ng ago been put down by the Island folk as
confirmed bachelors.

Father Tiernay had talked with Jacopo about his religion, and had
declared him an excellent son of Mother Church, so there was nothing
against him on that ground. The captain of his ship gave him a good
character, and Jacopo had been with him three seasons. He had a tidy
little house near Greenock, and a bit of money saved. Yet the brothers
were not satisfied. 'Why couldn't she have fancied a lad of the kindly
neighbours?' grumbled William, the eldest. And the youngest, Patrick,
answered in the same strain, 'Wasn't the Island good enough for her
but she must go to foreign lands?' And then five melancholy heads
shook in the twilight.

They had a cold, awkward, insular distrust and shyness of the
Spaniard. They made no response to his professions of goodwill and
brotherhood, poured out fluently in his yet difficult Scots-English.
They noticed and commented afterwards upon his contemptuous shrug,
when one feast night he was invited to join the family at its
Rosary,--for they are devout people, the Islanders.

Yet, distrust or no distrust, the girl must go to him. He came back
one summer day with a fine rig-out for his wedding, and a bonnet and
cloak for the bride such as were never dreamt of in the Island. She
was an impassioned bride, and as she came down the church with her
husband, her eyes uplifted and shining like stars, she seemed rather
to float like a tall flame than to walk like a mortal woman.

Five men watched her then with melancholy and patient faces. The five
went with her to the boat on which she was to cross to the mainland to
take the Glasgow steamer. As the little ferry plied away from the pier
it was at her husband she looked, not at them and the Island, though
it stood up purple and black, and she had well loved the rocks and
glades of it, and though they had fostered her.

The five men went back to their lonely cottage and began to do for
themselves. They were handy fellows, as good at frying a fish as
catching it, and they were not minded to put a woman in Mary's place.
They kept the cottage tidy enough, yet it was a dreary tidiness. The
fire generally went out when it was no longer required for meals, and
as the brothers came in one after the other, from smoking a pipe on
the quay, they went to bed in the dark, or by the shaft of moonlight
that came in through the window overlooking the old Abbey and its
graves. They were always s