words he remembered; but it was a notable compliment all
the same to the young man who had brought these pleasant tunes to the
island. And so they drove on through the keen salt air, with the sea
shining beside them and the sky shining over them; and in the afternoon
they arrived at the small, remote and solitary inn of Barvas, placed
near the confluence of several rivers that flow through Loch Barvas (or
Barabhas) to the sea. Here they proposed to stop the night, so that
Lavender, when his room had been assigned to him, begged to be left
alone for an hour or two, that he might throw a little color into his
sketch of Callernish. What was there to see at Barvas? Why, nothing but
the channels of the brown streams, some pasture-land and a few huts,
then the unfrequented lake, and beyond that some ridges of white sand
standing over the shingly beach of the sea. He would join them at
dinner. Mackenzie protested in a mild way: he really wanted to see how
the island was to be illustrated by the stranger. There was a greater
protest, mingled with compassion and regret, in Sheila's eyes; but the
young man was firm. So they let him have his way, and gave him full
possession of the common sitting-room, while they set off to visit the
school and the Free-Church manse and what not in the neighborhood.

Mackenzie had ordered dinner at eight, to show that he was familiar with
the ways of civilized life; and when they returned at that hour
Lavender had two sketches finished.

"Yes, they are very good," said Ingram, who was seldom enthusiastic
about his friend's work.

But old Mackenzie was so vastly pleased with the picture, which
represented his native place in the brightest of sunshine and colors,
that he forgot to assume a critical air. He said nothing against the
rainy and desolate version of the scene that had been given to Sheila:
it was good enough to please the child. But here was something
brilliant, effective, cheerful; and he alarmed Lavender not a little by
proposing to get one of the natives to carry this treasure, then and
there, back to Borvabost. Both sketches were ultimately returned to his
book, and then Sheila helped him to remove his artistic apparatus from
the table on which their plain and homely meal was to be placed. As she
was about to follow her father and Ingram, who had left the room, she
paused for a moment and said to Lavender, with a look of frank gratitude
in her eyes, "It is very good of you to have