Duncan said, "for
there wass no one knew Loch Roag better as you, not one, and you hef
not been so long away; and when you tek the tiller in your hand it
will all come back to you, just as if you wass going away from Borva
the day before yesterday."

She certainly had not forgotten, and she was proud and pleased to see
how well the shapely little craft performed its duties. They had a
favorable wind, and ran rapidly along the opening channels, until in
due course they glided into the well-known bay over which, and shining
in the yellow light from the sunset, they saw Sheila's home.

Sheila had escaped so far the trouble of meeting friends, but she
could not escape her friends in Borvabost. They had waited for her for
hours, not knowing when the Clansman might arrive at Stornoway; and
now they crowded down to the shore, and there was a great shaking
of hands, and an occasional sob from some old crone, and a thousand
repetitions of the familiar "And are you ferry well, Miss Sheila?"
from small children who had come across from the village in defiance
of mothers and fathers. And Sheila's face brightened into a wonderful
gladness, and she had a hundred questions to ask for one answer she
got, and she did not know what to do with the number of small brown
fists that wanted to shake hands with her.

"Will you let Miss Sheila alone?" Duncan called out, adding something
in Gaelic which came strangely from a man who sometimes reproved his
own master for swearing. "Get away with you, you brats: it wass better
you would be in your beds than bothering people that wass come all the
way from Styornoway."

Then they all went up in a body to the house, and Scarlett, who had
neither eyes, ears nor hands but for the young girl who had been the
very pride of her heart, was nigh driven to distraction by Mackenzie's
stormy demands for oatcake and glasses and whisky. Scarlett angrily
remonstrated with her husband for allowing this rabble of people to
interfere with the comfort of Miss Sheila; and Duncan, taking her
reproaches with great good-humor, contented himself with doing her
work, and went and got the cheese and the plates and the whisky, while
Scarlett, with a hundred endearing phrases, was helping Sheila to take
off her traveling things. And Sheila, it turned out, had brought
with her in her portmanteau certain huge and wonderful cakes, not of
oatmeal, from Glasgow; and these were soon on the great table in the
kitchen, and She