is pipe round the corner.

For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had
in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father
had given his consent. More than that he would have done for the girl,
if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her
eyes--when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction
or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually
affectionate toward himself--he grew reconciled to the ways of
Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a
good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him. If there
was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila's
husband refusing to live in Stornoway, even for half the year or a
portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as
delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the
sports and scenery and climate of the island? If Mackenzie could have
bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone
back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing
better than Lewis in summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow
and frost.

The blow fell. One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night
the wind went round to the south-west, and in the morning, lo! the
very desolation of desolation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were
all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain
poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy
pasture-land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a
gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the
house. Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house
or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there
was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel
at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks. All signs
of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky. Bird and beast
had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the
melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of
the rain.

"Well, it can't be fine weather always," said Lavender cheerfully when
Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing
as rain in the island of Lewis.

"No, that iss quite true," said the old man. "It wass ferry good
weather we were having since you hef come here. And what