looked on this pretty picture with a less feeling of delight.

"Well, you see, Mr. Mackenzie," he was beginning, "you must make this
excuse for him--"

But Mackenzie put aside Lavender at once. It was all about Sheila
that he wanted to know. There was no anger in his words; only a great
anxiety, and sometimes an extraordinary and pathetic effort to take a
philosophical view of the situation. What had Sheila said? Was Sheila
deeply interested in the young man? Would it please Sheila if he was
to go in-doors and give at once his free consent to her marrying this
Mr. Lavender?

"Oh, you must not think," said Mackenzie, with a certain loftiness
of air even amidst his great perturbation and anxiety--"you must not
think I hef not foreseen all this. It wass some day or other Sheila
will be sure to marry; and although I did not expect--no, I did not
expect _that_--that she would marry a stranger and an Englishman, if
it will please her that is enough. You cannot tell a young lass the
one she should marry: it iss all a chance the one she likes, and if
she does not marry him it is better she will not marry at all. Oh yes,
I know that ferry well. And I hef known there wass a time coming when
I would give away my Sheila to some young man; and there iss no use
complaining of it. But you hef not told me much about this young man,
or I hef forgotten: it is the same thing whatever. He has not much
money, you said--he is waiting for some money. Well, this is what I
will do: I will give him all my money if he will come and live in the
Lewis."

All the philosophy he had been mustering up fell away from that last
sentence. It was like the cry of a drowning man who sees the last
life-boat set out for shore, leaving him to his fate. And Ingram had
not a word to say in reply to that piteous entreaty.

"I do not ask him to stop in Borva: no, it iss a small place for one
that hass lived in a town. But the Lewis, that is quite different; and
there iss ferry good houses in Stornoway."

"But surely, sir," said Ingram, "you need not consider all this just
yet. I am sure neither of them has thought of any such thing."

"No," said Mackenzie, recovering himself, "perhaps not. But we hef our
duties to look at the future of young folks. And you will say that Mr.
Lavender hass only expectations of money?"

"Well, the expectation is almost a certainty. His aunt, I have told
you, is a very rich old lady, who has no other near relations, and she
i