They landed and went up the rocks.  They passed two or three small white houses overlooking the still, green waters of the sea, and then, following the line of a river, plunged into the heart of a strange and lonely district, in which there appeared to be no life.  The river-track took them up a great glen, the sides of which were about as sheer as a railway-cutting.  There were no trees or bushes about, but the green pasture along the bed of the valley wore its brightest colors in the warm sunlight, and far up on the hillsides the browns and crimsons of the heather and the silver-gray of the rocks trembled in the white haze of the heat.  Over that again the blue sky, as still and silent as the world below.

They wandered on, content with idleness and a fine day.  Mr. Mackenzie was talking with some little loudness, so that Lavender might hear, of Mr. John Stuart Mill, and was anxious to convey to Ted Ingram that a wise man, who is responsible for the well-being of his fellow-creatures, will study all sides of all questions, however dangerous.  Sheila was doing her best to entertain the stranger, and he, in a dream of his own, was listening to the information she gave him.  How much of it did he carry away?  He was told that the gray goose built its nest in the rushes at the edge of lakes:  Sheila knew several nests in Borva.  Sheila also caught the young of the wild-duck when the mother was guiding them down the hill-rivulets to the sea.  She had tamed many of them, catching them thus before they could fly.  The names of most of the mountains about here ended in bhal, which was a Gaelic corruption of the Norse fiall, a mountain.  There were many Norse names all through the Lewis, but more particularly toward the Butt.  The termination bost, for example, at the end of many words, meant an inhabited place, but she fancied bost was Danish.  And did Mr. Lavender know of the legend connected with the air of Cha till, cha till mi tuille?

Lavender started as from a trance, with an impression that he had been desperately rude.  He was about to say that the gray gosling in the legend could not speak Scandinavian, when he was interrupted by Mr. Mackenzie turning and asking him if he knew from what ports the English smacks hailed that came up hither to the cod and the ling fishing for a couple of months in the autumn.  The young man said he did not know.  There were many fishermen at Brighton.  And when the King of Borva turned to Ingram, to see why he was shouting with laughter, Sheila suddenly announced to the party that before them lay the great Bay of Uig.