as he was being introduced. His welcome of Ingram had been most
gracious and friendly, but he received his companion with something of a
severe politeness. He requested him to take a seat beside him, so that
he might see the country as they went across to Borva; and Lavender
having done so, Ingram and Duncan got into the body of the wagonette,
and the party drove off.

Passing through the clean and bright little town, Mackenzie suddenly
pulled up his horses in front of a small shop, in the window of which
some cheap bits of jewelry were visible. The man came out, and Mr.
Mackenzie explained with some care and precision that he wanted a silver
brooch of a particular sort. While the jeweler had returned to seek the
article in question, Frank Lavender was gazing around him in some wonder
at the appearance of so much civilization on this remote and
rarely-visited island. There were no haggard savages, unkempt and
scantily clad, coming forth from their dens in the rocks to stare wildly
at the strangers. On the contrary, there was a prevailing air of comfort
and "bienness" about the people and their houses. He saw handsome girls
with coal-black hair and fresh complexions, who wore short and thick
blue petticoats, with a scarlet tartan shawl wrapped round their bosom
and fastened at the waist; stalwart, thick-set men, in loose blue jacket
and trowsers and scarlet cap, many of them with bushy red beards; and
women of extraordinary breadth of shoulder, who carried enormous loads
in a creel strapped on their back, while they employed their hands in
contentedly knitting stockings as they passed along. But what was the
purpose of these mighty loads of fish-bones they carried--burdens that
would have appalled a railway porter of the South?

"You will see, sir," observed the King of Borva in reply to Lavender's
question, "there is not much of the phosphates in the grass of this
island; and the cows they are mad to get the fish-bones to lick, and it
iss many of them you cannot milk unless you put the bones before them."

"But why do the lazy fellows lounging about there let the women carry
those enormous loads?"

Mr. Mackenzie stared: "Lazy fellows! They hef harder work than any you
will know of in your country; and besides the fishing they will do the
ploughing and much of the farm-work. And iss the women to do none at
all? That iss the nonsense that my daughter talks; but she has got it
out of books, and what do they know how the