ed by this spectre, that did not
threaten, but only looked piteously toward him with eyes full of
entreaty and pain?

He left the shore, and blindly made his way up to the pasture-land
above, careless whither he went. He knew not how long he had been away
from the house, but here was a small fresh-water lake set round about
with rushes, and far over there in the east lay a glimmer of the
channels between Borva and Lewis. But soon there was another light
in the east, high over the low mists that lay along the land. A pale
blue-gray arose in the cloudless sky, and the stars went out one by
one. The mists were seen to lie in thicker folds along the desolate
valleys. Then a faintly yellow whiteness stole up into the sky, and
broadened and widened, and behold! the little moorland loch caught
a reflection of the glare, and there was a streak of crimson here
and there on the dark-blue surface of the water. Loch Roag began to
brighten. Suainabhal was touched with rose-red on its eastern slopes.
The Atlantic seemed to rise out of its purple sleep with the new
light of a new dawn; and then there was a chirruping of birds over
the heath, and the first shafts of the sunlight ran along the surface
of the sea, and lit up the white wavelets that were breaking on the
beach. The new day struck upon him with a strange sense of wonder.
Where was he? Whither had gone the wild visions of the night, the
feverish dread, the horrible forebodings? The strong mental emotion
that had driven him out now produced its natural reaction: he looked
about in a dazed fashion at the revelation of light around him, and
felt himself trembling with weakness. Slowly, blindly and hopelessly
he set to walk back across the island, with the sunlight of the fresh
morning calling into life ten thousand audible things of the moorland
around him.

And who was this who stood at the porch of the house in the clear
sunshine? Not the pale and ghastly creature who had haunted him during
those wild hours, but Sheila herself, singing some snatches of a song,
and engaged in watering the two bushes of sweetbrier at the gate. How
bright and roseate and happy she looked, with the fine color of her
face lit up by the fresh sunlight, and the brisk breeze from the sea
stirring now and again the loose masses of her hair! Haggard and faint
as he was, he would have startled her if he had gone up to her then.
He dared not approach her. He waited until she had gone round to the
gabl