doing her best to entertain the stranger, and
he, in a dream of his own, was listening to the information she gave
him. How much of it did he carry away? He was told that the gray goose
built its nest in the rushes at the edge of lakes: Sheila knew several
nests in Borva. Sheila also caught the young of the wild-duck when
the mother was guiding them down the hill-rivulets to the sea. She
had tamed many of them, catching them thus before they could fly. The
names of most of the mountains about here ended in _bhal_, which was
a Gaelic corruption of the Norse _fiall_, a mountain. There were many
Norse names all through the Lewis, but more particularly toward the
Butt. The termination _bost_, for example, at the end of many words,
meant an inhabited place, but she fancied _bost_ was Danish. And did
Mr. Lavender know of the legend connected with the air of _Cha till,
cha till mi tuille_?

Lavender started as from a trance, with an impression that he had
been desperately rude. He was about to say that the gray gosling in
the legend could not speak Scandinavian, when he was interrupted by
Mr. Mackenzie turning and asking him if he knew from what ports the
English smacks hailed that came up hither to the cod and the ling
fishing for a couple of months in the autumn. The young man said he
did not know. There were many fishermen at Brighton. And when the King
of Borva turned to Ingram, to see why he was shouting with laughter,
Sheila suddenly announced to the party that before them lay the great
Bay of Uig.

It was certainly a strange and impressive scene. They stood on the top
of a lofty range of hill, and, underneath them lay a vast semicircle,
miles in extent, of gleaming white sand, that had in bygone ages been
washed in by the Atlantic. Into this vast plain of silver whiteness
the sea, entering by a somewhat narrow portal, stretched in long arms
of a pale blue. Elsewhere, the great crescent of sand was surrounded
by a low line of rocky hill, showing a thousand tints of olive-green
and gray and heather-purple; and beyond that again rose the giant bulk
of Mealasabhal, grown pale in the heat, into the southern sky. There
was not a ship visible along the blue plain of the Atlantic. The only
human habitation to be seen in the strange world beneath them was a
solitary manse. But away toward the summit of Mealasabhal two specks
slowly circled in the air, which Sheila thought were eagles; and far
out on the western sea, lying lik