y the sea all her life, and who had
followed the wanderings of Endymion in the enchanted forest, need not
have been so particular about a method of boiling potatoes, or have
shown so much interest in a pattern for children's frocks.

Mackenzie and Ingram met them. There was the usual "Well, Sheila?"
followed by a thousand questions about the very things she had been
inquiring into. That was one of the odd points about Ingram that
puzzled and sometimes vexed Lavender; for if you are walking home at
night it is inconvenient to be accompanied by a friend who would stop
to ask about the circumstances of some old crone hobbling along the
pavement, or who could, on his own doorstep, stop to have a chat with
a garrulous policeman. Ingram was about as odd as Sheila herself in
the attention he paid to those wretched cotters and their doings.
He could not advise on the important subject of broth, but he would
have tasted it by way of discovery, even if it had been presented to
him in a tea-cup. He had already been prowling round the place with
Mackenzie. He had inspected the apparatus in the creek for hauling up
the boats. He had visited the curing-houses. He had examined the heaps
of fish drying on the beach. He had drunk whisky with John the Piper
and shaken hands with Alister-nan-Each. And now he had come to tell
Sheila that the piper was bringing down luncheon from Mackenzie's
house, and that after they had eaten and drunk on the white beach they
would put out the Maighdean-mhara once more to sea, and sail over to
Mevaig, that the stranger might see the wondrous sands of the Bay of
Uig.

But it was not in consonance with the dignity of a king that his
guests should eat from off the pebbles, like so many fishermen, and
when Mairi and another girl brought down the baskets, luncheon was
placed in the stern of the small vessel, while Duncan got up the
sails and put out from the stone quay. As for John the Piper, was he
insulted at having been sent on a menial errand? They had scarcely got
away from the shore when the sounds of the pipes was wafted to them
from the hillside above, and it was the "Lament of Mackrimmon" that
followed them out to sea:

Mackrimmon shall no more return,
Oh never, never more return!

That was the wild and ominous air that was skirling up on the
hillside; and Mackenzie's face, as he heard it, grew wroth. "That
teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his
foot. "What for wil