nge
thing. In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay
a long wonder-land of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could see the
successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean,
until in the south they faded into a gray mist and became invisible.
And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters
of the little bay and the hulls of the boats and the windows of the
houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!

"Yes," said Lavender to the captain, "it will be a cold drive across
to Loch Roag. I shall give Mackenzie's man a good dram before we
start."

But it was not Mackenzie's notion of hospitality to send Duncan to
meet an honored guest, and ere the vessel was fast moored Lavender had
caught sight of the well-known pair of horses and the brown wagonette,
and Mackenzie stamping up and down in the trampled snow. And this
figure close down to the edge of the quay? Surely, there was something
about the thick gray shawl, the white feather, the set of the head,
that he knew!

"Why, Sheila!" he cried, jumping ashore before the gangway was shoved
across, "whatever made you come to Stornoway on such a day?"

"And it is not much my coming to Stornoway if you will come all the
way from England to the Lewis," said Sheila, looking up with her
bright and glad eyes.

For six months he had been trying to recall the tones of her voice in
looking at her picture, and had failed: now he fancied that she spoke
more sweetly and musically than ever.

"Ay, ay," said Mackenzie when he had shaken hands with the young
man, "it wass a piece of foolishness, her coming over to meet you in
Styornoway; but the girl will be neither to hold nor to bind when she
teks a foolishness into her head."

"Is this the character I hear of you, Sheila?" he said; and Mackenzie
laughed at his daughter's embarrassment, and said she was a good lass
for all that, and bundled both the young folks into the inn, where
luncheon had been provided, with a blazing fire in the room, and a
kettle of hot water steaming beside it.

When they got to Borva, Lavender began to see that Mackenzie had laid
the most subtle plans for reconciling him to the hard weather of these
northern winters; and the young man, nothing loath, fell into his
ways, and was astonished at the amusement and interest that could
be got out of a residence in this bleak island at such a season.
Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble protection