“I can stand a good bit of cold when there’s a reason for it,” said the young man; “and I have written to Sheila to say I should start to-morrow.”

“In that case I had better make use of you.  I suppose you won’t mind taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket that I have bought for her.”

“That you have bought for her!” said the other.

How could he have spared fifteen pounds out of his narrow income for such a present?  And yet he laughed at the idea of his ever having been in love with Sheila.

Lavender took the sealskin jacket with him, and started on his journey to the North.  It was certainly all that Ingram had prophesied in the way of discomfort, hardship and delay.  But one forenoon, Lavender, coming up from the cabin of the steamer into which he had descended to escape from the bitter wind and the sleet, saw before him a strange thing.  In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay a long wonder-land of gleaming snow.  Far as the eye could see the successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean, until in the south they faded into a gray mist and became invisible.  And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters of the little bay and the hulls of the boats and the windows of the houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!

“Yes,” said Lavender to the captain, “it will be a cold drive across to Loch Roag.  I shall give Mackenzie’s man a good dram before we start.”

But it was not Mackenzie’s notion of hospitality to send Duncan to meet an honored guest, and ere the vessel was fast moored Lavender had caught sight of the well-known pair of horses and the brown wagonette, and Mackenzie stamping up and down in the trampled snow.  And this figure close down to the edge of the quay?  Surely, there was something about the thick gray shawl, the white feather, the set of the head, that he knew!

“Why, Sheila!” he cried, jumping ashore before the gangway was shoved across, “whatever made you come to Stornoway on such a day?”

“And it is not much my coming to Stornoway if you will come all the way from England to the Lewis,” said Sheila, looking up with her bright and glad eyes.

For six months he had been trying to recall the tones of her voice in looking at her picture, and had failed:  now he fancied that she spoke more sweetly and musically than ever.

“Ay, ay,” said Mackenzie when he had shaken hands with the young man, “it wass a piece of foolishness, her coming over to meet you in Styornoway; but the girl will be neither to hold nor to bind when she teks a foolishness into her head.”

“Is this the character I hear of you, Sheila?” he said; and Mackenzie laughed at his daughter’s embarrassment, and said she was a good lass for all that, and bundled both the young folks into the inn, where luncheon had been provided, with a blazing fire in the room, and a kettle of hot water steaming beside it.