his neighbor Ingram, who would sit
by your side for an hour at a time without breaking the monotony of the
horses' tramp with a single remark. He had formed a poor opinion of
Lavender's physique from the first glimpse he had of his white fingers
and girl-like complexion; but surely a man who had such a vast amount of
good spirits and such a rapidity of utterance must have something
corresponding to these qualities in substantial bone and muscle. There
was something pleasing and ingenuous too about this flow of talk. Men
who had arrived at years of wisdom, and knew how to study and use their
fellows, were not to be led into these betrayals of their secret
opinions; but for a young man--what could be more pleasing than to see
him lay open his soul to the observant eye of a master of men? Mackenzie
began to take a great fancy to young Lavender.

"Why," said Lavender, with a fine color mantling in his cheeks as the
wind caught them on a higher portion of the road, "I had heard of Lewis
as a most bleak and desolate island, flat moorland and lake, without a
hill to be seen. And everywhere I see hills, and yonder are great
mountains which I hope to get nearer before we leave."

"We have mountains in this island," remarked Mackenzie slowly as he kept
his eye on his companion--"we have mountains in this island sixteen
thousand feet high."

Lavender looked sufficiently astonished, and the old man was pleased. He
paused for a moment or two, and said, "But this iss the way of it: you
will see that the middle of the mountains it has all been washed away by
the weather, and you will only have the sides now dipping one way and
the other at each side o' the island. But it iss a very clever man in
Stornoway will tell me that you can make out what wass the height o' the
mountain, by watching the dipping of the rocks on each side; and it iss
an older country, this island, than any you will know of; and there were
the mountains sixteen thousand feet high long before all this country
and all Scotland and England wass covered with ice."

The young man was very desirous to show his interest in this matter, but
did not know very well how. At last he ventured to ask whether there
were any fossils in the blocks of gneiss that were scattered over the
moorland.

"Fossils?" said Mackenzie. "Oh, I will not care much about such small
things. If you will ask Sheila, she will tell you all about it, and
about the small things she finds growing on t