over six feet in height, keen-faced, gray-eyed,
straight-limbed and sinewy in frame, jumped into the big and rough boat
and began to get ready for their departure. There was just enough wind
to catch the brown mainsail, and the King of Borva took the tiller, his
henchman sitting down by the mast. And no sooner had they left the shore
and stood out toward one of the channels of this arm of the sea, than
the tall, spare keeper began to talk of that which made his master's eye
grow dark. "Ah, well," he said, in the plaintive drawling of his race,
"and it iss an empty house you will be going to, Mr. Mackenzie; and it
iss a bad thing for us all that Miss Sheila hass gone away; and it iss
many's ta time she will hef been wis me in this very boat--"

"---- ---- ---- ---- you, Duncan Macdonald!" cried Mackenzie, in an
access of fury, "what will you talk of like that? It iss every man,
woman and child on the island will talk of nothing but Sheila! I will
drive my foot through the bottom of the boat if you do not hold your
peace!"

The tall gillie patiently waited until his master had exhausted his
passion, and then he said, as if nothing had occurred, "And it will not
do much good, Mr. Mackenzie, to tek ta name o' God in vain; and there
will be ferry much more of that now since Miss Sheila iss gone away, and
there will be much more of trinking in ta island, and it will be a great
difference, mirover. And she will be so far away that no one will see
her no more--far away beyond ta Sound of Sleat, and far away beyond
Oban, as I hef heard people say. And what will she do in London, when
she has no boat at all, and she will never go out to ta fishing? And I
will hear people say that you will walk a whole day and never come to ta
sea, and what will Miss Sheila do for that? And she will tame no more o'
ta wild-ducks' young things, and she will find out no more o' ta nests
in the rocks, and she will hef no more horns when the deer is killed,
and she will go out no more to see ta cattle swim across Loch Roag when
they go to ta sheilings. It will be all different, all different, now;
and she will never see us no more. And it iss as bad as if you wass a
poor man, Mr. Mackenzie, and had to let your sons and your daughters go
away to America, and never come back no more. And she ta only one in
your house! And it wass the son o' Mr. Macintyre of Sutherland he would
hef married her, and come to live on ta island, and not hef Miss Sheila
go a