n unusually
complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect
compliments that Sheila could overhear.

"You poor young things!" he seemed to be saying to himself, "you've got
all your troubles before you; but in the mean time you may make
yourselves as happy as you can."

Was the weather at last about to break? As the afternoon wore on the
heavens became overcast, for the wind had gone back from the course of
the sun, and had brought up great masses of cloud from the rainy
south-west.

"Are we going to have a storm?" said Lavender, looking along the
southern sky, where the Barvas hills were momentarily growing blacker
under the gathering darkness overhead.

"A storm?" said Mackenzie, whose notions on what constituted a storm
were probably different from those of his guest. "No, there will be no
storm. But it is no bad thing if we get back to Barvas very soon."

Duncan sent the horses on, and Ingram looked out Sheila's waterproof and
the rugs. The southern sky certainly looked ominous. There was a strange
intensity of color in the dark landscape, from the deep purple of the
Barvas hills, coming forward to the deep green of the pasture-land
around them, and the rich reds and browns of the heath and the
peat-cuttings. At one point of the clouded and hurrying sky, however,
there was a soft and vaporous line of yellow in the gray; and under
that, miles away in the west, a great dash of silver light struck upon
the sea, and glowed there so that the eye could scarcely bear it. Was it
the damp that brought the perfumes of the moorland so distinctly toward
them--the bog-myrtle, the water-mint and wild thyme? There were no birds
to be heard. The crimson masses of heather on the gray rocks seemed to
have grown richer and deeper in color, and the Barvas hills had become
large and weird in the gloom.

"Are you afraid of thunder?" said Lavender to Sheila.

"No," said the girl, looking frankly toward him with her glad eyes, as
though he had pleased her by asking that not very striking question. And
then she looked round at the sea and the sky in the south, and said
quietly, "But there will be no thunder: it is too much wind."

Ingram, with a smile which he could scarcely conceal, hereupon remarked,
"You're sorry, Lavender, I know. Wouldn't you like to shelter somebody
in danger or attempt a rescue, or do something heroic?"

"And Mr. Lavender would do that if there was any need," said the girl
bravely,