The young men go down to the sea and sow their wild oats in the wicked ports, returning periodically, between voyages, to live the old intensive morality, to court till ten o’clock, to sit under the minister each Sunday, and to listen at home to the same stern precepts that the elders preached to them from the time they were laddies.  Much they learned of women in the ends of the earth, these seafaring sons, yet a canny wisdom was theirs and they never brought wives home with them.  The one solitary exception to this had been the schoolmaster, who had been guilty of bringing a wife from half a mile the other side of the loch.  For this he had never been forgiven, and he rested under a cloud for the remainder of his days.  At his death the wife went back across the loch to her own people, and the blot on the escutcheon of Island McGill was erased.  In the end the sailor-men married girls of their own homeland and settled down to become exemplars of all the virtues for which the island was noted.

Island McGill was without a history.  She boasted none of the events that go to make history.  There had never been any wearing of the green, any Fenian conspiracies, any land disturbances.  There had been but one eviction, and that purely technical—­a test case, and on advice of the tenant’s lawyer.  So Island McGill was without annals.  History had passed her by.  She paid her taxes, acknowledged her crowned rulers, and left the world alone; all she asked in return was that the world should leave her alone.  The world was composed of two parts—­Island McGill and the rest of it.  And whatever was not Island McGill was outlandish and barbarian; and well she knew, for did not her seafaring sons bring home report of that world and its ungodly ways?

It was from the skipper of a Glasgow tramp, as passenger from Colombo to Rangoon, that I had first learned of the existence of Island McGill; and it was from him that I had carried the letter that gave me entrance to the house of Mrs. Ross, widow of a master mariner, with a daughter living with her and with two sons, master mariners themselves and out upon the sea.  Mrs. Ross did not take in boarders, and it was Captain Ross’s letter alone that had enabled me to get from her bed and board.  In the evening, after my encounter with Margaret Henan, I questioned Mrs. Ross, and I knew on the instant that I had in truth stumbled upon mystery.

Like all Island McGill folk, as I was soon to discover, Mrs. Ross was at first averse to discussing Margaret Henan at all.  Yet it was from her I learned that evening that Margaret Henan had once been one of the island belles.  Herself the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, she had married Thomas Henan, equally well-to-do.  Beyond the usual housewife’s tasks she had never been accustomed to work.  Unlike many of the island women, she had never lent a hand in the fields.

“But what of her children?” I asked.

“Two o’ the sons, Jamie an’ Timothy uz married an’ be goun’ tull sea.  Thot bug house close tull the post office uz Jamie’s.  The daughters thot ha’ no married be luvun’ wuth them as dud marry.  An’ the rest be dead.”