cauldrons of 
 the deep, and partly from the fugitive 
 
 20 
 
clamour of breaking waves, and mostly 
 from the now muffled, now loud and 
 raucous sough of the wind as it swung 
 low by the surge, or trailed off above 
 the highest reach of the flying scud. 
 
 At last, in a whisper, the girl spoke. 
 
 "Ian, has aught of evil come to 
 Alastair?" 
 
 " God forbid ! " 
 
 " Do you know anything to his un- 
 doing ? " 
 
 " No, Lora bhan." 
 
 " You have not had the sight upon 
 him lately ? " 
 
 The islesman hesitated a moment. 
 Raising his eyes at last, he glanced first 
 at his companion and then out into the 
 dusk across the waves, as though he 
 expected to see some one or something 
 there in answer to his quest. 
 
 " I dreamt a dream, Lora, wife of 
 Alastair. I saw you and him and 
 another go away into a strange place. 
 You and the other were as shadows ; 
 but Alastair was a man, as now, 
 though he walked through mist, and 
 I saw nothing of him but from the 
 waist upward." 
 
 Silence followed this, save for the 
 wash of the sea, the moan of wind 
 athwart wave, and the soft rush of the 
 breeze overhead. 
 
 Ian rose, and made as though he 
 21 
 
were going to put out the oars ; but as 
 he saw how far the boat had drifted 
 from the shore, and what a jumble of 
 water lay between them and the isle, 
 he busied himself with hoisting the 
 patched brown sail. 
 
 As if no interval had occurred, Lora 
 abruptly called him by name. 
 
 "Ian," she added, "what does the 
 mist mean ? . . . the mist that 
 you saw about the feet and up to the 
 waist of Alastair ? " 
 
 There was no reply. Ian let go the 
 sail, secured it, and then seated him- 
 self a few feet away from Lora. 
 
 She repeated the question : but the 
 old man was obstinately silent, nor did 
 he speak word of any kind till the 
 wherry suddenly slackened, as she 
 slipped under the lee of the little pro- 
 montory of the landing-place. 
 
 " The tide will be on turning now," 
 he exclaimed in his awkward English, 
 chosen at the moment because he did 
 not dare to speak in the Gaelic, fearful 
 as he was of having any further word 
 with his companion ; " and see, after 
 all, the wind she will soon pe gone." 
 
 Lora, who had mechanically steered 
 the boat to its haven, still sat in the 
 stern, though Ian had stepped on to 
 the ledge and was holding the gun- 
 whale close to it so that she might step 
 
 22 
 
ashore with ease. She looked at him 
 as though she did not understand. 
 The old man shifted uneasily. Then 
 his conscience smote him for having 
 used the cold, unfriendly English in- 
 stead of the Gaelic so dear to them 
 both : for was not the girl in the shadow 
 of trouble, and did he not foresee for 
 her more trouble to come? So, in a 
 gentle, apologetic voice, he repeated 
 in Gaelic what he had said about the 
 tide and the wind : — 
 
 "Thill an sruth : DV fhalbh a' 
 g/idoth." 
 
 "There will be peace to-night," 
 he added. " It was but a sunset 
 breeze, after all. There will be no 
 storm. I think now there will be a 
 calm. It will be bad for the herring- 
 boats. It is a long pull and a hard 
 pull when the water sleeps against the 
 keel. A dark night, too, most likely." 
 
 Lora rose, and slowly stepped on 
 shore. She took no notice of Ian's 
 sudden garrulity. She did not seem 
 to see him even. 
 
 He looked at her with momentary 
 resentment: but almost simultaneously 
 a pitiful light came into his eyes. 
 
 " He will be to-morrow," he mur- 
 mured, " and if not, then next day for 
 
 sure " 
 
 Lora moved up the ledge in silence. 
 23 
 
In the middle of the cove she 
 stopped, waved her hand, and, in a 
 dull voice bidding good night, wished 
 sound sleep to him : — 
 
 " Beannachd leibh ! Cadal math 
 dhiubh / " 
 
 Ian answered simply, " Beannachd 
 leibh /" and turned to fasten the rope 
 to the iron clank. 
 
 The dew was heavy, even on the 
 rough salt spear-grass which fringed the 
 sand above the cove. On the short 
 sheep-grass, on the rocky soil beyond, 
 it was dense, and shone white as a 
 shroud in a dark room. A bat swung 
 this way and that, whirling silently. 
 The fall of the wind still sighed in the 
 bent rowan trees to the west of the 
 clachan, where the pathway diverged 
 from the shore. Against the bluff of 
 Cnoc-an-Iolairit swelled intermittently: 
 its voice in the hollows and crevices of 
 the crag broken up in moans and short 
 gasps, fainter and fainter. 
 
 Lora noted all this wearily as she 
 advanced. She was conscious, also, of 
 the nibbling of the sheep, quenching 
 their thirst with the wet grass : of the 
 faint swish of her feet going through 
 the dew : of the dark track, like a 
 crack in black ice, made wherever she 
 walked in the glisten. But though 
 she saw and unwittingly noted, her 
 24 
 
thoughts were all with Alastair and 
 with what had kept him. 
 
 In her remote life there was scarce 
 room for merely ordinary vicissitudes. 
 It was not a thing to ponder as omin- 
 ous that one should go out to sea 
 after herring or mackerel and not 
 return that night or the morrow, or 
 even by the next gloaming, or second 
 dawn ; or that a man should go up 
 among the hills and not come back for 
 long after his expected hour. But that 
 one could miss the great steamer was a 
 thing scarce to believe in. To Lora, 
 who had been so little on the main- 
 land, and whose only first-hand know- 
 ledge of the feverish life of towns was 
 derived from her one winter of school- 
 life at Rothesay and brief visits to 
 Greenock and Oban, it was difficult to 
 realise how any one could fail to leave 
 by the steamer, unless ill or prevented 
 by some serious mischance. The peri- 
 odical coming of the Clansman sym- 
 bolised for her, to a certain extent, the 
 inevitable march of time and fate. To 
 go or come by that steam-driven, wind- 
 heedless vessel was to be above the 
 uncertainties and vicissitudes to which 
 ordinary wayfaring mortals are subject. 
 The girl thought she knew so much 
 that to her all of what town-life meant 
 must be bare, because of her reading : 
 25 B 
 
knowing not that, with a woman whose 
 heart aches, a tear will drown every 
 word writ in any book, a sigh scatter 
 the leaves into nothingness. 
 
 Deep was the puzzle to her as she 
 slowly ascended the path which led to 
 Mary Maclean's cottage. She stopped 
 once or twice, half unconsciously, to 
 smell the fragrance of the bog-myrtle 
 where the gale grew in tufts out of the 
 damper patches, or of the thyme as it 
 was crushed under her feet and made 
 over-sweet, over-poignant by the dew. 
 
 The peat-reek reached her nostrils 
 from the cottage, blent with the 
 breaths of the cows that still loitered 
 afoot, munching the cool wilding fod- 
 der. Her gaze, too, fell upon the fire- 
 lit interior, with a table overspread by 
 a white cloth, flushed by the glow that 
 wavered from betwixt the red-hot bars : 
 and, later, upon the figure of Mrs. 
 Maclean, who had come out to meet 
 her, or, more likely, had been there 
 ever since the ferry-boat had gone off 
 upon its useless errand. 
 
 " Are you wet, Lora ? Are you 
 cold ? " she asked, as the girl drew 
 near. There was no need to say aught 
 of the bitter disappointment, any more 
 than to speak of the glooming of the 
 dusk : both were obvious facts beyond 
 the yea or nay of speech. 
 26 
 
" I am very tired, Mary." 
 
 " Come in, dear, and have your tea. 
 It will do you good. Lora-/no-g/iraidh, 
 you should not have gone out in the 
 ferry-boat. It was no use, and the sea 
 was rough, and you might have come to 
 harm ; and what would Alastair Mac- 
 leod be saying, to-morrow, if he found 
 his hearts-delight ill, and that I had 
 stood by and seen her do so foolish a 
 thing?" 
 
 " Oh, Mary, do you really think he 
 will be here to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Surely." 
 
 " But I fear he will wait now till the 
 next sailing of the Clansman." 
 
 " We cannot say. Come in, my 
 fawn, out of the chill." 
 
 "It is going to be a lovely night. The 
 wind falls fast : even now it is almost 
 still. The purple peace will be upon 
 everything to-night. I am restless : I 
 do not wish to go in-doors." 
 
 " No, no, Lora dear to me ! Come 
 in and have your tea, and then rest. 
 You can rise at daybreak, if you will, 
 and go round the island, lest he should 
 be coming in any of the herring- 
 smacks." 
 
 " I want to speak to Ian." 
 
 "Ian has gone across to Ivor 
 Maquay's ; he will not be here to- 
 night." 
 
 27 
 
Lora looked suspiciously at the 
 speaker. Had she not left Ian a few- 
 minutes ago, and was he not even now 
 following her ? She stared about her, 
 but saw no one. In the gloaming she 
 could just descry the black mass of the 
 wherry. Ian was nowhere visible. She 
 did not think of scrutinising the shadow 
 of the beached and long disused coble 
 which lay a few yards away. Had she 
 done so, she might have perceived the 
 old islesman standing rigid. He had 
 overheard his kinswoman, and under- 
 stood. As soon as the two women had 
 entered the cottage, he moved swiftly 
 and silently away, and, traversing the 
 clachan, was soon swallowed up of the 
 darkness. 
 
 After the meal was ended, Lora 
 found herself overworn with excitement. 
 All wish to go out again went from her. 
 From where she lay resting, she watched 
 Mrs. Maclean put away the things and 
 then seat herself by the fire. 
 
 For a long time neither woman 
 spoke. A drowsy peace abode upon 
 the threshold. 
 
 The hot red glow of the peats shone 
 steadily. 
 
 At first there had been a little lamp 
 
 on the table, but after a time Mrs. 
 
 Maclean had extinguished it. Instead, 
 
 she had thrown upon the fire a log of 
 
 28 
 
pinewood. The dry crackle, the spurt 
 of the sap as it simmered in the heat, 
 the yellow tongues and sudden red 
 fangs and blue flames, gave the sound 
 and glow whereof a sweeter silence can 
 be wrought into what has been but 
 stillness before. 
 
 An hour went by. With brief 
 snatches of talk, all made up of fears 
 and hopes, another hour passed. Then 
 a long quietness again, broken at the 
 last by a low crooning song from 
 the elder woman, as she leaned to 
 the fire and stared absently into its 
 heart. The song was old : older than 
 the oldest things, save the summits of 
 the mountains, the granite isles, and 
 the brooding pain of the sea. Long 
 ago it had been sung by wild Celtic 
 voices, before ever spoken word was 
 writ in letters — before that again, may- 
 hap, and caught perhaps from a wailing 
 Pictish mother — so ancient was the 
 moving old-world strain, so antique the 
 words of the lullaby that was dim with 
 age when it soothed to sleep the child 
 Ossian, son of Fingal. 
 
 When the crooning died away, Lora 
 slept. With soft step Mrs. Maclean 
 moved across the room, and lightly 
 dropped a plaid over the girl's figure, 
 recumbent in beautiful ease upon the 
 low bed-couch. 
 
 29 
 
She returned slowly to her place by 
 the fire. After a while she was about 
 to seat herself, when she started vio- 
 lently. Surely that was a face pressed 
 for a moment against the window ? 
 
 With a strange look in her eyes, she 
 reproved herself for her nervous folly. 
 She sat down, with gaze resolutely fixt 
 on the glowing peats : nor would she 
 have stirred again, but for a sound as 
 of a low moan. 
 
 The blood ran chill in her veins ; 
 her mouth twitched ; and the inter- 
 twisted fingers of her hands were white 
 and lifeless with the fierce grip that 
 came of her fear. 
 
 But she was not a woman to be 
 mastered by terror. With a quivering 
 sigh she rose, looked round the room, 
 forced herself to stare fixedly at the 
 window, and then moved quietly to the 
 door. 
 
 As soon as she felt the air upon her 
 brows she became calm, and all dread 
 left her. 
 
 " Is that you, Ian ? " she whispered. 
 
 There was no one visible : no sound. 
 
 " Is that you, Alastair Macleod ? " 
 
 So low was the utterance that, if any 
 one had been there, he could scarce 
 have heard it. 
 
 To her strained ears it was as though 
 she heard a light susurrus of brushed 
 30 
 
dew : but it might be a wandering 
 breath of air among the gale, or an 
 adder moving through the grass, or a 
 fern-owl hawking under the rowan- 
 trees. 
 
 She waited a little; then, with a sigh 
 of relief, re-entered the cottage and 
 closed the door. 
 
 A glance at Lora showed her that 
 the girl was sleeping unperturbed. For 
 some time thereafter she sat by the fire, 
 brooding over many things. Weary, at 
 last, she rose, cast a farewell glance at 
 the sleeper, and then slipt quietly to 
 her bed in the adjoining room. 
 
 Night lay passively upon the sea, 
 upon the isle, upon the clachan. Not 
 a light lingered in any cottage, save the 
 fire-glow in that of Mary Maclean : a 
 hollow, attenuating beam that stared 
 through the dark unwaveringly. 
 
 Neither star nor moon was visible. 
 The clouds hung low, but without im- 
 minence of rain for the isles, drawn 
 inland as the vapours were by the fore- 
 heads of the bens. 
 
 An hour later the door of the cot- 
 tage opened and closed again, silently. 
 It was Lora who came forth. 
 
 She walked hesitatingly at first, and 
 then more swiftly, not pausing till she 
 reached the little boulder-pier. There 
 she stood motionless, listening intently. 
 
 3i 
 
The water lapped among the hol- 
 lows, above which the ebb-left shellfish 
 gaped thirstily. There was a lift among 
 the dulse-heaps, as though a finger 
 stirred them and let loose their keen 
 salt smells. The bladder-wrack moved 
 with strange noises, sometimes start- 
 lingly loud, oftenest as if sea-things were 
 being stifled or strangled. 
 
 From the promontory came a cry : 
 abrupt, strident — the hunger-note of 
 a skua. The thin pipe of the dot- 
 terel fell into the darkness beyond the 
 shallows where the sea-mist lay. In 
 the Kyle a muffled, stertorous breath, 
 near and twice as far away, told that 
 two whales were in the wake of the 
 mackerel. 
 
 From the isle, no sound. The 
 sheep lay on the thyme, or among the 
 bracken, still as white boulders. The 
 kye crouched, with misty nostrils laid 
 low to the damp grass, rough with 
 tangled gale. The dogs were silent. 
 Even the tufted canna hung straight 
 and motionless. The white moths 
 had, one by one, fallen like a falling 
 feather. The wind-death lay upon 
 all : at the last, too, upon the sea. 
 
 32 
 
II. 
 
 A LOWLY, as though a veil were 
 ^^ withdrawn, the cloudy dusk 
 passed from the lift. The moon, lying 
 in violet shadow, grew golden : while the 
 sheen of her pathway, trailed waveringly 
 across the sea and athwart the isle, 
 made Innisrbn seem as a beautiful 
 body motionlessly adrift on the deep. 
 
 One by one the stars came forth 
 — solemn eyes watching for ever the 
 white procession move onward orderly 
 where there is neither height, nor depth, 
 nor beginning, nor end. 
 
 In the vast stellar space the moon- 
 glow waned until it grew cold, white, 
 ineffably remote. Only upon our little 
 dusky earth, upon our restless span of 
 waters, the light descended in a tender 
 warmth. Drifting upon the sea, it 
 moved tremulously onward, weaving 
 33 bi 
 
the dark waters into a weft of living 
 beauty. 
 
 Strange murmur of ocean, even when 
 deep calm prevails, and not the most 
 homeless wind lifts a weary wing from 
 wave-gulf to wave-gulf. As a voice 
 heard in dream ; as a whisper in the 
 twilight of one's own soul ; as a breath, 
 as a sigh from one knows not whence, 
 heard suddenly and with recognising 
 awe; so is this obscure, troublous echo 
 of a tumult that is over, that is not, but 
 that may be, that awaiteth. 
 
 To Lora it was almost inaudible. 
 Rather, her ears held no other sound 
 than the babbling repetitive chime and 
 whisper of the lip of the sea moving to 
 and fro the pebbles on the narrow 
 strand just beyond her. 
 
 Her eyes saw the lift of the dark, the 
 lovely advance of the lunar twilight, 
 the miracle of the yellow bloom — 
 golden here and here white as frost- 
 fire — upon sea and land : they saw, 
 and yet saw not. Her ears heard the 
 muffled voice of ocean and the sweet 
 recurrent whispering of the foam-white 
 runnels beside her : they heard, and 
 yet heard not. 
 
 Surely, in the darkness, in the lone- 
 liness, she would have knowledge 
 of Alastair. Surely, she thought, he 
 would come to her in the spirit. In 
 34 
 
deep love there is a living invisible line 
 from soul to soul whereby portent of 
 joy or disaster, or passion of loneliness, 
 or passion of fear, or passion of longing 
 may be conveyed with terrifying surety. 
 
 How beyond words dreadful was this 
 remoteness which environed her, as the 
 vast dome of night to a single white 
 flower growing solitary in a waste place. 
 
 Inland upon the isle, seaward, sky- 
 ward, Lora looked with aching eyes. 
 The moonlight wounded her with its 
 peace. The shimmering sea beat to a 
 rhythm atune to a larger throb than 
 that of a petty human life. In the 
 starry infinitude her finitude was lost, 
 absorbed, as a grain of sand windblown 
 a few yards across an illimitable desert. 
 
 That passionate protest of the soul 
 against the absolute unheed of nature 
 was hers : that already defeated revolt 
 of the whirling leaf against the soaring, 
 far-come, far-going wind that knows 
 nothing of what happens beneath it in 
 the drift of its inevitable passage. 
 
 With a sob, she turned, vaguely yearn- 
 ing for the human peace that abode in 
 the cottage. As she moved, she saw a 
 shadow, solidly clear-cut in the moon- 
 light, sweep from a rock close by, as 
 though it were a swinging scythe. 
 
 Instinctively she glanced upward, to 
 see if the cloud-counterpart were over- 
 
 35 
 
head. The sky was now cloudless : 
 neither passing vapour nor travelling 
 wild-swan had made that shadow leap 
 from the smooth boulder into the 
 darkness. 
 
 She trembled : for she feared she 
 had seen the Watcher of the Dead. 
 At the wane of the last moon, an old 
 islesman had passed into the white 
 sleep. Lora knew that his spirit would 
 have to become the Watcher of Graves 
 till such time as another soul should 
 lapse into the silence. Was this he, 
 she wondered with instinctive dread — 
 was this Fergus, weary of his vigil, 
 errant about the isle which had been 
 the world to him, a drifting shadow 
 from graveyard to byre and sheiling, 
 from fold to dark fold, from the 
 clachan-end to the shore-pastures, from 
 coble to havened coble, from the place 
 of the boats to the ferry-rock ? Did 
 he know that he would soon have one 
 to take over from him his dreadful 
 peace ? Or was he in no satiate 
 peace, but an-hungered as a beast of 
 prey for the death of another? And 
 then . . . and then . . . who was 
 this other? Who next upon the isle 
 would be the Watcher of the Dead ? 
 
 With a low, shuddering breath, she 
 sighed, " Fergus /" 
 
 The fall of her voice through the 
 36 
 
silence was an echo of terror. She 
 clasped her hands across her breast. 
 Her body swayed forward as a bulrush 
 before the wind. 
 
 11 Ah, Dial Dial" broke from her 
 lips ; for, beyond all doubt, she saw 
 once again the moving of a darkness 
 within the dark. 
 
 Yet what she saw was no shadow-man 
 weary of last vigil, but something that 
 for a moment filled her with the blind- 
 ness of dread. Was it possible ? Was 
 she waylaid by one of" those terrible 
 dwellers in twilight-water of which she 
 had heard so often from the tellers of 
 old tales ? 
 
 " Toradh nu feudalach gun am 
 faicinn" she muttered with cold lips : 
 " the offspring of the cattle that have 
 not been seen ! " 
 
 " Ah, no, no ! " she cried. The next 
 moment, and with a sob of relief, she 
 saw a moonbeam steal upon the hollow 
 and reveal its quietude of dusk. She 
 would have moved at once from 
 boulder to boulder, eager for that lost 
 sanctuary whence she had come — when 
 the very pulse of her heart sprang to 
 the burst of a human sob close by. 
 
 She stood still, as though frozen. A 
 moment before, the breath from her 
 lips was visible : now not the faintest 
 vapour melted into the night-air. 
 37 
 
Was she dreaming, she wondered, 
 when the stifling grip at her heart had 
 mercifully relaxed. 
 
 No : there was no mistake. Blent 
 with the gurgle and cluck and whisper 
 of the water among the lifted bladder- 
 wrack and in and out of the pools and 
 crannies in the rocks, there was the 
 piteous sound of a human sob. 
 
 All at once, everything became clear 
 to Lora. She knew that Alastair was 
 near : she did not even dread that he 
 was present as a disembodied spirit. 
 He had reached the isle after all, but 
 in some strange sorrow had not sought 
 her straightway. 
 
 "Alastair!" she cried, yearningly. 
 
 No one answered ; no one stirred ; 
 nothing moved. But the muffled sob- 
 bing was hushed. 
 
 " Alastair ! Alastair ! " 
 
 Slowly from a sand-drift beside the 
 ferry-rock a tall figure arose. For a few 
 moments it stood motionless, black 
 against the yellow shine of the moon. 
 The face was pale ; that of a man, 
 young, with the thin lips, the shadowy 
 eyes that in sunlight would shine sea- 
 blue, the high oval features, the tangled, 
 curly, yellow-tawny hair of the islesmen 
 of the ancient Suderoer, in whose veins 
 the Celtic and the Scandinavian strains 
 
 commingle. 
 
 38 
 
Alastair was as visible as though he- 
 were in the noon-light. 
 
 Lora looked at him, speechless. She 
 saw that in his strained eyes, in his 
 wrought features, which told her he had 
 drunken of sorrow. His dishevelled 
 hair, his whole mien and appearance 
 showed that he was in some dire ex- 
 tremity. 
 
 "Alastair/" 
 
 He heard the low, passionate appeal, 
 but at first he did not stir. Then, and 
 yet as though constrainedly and in 
 weariness, he raised and stretched forth 
 his arms. 
 
 Swift as a gliding shadow, Lora was 
 beside him, and claspt to his heart. 
 
 For a time, neither spoke. His heart 
 beat loud and heavily : against his 
 breast her head lay, with her breath 
 coming and going like a wounded bird 
 panting in the green-gloom of the 
 thicket. 
 
 " O Alastair, Alastair, what is it ? " 
 she murmured at last, raising her head 
 and looking into his pale, distraught 
 face. 
 
 " What made you come out in the 
 dark, Lora-muirnean ? " 
 
 " I could not rest. I was too un- 
 happy. I thought — I thought — no, I 
 do not think I dared to believe that 
 you might come to-night after all ; but 
 39 
 
something made me long to go down 
 to the sea. Did you see me only now, 
 dear heart ? " 
 
 "No, Lora." 
 
 For a moment she was still, while 
 she gazed fixedly at Alastair. 
 
 " Ah," she whispered at last, " then 
 you have been here all this night, and 
 I not knowing it ! Ah, Aliiinn, it was 
 you}' heart crying to mine that made 
 me rise and leave the cottage and come 
 out into the dark. But why did you 
 not come to me ? When did you 
 come to Innisron ? How did you 
 come ? " 
 
 " Dear, I could not wait for the 
 Clansman. I left Greenock three hours 
 earlier by the Foam, James Gilchrist's 
 tug ; for he undertook to put me ashore 
 at the haven below Craig-Sionnach. 
 Thence I walked to Dunmore. But I 
 was not well, Lora ; and I was so long 
 on the way that I missed the Clansman 
 as well as the Dunmore herring-steamer. 
 Before nightfall, however, I persuaded 
 Archibald Macleod, of Tighnacraigh, to 
 bring me here on his smack. I landed 
 at the Rock of the Seafolk. It was 
 already dusk, and my heart was against 
 yours in longing, my beautiful gloom : 
 yet over me came such a sorrow that I 
 could not bear the homing, and so 
 moved restlessly from shadow to 
 40 
 
shadow. I felt as though it would be 
 better for me to deal with my sorrow 
 alone and in the night, and that it was 
 more bearable since I was so near you, 
 and that any moment I could go to you." 
 
 "Why, why did you not come, 
 AJastair? Oh, I longed, longed for 
 you so ! " 
 
 " Once I came close to the cottage, 
 almost happy since I knew that you 
 were so near to me. The red glow that 
 warmed the dark without comforted me. 
 I thought I would look in upon you for 
 a moment : and if you and Mary were 
 awake and talking, that I should let 
 you know I had come. But I saw that 
 you lay in sleep ; and I had scarce time 
 to withdraw ere, as I feared, Mary saw 
 me — though see me, indeed, perhaps 
 she did, for in a brief while she opened 
 the door and came out, and would have 
 discovered me but that I moved swiftly 
 to the shadow of the birk-shaws. Then, 
 after a little, I wandered down by the 
 shore. There was a voice in the sea — 
 calling, calling. It was so cool and 
 sweet : soft was the balm of the air of 
 it, as the look of your eyes, Lora, as 
 the touch of your hand. I was almost 
 healed of my suffering, when suddenly 
 the pain in my head sprang upon me, 
 and I crouched in the hollow yonder, 
 chill with the sweat of my agony." 
 41 
 
" O Alastair, Alastair, then you are 
 no better : that great doctor you 
 went so far to see has done you no 
 good?" 
 
 " And in the midst of my pain, Lora 
 my Rest, I saw you standing by the sea 
 upon the ferry -ledge. At first I took 
 you for a vision, and my heart sank. 
 But when the moonlight reached the 
 isle and enfolded you, I saw that it was 
 you indeed. And once more my pain 
 and my sorrow overcame me." 
 
 " Alastair, I am terrified ! It was 
 not thus for you before you went away. 
 Great as was your pain, you had not 
 this gloom of sorrow. Oh, what is it, 
 what is it, dear heart ? Tell me, tell 
 
 me!" 
 
 Slowly Alastair held Lora back from 
 him, and looked long and searchingly 
 into her eyes. 
 
 She shrank, in an apprehension that, 
 like a bird, flew bewildered from the 
 blinding light that flashed out of the 
 darkness — a vain bewilderment of fore- 
 doom. 
 
 Then, with a great effort, she bade 
 him tell her what he had to say. 
 
 Too well he knew there was no time 
 to lose: that any day, any moment, 
 his dark hour would come upon him, 
 and that then it would be too late. Yet 
 he would fain have waited. 
 
" Lora, have you heard aught said 
 by any one concerning my illness ? " 
 
 " Dear, Father Manus told me, on 
 the day you went away, that you feared 
 the trouble which came upon your 
 father, and upon your father's father ; 
 and oh, Alastair my beloved, he told 
 me what that trouble was." 
 
 " Then you know : you can under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " That which now appals me . . . 
 now kills me." 
 
 " Alastair ! " 
 
 " Yes, Lora ? " 
 
 " Oh, Alastair, Alastair, you do not 
 
 mean that . . . that . . . you 
 
 too . . . you are . . . are 
 
 . that you have the . . . the 
 
 . . . mind-dark ? " 
 
 " Dear heart of mine, this sorrow has 
 come to us. I " 
 
 With a sharp cry Lora held him 
 to her, despairingly, wildly, as though 
 even at that moment he were to be 
 snatched from her. Then, in a passion 
 of sobbing, she shook in his arms as 
 a withered aspen-leaf ere it fall to the 
 wind. 
 
 The tears ran down his face ; his 
 mouth twitched ; his long, thin fingers 
 moved restlessly in her hair and upon 
 her quivering shoulder. 
 43 
 
No other sound than her convulsive 
 sobs, than his spasmodic breathing, 
 met in the quietude of whisper-music 
 exhaled as an odour by the sea and by 
 the low wind among the corries and 
 upon the grasses of the isle. 
 
 A white moth came fluttering slowly 
 towards them, hovering vaguely awhile 
 overhead, and then drifting alow and 
 almost to their feet. In the shadow it 
 loomed grey and formless — an obscure 
 thing that might have come out of the 
 heart or the unguarded brain. Upward 
 again it fluttered, idly this way and that: 
 then suddenly alit upon the hair of 
 Alastair, poising itself on spread wings, 
 and now all agleam as with pale phos- 
 phorescent fire, where the moonlight 
 filled it with sheen as of white water 
 falling against the sun. 
 
 The gleam caught Lora's eyes as, 
 with a weary sigh, she lifted her head. 
 
 A strange smile came into her face. 
 Slowly she disengaged her right arm, 
 and half raised it. Alastair was about 
 to speak, but her eyes brought silence 
 upon him. 
 
 " Hush /" she whispered at last. 
 
 He saw that her eyes looked beyond 
 his, beyond him as it seemed. What 
 did she see ? The trouble in his brain 
 moved anew at this touch of mystery. 
 
 " What is it, Lora ? " 
 44 
 
" Hush, hush ! . . . I see a sign 
 from heaven upon your forehead . . . 
 the sign of the white peace that Sheu- 
 mais says is upon them who are of the 
 company of the Beloved." 
 
 " Lora, what are you saying? What 
 is it ? What do you see ? " 
 
 His voice suddenly was harsh, fret- 
 ful. Lora shrank for a moment ; then, 
 as the white moth rose and fluttered 
 away into the dark, faintly agleam 
 with moonfire till it reached the sha- 
 dow, she pitifully raised her hand to 
 his brow. 
 
 " Come, dear, let us go in. All will 
 be well with us, whatever happens." 
 
 "Never . . . never . . . never!" 
 
 " O Alastair, if it be God's will ? " 
 
 " Ay, and if it be God's will ? " 
 
 " I cannot lose you : you will always 
 be mine : no sorrow can part us : 
 nothing can separate us : nothing but 
 the Passing, and that " 
 
 " Lora ! " 
 
 For answer she looked into his eyes. 
 
 " Lora, it is of that, of the Passing : 
 
 . are you . . . are you brave 
 
 enough not only to endure . . . 
 
 but to . . .if we thought it well 
 
 if I asked you . ? " 
 
 A deep silence fell upon both. 
 Hardly did cither breathe. By some 
 strange vagary of the strained mind, 
 45 
 
Lora thought the throb of her heart 
 against her side was like the pulse of 
 the engines of the Clansman to which 
 she had listened with such intent ex- 
 pectation that very evening. 
 
 From the darkness to the north came 
 the low monotone of the sea, as a 
 muffled voice prophesying through the 
 gates of Sleep and Death. Far to the 
 east the tide-race tore through the 
 Sound with a confused muttering of 
 haste and tumult. Upon the isle the 
 wind moved as a thing in pain, or idly 
 weary : lifting now from cranny to 
 corrie, and through glen and hollow, 
 and among the birk-shaws and the 
 rowans, with long sighs and whispers 
 where by Uisghe-dhu the valley of 
 moonflowers sloped to the sea on the 
 west, or among the reeds, and the gale, 
 and the salt grasses around the clachan 
 that lay duskily still on the little brae 
 above the haven. 
 
 " Lora . . . would you . . . 
 would . . ?" 
 
 Only her caught breath at intervals 
 gave answer. The short lisp and gurgle 
 of the water in the seaweed close by 
 came nearer. The tide was on the 
 flood, and the sand about their feet 
 was already damp. 
 
 The immense semicircle of the sky 
 domed sea and land with infinity. In 
 46 
 
the vast space the stars and planets 
 fulfilled their ordered plan. Star by 
 star, planet by planet, sun by sun, uni- 
 verse by universe moved jocund in the 
 march of eternal death. 
 
 Beyond the two lonely figures, sea- 
 ward, the moon swung, green-gold at 
 the heart with circumambient flame of 
 pearl. 
 
 Beautiful the suspended lamp of her 
 glory : a censer swung before the Earth- 
 Altar of the Unknown. 
 
 In their human pain the two drew 
 closer still. The remote alien silences 
 of the larger life around vaguely ap- 
 palled them. Yet Lora knew what was 
 in his thought : what he foreshadowed: 
 what he wished. 
 
 " It shall be as you will, Alastair, 
 heart of me, life of me," she whispered. 
 Then, with clasping arms, and dear 
 entreaty, she urged him homeward. 
 
 " Come, come home, Alastair, Alu- 
 inn. Enough of sorrow to-night. Speak 
 to me to-morrow of all that is in your 
 mind ; but to-night . . . to-night, 
 no more ! My heart will break. Come, 
 dearest. Come, mo mu 'i 'mean.' Hark! 
 the wind is crying in the corrie : it is 
 rising again on the other side of the 
 isle : and we are already chill — oh, 
 cold, so cold ! " 
 
 Hand in hand, they moved slowly 
 47 
 
upward along the little pathway of 
 mingled grass and shingle which led to 
 the clachan from the ferry : he with 
 bowed head, she with upward face. 
 
 A dog barked from a byre, another 
 answered from a sheiling beyond. Sud- 
 denly there was a rushing sound, and 
 Ghaoth, Alastair's dog, came leaping 
 upon his master, whining and barking 
 with joy. He stooped and fondled it ; 
 but in vain tried to quell its ecstasy in 
 seeing him again. 
 
 Whether aroused by the barking of 
 Ghaoth, or having awoke and found 
 Lora absent from the cottage, Mrs. 
 Maclean had risen, lit a candle, and 
 now stood upon the threshold, looking 
 intently at the twain as they approached. 
 
 Among the islefolk many words are 
 not used. The over-arching majesty of 
 the sky, the surrounding majesty of the 
 sea, the loneliness of these little wind- 
 swept spots of earth isled in remote 
 waters, leave a hush upon the brain, and 
 foster eloquent silences rather than idle 
 words. 
 
 Mrs. Maclean knew intuitively that 
 something of disaster was in this 
 nocturnal return of Alastair : that he 
 and Lora had met by chance, or 
 through a summons unknown to her : 
 and that now they came — to her, in 
 their youth, so tragically piteous under 
 48 
 
the shadow of calamity — craving only 
 for that impossible boon of the young 
 in sorrow : peace. 
 
 When they drew near to her, she 
 turned and placed the candle on the 
 table. Then, facing them, she came 
 forward, led them in by the hand, and 
 closed the door. She saw that Ala- 
 stair was hatless, and his clothes damp 
 and travel-stained; so with quiet, home- 
 sweet words, she persuaded him to 
 change his things while she laid some 
 food for him to break his long fast with. 
 
 But though wearily he did the one, 
 he would have nothing of the other 
 save a draught of warm milk. 
 
 A heavy drowsiness was now upon 
 him. He could scarce uplift the lids 
 from his eyes. His voice, when he 
 spoke at all, was so low that it was 
 barely audible. 
 
 After a silence, during which he 
 had looked long at the fire, and closed 
 his eyes at the last, with Lora's gaze 
 hungrily set upon him, and the dark, 
 sweet gloom of Mrs. Maclean's, wet 
 with the dew of unshed tears, upon 
 both of the twain whom she loved so 
 passing well, he murmured huskily and 
 confusedly — 
 
 " By green pastures ... I will 
 
 lay me down to sleep It 
 
 calleth, calleth . . ." 
 
 49 c 
 
Suddenly Mrs. Maclean arose. Tak- 
 ing Lora's hand, she led her to the fire- 
 side and motioned her to kneel beside 
 Alastair. Then, blowing out the candle- 
 flame, she too knelt. Only the fireglow 
 now lit the room, filled with brooding 
 shadows in the corners and with warm 
 dusk where the two women kneeled and 
 the man slept. 
 
 With arms lifted as if in invocation, 
 the elder woman — her face wan under 
 her grey hair, though touched with an 
 unreal glow from the flaming peats — in 
 a low, crooning voice, repeated the 
 ancient rest-words, the ancient prayer 
 of her people, said at the covering up 
 of the fire against the hours of sleep : — 
 
 Smalaidh mise an teine ; 
 Afar a smalas Mac Moire. 
 Glim bit slcin an tigh 's an teine, 
 Gn'm bu slan ddn chuideachd uile. 
 Co sid air an lar ? 
 Peadair agus PU, 
 Co air a bhittts an aire 'nockd ? 
 Air Moire geal 's air a Mac. 
 Beul J)e a dk' innseas, 
 Aingeal geal a lann'ras, 
 Aingeal 'an dorus gach taighe 
 Gu solus gael a maireach. 
 
 I will cover up the fire aright, 
 Even as directed by the Virgin's Son. 
 Safe be the house, and safe the fire, 
 And safe from harm be all the indwellers. 
 Who is that that I see on the floor ? 
 Even Peter himself and Paul. 
 5o 
 
Upon whom shall this night's vigil rest ? 
 I fpon the blameless Virgin and her Son : 
 God's mouth has spoken it. 
 A whiterohed angel shall be with us in the 
 
 dark, 
 Till the coming of the sun at morn. 
 
 When she ceased, there was no sound 
 save the low sobbing of Lora and the 
 quiet breathing of the sleeper in the 
 high-backed chair. 
 
 Having made the sign of the cross 
 upon her breast and over the fire, she 
 covered up the flame with ash and 
 charred peat. Quietly, then, she placed 
 her strong arm around Alastair, and 
 half guided, half lifted him to the bed 
 in the adjoining room where he and 
 Lora were wont to sleep. The girl-wife 
 followed, and, with deft hands, unclad 
 Alastair and laid him gently in the bed. 
 Swiftly disrobing herself, she lay down 
 by his side, her dark hair mingling on 
 the pillow with his tangle of dull gold. 
 
 The gleam still emitted between the 
 bars from beneath the covered peats 
 passed into the room through the open 
 doorway and fell upon the bed. 
 
 Alastair stirred ; opened his eyes ; 
 looked with wild, startled gaze at Lora, 
 then at Mrs. Maclean, who had again 
 knelt, and with raised arms had begun 
 her " Blessing of Peace." 
 
 With a sigh he closed his eyes, and 
 5i 
 
the terror passed from his face. Once 
 or twice he muttered parts of the lines 
 of that ancient sleep-prayer, familiar to 
 him since his boyhood, and before it 
 was ended deep slumber had come 
 upon him. 
 
 Laidhidh mise 'nockd 
 
 Le Moire 's le ''Mac, 
 
 Le mat hair mo Rigk, 
 
 '717 mo dhion 'o dhroch-bheairt , 
 
 Cha laidh mise Zeis an olc, 
 
 'S cha laidh an f olc leant ; 
 
 Ach laidhidh m) le Dia, 
 
 'S laidhidh Dia ma? rhim. 
 
 Lamh dheas Dhefo'm chearni, 
 
 Crois nan naoi aingeal learn. 
 
 '0 mhttllach mo ckinn 
 
 Gn craican mo bhonn. 
 
 Guidheam Peadair, guidheam Pol, 
 
 Guidheam Moir-Oigli 'sa Mac. 
 
 Guidheam an da ostal deug, 
 
 Gun mise 'dhol etig le'n cead. 
 
 'Dhia 'sa Mhoire na gloire. 
 
 'S a Mhic na oigke cubhraidh 
 
 Cumabh mise na piantan dorcha, 
 
 'S Micheal geaf an co 'ail m'anama. 
 
 This night I will lay me down to sleep 
 
 With Mary Virgin and her Son, 
 
 Even with the mother of my King, 
 
 Who protects me from all evil ; 
 
 Nor shall evil lie down to sleep with me, 
 
 But I shall sleep with God : 
 
 And with me shall God lie down. 
 
 His right arm shall be under my head : 
 
 The cross of the Nine Angels be about me, 
 
 From the top of my head 
 
 To the soles of my feet. 
 
 52 
 
I supplicate Peter, I supplicate Paul, 
 
 I supplicate Mary the Virgin and her Son, 
 
 I supplicate the twelve Apostles, 
 
 That evil befal us not this night. 
 
 Mary, in thy goodness and glory, 
 
 And Thou, Son of the sweet-savoured Virgin, 
 
 Protect us this night from all the pains of 
 
 darkness. 
 And thou, Michael, guardian of souls, abide 
 
 with us, watching. 
 
 When she looked down, at the end of 
 her prayer, Mary saw that Lora's eyes 
 also were closed; though by the mutter- 
 ing of the lips she knew her dear one 
 was not asleep. 
 
 Softly she closed the door behind 
 her; then, passing by the fire, went into 
 the third room of the cottage. 
 
 Soon she too was in bed, softly 
 repeating, as the weariness of sleep 
 came over her — 
 
 Cha laidh mise lets an oh, 
 'S cha laidh an (' olc learn. 
 
 Without, came the rising sound of 
 the tide among the pebbles on the 
 shore, the incessant chime of wave 
 lapsing over wave on flat rocks. The 
 sough of the wind fell from the corries 
 of Craig-an-Iolair, and died in whispers 
 among the fern and dew-cold grasses. 
 
 So went the hours from silence into 
 silence. And in time came the dawn, 
 and an ashen-grey upon the sea, and a 
 53 
 
grey gloom upon each leaf and every 
 dusky frond and blade. But when the 
 black of the mainland became gold, 
 and a trouble of light moved, swiftly- 
 throbbing, across the eastern water, 
 Michael the Watcher withdrew. 
 
 At the window of the room where 
 Alastair and Lora slept, the beautiful 
 sunflood of the new day poured in re- 
 joicingly. 
 
 One long streamer of light fell upon 
 his yellow hair and kissed the eyelids 
 of a veiled, subsiding mind. Down- 
 ward it moved, and filled with its gleam 
 the dark-brown hair which lay across 
 the white breast of Lora. Then, surely, 
 it passed beneath the flower of her 
 bosom and into her heart, and warmed 
 it with joy ; for with a smile she awoke, 
 murmuring, "Pharais, Pharais." 
 
 54 
 
III. 
 
 QJAKKORE the wane of that day, the 
 >^ rumour went among the scant 
 population of Innisrbn that Alastair, 
 son of Diarmid of Macleod, was mad : 
 that, in the phrasing of the islesmen, 
 he had the mind-dark. 
 
 Men and women whispered the 
 thing with awe. In the West, some- 
 thing almost of a hieratic significance 
 is involved in the poetic phrase that 
 God has filled with dusk the house of 
 the brain. Not thus is spoken of the 
 violence of insanity — the mere insur- 
 gence of delirium from the fever of hate, 
 or from jealousy, or love, or evil of the 
 blood, or the curse of drink. But that 
 veil of darkness which comes down upon 
 the mind of man or woman in the ful- 
 ness of life, and puts an impermeable 
 mist or a twilight of awful gloom about 
 55 
 
the soul, is looked upon not only with 
 an exceeding tenderness, but with awe, 
 and as of a bowing of the head before 
 a divine mystery. 
 
 Yet the rumour was not true, for 
 Alastair Macleod, though he stood 
 within the shadow, had not yet sunk 
 into the darkness. 
 
 As it had chanced, Mrs. Maclean 
 was not the only person who had seen 
 him and Lora on their return. 
 
 Late in the night Ian Maclean had 
 come back from the western side of the 
 isle, and was standing in the shadow 
 of the byre when, hand in hand, Lora 
 and Alastair approached. 
 
 The old man had been unhappy, and, 
 after leaving his kinsman at Ardfeulan, 
 had wandered up among the corries. 
 In the wail of the wind along the 
 heights, in the sough of it in the little 
 glens and shelving uplands, he heard 
 voices to which he would fain not have 
 listened, for they spoke of a terror that 
 was in the air. 
 
 The moment he saw Alastair's eyes, 
 dark within the moonlit pallor of the 
 face, he knew that his premonitions 
 were no mere imaginings. On his 
 forehead he saw the shadow of doom. 
 
 With a sigh he turned, and, having 
 entered the byre and gone to the part 
 of it shut off for his use, lay down 
 56 
 
upon his bed of fragrant fern. But, 
 weary as he was, he could not sleep. 
 
 Again the vision came to him : and 
 once more he saw Alastair move blindly 
 in an unfamiliar place, with the mist no 
 longer up to his waist only, but risen 
 now to his throat, and with thin tongues 
 reaching upward still. 
 
 The long night went drearily past. 
 When the day was come, Ian rose and 
 let out the kye. The sweet freshness 
 of the air was as balm to his weariness. 
 The wind blew cool upon his brows, 
 and a breath of the sea mingled with 
 the myriad suspiration of the earth 
 and gave him the intoxication of the 
 dawn. His eyes grew brighter, his step 
 firmer, his mien no longer that of pro- 
 found dejection ; and when Ghaoth 
 came leaping towards him, and barked 
 about the half amused, half angry cows 
 — who stopped to plash their hooves in 
 the thick white dew, against which the 
 warm breaths fell revolvingly like grey 
 whorls of steam, and to swing their 
 great horns against their flanks, wild 
 and shaggy as the brown hill-sides in 
 autumn — then all the gloom of the 
 night went from him. 
 
 •• Mayhap it was but a dream," he 
 muttered : " and who can tell the folly 
 of the mind?" 
 
 Then, with Ghaoth's help, he got the 
 57 ci 
 
steers from the neighbouring shed and 
 "Righ-geal," the great tawny-shaggy 
 bull, whose either horn could have 
 pierced right through and beyond the 
 biggest drover who ever crossed the 
 Kyles at Colintraive, and urged all the 
 kine upward to the higher pastures, 
 where the thyme was so sweet, close- 
 clustered as it was among the soft green 
 hair of the isle-grass. 
 
 It seemed to him as though all the 
 larks on Innisrbn were singing at one 
 time and just there, everywhere around 
 and above him. In the birk-shaws, there 
 was a mavis that was as a fount where- 
 from music spilled intoxicatingly : by 
 the burn, the merles called, re-called, 
 and called yet again, and over and over, 
 sweet and blithe, and with loud, reck- 
 less cries of mirth and joy. On every 
 gorse-bush, yellow with bloom, fragrant 
 almost to pain, and filled with the 
 murmur of the wild-bee and the high, 
 thin hum of the wood-wasp, a yellow- 
 hammer flitted to and fro, or sang its 
 tiveet — tweet — tweet — o-o-oh sweet .' — 
 sweet I 
 
 The sky was almost cloudless save 
 for an angry flush in the north-east — a 
 deep, living blue of infinite, though in- 
 discernibly faint gradation. Here and 
 there, too, were thin, almost invisible 
 grey mares' - tails swept upward, as 
 58 
 
though they were snow-dust or sea- 
 spray, before the flying feet of the 
 Weaver of the Winds. 
 
 As soon as Ian had reached the last 
 dyke, and had seen " Righ-geal " lead 
 his impatient following towards the up- 
 lands, he stood swaying his grey head 
 slowly to and fro, with his right hand 
 moving automatically in rhythmic ac 
 cord, while he repeated the familiar 
 " Rann Buachailleachd," or Rune on 
 the driving of the cattle to the pas- 
 tures : — 
 
 Siubhal beinne, siubhal coille, 
 Siubhal gu rcidh fada, farsuinn, 
 Banacha^ Phadniig ma'n casan, 
 'Sgu fate mise slan a rithisd sith. 
 An senn a chuir Moire mu 'buar, 
 Moch 'us anmoch 'sa ligh'n bhtiaidk', 
 Ga'n gleidheadh fholl, O eabar. 
 O fheithe, adh'nean a cheile, 
 O liana 1 na Craige-Ruaidhe, 
 'S o Luaths na Fcinne. 
 Banachag Phadruig rna'r casan, 
 Gu'rn bu slan a tkig sibh dhachaidh. 
 
 Wandering o'er uplands, wandering thro' 
 
 woods, 
 Hence and far away wander ye still, 
 St. Patrick's own milkmaid attend your steps 
 Till safe I see you return to me again. 
 The charm that Mary made to her cattle, 
 Early and late, going and coming from pas- 
 ture, 
 Still keep you safe from quagmire and marsh, 
 From pitfalls and from each other's horns, 
 
 59 
 
From the sudden swelling by the Red Rock, 
 And from the hound Luath of the Fingalians. 
 St. Patrick's milkmaid attend your feet, 
 Safe and scatheless come ye home again. 
 
 Then, calling Ghaoth from the already 
 scattered kye, he turned and made his 
 way back to the clachan. 
 
 When he entered Mrs. Maclean's 
 cottage, where his breakfast of porridge 
 was ready, he made and received the 
 usual salutation of blessing : and then 
 sat down in silence. 
 
 The room was full of sunlight — so full 
 that Mrs. Maclean had hung a screen 
 of bracken from an iron hook, so that 
 it shielded the peat-fire and let the life 
 of the flame burn unchecked. 
 
 He did not look at Alastair ; and, 
 indeed, all the morning-blitheness had 
 gone out of the eyes of the old man. 
 Not that any there noticed his tacitur- 
 nity. Mrs. Maclean moved softly to 
 and fro. Alastair sat broodingly in the 
 leathern chair before the fire : Lora on 
 a stool at his feet, with her right hand 
 claspt in his left and her eyes fixt on 
 his face. On the table the porridge was 
 untouched, the new bread uncut, the 
 warm milk grown tepid. 
 
 With a sigh, Alastair rose at last. 
 
 Crossing the room, he went to the east 
 
 window and stared forth unseeingly, or, 
 
 at any rate, without sign of any kind. 
 
 60 
 
Then, restlessly, he began to pace to 
 and fro. Repressing her tears, Lora 
 seated herself at the table and tried to 
 eat, hopeful that she might thus induce 
 him to do likewise. Mrs. Maclean fol- 
 lowed her example, but ate in silence. 
 She had almost ended, when Lora saw 
 that she had abruptly laid down her 
 spoon and was looking intently at Ian. 
 
 The old man now followed every 
 motion of the invalid with a look as of 
 one fascinated. When, suddenly, Ala- 
 stair turned, went to the door and 
 crossed the threshold, Ian rose and 
 followed. 
 
 A few seconds later he came back, 
 his withered face almost as white as his 
 hair. 
 
 Mrs. Maclean met him ere he could 
 speak. 
 
 " Not a word before her" she whis- 
 pered. " Meet me at the byre: I shall 
 be there in a minute or two." 
 
 But just then Lora rose and went 
 out. 
 
 " Ian Maclean, what is it ? " 
 
 " Mary, my kinswoman, he is not 
 alone." 
 
 " Not alone ? " 
 
 " I have seen the other.'" 
 
 She knew now what he meant. He 
 had seen the shadow-self, the phantasm 
 of the living that, ere death, is often 
 61 
 
seen alongside the one who shall soon 
 die. Mrs. Maclean knew well that this 
 shadowy second-self simulated the real 
 self, and that even all the actions of the 
 body were reproduced with a grotesque 
 verisimilitude. But she was also aware 
 how, sometimes, one may learn from 
 the mien of the phantasm what is 
 hidden in the aspect of the doomed. 
 
 " Last night," Ian went on in a dull 
 voice, "I had the sight again. I saw 
 the mist of death as high about him as 
 when a man is sunken in a peat-bog 
 up to the eyes." 
 
 " Well ? I know you have more to 
 say." 
 
 " Aye." 
 
 " Speak, Ian ! " 
 
 With a long, indrawn breath, the oM 
 man resumed in a slow, reluctant voic 
 
 " When I came in, a little ago, I saw 
 the sorrow there was on every face. 
 My vision, too, came back upon me, 
 and I had trouble. I meant to eat 
 and go out quickly. But when Mr. 
 Alastair began to move about, I saw 
 that he was not alone. I knew the 
 other at once. There could be no 
 mistake. In dress, in height, in face, 
 in movement, they were the same. 
 But there was a difference." 
 
 Mrs. Maclean shuddered slightly, 
 and her lips opened as though she 
 62 
 
were about to speak. With a gesture, 
 however, she signed to Ian to con- 
 tinue. 
 
 " Aye, there was a difference. I 
 hoped against my eyes ; but when I 
 followed him yonder I saw what I saw, 
 and what killed my hope." 
 
 " Speak, speak, Ian ! " 
 
 "In all things the same but one, 
 and that was in the eyes, in the ex- 
 pression. Those of Mr. Alastair were 
 dull and lightless, and brooding low; 
 those of the other were large and wild, 
 and stared in terror and amaze ; and 
 on the face of the thing the Fear lay, 
 and moved, and was alive." 
 
 "O Ian, Ian, what does it mean?" 
 
 " It means this, Mary, daughter of 
 Donnacha, what, sure, you know well : 
 that not only is the shadow of death 
 near this house, but that upon Alastair 
 Mae Diarmid is the mind-dark that 
 lay upon his father and upon his 
 father's father." 
 
 "The curse of Michael be upon this 
 evil, Ian ! " 
 
 " Even so, Mhoire nighean Don- 
 nacha." 
 
 "His father was the third of his race 
 in succession who, soon or late, fell 
 under that shadow. And we all know, 
 sure we all know, that after the third 
 generation the veil is withdrawn. This 
 63 
 
thing is an evil dream of yours, Ian 
 Maclean ! " 
 
 " It is an evil doing of some one" 
 muttered the old man, with sombre 
 eyes. 
 
 "Perhaps"— . . . 
 
 But before Mrs. Maclean could say 
 what was in her mind, Alastair and 
 Lora entered. 
 
 With downcast eyes Ian passed out, 
 giving a furtive, terrified look behind 
 him ere he closed the door. 
 
 It was through the old isleman that 
 the rumour of Alastair Macleod's mad- 
 ness went abroad. 
 
 Long before the stormy afternoon 
 which followed the beautiful youth of 
 that day, with its ominous morning-red 
 in the north-east, had waned to gloam- 
 ing, there was not a soul on Innisron 
 who did not know of the sorrow. 
 
 Yet no one came near out of a cruel 
 sympathy : no one spoke heedless words 
 either of question or solace to Mrs. 
 Maclean ; for none could be said to 
 the two most concerned, neither 
 Alastair nor Lora having been seen 
 throughout the day. 
 
 Nevertheless, a deep resentment 
 
 prevailed against one person upon the 
 
 island. Not only had the Spring gone 
 
 ill with the fishing, but the nets had 
 
 64 
 
been torn and trailed in a way that 
 suggested something beyond the blind 
 malice of wind and wave and the 
 currents of the deep sea and the savage 
 dog-fish. Several cows had ceased to 
 give milk ; hens had ceased to lay ; 
 and Gregor McGregor's white mare 
 had dropped a dead foal, the first time 
 such a thing had happened on the isle. 
 And now that, unforeseen and in the 
 heyday of youth and health, the worst 
 of all troubles had come upon Alastair 
 Macleod, many recalled how his father, 
 Macleod of Dunvrechan, who had died 
 on Innisrbn, had not only once de- 
 nounced old Ealasaid MacAodh as a 
 woman of the evil eye, but had cursed 
 her ere he died, and attributed his 
 misery to a blight of her working. 
 
 As one spake to another, the same 
 thought came into each mind : that 
 the old widow who lived at Craig- 
 Ruaidh, at the head of the Glen of the 
 Dark Water, had put her malice upon 
 Alastair Mac Diarmid. 
 
 Some one, in a group by the ferry, 
 reminded her hearers that, by a mis- 
 chance, every one on the isle save 
 Widow MacAodh had been invited 
 to the feast in the little mission-house, 
 when " Lora nigheaii matghstir Tor- 
 maid" was wedded : and how it was 
 well known that old Ealasaid had been 
 65 
 
full of anger and pain at the slight, 
 and had since scarce spoken with any 
 one save Mrs. Maclean, with whom no 
 bitterness was ever long to endure. 
 
 " Ay, ay, it's her doing — it's her 
 doing," was muttered all round ; " she 
 has put the spell of the evil eye upon 
 him — foreigner that she is." 
 
 Many years had gone by since 
 Duncan ban MacAodh, a Hebridean 
 who had settled in Innisrbn, brought 
 thither a wife out of remote St. Kilda. 
 Long since he had gone to his rest, 
 and lay among the few dead under the 
 great runic cross at the extreme of Ard- 
 feulan, on the west of the isle : yet he 
 was still " the man from Uist," as his 
 widow was still the " outlander." 
 
 " Ian," said Pol Macdonald, one of 
 the oldest of the fishermen, " you too 
 are said to have the thing in you, 
 though you always look through both 
 eyes, and with good will to man and 
 beast. Let you, and two others of us, 
 go to-night to Widow Ealasaid's, and 
 do you look upon her and find out if 
 she is accursed : . and then 
 
 . and then . . ." 
 
 No one spoke, though a veiled con- 
 senting glance went between Mac- 
 donald and Ian and a young islesman, 
 Ronald Macrae, who lived over by 
 Ardfeulan. 
 
 66 
 
It was not a subject to discuss further 
 in that hour of uncertainty. One o 
 two members of the group had already 
 edged away, when Kathia Macdonald 
 suddenly drew attention to the appear- 
 ance of the first three of the returning 
 herring-boats, anxiously expected for 
 over an hour past. 
 
 The brown-sailed wherries came in 
 under the lee of the isle in a smother of 
 foam. Already a snarling north-easter 
 was racing over the sea, still smelling of 
 the ling and bracken it had flattened as 
 it tore over the summits of the mainland 
 hills. 
 
 The water was of a shifting emerald 
 near the haven ; of a dark bottle-green 
 beyond ; and, out in the open, black, 
 fretted and torn with staring white 
 splashes and a myriad-leaping surge. 
 
 The race of the sea-horses had begun, 
 and no one on Innisron was at ease till 
 the last boat had come safely round 
 from Ardgheal, the point whence on the 
 yestereve Lora had so eagerly watched 
 for the coming of her husband. 
 
 A fiery sunset disclosed the immense 
 and swirling procession of clouds high 
 over the isle — cloud not only racing 
 after cloud, but often leaping one upon 
 the other as flying sheep in panic. 
 Towards the east, the vapours were 
 larger and darker : the cohorts more 
 67 
 
densely massed. Above the mainland 
 stretched one vast unbroken phalanx of 
 purple-livid gloom, out of the incessant 
 and spasmodically convulsive travail in 
 whose depths swept monstrous cloud- 
 births. 
 
 As the night fell, there was audible 
 beyond the hills the noise of a baffled 
 thunderstorm — a tempest which had 
 been caught among the mountains, and 
 could no more lift itself over the sum- 
 mits than a screaming and wrestling 
 eagle could tear itself from a stag in 
 whose hide its talons had become irre- 
 movably gript. 
 
 Above the peaks and along the flank 
 of the mass of livid gloom, spears of 
 lightning were swung against the wind ; 
 and with splinter and flash, there was a 
 rain of whirled lances as against some 
 unseen assault from below. 
 
 The tumult soared, hurled down- 
 ward, and fell upon Innisron. The 
 islefolk listened in the dark with awe. 
 Roar and crash, and a frightful, terrify- 
 ing howling followed every blast, as of 
 a volcano belching forth avalanche after 
 avalanche, and shaking to the valleys 
 the debris of all the hills. Roar upon 
 roar, crash upon crash, howl upon howl: 
 with the strident raucous scream of 
 the wind, yelling a pa^an of triumph 
 as it leapt before the javelins of the 
 68 
 
lightning and tore in its ruinous might 
 far out across the heaving, swaying, 
 moaning sea. 
 
 It was a night for all who fare by or 
 upon the deep waters to remember with 
 awe : for those whose lives, and kin, 
 and gear had gone scatheless, to recol- 
 lect with thanksgiving : for those whose 
 weal went with it, to recall with bowed 
 heads or wet eyes. 
 
 An hour or more after nightfall, three 
 figures moved with the wind across 
 the isle : blurred shadows astir in the 
 tempest-riven dark. Ronald Macrae 
 carried a lantern ; but speedily laid it 
 down by a cairn, for the flame could 
 not live. 
 
 He and Ian and Pol were grimly 
 silent, not only on the path through the 
 wind-swept heather, but when under 
 shelter from a bight of hillside or over- 
 hanging crag. The business that took 
 them out in that tempest lay heavy 
 upon them. 
 
 If, out of her own mouth, or by sign 
 or deed of her own, Ealasaid should 
 convict herself of the use of the evil- 
 eye, her doom would be fixt. Even in 
 the bitterness of superstition, however, 
 the islemen were not bent upon the 
 extreme penalty, the meed of those 
 who deal in witchcraft. The dwellers 
 69 
 
on Innisrbn, as all who live among the 
 outer isles in general, are too near the 
 loneliness of life and death to be wanton 
 in the taking away of that which is so 
 great in the eyes of man and so small 
 in the eyes of God. 
 
 The worst they intended was to make 
 Ealasaid bring her own doom upon her: 
 then, on the morrow, her sheiling would 
 be burned to the ground and the ashes 
 scattered to the four quarters, while she 
 herself would be exiled from the island 
 under ban of cross, mystic word, and 
 the ancient Celtic anathema. 
 
 So wild was the wind and dark the 
 way, that a full hour passed before they 
 reached the Glen of the Dark Water, 
 and heard the savage ramping and 
 charging of the endless squadrons of 
 the waves against the promontory of 
 Ardfeulan. 
 
 As they drew near the little cottage, 
 a lonely dwelling on the brae which 
 sloped to the glen, they saw that the 
 occupant had not yet gone to bed, for 
 a red gleam of light stole comfortingly 
 across the forlorn dark. 
 
 With a significant touch on the 
 shoulder of each of his companions, 
 Ian led them to within a yard or two 
 of the window. 
 
 " Hush," he whispered, in a momen- 
 tary lull ; " make no noise as we look 
 70 
 
in. She might hear, and blast us 
 with her evil eye. Perhaps she is 
 even now talking with some warlock 
 or fiend." 
 
 Trembling, the three men huddled 
 under the wall. At last, slowly, and 
 with hearts wildly athrob, they raised 
 themselves and looked within. 
 
 The room was bare in its clean 
 poverty. On the rickety wooden table 
 was a bowl with a little unfinished 
 porridge in it. A yard away was an 
 open Gaelic Bible, with a pair of horn 
 spectacles laid across the open page. 
 At a spinning stool between the table 
 and the peat-fire was an old woman, 
 kneeling, wit!; her hands claspt and 
 her face upraised. On the poor, tired, 
 worn features was a look of pathetic 
 yearning, straining from a white and 
 beautiful peace. 
 
 So rapt was she that she did not see 
 a hand move the outer latch of the 
 window, or feel the sudden breath of 
 the night-air. 
 
 Then those without, waiting to 
 hearken to sorcery more appalling than 
 the savagery of the tempest, heard old 
 Ealasaid repeat this prayer : 
 
 Tha 'n la tris airfalb/i uainn, 
 Tha 'n oidluhc 'tigkinn orm dlitth ; 
 'S ni viise luidhe gu dion 
 
 Fo dhttbJiar sgiath nio ruin. 
 
 71 
 
O gach cunnart 's o gach bas, 
 
 'S o gach namhaid tK aig Mac Dhe, 
 
 twdur dhaoiue borba, 
 
 'So choirbteai'kd mo nadidr f'ein, 
 Gabhaidh mis' a nis armachd Dhe, 
 Gun bhi reubta no briscP, 
 'Sge b' oil his an fsatati 'j h phairt 
 Bi'dh mis' air mo gheard a nis. 
 
 The day is now gone ; 
 Dark night gathers around, 
 And I will lay me safely down (to sleep) 
 Under the shadow of my Beloved One's wing. 
 Against all dangers, and death in every form, 
 Against each enemy of God's good Son, 
 Against the anger of the turbulent people, 
 And against the corruption of my own nature, 
 
 1 will take unto me the armour of God —   
 That shall protect me from all assaults : 
 And in spite of Satan and all his following, 
 I shall be well and surely guarded. 
 
 When, after an interval of speechless 
 prayer, the lonely old woman rose pain- 
 fully to her feet, she noticed the open 
 window, and heard the sough of the 
 wind without. 
 
 With a tired sigh, she crossed the 
 room to close the inside latch. But, at 
 the window, she stood irresolute, held 
 by the noise of the sea beating against 
 the clamour of the wind. She stooped, 
 and peered forth. 
 
 Not a thing was visible. Suddenly a 
 broad wavering gleam of sheet-lightning 
 lit up the whole brae. Almost, she 
 
 72 
 
fancied, she could have sworn she saw 
 three human figures, with bowed heads, 
 moving across the brow of the slope. 
 
 She could not know that three men, 
 stricken with shame and remorse — 
 remorse which would ere long bloom 
 into the white flower of repentance, to 
 be worn lovingly by all on the isle — 
 were stealing homeward from a vain 
 and wicked errand. 
 
 With a shudder, she crossed her- 
 self, fearing that the figures she had 
 imagined, or had really seen, were the 
 three dreadful Accursed who drove the 
 spear into Christ's side and the nails 
 into His hands and feet, and with mock- 
 ing offered Him the bitter sponge. 
 
 Slowly repeating — 
 
 O gach cunnart 's o gach bds, 
 
 'S o gach namhaid th' aig Mac Dhe, 
 
 she quenched with charred peat the 
 flame of her fire, and was soon in a 
 child-like rest " under the shadow of 
 the wing of her Beloved One." 
 
 When midnfg'ht came upon the isle, 
 the worst violence of the storm was 
 over. Nevertheless, upon the sea was 
 the awfulness of desolation, the rumour 
 of a terrible wrath. 
 
 All slept at last : the innocent Eala- 
 73 d 
 
said, the foolish seekers of evil, the 
 islefolk one and all — except two. 
 
 Alastair and Lora lay in each 
 other's arms as children terrified in 
 the dark. 
 
 That afternoon his madness had 
 come upon him for a while ; and he 
 had smiled grimly at he knew not 
 what, and laughed while the tears 
 streamed from the eyes of Lora and 
 Mary ; and moaned betimes ; and cried 
 out against the calling of the sea ; and 
 closed his ears against the frightful 
 wailing of a kelpie in the tarn beyond 
 the byre ; and, at the last, shook as in 
 an ague before the fire, fearful of some 
 informulate terror, but with such a 
 crown of sorrow on his forehead that 
 the two women bowed their faces in 
 their hands, speechless with grief : with 
 such a horror in his eyes that Ghaoth 
 shrank from him with bristling fell and 
 upcurled, snarling lip. 
 
 But with the night came yet another 
 merciful lifting of the veil. 
 
 While the storm raged at its worst, 
 the three kneeled, and Mrs. Maclean 
 read from the beautiful Gaelic Scrip- 
 ture. Then, with all the tenderness of 
 her childless passion of maternity, she 
 prayed for God ; s balm and peace and 
 the healing of His hand. 
 
 When, in time, she went to her own 
 
 74 
 
room, Alastair and Lora talked for long 
 in a low voice. 
 
 On the day he had first heard that 
 the seed of life had taken root in her 
 womb, and knew that a child was to be 
 born of their great love, he had known 
 a thrill of such rapture that he could 
 scarce see Lora for the blinding of the 
 tears of joy. 
 
 Beautiful she was to all : to him, 
 lovely and tender as twilight and dear 
 beyond words : but at that moment, 
 when he learned from her own lips of 
 her only half explicable trouble, he 
 knew he had passed into a Holy of 
 Holies of love and reverent passion 
 such as he had but vaguely dreamed of 
 as possible. 
 
 But now, on this wild night of storm 
 without and more awful dread within, 
 he recalled with horror what had been 
 driven from his mind. 
 
 Bitter as was the doom he and Lora 
 had to face, tenfold bitter was it made 
 by the thought that they were to bring 
 into the world yet another soul shrouded 
 in the shadow of his own intolerable 
 ill. 
 
 And so it was that, at the last, Ala- 
 stair and Lora Macleod, knowing his 
 madness was at hand and could be 
 cured of no man, and that their lives 
 were spilled out as lees from a cup, and 
 75 
 
that they were witlessly dooming the 
 unborn child to a heritage of grief, 
 gave solemn troth to each other that 
 on the morrow they would go forth 
 hand in hand, and, together in death 
 as in life, lay themselves beneath that 
 ever wandering yet ever returning wave 
 which beats day and night, and week 
 by week, and year by year, and without 
 end for ever, about the sea-gathered 
 graveyard on the remote west of In- 
 nisrbn. 
 
 Then was a great peace theirs. For 
 the last time they laid themselves down 
 on their bed : for the last time twined 
 their arms around each other, while on 
 the same pillow their heads lay side by 
 side, the hair about his forehead wet 
 with her falling tears : for the last time 
 they kept vigil through the terror of 
 the dark — an awful terror now, with 
 the wrath of the sea without, with the 
 shadow of Death within the room, with 
 the blackness of oblivion creeping, 
 creeping from chamber to chamber 
 in the darkened house of a dulled, 
 subsiding brain. 
 
 Ere dawn, Alastair slept. Lora lay 
 awake, trembling, longing for the day, 
 yet praying God to withhold it ; sick 
 with baffled hope, with the ache of 
 weariness, with the sound of the moan 
 and hollow boom of the sea. More 
 76 
 
deep and terrible in her ears grew that 
 midnight Voice, reverberant in the 
 room as in the whorl of a shell : a 
 dreadful iterance of menace, a dirge 
 that confusedly she seemed to know 
 well, a swelling chant, a requiem. 
 
 77 
 
IV. 
 
 77 N hour after sunrise there was not 
 a cloud in the sky. The first 
 day of June came clad in the fulness 
 of summer. Sea and land seemed as 
 though they had been immersed in 
 that Fount of Life which wells from 
 the hollow of the Hand which up- 
 holdeth Tir-na-h'Oighe, the isle of 
 eternal youth. 
 
 The low island-trees had not suf- 
 fered as had those on the mainland : 
 yet everywhere were strewn branches, 
 and, on the uplands, boughs wrenched 
 away, and often hurled far from the 
 parent tree. 
 
 But upon all the isle there was now a 
 deep quiescence. In the warm languor, 
 even the birds sang less wildly clear, 
 though the high, remote, falling lark- 
 music floated spirally earthward, poig- 
 78 
 
nantly sweet. An indescribably delicate 
 shimmer of haze lay on the heights 
 and pastures, and where the corries 
 sloped jaggedly seaward, each with a 
 singing burn splashing or wimpling 
 adown its heart. From the uplands 
 came the lowing of the kine, the bleat- 
 ing of the ewes and lambs, the rapid 
 whirring gurgle of the grouse among 
 the heather. The wailing of curlews 
 rose and fell ; the sharp cries of the 
 cliff-hawks beat against Craig-Ruaidh. 
 High overhead, as motionlessly in 
 motion as the snow-white disc of the 
 moon lying immeasurably more remote 
 within the vast blue hollow of the sky, 
 an eagle poised on outspread wings, 
 and then, without visible effort or move- 
 ment, drifted slowly out of sight like a 
 cloud blown by the wind. 
 
 Only upon the sea was something of 
 the tumult of the past night still a 
 reality. 
 
 Around the isle, and in the wide 
 Sound between it and the mainland, 
 the " white sheep " moved in endless 
 procession, no longer wildly dispersed 
 and huddled and torn by the wolves of 
 the tempest. Oceanward the sea-horses 
 swept onward magnificently, champing 
 and whirling white foam about their 
 green flanks, and tossing on high their 
 manes of sunlit rainbow gold, dazzling- 
 79 
 
white and multitudinous far as sight 
 could reach. 
 
 Clamour of gulls, noise of waves, lisp 
 and chime and flute-call of the shallows 
 among the rock-holes and upon the 
 whispering tongues of the sea-weed — 
 what joy, and stir, and breath of life ! 
 
 Hand in hand, in the hot noon, Lora 
 and Alastair went idly along the sheep- 
 path leading from the clachan to the 
 promontory of Ardgheal. The smell 
 of the brine from the sea and wrack- 
 strewn shore, the sun-wrought fragrance 
 of the grass and thyme, of bracken and 
 gale, of birch and hawthorn and trail- 
 ing briar, of the whole beautiful, living, 
 warm body of the earth so lay upon 
 the tired senses with a healing as of 
 balm, that even the tears in Lora's eyes 
 ceased to gather, leaving there only a 
 softness as of twilight-dew in violets. 
 
 It was to be their last walk in the 
 sunshine of that day — their last par- 
 ticipance in the sunshine of life. 
 
 All the morning had been spent by 
 Alastair in writing and brooding. Once 
 again he had talked over with Lora that 
 projected deed, which to them seemed 
 the one right and fitting end to the 
 tragedy of circumstance. She had 
 promised that even if the darkness 
 came down upon his mind irretrievably 
 she would fulfil her troth with him. 
 80 
 
Great love casteth out fear; hut even 
 if this had not been so with her, she 
 bore in mind the menace of what he 
 had said about the child. 
 
 She, too, had spent a little of that 
 last morning in writing, though her 
 letter was not to go across the sea to 
 the mainland, but to be left with old 
 Ian to give to Mary on the morrow. 
 
 It was close upon noon when she 
 saw that Alastair's gloom was upon him 
 again, though he was now as quiet as a 
 child. Taking his hand, she led him 
 forth, heedful to avoid the clachan, and 
 vaguely wishful to visit once more that 
 little eastern haven of Ardgheal where, 
 but two days ago, she had longingly 
 awaited Alastair's return, and where, 
 months before, he had first won her 
 love. 
 
 He seemed to take pleasure in the 
 sight of the sea he loved so well, and 
 in the songs of the birds, and to be 
 vaguely displeased because Ghaoth 
 would not leap to his caress as usual, 
 or else would crouch at his feet with 
 startled eyes and low whine. 
 
 When Lora spoke, he answered 
 seldom ; but when he did, she knew 
 that he understood. Once or twice he 
 looked at her strangely; and once, with 
 a thrill of awe and dread, she saw that 
 it was unrecognisingly. 
 
 81 Di 
 
With a sob, she turned and put 
 her arms about him. Never had he 
 seemed so fair in her sight — tall and 
 comely as a young pine, of a beauty 
 beyond that of any man she had ever 
 seen. No wonder that her father, fami- 
 liar lover of the Ossianic ballads, had 
 been wont, remembering the beauty of 
 the second son of Usnoth, lord of 
 Etha, to call Alastair Ailthos. 
 
 " Dear, my dear one, Ailthos, Ala- 
 stair !" she cried, clinging close. " Look 
 at me ! Speak to me ! Do you not 
 know me ? " 
 
 Slowly he turned his eyes upon her, 
 and after a brief perplexity the shadow 
 went out of them, and he smiled gently. 
 
 " Let us go home, my fawn," he 
 whispered. " I am tired. It would be 
 too sad to go down to Ardgheal." 
 
 He had already caught sight of the 
 smoke of a steamer beyond Dunmore 
 Point; and fearing that it might be the 
 Clansman — for he thought the hour 
 much later than it was — he hoped to 
 spare Lora another needless pang. 
 Moreover, his growing dread of seeing 
 any one was stronger than ever upon 
 him. 
 
 So they turned thus soon even in 
 
 that last sunshine, and, entering the 
 
 cottage, sat before the smouldering 
 
 peat-fire ; he brooding darkly, Lora 
 
 82 
 
dreaming through her slow - welling 
 tears, and both .... waiting. 
 
 Though, at dusk, a heavy sea still 
 ran, it was partly due to the surge of 
 the ground-swell and to the turbulence 
 of the tide, for there was but little wind 
 even away from the shelter of the isle, 
 and what there was came mostly in 
 short, sudden puffs and wandering 
 breaths. 
 
 In the quietude of the gloaming, it 
 was as though the sea called all round 
 Innisron as a beast of prey stalks about 
 a high sheepfold, growling, breathing 
 heavily, ravening. 
 
 After the supper, eaten frugally and 
 in silence, Lora and Alastair listened 
 once again to the peat-prayer and the 
 Blessing of Peace of Mrs. Maclean ; 
 then, not daring to say any word to her 
 but that of a husky farewell for the 
 night, and fearful even of meeting the 
 glance of her quiet eyes, they went to 
 their room, there to sit silently awhile 
 in the darkness, hand in hand. 
 
 No one saw them leave the cottage 
 an hour later : not a soul heard them 
 as they passed through the clachan. 
 
 The road they chose was that sheep- 
 path through the heather which led to 
 Ardfeulan by the Glen of the Dark 
 Water. Each knew the way well, other- 
 83 
 
wise their faring westward would have 
 been difficult, for the sky was veiled by 
 a thin mist and the moon was not 
 visible. 
 
 They walked in silence ; sometimes 
 Lora in advance, but, whenever practi- 
 cable, together, and hand in hand. 
 
 At last they reached the Glen of the 
 Dark Water, and perceived through 
 the gloaming the sheiling of Ealasaid 
 MacAodh. This they skirted, and then 
 entered a sloping hollow, at the base of 
 which was audible the hoarse murmur- 
 ing of the sea. Lora knew the place 
 well. A week ago she had been there 
 with Alastair, and remembered that the 
 whole slope was a mass of moonflowers, 
 tall, white, and so close-clustered that 
 the green stems could hardly be seen.* 
 
 The wan glimmer of them was per- 
 ceptible now, like the milky way on a 
 night when a faint frost-mist prevails. 
 Around, there was nothing else visible. 
 Not a tree grew in that place : not a 
 crag rose out of the sea of death-white 
 blooms. The low-hanging mist-cloud 
 veiled all things. It was as though the 
 grave had been passed, and this was 
 the gloom of the Deathsleep Land that 
 lies beyond. Only there is eternal 
 
 * A tall, cream-white marguerite, native 
 to the Outer Isles and the Hebrides, is known 
 to the Islanders as the Moonflower. 
 
 84 
 
silence : here, the dull menace of the 
 sea made a ceaseless murmur about the 
 obscure coasts. 
 
 As they entered the valley of moon- 
 flowers, dimly seeing their way a few 
 yards beyond them, and hearkening to 
 the inwash and resurgence of the tide 
 moving along the extreme frontiers of 
 the land, a sense of unspeakable dread 
 came over Alastair and Lora. 
 
 They stood still, hardly daring to 
 breathe. Both vaguely remembered 
 something : they knew not what, save 
 that the tragic memory was linked with 
 reminiscence of a valley of moonflowers 
 seen in a dark twilight. Was it all a 
 dream, coincident in their minds? Or 
 had life once before, in some unre- 
 membered state, wrought tragic issues 
 for them by a valley of white flowers 
 seen in the darkness, with a deeper 
 darkness around, a veiled sky above, 
 and the hoarse, confused prophesying 
 of the sea beyond ? 
 
 As they stood, the moon — about an 
 hour risen — glimmered through the veil 
 of cloud. As with a hand, the rift was 
 slowly made ; but though the light was 
 now clearly visible, it still gleamed 
 through filmy shrouds of vapour. There 
 was no shape, no central luminous 
 spot even : only a diffused sheen which 
 spread for a great span northward and 
 85 
 
southward, though it illumed nothing 
 beneath save the long sloping hollow 
 filled with moonflowers. The blooms 
 rose almost to the knees of the two 
 silent and trembling figures. For some 
 inscrutable reason, the advance of light 
 had not brought any comfort to either : 
 rather, their vague terror increased 
 almost unendurably. 
 
 The sea called below. Lora shud 
 dered, and drew back a step or two. 
 
 A long, wavering, greenish light ap- 
 peared high above the south-west. As 
 the sheet-lightning fled shudderingly 
 northward, it lapsed into ashen tremors 
 before it was swallowed up of the 
 darkness, as a wounded sea-bird in the 
 deep. 
 
 In that brief gleam, Alastair turned 
 and looked into Lora's eyes. 
 
 She moved to his side again, and 
 once more took his hand. Then, 
 slowly, and still without word one 
 to the other, they moved downward 
 through the hollow. 
 
 There was not a sound about them 
 save the susurrus of their feet going 
 through the moonflowers. From the 
 glen alone came any break in the inland 
 stillness, the noise of water running 
 swiftly from ledge to ledge. In the 
 darkness where the sea was, there 
 broke the fluctuating moan and boom 
 86 
 
of ocean. From far across the wave 
 came a thin, forlorn sound that was the 
 crying of the wind. 
 
 Minute by minute, as they waded 
 through that death-white wilderness, 
 the moon wove the cloud-shroud into 
 thinner veils, till at last, as the two 
 figures emerged upon the shore by the 
 side of a precipitous scaur, they were 
 of a filmy gossamer that no longer 
 obscured the golden-yellow globe that 
 wheeled solemnly through the appalling 
 upper solitudes of the night. 
 
 The tide, at the last reach of the ebb 
 for nearly an hour past, was now on the 
 flood : though the first indeterminate 
 babble of returning waters was scarce 
 different from the lapsing ebb-music 
 in aught save a gurgling swiftly-repeti- 
 tive undertone. 
 
 The scaur by whose side they stood 
 was hollow, and was known as the Cave 
 of the Sea-Woman. It could be reached 
 dry-shod, or nearly so, only at low water, 
 and even then only during calm, or when 
 the wind did not blow from the south 
 or west. For years beyond record it had 
 been almost unvisited, for the cavern 
 was a place of deadly peril except just 
 before and after the extreme ebb. But 
 after the death of two of his sons — one 
 in the effort to swim outward against 
 the inrush of the tide : the other by 
 87 
 
falling, or being swept backward to the 
 deep chasm that lay at the far end of the 
 cave — old Macrae, of Ardfeulan Farm 
 near by, had caused rude steps to be 
 cut in the funnel -like hollow rising 
 sheer up from the sloping ledge that 
 lipped the chasm and reached the 
 summit of the scaur. 
 
 The smell of the brine from the 
 dripping boulders smote shrewdly upon 
 Alastair and Lora as they stood at the 
 weedy mouth of the cavern. Then 
 for the first time that night they turned 
 their backs upon the sea, and moved 
 slowly across the long, flat slabs of 
 rock. 
 
 It was not dark at the entrance to 
 the Cavern of the Sea-Woman, for the 
 moonlight moved within it as the hand 
 of a blind man groping blankly in an 
 unfamiliar place. The arch of the rock 
 was clear, and even the frondage of 
 fern and sea-plants suspended from its 
 lower curve ; also, beneath, a mass of 
 mossed crag, just beyond the highest 
 reach of the tides. Among this dark 
 crag - vegetation grew strange plants ; 
 but none stranger or so rare as the sea- 
 grape, or mermaid's-fruit of the islanders. 
 No one on Innisrbn knew its proper de- 
 signation, and it had become known at 
 all as the sea-grape only because some 
 student of rare things discovered and 
 88 
 
wrote about it under that name, as per- 
 haps the culminating treasure-trove of 
 
 the botanist in the Seottisli West. It 
 is a plant which clings as a tendril, 
 choosing only the summit of high 
 rocks or boulders in some sunless place 
 where it can breathe the ooze from 
 dead or dying seaweed, and can feel 
 the salt air reach it with a chilly touch. 
 It lies low, with its thin, moist, ash- 
 grey stems ; its round, pale-green, trans- 
 parent leaves faintly spotted with livid 
 blotches ; and its infrequent clusters 
 of small, juicy berries of a hue of dusky 
 yellow. 
 
 The islefolk regard it with awe. 
 Though the fruit is poisonous, and a 
 deadly draught can be distilled from 
 the leaves, a few berries would not suf- 
 fice to kill. To eat sparingly of the 
 sea-grape is not to invite death neces- 
 sarily, but to bring about a stupor 
 so deep that for an hour or more no 
 familiar sound can reach the ear, no 
 ordinary shock vibrate along the nerves, 
 no common pain affect the body. If 
 the eater of the mermaid's-fruit be left 
 undisturbed, he will not stir for twelve 
 or even fifteen hours, though the first 
 death-like trance does not prevail be- 
 yond an hour, or at most two: while, if 
 forcibly aroused, he is so weak in body 
 and so dazed in mind that he cannot 
 89 
 
long be kept awake without peril to the 
 brain, and indeed to life itself. 
 
 It was because of this fruit of obli- 
 vion that Alastair and Lora had sought 
 the Cave of the Sea-Woman. 
 
 They had feared not so much their 
 own instinctive evasion of death as that, 
 in the final struggle, they might not go 
 down into the shadow together. 
 
 The idea that the Silence should 
 come upon them unawares — -that, arms 
 about each other in a last embrace, 
 the wave should encroach upon their 
 deep unheeding slumber — had given 
 them a strange elation. The thought 
 was Alastair's. Though he was not a 
 native of Innisrbn, he had often visited 
 it from Dunvrechan even before he had 
 come to love Lora, and was familiar 
 with each of the treacherous caves and 
 all the desolate, boulder-strewn, unin- 
 habited south-western side of the island, 
 as well as with everything in animate or 
 inanimate nature which was to be found 
 therein. Not only had he often heard 
 of the sea-grape which grew almost in- 
 accessibly in some of the caverns on 
 the western side, but he knew where to 
 the Cave of the Sea-Woman it was to' 
 be obtained with little difficulty. 
 
 Letting Lora's hand drop gently to 
 her side, he climbed the rough, broken 
 ledges to the right, and swiftly returned 
 90 
 
holding in his hand a cluster of limp 
 leaves from which hung snakily several 
 stems of the dusky-yellow fruit. 
 
 Lora looked at the berries curiously, 
 and yet with a strange indifference. 
 With that awful menacing sound of the 
 sea beyond, with that more awful mur- 
 mur of dread in her heart, with that 
 rising tide of death all about them, it 
 mattered little to her that Alastair laid 
 such stress on those small, poisonous 
 things, those petty messengers of a 
 mere oblivion of the senses. 
 
 Just beyond where they stood, and 
 at the beginning of those long, flat, 
 inward sloping ledges which formed the 
 floor of the cavern till the abrupt end- 
 ing over the dark chasm at the extreme 
 end, was a bed of soft white sand, shelv- 
 ing from one of the ledges past and 
 underneath another, and then among 
 rocks covered with bladder-wrack and 
 adder's - tongues and other sea-weed, 
 with tangled masses of the long, trail- 
 ing dead-man's-hair. 
 
 Still without speech, here Alastair 
 and Lora lay down, side by side. 
 
 There is an ebb in the tide of human 
 hope that must reach a limit. When 
 this limit is attained there is too great 
 weariness for any further revolt, for any 
 protest, for anything but dull acquies- 
 cence. 
 
 9i 
 
Slowly Alastair stripped a few of the 
 dusky berries from the plant and held 
 them in the hollow of his hand to 
 Lora. 
 
 Taking them, she leaned forward, 
 looking intently upon his face, but 
 failing to see into his eyes, because 
 of a deeper shadow therein than that 
 which environed them. 
 
 "Alastair" she whispered. 
 
 He made no answer ; but wearily 
 raised his hand to his mouth, and with 
 his tongue crushed against his palate 
 the acrid juice of the sea-grapes. 
 
 " O Alastair ! speak to me ! speak 
 to me ! " 
 
 He turned slowly. Then suddenly 
 he put out his arms, and gathered her 
 to his breast. 
 
 "My beautiful gloom — Lora — my 
 Rest — my Joy — O you who are my 
 Pharais — all the Pharais I care for now 
 or dream of — if there be indeed a pitiful 
 God, He will have mercy upon us. If 
 we do wrong, we sin believing that we 
 are doing the right, the sole right thing. 
 But sweet it is — O Lora, sweet and 
 dear at the last, after all our dark 
 bewildered pain, to be here and know 
 that all is over now, and that we 
 two go into the Silence together : and 
 if there be any waking, that together 
 we shall wake. Mo ghraidh, mo miiir- 
 92 
 
neon, my dear one, what peace there is 
 for you and me that I die thus : free 
 from that crushing, crushing pain and 
 darkness that has filled my brain." 
 
 " Alastair ! O my dear love — 
 dearest — shall we — shall we meet 
 again after this dreadful night? Shall 
 there be any day for us ? I cannot 
 die — oh, I cannot die in this awful 
 darkness . . . thus . . . We 
 are both so young . . . and 
 I . . . 
 
 She ceased abruptly. 
 
 A low splashing sound, with long- 
 drawn suffocating surge and susurrus, 
 told that the sea had begun to creep 
 forward with stealthy swiftness. 
 
 It was not the menace of the tide, 
 however, that froze the words upon her 
 lips. 
 
 Alastair had begun to croon, in a 
 drowsy, yet strained, uncertain voice, a 
 snatch of fisher-lore. 
 
 " Alastair ! Alastair ! Alastair !" 
 
 He gave a low laugh, as he turned on 
 his side, and with wandering fingers 
 played idly with the sand. 
 
 " Alastair ! . . . my husband ! 
 . . Beloved . . . Alastair ! . . . 
 Oh, say farewell to me at the least. . . 
 Do not turn from me ! " 
 
 " It called— called — called : and she 
 cried to me, Come, my Beloved : and 
 93 
 
then I knew Lora was dead. Why do 
 you laugh at me ? She is dead, I tell 
 you : dead, dead, dead! She, my beauti- 
 ful Lora — my dream — my joy — she who 
 to me was Pharais itself: she is dead /" 
 
 In the grip of supreme woe, a woman 
 has a heroism of abnegation beyond all 
 words to tell of it. 
 
 Her grief rose within Lora as a 
 phantom, and chilled her to the very 
 heart and to the very brain. But with 
 a great effort she stirred, leaned over 
 and pluckt some of the fatal fruit, and 
 swallowed it : for she had crushed in 
 her hand the berries he had given her. 
 
 Then, having risen, with deft hands 
 she pulled towards her some long 
 strings of dead-man's-hair and rope- 
 weed ; and, with those which were 
 firmly affixed to rocks or heavy stones, 
 she wove a girdle about the waist of 
 Alastair, and so round her own. 
 
 She could scarce see to finish her 
 task, for the moon had passed upward 
 into the denser cloud, and the faintly 
 luminous veils of vapour beneath it 
 were now scarce distinguishable from 
 the obscurity all around. 
 
 The insistent wash of the tide was 
 coming steadily nearer. She could feel 
 the cold breath of its moving lip. 
 
 Absolute darkness prevailed ; while, 
 with shaking hands, having unloosed 
 94 
 
her long, black hair, she tied it firmly in 
 two places with the curly tangle of him 
 whom she loved so passing well in 
 death as in life 
 
 Not a gleam fell from the veiled 
 moon. Not a thing was visible save 
 a faint phosphorescent line that moved 
 slowly inward. Lora could not see Ala- 
 stair's face, not even his body, not even 
 the two shaking hands she held over 
 him while she prayed inaudibly, and 
 with a suffocating, bewildering pain at 
 her heart, at her lungs, in her head. 
 
 No sound came from the isle. The 
 noise of the falling stream in the glen 
 was merged in the confused clamour of 
 the tide-race. Shoreward, there was 
 that awful tidal whisper. Seaward, the 
 march of wave after wave, of billow 
 after billow, in vast processional array ; 
 squadron after squadron, battalion after 
 battalion, of the innumerable army of 
 the deep : and among them all, over 
 them all, beneath them all, a Voice, 
 loud, reverberant, menacing, awful as 
 brooding thunder, terrible as the quak- 
 ing of the dry land when the hills o'er- 
 topple the cities of the plain : a Voice 
 as of the majesty of Death, swelling 
 through the night with all the eternal 
 pain, the forlorn travail, the incom- 
 municable ache of all the weary, weary 
 World. 
 
 95 
 
Then, ere all remembrance died for 
 her, Lora knew that Alastair slept and 
 was at peace. 
 
 She stole her arm round his neck 
 and held him close, but was too weak 
 now to lean over and kiss those white 
 lips, parted as a child's in dreamless 
 slumber. 
 
 It was her last pain : the last unavail- 
 ing bitterness of woman's woe. 
 
 Thereafter she lay still, vaguely 
 hearkening the tide run up the deep 
 channel beyond the little isle of sand, 
 already damp with the under-ooze. 
 
 She listened to the slipping of the 
 water along the ledges. A wave came 
 out of the darkness and stalked through 
 the gloom as a wild beast to its lair. 
 Ledge over ledge she heard it swiftly 
 move : then suddenly there was a 
 blank ... a hoarse muffled noise 
 the hollow reverberation of 
 the billow as it fell heavily into the 
 black unfathomed gulf wherein at the 
 flood was swept all that drifted into the 
 cave. 
 
 A windy sigh arose in the cavern. 
 The tide moved upward, feeling along 
 the walls with stealthy, groping hands. 
 A faint phosphorescence appeared 
 momently, now here, now there. 
 
 The second channel, to the left, sud- 
 denly brimmed. The water spilled over 
 96 
 
upon the sandy tract beyond. Then a 
 long rolling wave raced inward, leapt 
 along one of its ledges, poised a mo- 
 ment, and, breaking into a seething 
 foam in its fall, tore this way and that 
 the weedy bonds which bound the 
 sleepers. 
 
 Beyond, in the darkness, the loud 
 moan, the deep, monotonous boom of 
 the sea filled the whole vast void of 
 the night. 
 
 97 e 
 
V. 
 
 ^*HE loud and terrifying violence of 
 the sea throughout that day ; the 
 oppressive gloom of that night ; the 
 weight of undischarged electricity which 
 everywhere brooded ; all made sleep 
 impossible for Ealasaid MacAodh. 
 
 So ill was she when evening set in, 
 that she had moved her things from 
 the bed in the second of the two rooms 
 of which the sheiling consisted, so as 
 to sleep in the box-bed in the larger, 
 within sight and feel of the fire-glow. 
 
 She had not slept there since her 
 husband died. Perhaps this was be- 
 cause that, even after the lapse of years, 
 she could not endure the solitudes of 
 memory. They had been lovers in 
 their youth, she and her Hebridean : 
 they had been lovers during their brief 
 married life, ere he, after the too fre- 
 98 
 
qucut wont of the islesmen, found 
 death in the wave wherein he sought 
 the means of life : and when his 
 drifted body had been recovered, and 
 laid in the island soil, she had re- 
 mained his lover still. Doubtless, she 
 thought of him even yet with his 
 yellow hair and laughing eyes; perhaps 
 of herself, too, as lithe of limb and 
 with soft, fair skin as unwrinkled and 
 hair as brown and supple as when he 
 had first caused the trouble of a new 
 and strange tide in the calm waters of 
 her girl's heart. 
 
 To sleep in the bed where she had 
 lain by his side, where a child had 
 been born to her and had died just as 
 with glad pain she had recognised in 
 the little one the eyes of its father, 
 may have seemed to her a cross of 
 suffering which she was unable to take 
 up and bear. 
 
 Or, it may be, there lurked darkly in 
 her mind the ancient secret Celtic 
 dread of sleeping in the bed where 
 any of one's own blood-kin has died : 
 the dread of the whisper that is on the 
 pillow in the dark hours, of the hand 
 that gropes along the coverlet, of the 
 chill ! ueath that comes without cause 
 and stirs the hair as it falls suddenly 
 upon the cheek of the awakened 
 sleeper. 
 
 99 
 
On this night, however, she dreaded 
 not only her own weakness, but the 
 dark. Vaguely, she wondered how she 
 had for so long a time slept away from 
 the comforting light and warmth of 
 her peat-fire. 
 
 She was so old, so weary, she thought 
 pitifully. Would Duncan be sure to 
 know her again ? Why was she kept 
 so long there, waiting for the summons 
 that never came ? Had God forgotten 
 her ? No kin had she : not one to 
 claim her body for the place of sleep 
 when her dark hour came. Useless 
 were her days to all : to herself, each 
 day a rising sorrow ; each night a 
 setting grief. 
 
 Yet that infinite patience of the 
 poor was hers, that poignant pathos of 
 womanhood in childless and husband- 
 less old age, which to the very end 
 endures — till the last thread has been 
 used in the weaving of the Crown of 
 Sorrow. 
 
 Beautiful this austere Diadem worn 
 by aged and lonely women: sweet-eyed 
 bearers of crowns among the myriad 
 procession of the weary poor of all the 
 world, all going gloriously apparelled 
 and wreathed with green garlands which 
 fade not in the sight of Him who 
 leadeth His feeble folk to kingship and 
 honour. 
 
 ioo 
 
For a brief while she lay brooding, 
 with dull old eyes fixt upon the red 
 heart of the peats. Then the gaze with- 
 drew slowly, and the lids closed ; as 
 though a bird, flying softly through 
 the twilight, had passed beneath the 
 low-hung leaves over its nest. 
 
 She could not have been long asleep, 
 for the glow was still ruddy upon the 
 floor, when she was startled by a sudden 
 barking and whining. She sat up, 
 listening intently. She could hear no 
 step, no voice. The whining terrified 
 her. If the noise were that of a dog 
 at all, and not of Luath or some other 
 phantom hound, whose dog was it, 
 and why its sudden appearance at her 
 door at that hour of night, — its eager, 
 unceasing clamour ? 
 
 But when, with louder and louder 
 barks and an impatient scraping, the 
 unwelcome visitor showed he was not 
 to be denied, she rose, put on .her 
 things, and then, having wrapt a shawl 
 about her head and lit a lantern which 
 she lifted from a hook, opened the door. 
 
 For a moment, she thought that 
 nothing was there. Then her ears 
 caught the sound of panting breath, 
 and something wet and warm touched 
 her suspended left hand. 
 
 With timid, yet caressing voice, she 
 lured the dog across the threshold. 
 
 IOI 
 
The moment she could see clearly, she 
 recognised him as Ghaoth, the white- 
 breasted, tawny - haired, amber - eyed 
 collie that belonged to Alastair Mac- 
 leod. 
 
 The dog would not bide. His 
 whining never ceased, save when it 
 was interrupted by loud, eager barks. 
 To and fro he ran, and at last sprang 
 out into the night again, only to return 
 a few moments later in a state of excite- 
 ment bordering on frenzy. 
 
 "Some evil must have happened to 
 Alastair Macleod," Ealasaid muttered, 
 as after a brief hesitation she took the 
 lantern and followed Ghaoth. 
 
 To her dismay, the dog tried to lead 
 her towards the hollow of the moon- 
 flowers. Could Alastair possibly be 
 there, or on the shore beyond ? Why, 
 if he were down there, lying helpless, 
 the tide would be upon him shortly, 
 and then his doom would be certain. 
 Again, of what avail was she, so old 
 and frail, and now with some new weak- 
 ness upon her ? She feared she had 
 not the strength to move downward in 
 the dark through that dense jungle of 
 white blooms : still less to climb home- 
 ward again. 
 
 But while she pondered, she saw 
 that Ghaoth leapt no more in the 
 direction of the valley, but along the 
 102 
 
grassy ridge which led to the summit 
 of Craig-Geal, so perilous by night be- 
 cause of the sloping, precipitous hole 
 which gave entrance to the funnel-like 
 passage issuing from the Cave of the 
 Sea-Woman. 
 
 " Ah," she cried, as it flashed upon 
 her that Alastair had fallen, or been 
 hemmed-in in the cavern by the tide, 
 " God help him if he is there ! " 
 
 With panting breath she hurried 
 along the ridge, heedless now of 
 Ghaoth, who had suddenly darted off 
 to the left and disappeared among the 
 moonflowers. She had not gone far, 
 however, before she stopped. What 
 use to hurry onward, if all she could 
 do was to shout down into the dark- 
 ness — a cry that would likely never be 
 heard, and if heard would be of no 
 avail to the hearer ? 
 
 No sooner did she realise the use- 
 lessness of her errand than she turned, 
 and, with shaking limbs and labouring 
 breath, made her way along a sheep- 
 path which led to the opposite brae of 
 Craig- Ruaidh, where Angus Macrae 
 and his son Ranald lived. 
 
 So exhausted was the old woman by 
 the time she had reached the farm and 
 aroused the inmates, that two or three 
 minutes passed before she could ex- 
 plain. 
 
 io 3 
 
Ranald Macrae saw at once that one 
 of two things had happened : either 
 that Alastair had wandered to the cave 
 in his madness, and there, ignorant or 
 oblivious of the steps cut in the hollow 
 columnar passage at the far end, been 
 cut off by the sea ; or else that he 
 had wittingly made his way there, with 
 intent to drown himself in the Kelpie's 
 Pool — an abyss that never gave back 
 what it swallowed. 
 
 It was during this hurried explana- 
 nation to his father that Ealasaid 
 learned for the first time the truth of 
 what had reached her as a vague 
 rumour in the mouth of a herd-boy. 
 Eager as she was to be of help, she 
 was now too weak to accompany the 
 men, even if it were possible for her 
 to keep pace with them, which it was 
 not, as they had started off at a run. 
 
 She knew that old Macrae's advice 
 was right : that she could best help*by 
 going home at once, and making pre- 
 paration to receive Alastair if he were 
 still alive. There was no room for him 
 at the farm, where Ranald's wife had 
 given birth to a child two days before. 
 So with little Pol, the herd-boy, she set 
 out once more, leaning often upon the 
 lad's shoulder ; and wondering if, after 
 all, God were going to let her be of 
 some service before he led her through 
 104 
 
the blind way till her hand should slip 
 into that of her husband. 
 
 Before they left the farmstead, the 
 Macraes had provided themselves with 
 lanterns, a long rcpe, and a pine-torch 
 dipped in tar. 
 
 As they neared the summit of Craig- 
 Geal, they could hear the frenzied bark- 
 ing of Ghaoth in the darkness down 
 by the sea — loud when caught on an 
 eddy of wind and borne upward, scarce 
 audible when overborne by the moan 
 and boom and ever recurrent breaking 
 surge of the advancing tide. 
 
 At the dark circular exit of the cavern, 
 they waved lanterns and shouted them- 
 selves hoarse : but without seeing aught, 
 or winning response. 
 
 Angus .Macrae silently drew back, 
 rose, and lit the pine-torch. Flaring 
 abruptly into the dark before a gust 
 of wind, it was like a blood-red wound 
 in the flank of some vast black creature 
 of night. 
 
 Having fastened the torch to the 
 rope, he swung it far down the narrow 
 funnel, up which came the smell of 
 wrack and sea-damp and an obscure, 
 muffled sound. 
 
 Still there was nothing visible. No 
 shout followed the sudden glare. 
 
 The old man stood silent, craning 
 forward with brooding eyes ; for now 
 105 e 1 
 
he was thinking of the two sons he 
 had lost. With a shudder, he moved 
 slowly back and turned to Ranald. 
 
 " Will you go down ? " 
 
 " Aye, father, that I will : if you will 
 breathe the holy word before me and 
 after me. The kelpie . . . the Sea- 
 Woman . . . won't catch me, for I 
 am sure of hand and foot." 
 
 " So your brother Sheumais thought." 
 
 Ranald hesitated, looked at the cave- 
 mouth, then at his father. 
 
 " Is it true Sheumais died in that 
 way ? " 
 
 " It is true. The tide hemmed him 
 in, and a heavy sea foamed at the 
 mouth of the cavern. There was no 
 chance but to gain some ledge high 
 above the Sea-Woman's Pool. He did 
 gain a hold on a ledge, for long after- 
 wards we found his knife on it. Then 
 the accursed kelpie rose out of her 
 lair and took him by the legs, and 
 pulled him down, and tore him, and 
 broke the bones of him, — my son, my 
 son, my beautiful Sheumais ! " 
 
 As the old man spoke, his voice had 
 grown louder, his tone more intense ; 
 and at the last the memory of his loss so 
 wrought upon him that, with a sudden 
 cry, he dashed forward and whirled one 
 of the lanterns into the dark, echoing 
 chasm. 
 
 1 06 
 
" Let me go, let me go," he cried, 
 as his son tried to withhold him. 
 
 " If she must have one of us again, 
 Let it be me ! Let go, boy ! You have 
 
 your wife and child : and I am old, 
 and have lost Sheumais and Andras 
 and the mother who bore them ! " 
 
 Without a word, Ranald desisted. 
 The old man went on his knees, crawled 
 forward, and pulled up the flaming 
 torch. Then, having fastened the 
 rope round his waist and secured a 
 lantern to his belt, he slipt over the 
 edge and began the descent, cautiously 
 feeling his way with his feet as he 
 went. 
 
 As he reached further and further 
 into the darkness, he wondered why he 
 heard no more the barking of Ghaoth. 
 A grim thought came into his mind : 
 the dog had been caught by the Sea- 
 Woman, and was even now drifting 
 round and round in her pool, strangled, 
 with glazed, protruding eyes. 
 
 At last, both sight and sound told 
 him that he was nearly over the abyss — 
 sight and sound, and his careful count- 
 ing of the steps in his descent. 
 
 The tidal wash, the heavy lapse and 
 then heavier resurge, with the rush and 
 cataract-roar of the seas as they fell far 
 down into the chasm, assailed his ears 
 continuously. Peering down, he could 
 107 
 
see the foam upon the flood, as it swept 
 ravening round the cave and then fell 
 headlong into the abyss, above which 
 was a misty pulsating whiteness, the 
 send and spray of tons of whirled 
 water. 
 
 There was almost no need to 
 descend further, he thought. The 
 strongest swimmer, if caught in that 
 inrush, would be swept irresistibly into 
 the horrible cauldron where the Sea- 
 Woman brewed her spells of storm and 
 disaster. 
 
 There was but one chance for Ala- 
 stair; if, in truth, he were in the cave at 
 all and still alive. A little way below 
 where the isleman stood, there were 
 three or four broad ledges of which 
 even the lowest would still be unswept 
 by the sea. He dreaded to descend ; for 
 it was on the first of those ledges that 
 his son, Sheumais, had been dragged, 
 screaming, into the abyss. With a 
 muttered prayer, however — a prayer 
 that was half an incantation — he once 
 more slowly crawled downward. 
 
 When he came to the third ledge, he 
 stopped, crouched, and peered down- 
 ward and forward. 
 
 For a moment, his brain swung. 
 
 What was it that he saw ? What 
 fantasy was this? what horrible caprice 
 of his eyes ? Had Ghaoth slain the 
 1 08 
 
kelpie, and was he now perishing there 
 with his teeth fixt in the neck of the 
 Sea-Woman ? 
 
 For Ghaoth, and no other, was the 
 dog that crouched on the lowest ledge; 
 and a woman it was who lay beside 
 him, upheld at the neck by his strong 
 teeth. 
 
 He saw the gleam in the dog's eyes, 
 fixt upon him unwaveringly. He un- 
 derstood their appeal. Slowly he un- 
 fastened and raised his lantern. 
 
 When he recognised Lora, he knew 
 intuitively what had happened. With 
 uplifted arm. he let the light fall all 
 around — above weedy, sea-swept boul- 
 ders, and the dark, inward-moving 
 flood, broken here and there into a 
 seethe of foam that shone ghastly white 
 in the lantern-glow. 
 
 There was no sign of Alastair. 
 
 It was clear he was either already 
 swept into the chasm, or had been 
 sucked seaward in the undertow. 
 
 With utmost care, Macrae stepped 
 on to the lowest ledge. 
 
 Stooping, he looked intently in Lora's 
 white face. Then he put his hand to 
 her heart. He fancied he felt it beat, 
 but could not be sure. Drawing a 
 flask from his pocket, he poured some 
 of the contents down her throat, then 
 upon her temples and breast, with 
 109 
 
rough hand laving the spirit across the 
 bosom which, cold as it was, had not 
 the unmistakable chill of death. A new 
 strength came to the old man. He 
 had lost all fear now, and had no other 
 thought but to save this poor creature 
 who had already looked on the face 
 of Death, and nigh perished with the 
 horror of it. 
 
 Taking her in his arms, he was 
 swiftly securing her to his body by the 
 rope, when he was startled to see 
 Ghaoth, who had at once let go his 
 hold, leap into the surge and swim sea- 
 ward. 
 
 The dog went to its doom, he knew, 
 in a vain quest for Alastair. With a 
 moment's sigh, he turned to what he 
 had to do. 
 
 An arduous and perilous climb it 
 was ere the old islesman at last neared 
 the summit, and felt Ranald grasp him 
 by the shoulder and help him and his 
 burden over the edge. 
 
 He would have swooned from the 
 long strain upon him, had not his son 
 hastily put the flask of whiskey to his 
 mouth and imperatively bid him drink. 
 
 As soon as he could breathe freely 
 once more, he recounted what had 
 happened. The young man wanted to 
 go down at once into the cave and 
 seek for Alastair, in the hope that he 
 no 
 
might still be swimming in the open 
 or be somewhere afloat, and that 
 Ghaoth might reach him and bring 
 him to the spot where the dog had 
 guarded Lora — almost from the mo- 
 ment, though of course neither Macrae 
 nor his son knew aught of this, when 
 the first ledge-sweeping wave broke 
 upon the sleepers and reft asunder 
 their impotent weedy bonds. 
 
 But of this project Angus Macrae 
 would hear nothing further. Was his 
 son mad, he asked him, to believe that 
 Alastair could still be alive, since he 
 was visible nowhere ? 
 
 " No," he added, " he is in the deep 
 sea by now, or lies gript by the Woman 
 in her hole. But, Ranald, if to search 
 for his body you are so fain, you can 
 go down later. May be you will find 
 the dog, though I think neither you, 
 nor I, nor any one else will ever see 
 dog or man again. Meanwhile, take 
 up this poor soul and carry her to 
 Widow Ealasaid's." 
 
 "She is big with child," whispered 
 the young man, as awe - struck he 
 wrapped Lora in his warm plaid and 
 raised her in his arms. 
 
 "Aye: God have pity on this lost 
 
 ewe and her poor, wee lammie. Be 
 
 careful, Ranald, be tender— aye, as 
 
 tender as if she were your own Cairis- 
 
 iii 
 
tine, and the babe that is now moving 
 within her were blood of your blood 
 and bone of your bone." 
 
 In silence, and as swiftly as possible, 
 the two men, with their still more silent 
 burden, crossed the slopes of the ridge 
 and ascended the grassy, boulder-strewn 
 brae. In due time, they were met at 
 the door by Ealasaid. 
 
 With a low, crooning wail, the old 
 woman helped to lay Lora on the bed 
 in the inner room. She had already 
 warmed the clothes, and had poured 
 boiling water in a tub, with hot flannels 
 for swathing. All island-women act thus 
 on any hint of accident, for the hunger 
 of the sea is the cause of nearly every 
 disaster for them and their loved ones. 
 Besides — had not Duncan Ban once 
 been brought home, and all this and 
 more done for him, though the chill 
 upon him was not that of the sea 
 only ? 
 
 Suddenly she saw there was no time 
 to lose. 
 
 " Quick, quick, Pol," she cried : 
 " take a lantern and run like the wind 
 across to the clachan, and tell Mrs. 
 Mary Maclean that she is to come 
 here at once, for Alastair Macleod is 
 dead and his wife is lying here in 
 labour, and that the last pains may 
 come upon her speedily." 
 112 
 
The boy hesitated a moment, glanced 
 at his grandfather, and then fled into 
 the night, heedless of any lantern, and 
 sure-footed as a goat. 
 
 Finding that he could be of no use, 
 and that Mrs. MacAodh wished only 
 his father to remain, Ranald Macrae 
 slipped quietly away : and in a brief 
 while had reached the cave-entrance, 
 descended, and searched vainly for 
 any trace of either Alastair or the dog. 
 
 To Ealasaid's unceasing care Lora 
 owed her life. The old woman seemed 
 to have grown years younger. A new- 
 strength was in her arm, a new light 
 in her worn eyes, a new spirit in her 
 frail body. With deft hands, she rubbed 
 the skin aglow, wrapped warm flannels 
 about the limbs, breathed into breast 
 and back, soothed the convulsive 
 strainings of the sides and heavy 
 womb, fed the unconscious sufferer 
 with sips of broth and warmed spirit, 
 and often the while kissed the poor 
 faintly quivering lips. It seemed to 
 her as if her heart swam in tears ; but, 
 with the unnoticed heroism of women, 
 she let no grief overmaster her, no 
 flagging of mind or body usurp her 
 
 will. 
 
 In the outer room Angus Macrae 
 sat, intent at first upon the keeping up 
 of the fire and the fulfilment of Eala- 
 "3 
 
said's divers commands. Then, nigh 
 an hour later, when through the open 
 doorway he heard a strange moaning 
 from the inner room, he sat down by 
 the low, rude table, and, taking the 
 Gaelic Bible which lay there, began 
 in a slow, monotonous voice to read 
 from the page which caught his eye as 
 he opened the book : — 
 
 " I returned, and saw under the sun, that 
 the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to 
 the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor 
 yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet 
 favour to men of skill ; but time and chance 
 happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth 
 not his time : as the fishes that are taken in an 
 evil net, and as the birds that are caught in 
 the snare, even so are the sons of men snared 
 in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon 
 them." 
 
 As he read steadfastly onward 
 through this moving last chapter of 
 Ecclesiastes, his voice rose, and took 
 a rhythmic chant, and filled the room, 
 as a rising wind fills a valley set among 
 the hills. 
 
 But when he had read : 
 
 " As thou knowest not what is the way of 
 the wind, nor how the bones do grow in the 
 womb of her that is with child ; even so thou 
 knowest not the work of God who doeth all 
 
 he stopped abruptly, for he heard a 
 114 
 
sound at the outer door, and guessed, 
 even before he saw her, that the comer 
 was Mrs. Maclean. 
 
 Angus rose, and took her hand. 
 Then, seeing the speechless sorrow in 
 her eyes, he let go his hold of her, 
 and, bowing his head, did not lift up 
 his eyes again till Mary had entered 
 the inner room. 
 
 He knew that, with these two women 
 there, all would go well with Lora, 
 if it were ordained that she was to 
 live. But he feared that death was 
 ahead) entered in at the door ; and he 
 knew not what passionate sorrow might 
 come upon and undo those who min- 
 istered to the woman who even now was 
 in those pains of labour that ere morn 
 should end in the birth of a child. 
 Long he sat brooding. Then, weary 
 of his vigil, once more he began to 
 read, resuming with the verse where he 
 had been interrupted : — 
 
 " Even so, thou knowest not the work of 
 God who doeth all. 
 
 " In the morning sow thy seed, and in the 
 evening withhold not thine hand : for thou 
 knowest not which shall prosper, whether this 
 or that, or whether they both shall he alike 
 good." 
 
 Looking up, he saw Ealasaid standing 
 at the door, a wonderful light on her 
 old face. 
 
" It lives," she said simply. " Mary 
 said that the child would certainly be 
 born dead ; but it lives. She says now 
 it has the shadow upon it, and must 
 die ere long ; but they told me that 
 my own little blossom was strong, and 
 would live : . . and even as they 
 
 were wrong, wrong also may Mary 
 Maclean be." 
 
 Hearing a call, she turned, and went 
 within. 
 
 The old islesman muttered for a 
 while, with bent head and closed eyes. 
 Then he began to read again : — 
 
 " Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant 
 thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." 
 
 " Hush ! " 
 
 It was Mary who spoke. She had 
 that in her face which made him rise. 
 
 " Hush, Angus Macrae. Truly, the 
 eyes are the delight of the body, but 
 this is not the time for the bitterness 
 of that saying. Never for this child, 
 that is born in the shadow of death, 
 and can itself live but a brief while, 
 shall there be the sweet light of which 
 you speak, nor the pleasantness of be- 
 holding the sun, nor the way of the 
 day betwixt rise and set." 
 
 "Is the child blind?" 
 
 "Ay . . . blind . . . blind." 
 
 " And weakling ? " 
 116 
 
" Ay." 
 
 "And she?" 
 
 "(lod hath given her Strength to 
 endure." 
 
 " Does she know all that has hap- 
 pened ? " 
 
 " If she did, she would be with Ala- 
 stair. Her mind is dazed. She is as 
 one distraught. My friend, read no 
 more to-night. Go home now, and 
 God be with you. Bring on the mor- 
 row what tidings you have." 
 
 Soon after the departure of the old 
 man, a great stillness fell upon the 
 house. Lora slept in a stupor like 
 unto death. The ehild lay upon her 
 breast, as a frail flower drifted there by 
 a chance wind. Ealasaid sat by the 
 bed watching. Mary knelt against it, 
 crying silently. 
 
 Towards dawn, Mrs. Maclean rose, 
 and looked out upon the chill dusk. 
 When she came back, she kneeled 
 again ; and, in a low voice, repeated a 
 strange Celtic " Prayer of Women " : — 
 
 O Spirit, that broods upon the hills 
 
 Anil moves upon the fare of the deep, 
 
 And is heard in the wind, 
 
 Save us from the desire of' men's eyes, 
 
 And the cruel lust of them, 
 
 And the springing of the cruel seed 
 
 In that narrow house which is as the grave 
 
 For darkness and loneliness 
 
 "7 
 
That women carry with them with shame, 
 
 and weariness, and long tain, 
 Only for the laughter of man's heart, 
 And the joy that triumphs therein, 
 And the sport that is in his heart, 
 Wherewith he mocketh us, 
 Wherewith he pla) eth with us, 
 Wherewith he trampleth ufon us . 
 Us, who conceive and bear him ; 
 Us, who bring him forth ; 
 Who fe;d him in the womb, and at the breast, 
 
 and at the knee : 
 Whom he calleth Mother, 
 And Mother again of his wife and children : 
 When he looks at our hair, and sees it is white ; 
 And at our eyes, and sees they are dim ; 
 And at our lips, straitened out with long pain; 
 And at our breasts, fallen and seared as a 
 
 barren hill ; 
 And at our hands, worn 'with toil ; 
 And, seeing, seeth all the bitter ruin and 
 
 wreck of us — 
 All save tin violated loomb that curses him—- 
 All save the heart that forbeareth . . for 
 
 pity- 
 All save the living brain that condemneth 
 
 him — 
 All save the spirit that shall not tnale with 
 
 him — 
 All save the soul he shall never see 
 Till he be one with it, and equal ; 
 He who hath the bridle, but guideth not ; 
 He who hath the whip, yet is driven ; 
 He. who as a shepherd colleth upon us, 
 But is himself a lost sheep, crying amon^the 
 
 hills ! 
 O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us, 
 And Thy Son, and Alary Virgin, 
 Heal us of the Wrong of Man : 
 We, whose breasts are weary with milk, 
 Cry, cry to Thee, Compassionate ! 
 
 118 
 
Ealasaid trembled. She had never 
 
 heard words such as these before, and 
 
 was afraid ; yet even more of the strange 
 
 intensity in the voice of Mrs. Mai lean, 
 
 in the shine of her usually quiet eyes. 
 
 " God be with you, Mary Maclean/' 
 
 "And with you, Ealasaid MacAodh." 
 
 Therewith Mrs. Maclean arose, 
 
 looked at Lora to see if she still slept, 
 
 and then went into the adjoining room, 
 
 where she seated herself before the 
 
 hot glow of the peats ; and, as the day 
 
 broke, read below her breath in the 
 
 third chapter of the Book of Job. 
 
 AVeeks passed, and there was no 
 word of Alastair. For twenty days 
 after the coming of the child, Lora 
 lay distraught, knowing no one about 
 her, though oftentimes looking long 
 and lovingly in the eyes of Mary, 
 whose face had won again an exceed- 
 ing peace, and who went, as of yore, 
 girt about with a beautiful silence as 
 with a garment. 
 
 But on the last day of the third 
 week, Lora awoke in her right mind. 
 Mary had given the frail, blind babe 
 to young Cairistine Macrae to suckle. 
 This was well; for had Lora looked 
 upon it on that day, she would have 
 died. 
 
 119 
 
Nevertheless, in a brief while there- 
 after she knew all. It seemed strange, 
 both to Mary and Ealasaid, that she 
 did not appear greatly to care. She 
 had that in her heart which would 
 have enlightened them ; but grief, as 
 well as madness or evil, has its cunning, 
 and so she veiled her purpose in abso- 
 lute secrecy. 
 
 Not a sign of Alastair ! This was 
 what she could not accept. Till his 
 body, or some trace of it, were found, 
 she said she would not return with 
 Mary to her home. Nothing, however, 
 repaid the most scrupulous search : no 
 clue was gained — unless the discovery 
 of the body of Ghaoth, caught in a 
 trawling net one night a mile seaward, 
 could be called a clue. 
 
 On that day of agony when she had 
 at last looked on the face of her child, 
 and knew it stricken with frailty and 
 blind for all its days, and heritor per- 
 haps of that curse which had caused 
 her to sin and incur this punishment, 
 she had made a covenant with herself 
 to go down as soon as she could to the 
 shore, at low tide, and with her child 
 follow Alastair into that abyss in the 
 cavern where she felt assured he had 
 been swept by the sea. 
 
 Two weary weeks passed before an 
 opportunity came. One afternoon, 
 1 20 
 
Mary went across Innisrbn, so as to 
 reach the clachan and meet the Clans- 
 man for somewhat she expected : 
 
 and as she was to come back with 
 Kanald Macrae, and he was not to 
 return till after dark, Lora felt secure. 
 
 Early in the evening, she sent Ealasaid 
 on a message to Parian Macalister's 
 wife, who lived in a cottage about a 
 mile along the shore, beyond the pro- 
 montory of Ardfeulan. 
 
 It was a lovely evening in mid-July. 
 The moon was at the full, and made a 
 golden dust upon the isle and a glory 
 of pale gold upon the sea. 
 
 As she went once more down the 
 hollow of the moonflovvers — not so 
 dense now as then, and many withered 
 by the heat of the sun and the month- 
 long drought — she stopped again and 
 again, overcome by the heat even of 
 the dusk. 
 
 In her ears was the bewildered, 
 plaintive cry of the lapwings : and, as 
 an undertone, the low, soft chime — the 
 long, sweet ululation of the myriad- 
 swung bell of the sea. 
 
 She was weary when she reached 
 the shore. An unspeakable horror of 
 the cavern came upon her, and she 
 turned and went slowly towards the 
 long sandy tract that stretched beyond 
 the base of the hollow. There she 
 
 121 F 
 
laid the child gently down in the soft 
 sand at her feet, and seated herself on 
 a low rock. 
 
 After all, was it worth while to seek 
 Death, when Death had already whis- 
 pered that the little one was to be his 
 own so soon, and had stealthily re- 
 moved all but the last barriers that 
 guarded her own poor life ? 
 
 Would God not be even more wroth 
 with her — punish her even more 
 heavily ; though this, indeed, seemed 
 impossible ? 
 
 How lovely that vast ocean veiled 
 in violet dusk, save where lit gloriously 
 with moonlight : how full of alluring 
 peace, she thought, that wave-whisper 
 all around her. 
 
 Surely the music was woven into a 
 song that was dear and familiar in 
 her ears ? 
 
 She turned her head away from the 
 sea, and looked idly along the sand : 
 though, as she did so, the vague strain 
 ceased. 
 
 Then Lora stood, trembling in a 
 great awe, and with a passionate hope 
 in her eyes, in her heart, at the very 
 springs of life. 
 
 In the moonshine, she saw a tall 
 
 figure moving slowly towards her, 
 
 naked-white, and walking with a proud 
 
 mien. The erect body, the flashing 
 
 122 
 
eyes, the grace and beauty, were those 
 of a king — of a king among men : 
 and as a king the naked figure was 
 crowned, with moonflowers and yellow 
 sea-poppies woven into his gold-sheen 
 hair. 
 
 Suddenly he saw her. He stood as 
 though wrought in impassioned stone. 
 The moonshine fell full upon his white 
 skin, upon the beauty of his face, upon 
 the flower-tangle wherewith he had 
 crowned himself. 
 
 Then, without a sound, he turned 
 and fled like the wind, and vanished 
 into the gloom that lay beyond the 
 dusk. 
 
 And Lora, lifting the child and 
 staggering homeward, knew that she 
 had seen Alastair. 
 
 123 
 
VI. 
 
 3T was not till many weeks later that 
 the way of Alastair's escape from 
 death became known. 
 
 On that dark night when he had 
 lain down to die, the wave which fell 
 across Lora and himself, and tore 
 asunder the bonds she had woven, was 
 followed by no other for a time : other- 
 wise, the end of both would have been 
 attained. But so great was the shock, 
 that his apathy of mind and body 
 was rudely broken. The tired blood 
 stung in his veins ; the instinct of life 
 was as a flame of fire that consumed 
 all the stupor due to the sea-fruit he 
 had eaten — an instinct that wrought 
 him to a passion of effort. 
 
 Shaken and trembling, he staggered 
 to his feet. Nothing but a profound 
 darkness beyond, behind, above : a 
 darkness filled with the voices of the 
 wind, the seething tide, wave falling 
 124 
 
over wave, billow leaping after billow 
 and tearing it into a yeast of foam — 
 itself to stagger the next moment, and 
 struggle and strangle furiously in a 
 cloud of spray ere flung a dead mass 
 upon the shore. 
 
 He had no remembrance of Lora, of 
 what had brought them here, of the 
 grave that was ready where the Sea- 
 Woman watched. 
 
 But fear was left to him : and w r hen 
 he was aware of something moving 
 across the ledges to his left, and heard 
 it splash through the tide-wash in its 
 effort to reach him, he gave a terrified 
 cry, and dashed seaward to escape the 
 grip of the kelpie. 
 
 Stumbling, he fell heavily forward. 
 But it was into deep water ; and, power- 
 ful swimmer as he was, he fought the 
 surge, and so was not thrown back 
 upon the rocks till, unwittingly, he was 
 caught in a cross-current and swept 
 southward on the backs of the reeling 
 sea-horses. 
 
 A horrible tumult was in his ears. 
 The darkness was upon him as a heavy 
 hand. As idle flotsam, the waves swung 
 him backward and forward. 
 
 A deathly cold beset his limbs ; then 
 utter weariness. His hands ceased to 
 propel, and only automatically and in- 
 stinctively kept him afloat. 
 125 
 
Yet even now, at the last extremity, 
 when memory was no more, terror 
 remained. 
 
 There was something swimming near, 
 something moving towards him through 
 the dark. 
 
 The next moment he threw up his 
 hands, overcome by the sickness of 
 fear and a fatigue that he could no 
 longer withstand. As he sank, he was 
 conscious of a body surging up against 
 his ; of a hot breath against his face ; 
 of a gasping whine against his ear. 
 Then in a flash he recognised, or by 
 instinct divined, that it was Ghaoth 
 who had followed into the darkness, 
 and was there to save him. 
 
 The dog had indeed followed, having 
 but an hour ago escaped from the byre 
 where Ian Maclean had risen from his 
 sleep to let him out because of his 
 ceaseless whining. He had raced 
 across the island, and along Alastair's 
 and Lora's track, till he found them 
 where they lay. Thence, after seeing 
 the two whom he loved lying silent 
 and motionless in a way that made 
 him whine with fear, and knowing, as 
 faithful dogs do know, that he must 
 win help without delay, he had sped 
 back to the nearest cottage. Once 
 convinced that old Ealasaid was fol- 
 lowing to succour those whom he had 
 126 
 
left, he had sprung away again through 
 the moonflowers, and had reached 
 the entrance to the cave after fierce 
 baffling with the tide-race. Just as 
 Alastair had risen and was staggering 
 towards the sea, Ghaoth had caught 
 sight of him, and had plunged without 
 hesitation into the black bewilderment 
 of waters which had swallowed up the 
 friend whom he loved with his life. 
 
 Fortunately, the spent swimmer was 
 still near the shore — nearer, even, 
 than when he had first fallen ; for he 
 was now close to the headland of 
 Craig-Geal, and was already in shallow 
 water, which swung on to a long shelf 
 of sand lying against the entrance to 
 another of the innumerable caverns of 
 that side of the island. But here the 
 sea, though at full-flood it covered the 
 sand and moved its hungry lip for a 
 few feet within, did not enter, as a 
 beast of prey halting unassuaged at 
 the entrance to its lair. 
 
 Ghaoth had gripped him by the hair 
 of his neck, and was now struggling to 
 reach the shore. Man and dog were 
 still flung to and fro by the waves ; but 
 the living sport of the sea was no longer 
 separate. With Ghaoth's help, Alastair 
 made renewed, if despairing, efforts. 
 
 Suddenly his feet touched the ground 
 for a moment. Then, with a staggering 
 127 
 
rush, having shaken himself free of the 
 dog, he gained the shore, stumbled 
 blindly up the low shelve of the sound, 
 and fell unconscious among the soft, 
 powdery grit, midway in the wide 
 half-roofless hollow known as the 
 Cave of the Sulaire, from the solan 
 geese which often congregated there 
 in the blinding snow-storms of winter. 
 
 Ghaoth stood panting beside him 
 awhile. At last, with a low whine, the 
 dog pressed his muzzle against the 
 white face in the white sand ; turned 
 aside, whined again, and came back 
 with lolling tongue. Then, suddenly, 
 he sprang away into the darkness, and 
 back into the drowning surge, with all 
 his loyal, loving heart — beautiful love 
 of the dumb animal-soul that God 
 heedeth and cherisheth no less than 
 that other wandering fire He hath 
 placed in the human — eager to baffle 
 with drift and billow till he reached 
 the cavern once more, in time to 
 save Lora, of whose body he had 
 caught a glimpse as he dashed after 
 Alastair. 
 
 In time, and no more. He had not 
 long rescued Lora, who, also, had been 
 partially roused by the shock of the 
 breaking wave. She had been half- 
 standing, half-leaning against the higher 
 ledge to which, with difficulty and in 
 128 
 
blind instinct, she had clung ; but, as 
 Ghaoth reached her, she sank wearily 
 and lay back against the dog, dreaming 
 she had waked in terror, but was now 
 safe in Alastair's arms. 
 
 It was thus that Angus Macrae dis- 
 covered them. Long afterwards, the 
 isleman recalled how he had seen 
 the dog leap back into the darkness. 
 Whether Ghaoth failed to reach the 
 Cave of the Sulaire, and was carried 
 seaward by a current ; or whether his 
 strength failed him in his last effort, 
 and he was swung lifelessly from wave 
 to wave ; whatever the first word of his 
 fate was, the last was the finding of his 
 sea-mangled body in the trawl-net of a 
 fisherman more than a mile oceanward 
 from Innisrbn. 
 
 When Alastair woke, an hour or more 
 after dawn, he remembered nothing of 
 what had happened. His memory, 
 though not killed, was clouded by his 
 madness ; and, doubtless, the shock of 
 what he had gone through, with the 
 action of the mermaid's fruit, had 
 further weakened it. 
 
 He rose and looked about him 
 wonderingly. x\round, were the pre- 
 cipitous rocks ; beyond, the sea 
 stretched far into the morning mists, 
 calm, with a silver sparkle in the south- 
 129 F 1 
 
east, and turquoise -blue elsewhere, 
 except in green straits under the 
 shadow of the isle, till it faded into 
 opal and dove-grey where the veils of 
 mist slowly dispersed, re-wove, lifted, 
 in-wove, and sank to the wave again, 
 or sailed indefinitely away. 
 
 Though he could still recall nothing 
 of the past night, he recognised, as 
 soon as he stepped from the cave and 
 went down by the sea-marge, the head- 
 land of Craig-Ruaidh and that of Craig- 
 Geal just behind him. His one wish 
 was to hide, so that none should see 
 him. His fantasy led him to seek 
 remote places, and to fear the face of 
 his fellows. 
 
 Turning towards the sun, he looked 
 scrutinisingly along the coast. Some- 
 where beyond Craig-Geal, he remem- 
 bered vaguely, there was another hollow 
 which led to a series of intricate and 
 unexplored caves, perilous places of 
 evil repute among the islanders. 
 
 If he were to go there . . . but 
 at that moment his wandering gaze 
 lighted upon an object moving black 
 in the shine of the sea. 
 
 Was it a whale sunning itself, or a 
 pollack moving idly after the liath ? 
 Then he saw that it was a boat — one 
 of many torn from moorings or swept 
 from the beach by the recent gale. 
 mo 
 
So methodical were his actions, that 
 none seeing him would believe his 
 mind was so darkly veiled, that his 
 reason was only partially in exercise. 
 
 Having taken off his coat, he wrapt 
 it round a heavy stone and threw the 
 bundle far into the sea. Then he 
 thrust his boots into a cranny in a 
 fissured boulder that at full flood was 
 covered. 
 
 A few seconds later he was in the 
 water, swimming swiftly towards the 
 derelict. 
 
 While he neared the boat, amid a 
 sheen of sparkling foam as he urged 
 his way through the sun-dazzle which 
 lay upon that part of the sea, he broke 
 intermittently into a mournful Gaelic 
 chant, but with words so incoherent, 
 and with interjections so wild and 
 strange, that the fishermen on a coble, 
 hid in the mist a few fathoms away, 
 believed they listened to a sea-kelpie, 
 or to that vague object of their pro- 
 foundest dread known as "the thing 
 that hides beneath the boat." They 
 were southward bound ; but at that 
 forlorn wailing they hauled down their 
 flapping sail, and, with their oars, made 
 all haste northerly to their island or 
 mainland haven. Not a man among 
 them would have persevered in that 
 voyage on that day. 
 131 
 
Alastair heard the sound of the oar- 
 wash, and ceased his fitful chant. It 
 must, he thought, be dead seamen 
 rowing to and fro, looking for the newly 
 drowned to take their places as warders 
 of the treasures and keepers of the 
 secrets which lie among the weed- 
 tangle and sunless caverns of the deep. 
 At the thought, he laughed loud, but 
 mirthlessly; and the echo of his laughter, 
 falling against the ears of the fishermen, 
 added to their horror and consternation. 
 
 With his hands gripping the gun- 
 wale, he swayed for some time to and 
 fro, fascinated by the lustrous green 
 beneath the keel — green in the sunlit 
 spaces as leaves of the lime in April, 
 and in the lower as emerald lapsing 
 into jade, and then as jade passing into 
 the gloom of pines at dusk. 
 
 At last he raised himself on the 
 water, bending the gunwale low, and 
 half fell, half crawled into the boat. 
 Indifferently, he noticed that it was 
 named Fionnaghal. Clearly it had 
 drifted away from moorings ; for not 
 only were oars and sail-enveloped mast 
 lying taut under the thwarts, but a 
 rope trailed from the bow far down 
 into the water. 
 
 He rowed for some time. At last, 
 becoming weary, or perhaps puzzled by 
 the mists which crept behind and all 
 132 
 
around him, he desisted. A flurry of 
 air struck his right cheek. Instinc- 
 tively he put up the palm of his hand 
 to feel if the wind were coming from 
 the south-east or the south-west. Then, 
 adjusting the mast and setting the sail, 
 he seated himself at the tiller. 
 
 Eddy followed eddy, and soon a 
 breeze blew freshly from the south- 
 east. By the time the Fionnaghal was 
 three or four miles to the north-west 
 of Innisrbn, there was not a mist 
 upon the sea. Immeasurably vast it 
 stretched ; blue, or glittering in a dia- 
 mond-sparkle sheen, or wimpling over 
 in violet hollows, with the white lambs 
 beginning to collect and leap merrily 
 onward in the pathway of the sun. 
 
 Alastair became drowsy with the 
 warmth of the glow upon his back 
 and the chime of the sea-music. Long 
 before noon he slept. For hours the 
 boat went idly adrift. 
 
 When he woke, he saw an island 
 less than half- a -mile to starboard. 
 Looking northward, he could descry 
 nothing but sea ; to the westward, 
 nothing but sea ; nothing but sea to 
 the southward. Far eastward, a dim 
 blue line of hills rose above the hori- 
 zon : here and there — lying apparently 
 against it, and scarce bigger to his eye 
 than the gannets and sea-mews which 
 
 i33 
 
flew overhead — two or three patches of 
 amethyst. These were the isles he 
 had left, though he did not recognise 
 them : Ithona, most westerly ; Innisrbn, 
 remote in the south-east ; I-na-Tril- 
 leachan-trahad, lost in its northerly 
 purple-greys. 
 
 Though the words brought no mean- 
 ing to him, or awakened nothing 
 beyond mere visual reminiscence, his 
 lips, as he looked at the island he was 
 now approaching, framed its name, 
 " I-M6nair." 
 
 Heedless of the fact that he was 
 running straight upon a shore set with 
 reefs like gigantic teeth, he tautened 
 the sail and let the boat rush for- 
 ward, and was almost havened when, 
 with a grinding rip, the Fio?inaghal 
 stopped, filled, leaned over, and hung 
 upon a jagged reef, as a dead body 
 suspended on the horn that has gored 
 it. 
 
 Alastair was thrown forward by the 
 shock. Bruised and stunned, he lay 
 motionless for a few seconds while the 
 water poured over him. Then, rising, 
 and casting a keen glance around, he 
 stepped on to the reef, sprang thence 
 to a rock nearer the shore, and thence 
 to the shore itself. 
 
 As he left the boat, it split. The 
 larger half went drifting on the tide. 
 134 
 
He sat down to watch idly for the 
 disappearance of the few planks which 
 remained. Suddenly, without cause, 
 he rose, stared wildly at the sea and 
 along the shore on either hand, and 
 then moved rapidly inland — often cast- 
 ing furtive glances behind him, now on 
 the one side, now on the other. 
 
 No other lived on I-Mbnair than a 
 shepherd and his wife ; and they only 
 through the summer months. Some- 
 times weeks passed by without their 
 seeing another soul : without other sign 
 of the world of men than the smoke of 
 a steamer far upon the horizon, or the 
 brown patches in the distance when 
 the herring-trawlers ventured ocean- 
 ward. 
 
 No wonder, then, that Fearghas 
 Mclan gave a cry of astonishment, that 
 was partly fear, when he saw a man 
 walking swiftly towards him .... 
 a man who appeared to have dropped 
 from the clouds ; for, looking beyond 
 the stranger, the shepherd could see 
 no sign of trawler, wherry, or boat of 
 any kind. 
 
 " Dibnaid, Dionaid," he cried to his 
 wife, who had come to the door of the 
 cottage to see if he were at hand for 
 his porridge ; "Trothad so . . . . 
 bi ealamh, bi ealamh : quick, quick, 
 come here." 
 
 i35 
 
They stood together as Alastair 
 slowly drew near. When he was close, 
 he stopped, looking at them curiously, 
 and with an air as if he wondered who 
 they were and why they were there. 
 
 "What is your name?" he asked 
 quietly, looking at the shepherd. 
 
 "C'ainm' tha ort" he repeated, as 
 the man stared at him in surprise and 
 something of alarm. 
 
 " Fearghas Mclan." 
 
 " And yours ? " he asked of the 
 woman. 
 
 " Dionaid Mclan." 
 
 " Co tha sin ? " he added abruptly, 
 pointing to the cottage : " who is 
 there ? " 
 
 "No one." 
 
 " I thought I saw some one come 
 out, look at us, and go in again." 
 
 Fearghas and Dionaid glanced at 
 each other with eyes of dread. 
 
 " C'ainm' tha ort " asked the former, 
 in turn. 
 
 Alastair looked at him, as if uncom- 
 prehendingly ; and then, in a low, dull 
 voice, said that he was tired ; that he 
 was hungry, and thirsty, and wet. 
 
 " Tha mi gle sgith ; tha an t' acras 
 orm ; tha am pathadh orm ; tha mi 
 flluch." 
 
 " How did you come here ? " 
 
 "Tha mi gle' sgith." 
 136 
 
"Did you come in a boat? Where 
 is the boat you came in ? " 
 
 "Tha mi gle sgith." 
 
 "What is your name? Are you of 
 the isles ? " 
 
 "Tha mi gle sgith." 
 
 " What do you want with us here, 
 on I-Mbnair, where we do no wrong, 
 O stranger who carrieth your sorrow 
 in your eyes ? " 
 
 "Tha mi gle sgith. Tha mi fliuch. 
 Tha an t' acras orm. Tha mi gle sgith 
 — tha mi gle sgith — tha mi gle sgith." 
 
 Alastair spoke in a strange, dull voice. 
 It would have terrified Fearghas and 
 Dibnaid more, but that the stranger 
 was so gentle in his manner, and had a 
 look upon his face that awed while it 
 reassured them. 
 
 "God has sent him," said Dibnaid, 
 simply. "The poor lad has not waked 
 — he is in a dream. God do unto us 
 as we do unto this waif from the sea. 
 In His good time He will whisper in 
 the closed ears, and the man will wake, 
 and tell us who he is, and whence he 
 came, and whither he would fain go." 
 
 " So be it, Dibnaid. You have said 
 the word, and a good word it is. When 
 this man's hour has come, God will 
 deliver him. Meanwhile, let us call 
 him Donncha, after the boy we lost 
 nigh upon six-and-twenty years ago, 
 137 
 
who might have been as tall and 
 comely as this stranger that is now a 
 stranger no more, but of us and one 
 with us." 
 
 And so it was that, from that day, 
 Alastair Macleod, unsought by any, and 
 unrecognised because no one came 
 near who might have known or guessed 
 who he was, abode on I-M6nair with 
 Fearghas the shepherd and his wife 
 Dibnaid. 
 
 He dwelt in peace. Through the 
 long days he wandered about the 
 shores. Often, in the gloaming, he sat 
 on a rock and stared longingly across 
 the waters for he knew not what, for 
 some nameless boon he craved wit- 
 lessly ; stared yearningly through the 
 dusk for something that lay beyond, 
 that, though unseen, brought a mist 
 into his eyes, so that when he reached 
 the peat-fire again, where Dibnaid 
 Mclan awaited him, he often could not 
 see to eat for awhile for the blur of his 
 slow-falling tears. 
 
 Week succeeded changeless week. 
 The sheep ceased to look up as he 
 passed. The yellowhammers in the 
 gorse sang even when he stopped 
 brooding by the bush whereon they 
 flitted from branch to branch, looking 
 at him the while with quiet eyes. 
 138 
 
It was in the sixth week, after a time 
 of storm which had lapsed into another 
 long spell of exquisite summer, that the 
 dream came to its end. 
 
 Late one afternoon, a herring-trawler 
 lay off I-Mbnair. The skipper, a kins- 
 man of Fearghas, came ashore to give 
 and learn what news there was. 
 
 Alastair had come back about the 
 usual time from one of his daylong 
 rambles, and, as he approached the 
 door, his quick ear had caught the 
 sound of an alien voice. 
 
 Whether he overheard the shepherd 
 tell his friend, in turn for the strange 
 and moving tale of Alastair MacDiarmid 
 Macleod, of Innisron, of the strange 
 visitor he and his wife nourished, with 
 the surmise that he, Donncha, might 
 be no other than the missing man ; or 
 whether some other suggestion con- 
 cerning his removal or identification 
 alarmed him, no one ever knew. 
 
 But, in the cloudy dark of that night, 
 when Rory Mclan and his two mates, 
 Dughall and Ebghann, were drink- 
 ing the crude spirit from Fearghas' 
 illicit still, Alastair slipped into the 
 small boat in which they had come 
 ashore, and rowed softly away into the 
 obscure and lonely wilderness of the sea. 
 
 Truly, as Dibnaid said, God must 
 have whispered in the closed ears, and 
 i39 
 
told him whither to guide the boat, 
 and when to rest while he let it drift, 
 and when to take up the oars again. 
 For, betwixt dawn and sunrise, the 
 fugitive, oaring slowly out of a pearly 
 haze, came abruptly upon the south- 
 west of Innisron. 
 
 With a cry of gladness, he leaned 
 forward, shading with his right hand 
 his eager eyes. He had recognised 
 familiar features of shore and head- 
 lands. The whim took him to capsize 
 the boat and swim ashore. In sudden 
 excitement, he sprang to his feet. The 
 little craft rocked wildly. The next 
 moment Alastair had left the upturned 
 keel to drift in the grey sea like a water- 
 snake, and was swimming swiftly across 
 the two or three hundred yards which 
 lay between the island and the place 
 where he had fallen. 
 
 When he reached the shore, he wan- 
 dered slowly to and fro, his new-born 
 energy having lapsed into a vague un- 
 rest. Aimlessly he leant now against 
 one boulder, now against another. At 
 last, the chill of his dripping clothes 
 gave him active discomfort. He looked 
 doubtfully on the slopes, then at the 
 sea, then again at the slopes. With 
 the strange impulsiveness of his disease, 
 he turned abruptly ; with swift, stum- 
 bling steps, crossed the shore ; passed 
 140 
 
the ridges covered with sea-grass, and 
 entered the shaws beyond. Thence he 
 walked quickly up the corrie behind 
 Craig-Geal. When he gained the upper 
 end, the sunrise shone full upon him. 
 Flinging first one wet garment from 
 him, and then another, he was speedily 
 naked — beautiful in his fair youth, with 
 his white skin and tangle of yellow 
 hair, which, as the sunrays blent with 
 it, seemed to spill pale gold. 
 
 He laughed with pleasure ; then 
 raced to and fro for warmth. When 
 tired, he stooped to pluck the thyme 
 or tufts of gale. For awhile, he 
 wandered thus circlewise, aimlessly 
 happy. 
 
 The day came with heat, and hourly 
 grew hotter. Alastair was glad to lie 
 down in a shady place by a burn, and 
 drowse through the long, warm hours. 
 As the afternoon waned into gloaming, 
 he rose, and, forgetful of or unheeding 
 his discarded clothes, wandered idly 
 northward by one of the many sheep- 
 paths. It was late when, having woven 
 for himself a crown of moonfiowers 
 into which he inserted afterwards a 
 few yellow sea-poppies, he made his 
 way down to the sea, and hungrily ate 
 of what shell -fish he could gather — 
 briny cockles from the sand, and 
 whelks and mussels from the rocks. 
 141 
 
At the coming of the moonlight 
 across the water, he laughed low with 
 joy. It was only in the darkness he 
 heard that Voice in the sea which 
 called, called, called, and terrified him 
 so even while it allured him. The 
 waves, dancing and leaping in the 
 yellow shine and breaking into a 
 myriad little cups and fleeting hollows, 
 sang a song that filled him with joy. 
 
 Then it was that, with erect head, 
 flashing eyes, and proud mien, crowned 
 with moonflowers and sea-poppies, and 
 beautiful in the comeliness of his youth, 
 Alastair appeared before the startled 
 eyes of Lora, who, for the second 
 time, had come down to that shore to 
 woo and win Death. 
 
 When, late that night, Mary Maclean 
 returned, she found Lora in Ealasaid's 
 arms, sobbing and moaning hysteri- 
 cally. 
 
 It was long ere she was able to learn 
 the exact truth, and at first she doubted 
 if Lora were not suffering from a hallu- 
 cination. But as the young mother 
 grew calm, and took up her frail babe 
 and kissed it with tears, Mary was won 
 to believe in at least the possibility that 
 the vision was, if not of Alastair in the 
 body, at any rate the wraith of him, 
 142 
 
allowed to be seen of Lora out of God's 
 pity of her despair. 
 
 The night was too far gone for any- 
 thing to be done straightway ; but she 
 promised to go forth with Lora at 
 sunrise and see if that white, flower- 
 crowned phantom walked abroad in 
 the day, and was no mere fantasy of 
 the moonshine. 
 
 She had fallen asleep when, at dawn, 
 Lora aroused her. 
 
 Without a word, she rose from the 
 chair, wrapped a shawl about her, and 
 then, kissing Lora gently, looked at 
 her with quiet, questioning eyes. 
 
 " What is it, Mary ? " 
 
 " You still believe that you saw Ala- 
 stair . . . Alastair in the body ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Then had you not better take the 
 child with you ? I will carry the little 
 one. If he should see it — perhaps he 
 would. . . ." 
 
 "You are right, dear friend. God 
 has put that thought into your mind." 
 
 A few minutes later, the two women 
 passed out into the cold, fresh morning; 
 Mary going first with the child, and 
 keeping, wherever practicable, to the 
 sheep-paths or to the barren ledges 
 that ran out every here and there from 
 the heather and bracken, and this 
 because of the dews which lay heavily, 
 '43 
 
giving a moon-white sheen to the grass, 
 and sheathing every frond and leaf and 
 twig as with crystal, glistening rainbow- 
 hued. 
 
 They took a path that trailed above 
 the hollow of the moonfiowers, and led 
 deviously shoreward by the side of 
 Craig-Geal. 
 
 When they reached the summit of 
 the grassy brae, where the path di- 
 verged, they looked long in every 
 direction. Nowhere could they discern 
 sign of any human being. Not a soul 
 moved upon the upland moors ; not a 
 soul moved upon the boulder-strewn, 
 rowan - studded slopes ; not a soul 
 moved by the margin of that dead- 
 calm sea, so still that even the whisper 
 of its lip was inaudible, though the 
 faint aerial echo of the crooning of its 
 primeval slumber-song slipt hushfully 
 into the ear. 
 
 They were half-way down towards 
 the shore when Mrs. Maclean, holding 
 up a warning hand, stopped. 
 
 " What is it, Mary? " Lora whispered: 
 " Do you see anything ? Do you see 
 him ? " 
 
 " Look ! " and, as she spoke, Mary 
 pointed to a dip in the little glen. 
 
 Under a rowan, heavy with clusters 
 of fruit, as yet of a ruddy brown 
 touched here and there with crimson 
 144 
 
a white figure stooped, leaning over 
 one of the pools wherein the falling 
 burn slept and dreamed awhile ere it 
 leaped again from ledge to ledge, or 
 slipt laughing and whispering through 
 time-worn channels. 
 
 He was like some beautiful creature 
 of an antique tale. Even as a wild 
 deer, he stooped and drank ; looked 
 questioningly through the rowans and 
 birches, and then across the bracken 
 where the sunrays slid intricately in a 
 golden tangle ; then, stooping again, 
 again drank. 
 
 The sunlight was warm about him. 
 His shoulders and back gleamed ivory- 
 white, dusked flickeringly here and 
 there with leaf-shadows. A shadowy 
 green-gloom lay upon his curved breast 
 and against his thighs, from the sheen 
 of the water passing upward through 
 the dense fern that overhung the 
 stream. 
 
 "It is the young god," thought Mary ; 
 " the young god who, Sheumais the 
 Seer says, was born of human hope, 
 weaned with human tears, taught by 
 dreams and memories, and therewith 
 given for his body, Beauty . . . and 
 for his soul, Immortal Joy." 
 
 But aloud she murmured only, " It 
 is he — the Beautiful One — of the 
 Domhan Tbir ! " 
 
 145 G 
 
Lora did not look at her ; but below 
 her breath whispered, "It is Alastair" 
 
 Swiftly and silently, they moved 
 forward. 
 
 So intent was Alastair, after he had 
 quenched his thirst, upon what he saw 
 or imagined in the pool beneath him, 
 that he did not hear their steps till they 
 were but a few yards away. 
 
 "Alastair!" 
 
 He lifted his head and listened. 
 
 "Alastair J '" 
 
 The sudden fear passed from his 
 eyes. A smile came into them, and 
 his lips parted : 
 
 " Lora . . . Lora bhan . . . 
 Lora, my beautiful gloom . . . my 
 fawn . . . my little one . . ." 
 
 As he spoke, with low, caressing, 
 yearning voice, he looked into the 
 heart of the pool again, and stretched 
 forward his arms longingly. 
 
 A sob behind him fell upon his 
 ears. Startled, he sprang back. 
 
 For more than a minute, he looked in- 
 tently at Lora and Mrs. Maclean. Then, 
 slowly, some reminiscence worked in 
 his brain. Slowly, too, the dark veil 
 began to lift from his mind ; slightly, 
 and for a brief while at most. 
 
 " Mary ! " 
 
 146 
 
Mrs. Maclean made a step towards 
 him, but stopped. The peace that was 
 about her at all times breathed from 
 her, and lay upon him. The benedic- 
 tion of her eyes upheld him. 
 
 Quietly she spoke, with her right 
 hand pointing to the sobbing woman at 
 her side. 
 
 " Alastair . . . this is Lora, who 
 has sought you far, and now has found 
 you." 
 
 " Lora ? Lora is dead ! She is a 
 beautiful spirit, and sleeps in that pool 
 under the rowan. She walked with me 
 last night in the moonshine. She has 
 a beautiful child that is our child. It 
 is now a song, singing in the sunshine. 
 I heard it at dawn, when I was listen- 
 ing to the stars calling one to another. 
 It is a song of joy about the doorway 
 of Pharais. I saw the golden doors 
 open a brief while ago — the doors of 
 Pharais. Our little child danced in the 
 glory as a mote in a sunbeam. But 
 Lora is dead." 
 
 " Hush ! Lora is not dead, but 
 liveth. Lora is here. See, her tears 
 run for you — her bosom heaves for 
 you — her arms reach for you ! " 
 
 Slowly the dreamer advanced. He 
 would not come quite close at first, but 
 there was a wonderful new light in his 
 eyes. 
 
 147 
 
" Alastair ! Alastair ! It is I, Lora ! 
 Come to me ! Come to me ! " 
 
 " If, indeed ... if, indeed, you 
 are Lora . . . Lora, my joy . . . 
 where is our child whose soul I heard 
 singing in the sunshine over against 
 Tigh-na-Pharais ? " 
 
 Without a word, and swiftly, Lora 
 took her poor blind blossom from 
 Mary, and held the child towards him. 
 
 " It is God's gift to us, Alastair," she 
 added at last, seeing that he came no 
 nearer, and looked at the child wonder- 
 ingly. 
 
 He advanced slowly, till his breath 
 fell upon Lora's hands, and made her 
 heart strain with its passion. Stopping, 
 he stretched forth his right hand and 
 gently touched the sleeping face. A 
 sunray fell upon it. Then a smile grew 
 upon the little parted lips, as the spirit 
 of a flower might grow and bloom bodi- 
 less in dreamland. 
 
 Alastair smiled. With soft, caressing 
 hand, he smoothed the child's face and 
 little, uplifted arm. Then he took it 
 gently from its mother, kissed it, handed 
 it to Mary. 
 
 And having done this, he opened his 
 arms and said one word : " Lora ! " 
 
 None saw their return. Mrs. Mac- 
 lean went before them with the child, 
 148 
 
and at once sent Ealasaid out to keep 
 watch and ward against the coming of 
 any one. Thereafter she swiftly made 
 all ready for those whom God had lifted 
 out of the grave. 
 
 But so weary was Alastair — so far 
 spent by hunger, and fatigue, and ex- 
 posure — that he could not put on the 
 clothes laid ready for him. So Lora 
 led him gently to bed ; and there, after 
 he had swallowed a little broth and 
 warm milk, he fell into a profound 
 sleep which lasted till dark, and then, 
 after a brief interval wherein he ate 
 ravenously, till late on the morrow. 
 
 From that time forth, Alastair's mad- 
 ness took a new form. All of dark 
 gloom, of dread or vague fear, went 
 from him. His reason seemed to be a 
 living energy again, though still be- 
 wilderingly distraught at times, and 
 ever veiled. 
 
 Nevertheless, that day of his awaken- 
 ing after his long, life-saving slumber 
 was the last wherein the things of his 
 past and the affairs of the present were 
 realities to him. Concerning these, 
 he could listen to little and speak 
 less ; and, again and again, his strug- 
 gling thought became confused and his 
 words incoherent. 
 
 Yet Lora learned enough to know 
 what his one passionate wish was. Full 
 149 
 
well he knew that the end was not far 
 from him ; but before he entered into 
 the silence he might live many months ; 
 and he longed to leave Innisron. Be- 
 yond words, he longed to die in that 
 little lonely isle of Ithona which was 
 his sole heritage from his mother, and 
 where he had been born ; for his father 
 had brought his fair Eilidh there from 
 his old gloomy castle at Dunvrechan 
 for the travail that was her doom. 
 
 Upon Ithona no one dwelt other than 
 an old islander whose fathers had been 
 there before him for generations. 
 
 Sheumais Macleod was at once shep- 
 herd and fisherman, and caretaker of 
 the long, low farmhouse : alone now, 
 since the death of his wife at mid- 
 summer of that year. There was room 
 and to spare for Alastair and Lora and 
 the little one ; for Mary also — for Mrs. 
 Maclean never dreamed of parting from 
 these her children. 
 
 And thus it was arranged, ere dusk 
 came and filled with violet shadows all 
 the hollows that lay betwixt the cottage 
 and the sea. 
 
 Three days thence, late on a hot 
 afternoon scarce cooled by the breeze 
 that moved soundlessly though steadily 
 over the upland crags of Innisron, a 
 company of islanders was met at the 
 150 
 
little western haven betwixt Ardfeulan 
 and Craig-Ruaidh. Every one on the 
 isle was there, indeed, except the one 
 or two who were weakly or in extreme 
 old age. 
 
 On the water, moored to a ledge, a 
 herring-trawler, the Ellu, lay with her 
 brown sail Sapping idly. In the stern 
 sat Lora, with her child at her breast, 
 and beside her Mrs. Maclean. In the 
 waist, with a leg on either side of the 
 seat, Angus Macrae, who owned the 
 boat, leaned against the mast. 
 
 The islanders made a semi-circular 
 group. In the middle were six or 
 seven old men : on either side were the 
 younger men, women old and young, 
 and the children. Behind were the 
 collie dogs, squatted on their haunches 
 or moving restlessly to and fro. 
 
 Some mischance had made it im- 
 possible for Mr. Macdonald, the old 
 minister of these outer isles, to be 
 present. Father Manus, a young priest 
 of Iona, took his place, and had already 
 blessed the sea, and the Ellu that was 
 to voyage across it, and those who were 
 going away for ever from Innisrbn, and 
 the weary hearts they carried with them, 
 and the sad hearts of those who were 
 gathered to see them go. 
 
 Alastair, tall, frail, with wild eyes 
 strangely at variance with the quiet 
 
 151 
 
pallor of his face — and to many there 
 scarce recognisable, so greatly had he 
 altered — was bidding farewell to the 
 elders one by one. 
 
 Not a word else was spoken by any 
 than the familiar good-bye — Beatmachd 
 leibh. The hearts of all were too full. 
 
 At the last, Alastair came to where 
 Ealasaid MacAodh stood, crying si- 
 lently. He took her in his arms, and 
 kissed her on the brow and then upon 
 both eyes. 
 
 She watched him as he moved slowly 
 down to the Ellu. He stepped on 
 board, followed by Ranald Macrae, 
 and sat down beside Lora, whose hand 
 he took in his, and with the other 
 stroked it gently. 
 
 As old Angus Macrae shook out the 
 sail, Ealasaid suddenly fell on her 
 knees, and, swaying to and fro, began 
 a wailing lament : — 
 
 Tha mo latha goirid, 
 
 Tha mo feasgar fada, 
 
 0. oi, oi, tha ceo air a' bheinn, 
 
 0, oi, oi, tha druchd air an fkeur ! 
 
 My day is short, 
 
 Long is my night — 
 
 O, alas, alas, the mist upon the hill, 
 
 O, alas, alas, the dew upon the grass ! 
 
 Slowly the Ellu moved out from the 
 haven. 
 
 152 
 
Lora and Mar) ^at with bowed heads. 
 Alastair had turned and was staring 
 seaward, where a glory of gold and 
 scarlet was gathered against the going 
 down of the sun. 
 
 0, oi, oi, tha do air a' bheinv, 
 
 O, oi, oi, tha driichd air an fheur! 
 
 sang the islanders in a long, wailing 
 chant. 
 
 Suddenly the sail fdled, became taut. 
 The boat moved swiftly before the 
 wind. 
 
 A deep silence fell upon all. Then 
 Griogair Fionnladh, the oldest of the 
 islesmen, raised the pipes from his 
 shoulder and began to play. 
 
 But the wild, mournful, plaintive air 
 was not the expected Lament of Fare- 
 well. It was the ancient Coronach for 
 the Dead. 
 
 One by one, every man doffed his 
 bonnet ; the white-haired elders bowing 
 their heads, and, with downcast eyes, 
 muttering inaudibly. Sobs were heard 
 and tears fell ; but no word was spoken. 
 
 When the sun set, the Ella was far 
 on her way — a black speck in the 
 golden light. With the coming of the 
 gloaming, the islanders slowly dis- 
 persed. Soon there was none left, 
 save Fionnladh and Ealasaid. 
 
 For a long while thereafter upon 
 153 GI 
 
the twilight-water rose and fell, min- 
 gling with the solemn, rhythmic chant 
 of the waves, the plaintive, mournful 
 wail of the Coronach for those who 
 have passed into the silence. 
 
 When that, too, had ceased, there 
 was no sound that the sea heard not 
 nightly, save the sobbing of the woman 
 Ealasaid. 
 
 i54 
 
T27 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 )EEK after week, month after 
 month, until nigh the end of 
 the fourth, passed by on Ithona : and 
 they who dwelt there took no heed of 
 the passage of the days. 
 
 There are no hours for those who 
 are beyond the rumour of that " time 
 or chance" of which the Preacher 
 speaks. Day grows out of night, and 
 in night fulnlleth itself again : the stars 
 succeed the diurnal march of the sun, 
 and hardly are they lost in his glory ere 
 they come again. Scarce distinguish- 
 able are the twilight of the dawn and 
 the twilight of the eve : and even as 
 the coming and going of these similar 
 shadows are the appearance and evan- 
 ishing of the shadows whom we know 
 for our fellow-men, so little differing 
 one from the other, individual from 
 155 
 
individual, people from people, race 
 from race. 
 
 And even as a shadow, to those who 
 abode on Ithona, was that world they 
 had seen so little of, but of which they 
 had yet known enough. 
 
 In that remote island, solitary even 
 among the outer isles of which it was 
 one of the most far-set in ocean, there 
 was little to break the monotony of the 
 hours. No steamer drew near, save at 
 long intervals. The coastguard cutter 
 arrived intermittently, but sometimes 
 not for months, coming like an alien 
 sea-bird, and as a strange bird of the 
 seas going upon its unknown way 
 again. Few even of the herring-trawlers 
 sailed nigh, except in the late summer, 
 when the mackerel came eastward in 
 vast shoals. 
 
 Morning and noon, afternoon and 
 evening, night and the passing of night, 
 dawn and sunrise : these were the veils 
 that seemed to curtain off this spot of 
 earth. Storm followed calm ; calm 
 succeeded storm : the winds came and 
 went : the tides rose and fell. In 
 summer, the rains from the south ; in 
 autumn, the rains from the west ; in 
 winter, the rains from the north. 
 Change followed change, but orderly 
 as in processional array. The poppies 
 reddened the scanty fields of rye ; 
 156 
 
the swallows and martins haunted the 
 island-ways ; the wild rose bloomed, as 
 with white and pink sea shells made 
 soft and fragrant. Then a little while, 
 and the ling grew purple at the passing 
 of the roses ; the hawks swung in the 
 wind when the swallows had vanished : 
 the campions waved where the poppies 
 had fallen ; the grey thistle usurped the 
 reaped grain. In summer, the Weaver 
 of Sunshine rested there ; there, during 
 the equinox, the Weaver of the Winds 
 abode ; in winter, the Weaver of the 
 Snow made a white shroud for the isle 
 and wove a shimmering veil for the 
 dusking of the sea. And as one spring 
 was like another spring, and one autumn 
 like another autumn, so was one year 
 like another year, in the coming and in 
 the going. 
 
 Save for the encroaching shadow of 
 death, there was nothing to mark the 
 time for the dwellers on Ithona. Mary 
 was aware that not Alastair only, but 
 Lora, was becoming frailer week by 
 week. Lora, as well as Mary, knew that 
 the child's face grew more wan and thin 
 almost day by day. Old Sheumais 
 Macleod was weary at heart with the 
 pity of all that he saw. Only Alastair 
 was happy, for he dreamed ; and his 
 dream was of the loveliness of earth 
 and sea and sky, of the pathway that 
 i57 
 
came down from heaven at sunrise and 
 led back at nightfall through the avenue 
 of the stars to the very gates of Pharais. 
 More happy, too, grew the others as 
 the autumn waned, and the golden 
 peace of St. Martin's aftermath lay 
 upon sea and land ; for their eyes saw 
 more and more through the dreaming 
 eyes of Alastair, more and more clearly 
 they heard strains of the music that 
 haunted his rapt ears. 
 
 Daily he went about clad with dream : 
 a strange sweetness in his voice, a 
 mystery upon his face. His eyes no 
 longer brooded darkly ; there was in 
 them a bright light as of a cloudless 
 morning. 
 
 If, months ago, God had filled with 
 dusk the house of the brain, it was now 
 not the dusk of coming night, but of the 
 advancing day. Fantasies beset him 
 often, as of yore, but never with terror 
 or dismay. The moorland tarn held 
 no watching kelpie : instead, he heard 
 the laughter of the fairies as they swung 
 in the bells of the foxglove ; the singing 
 of an angel where the wind wandered 
 among the high corries ; whispers and 
 sighs of fair spirits in the murmur of 
 leaves, or falling water, or chime of the 
 waves. 
 
 Sometimes Lora walked or lay beside 
 him for hours, listening to his strange 
 158 ' 
 
speech about the things that he saw — 
 things too lovely for mortal vision, but 
 ultimately as real to her as to him. 
 Hope came back to her; and then 
 Peace ; and, at the last, Joy. 
 
 When not with Lora, he loved well 
 to be with Mary or with Sheumais. 
 
 In the eyes of the former he would 
 sometimes look for a long time, seeing 
 there the secret home of peace, and per- 
 haps, deeper, the unveiled beauty of 
 the serene and lovely soul. 
 
 Sheumais he had loved from child- 
 hood. The old islesman had never 
 once been on the mainland, though in 
 his youth he had sailed along its end- 
 less coasts. Tall and strong he was, 
 despite his great age ; and his eyes 
 were the eyes of a young man who 
 hears his first-born laughing and croon- 
 ing against its mother's breast. Igno- 
 rant as he was of the foreign tongue of 
 the mainland, ignorant of books, and 
 unable to read even a verse in the 
 Gaelic Scriptures of which he knew so 
 many chapters by heart, he was yet 
 strong in knowledge and wise in the 
 way of it beyond most men. For he 
 knew all that is to be known concern- 
 ing the island and the surrounding sea, 
 and what moved thereon and lived 
 therein ; and, in his humbleness and 
 simplicity, he saw so deep into the 
 159 
 
human heart and into the mystery of 
 the soul, that he was not ashamed to 
 know he was man, nor to pray to God 
 to guide him through the shadows. 
 
 It was from Sheumais that Alastair, 
 in boyhood and youth, had learned 
 much, not only of his store of legends 
 and ancient runes and old Celtic poetry, 
 but also of that living poetry which 
 makes the heart of the Gael more 
 tender than that of other men, and his 
 brain more wrought with vision. From 
 him he had first heard how that for 
 one to have died is to have "gone into 
 the silence;" that for an old man or 
 woman to pass away in extreme age is 
 to "have the white sleep;" that for a 
 fisherman to drown is for him to have 
 " the peace of the quiet wave." 
 
 Sheumais had filled his brain with 
 lovely words — lovely in themselves and 
 their meaning ; but he had made his 
 clansman a poet by one thing that he 
 did and said. 
 
 For once, after Alastair had returned 
 to the West from the University in 
 St. Andrew's, he went to Ithona to 
 stay for some weeks. At sunrise on 
 the morrow of his arrival, on his 
 coming out upon the grass which 
 sloped to the shore a few yards away, 
 he saw Sheumais standing, with his 
 wide, blue bonnet in his hand, and the 
 1 60 
 
sun shining full upon his mass of white 
 hair — not praying, as at first Alastair 
 
 thought, but with a rapt look on his 
 face," and with glad, still-youthful eves 
 gazing lovingly upon the sea. 
 
 ••What is it, Sheumais ? " he had 
 asked ; and the old islesman, turning to 
 him with a grave smile, had answered : 
 
 " Morning after morning, fair weather 
 or foul, after I have risen from my 
 prayers and ere I have broken my fast, 
 I come here and remove my hat and 
 bow my head, with joy and thanksgiving, 
 before the Beauty of the World." 
 
 From that day, the world became a 
 new world for Alastair. 
 
 In the quietude of dusk— and day 
 by day the dusk came sooner and the 
 dawn later — Mary would sometimes 
 sing, or Sheumais repeat some favourite 
 Ossianic dua?i, or chant a fugitive song 
 of the isles. But, towards the close of 
 November, a silence fell more and more 
 upon all. Each had grown a little 
 weary with the burden of life: all knew 
 Who it was that was coming stealthily 
 across the waters, and for whom first. 
 
 It was on the dawn of December 
 that the child died. It seemed to 
 lapse from life as an ebbing wavelet 
 from a pool. 
 
 The evening before, Alastair had 
 161 
 
carried the little one to the shore. He 
 had never understood that the child's 
 eyes were sealed, and often thought 
 that it slept when it was really awake. 
 When he came to a favourite pool of 
 his, that at low tide was wont to flush 
 with any red light spilled across the 
 wave, he held his tiny burden up, 
 laughing and crooning to it. 
 
 " Look, my pretty one," he would 
 murmur, " that red light is the blood 
 of your elder brother. Fair is He, the 
 white Christ. He has put that there 
 to show that He loves you." Or, again, 
 he would kneel, and with one hand 
 warily move aside the bladder-wrack 
 and other sea-weeds ; and then, point- 
 ing into the translucent water, would 
 tell the blind sleeper to look into the 
 heart of the pool and he would see, 
 far down beyond a vast vista of white 
 columns, flight after flight of shining 
 golden stairs, which led at last to a 
 great gate flashing like the sea in the 
 noon-dazzle. And at the gate was a 
 little child like unto himself, singing a 
 sweet song ; and just within the gate 
 was a beautiful spirit, whose face was 
 that of Lora, and who could not sing 
 as the little child did, because, though 
 she was clad with joy as with a robe, in 
 her eyes there was still a last lingering 
 mist of human tears. 
 162 
 
"And in Pharais, my bonnie," he 
 would add whisperingly in the child's 
 unheeding car, " in Pharais there are no 
 tears shed, though in the remotest part 
 of it there is a grey pool, the weeping of 
 all the world, fed everlastingly by the 
 myriad thai .cry moment are 
 
 somewhere wet with sorrow, or agony, 
 or vain regret, or vain desire. And 
 those who go there stoop, and touch 
 their eyelids with that grey water ; and 
 it is as halm to them, and they go healed 
 of their too great joy : and their songs 
 thereafter are the sweetest that are sung 
 in the wa 5 3 of Pharais." 
 
 Often Lora or Mary would be with 
 him when he was thus speaking ; for 
 each was fearful lest some day he 
 should discover that his little nan was 
 blind, and could never even open the 
 sealed lids. 
 
 But on that last twilight of Novem- 
 ber, Alastair seemed to have been im- 
 pressed by the passive stillness of the 
 child, and to be troubled when he 
 looked at it. He had kissed the eyes 
 again and again, but they had not 
 opened ; he had whispered loving 
 words in the tiny ears, but they had 
 not hearkened. 
 
 All that night he was restless, and 
 rose often to look at the two sleepers in 
 the bed opposite his own. Just before 
 163 
 
dawn, he looked for the last time. He 
 was satisfied now. The little one 
 smiled . . . but it was because that 
 in the soundless, breathless passage 
 from one darkness to another, it had 
 heard a sweet voice at last, and at last 
 had, with suddenly illumined eyes, be- 
 held a new glory. 
 
 So white and still was it that, when 
 the cold of the tiny hands against her 
 bosom awoke Lora, she lay looking 
 upon it for a while, rapt in a new and 
 strange awe. Then, having aroused 
 Mary, she went to Sheumais, and 
 brought him in to the room. Mary 
 had already waked Alastair, and he sat 
 holding the small white body on his 
 knees, stroking it gently. 
 
 When Lora told him that their baby 
 was dead, and asked him if he knew 
 what she said, he did not reply ; but a 
 tear rolled down his cheek, and he put 
 his hand to his heart as though to still 
 the ache of his inarticulate pain. 
 
 But after Mary had read from the 
 Book of Psalms, and prayed in a low 
 voice, all rose and passed out into the 
 sunshine ; and Alastair, already obli- 
 vious of his loss, went down by the 
 shore, and smiled with pleasure at the 
 leap and fall, and chime and whisper, 
 and sweet, low laughter of the sunny 
 waters. 
 
 164 
 
About a hundred yards inland from 
 the cottage, a gigantic pointed stone 
 rises from out of the heather. It is 
 known anion- the isles as Fingal's Bolt, 
 though neither Fionn nor his son, 
 Ossian, ever threw that huge, flat-sided, 
 fang-like rock. A few rude lines and 
 even letters are still discernible on the 
 side next the sun ; but there is probably 
 none who could decipher that old-world 
 rune, carved in bygone ages by the 
 hand of a Druid. 
 
 Of all places in the island, except 
 the rocky headlands whose flanks were 
 laved by the sea, this Stone of the Past, 
 as Sheumais called it, was that most 
 frequented by Alastair. At its base he 
 had listened, as a boy, to the tales of 
 the old islander ; beneath it, his fantasy 
 now persuaded him, was one of the 
 hidden ways that led to that House of 
 Paradise of which he so often dreamed. 
 
 There the four silent mourners met 
 that afternoon to fulfil the wish of one 
 among them, who loved to think that 
 his little van would come back some 
 moonshine night or in a still dawn, 
 and, taking their hands, lead his father 
 and mother by that secret pathway 
 through Domham Tbir to Tir-na- 
 h'Oigh, whence, in good time, they 
 would arise and go up into Pharais. 
 
 Lora had already been on the spot 
 165 
 
with Sheumais. While the latter had 
 dug the place of sleep, she, with 
 white chalk picked from the shore, 
 had printed in large, heavy letters these 
 words upon the seaward side of the 
 stone : 
 
 " Take unto Thy compassion this 
 little one, and us who follow." 
 
 There were no words spoken as 
 Mary, kneeling, took the child from 
 Lora's arms, and laid it, wrapped in a 
 white sheet filled with fragrant gale, in 
 the wood-shored grave that had been 
 reverently prepared. 
 
 The afternoon had grown chill. Sea- 
 ward, a grey mass had risen as if out of 
 the waste of waters. 
 
 All were still kneeling — while Sheu- 
 mais laid turf and heather above the 
 small wooden lid covering the narrow 
 house that would give the body sanc- 
 tuary for a time — when the snow began 
 to come down. 
 
 There was no wind, so the flakes fell 
 light as feathers, grey in the gathering 
 dusk as the down that falls from the 
 wind-swept breasts of wild swans in 
 their flight to or from the Polar seas. 
 
 Denser and denser it came ; sound- 
 less at first, but after a while with a faint 
 rustling and whirring, as though the 
 flakes were wings of invisible birds of 
 silence. 
 
 1 66 
 
The grey-gloom thickened. Already 
 
 the sea was obscured. Its voir.- w.is 
 audible the more loudly ... a 
 calling voice : but dull, listless, melan- 
 choly with ancient, unforgotten pain 
 and all its burthen of immemorial lore. 
 
 The four mourners rose. The two 
 women, with bowed heads, murmured 
 words of prayer and farewell. Sheu- 
 mais, crossing himself, muttered : — 
 " 1 >eireadh gach comuinn, sgaoileadh ; 
 deireadh gach cogaidh, sith" — "the 
 end of all meetings, parting : the end 
 of all striving, peace." Alastair looked 
 eagerly through the snow-dusk lest the 
 child should come again at once and 
 go by them unseen. 
 
 By the time they reached home, there 
 was a thick twilight all about them. A 
 little later, looking out into the night, 
 they saw the flakes drift over and past 
 them like a myriad of winged things 
 hurrying before a wind that pursued, 
 devouring. The island lay in a white 
 shroud. At the extreme margin, a 
 black, pulsating line seemed to move 
 sinuously from left to right. 
 
 Suddenly a deeper sound boomed 
 from the sea, though no wind ruffled 
 the drifts which already lay thick in 
 the hollows. Till midnight, and for an 
 hour beyond, this voice of the sea was 
 as the baying of a monstrous hound. 
 167 
 
None in the homestead slept. The 
 silence, broken only by that strange, 
 menacing baying of the waves as they 
 roamed through the solitudes environ- 
 ing the isle, was so intense that some- 
 times the ears echoed as with the 
 noise of a rush of wings, or as with 
 the sonorous suspensions between the 
 striking of bell and bell in monoton- 
 ously swung chimes. 
 
 Then again, suddenly, and still with- 
 out the coming of wind, the sea ceased 
 its hoarse, angry baying, and, after lapse 
 within lapse till its chime was almost 
 inaudible, gave forth in a solemn dirge 
 the majestic music of its inmost heart. 
 
 At last, after long vigils, all slept, 
 though none so deeply, so unwaken- 
 ingly as Lora. 
 
 Three hours before dawn the snow 
 ceased to fall. An icy sparkle glittered 
 league after league oceanward, as the 
 star-rays pierced the heaving flanks 
 and bowed heads of the sea-horses 
 which had abruptly sprung up before 
 the advancing ground-swell. 
 
 The cold was the cold of the Black 
 Frost — bitter, sharp as a sword, nigh 
 unendurable. 
 
 Shortly after dawn, Alastair awoke, 
 
 shivering. He rose, threw some more 
 
 peats on the fire ; and then, having 
 
 dressed and wrapt his plaid about him,. 
 
 168 
 
and softly opened and closed the dour, 
 stepped out into the snow. 
 
 His breath caught with the cold, and 
 a greater weakness even than that 
 customary of late made him reel, then 
 Kan against the wall tor a few minutes. 
 
 Soon his faintness passed. The ex- 
 ceeding beauty of sunrise over that 
 vast stretch of waters, over the isle in 
 its stainless white shroud, filled him 
 with an exalted joy. Thereafter, for a 
 time, he walked to and fro : sometimes 
 staring absently seaward, again glancing 
 curiously at his shadow — scarce more 
 insubstantial than he himself had grown 
 within the last month, and particularly 
 within the last few days— as it lay upon 
 or moved bluely athwart the snow. 
 
 After a brief space, a rapt look came 
 into his face. He turned, and gazed 
 expectantly at the door. 
 
 No one coming forth, he entered, 
 and, with a loving smile, crossed to 
 Lora's bed. 
 
 'Sweetheart . . . my white flower 
 . come. It is so beautiful. 
 Pharais has opened to us at last. I 
 can see the steps gleaming gold within 
 the yellow shine of the sun. Beyond, 
 I saw a mist of waving wings. Come, 
 Lora . . . Come ! " 
 
 Cold and white was she as the snow 
 Alastair bent, kissed her lips, but was 
 169 H 
 
so wrought by his vision that he did 
 not notice the chill of them, nor see 
 the blue shadow in the pallor of the 
 face. 
 
 "Ah, mitirnean, mo mtiiinean, see, I 
 will carry you," he murmured suddenly. 
 
 He stooped, lifted the beautiful dead 
 body he had loved so well, and, stagger- 
 ing beneath the weight, half carried, half 
 dragged it to the snow-slope beyond the 
 door. Gently he placed Lora down. 
 Then, going for and returning with 
 a deer-skin, laid her upon it, and sat 
 down beside her. 
 
 For a brief while, he waited patiently 
 for her awakening. Then his eyes 
 wandered again, now fixt upon the 
 majesty of the sea, reaching intoler- 
 ably grand from endless horizons to 
 horizons without end ; now upon the 
 immense dome of the sky, where, amid 
 the deepest blue, high in the north- 
 west the moon turned a disc of pale 
 gold out of an almost imperceptible 
 flush, and confronted the flashing, 
 blazing sunfire that, in the south-east, 
 moved swiftly upward. 
 
 Suddenly he leaned forward; his lips 
 parted ; his eyes agleam with the inner 
 flame that consumed him. 
 
 " Lora . . . Lora, my fawn," he 
 whispered. " Look ! The gates are 
 opening ! Dear, all is well at the last. 
 170 
 
God has given me back to you. My 
 trouble is healed. Speak to me, dear ; 
 too great is my happiness ! " 
 
 No sound : no movement of the 
 hands : no stir of the closed eyelids. 
 
 " Lora!" 
 
 It was strange. But he would be 
 patient. 
 
 Idly he watched a small, grey snow- 
 cloud passing low above the island. 
 
 A warm breath reached the heart of 
 it, and set the myriad wings astir. 
 Down, straight down above the isle 
 and for a few fathoms beyond it, they 
 iluttered waveringly. 
 
 The fall was like a veil suspended 
 over Ithona : a veil so thin, so trans- 
 parent, that the sky was visible through 
 it as an azure dusk ; and beneath it, 
 the sea as a blue-flowing lawn where- 
 over its skirts trailed ; while behind it 
 the rising sunfire was a shimmer of 
 amber-yellow that made every falling 
 flake glisten like burnished gold. The 
 wind was utterly still ; the sky cloudless, 
 but for that thin, evanishing veil of 
 dropping gold. 
 
 The sea lay breathing in a deep 
 calm all around the isle. But, from its 
 heart that never slumbers, rose as of 
 yore, and for ever, a rumour as of 
 muffled prophesyings, a Voice of Awe, 
 a Voice of Dread. 
 
 171 
 
THE END. 
 
 HARPUR AND MURRAY, PRINTERS, DERBY.