For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father had given his consent.  More than that he would have done for the girl, if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her eyes—­when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually affectionate toward himself—­he grew reconciled to the ways of Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him.  If there was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila’s husband refusing to live in Stornoway, even for half the year or a portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the sports and scenery and climate of the island?  If Mackenzie could have bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing better than Lewis in summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow and frost.

The blow fell.  One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night the wind went round to the south-west, and in the morning, lo! the very desolation of desolation.  Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy pasture-land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the house.  Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks.  All signs of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky.  Bird and beast had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of the rain.

“Well, it can’t be fine weather always,” said Lavender cheerfully when Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing as rain in the island of Lewis.

“No, that iss quite true,” said the old man.  “It wass ferry good weather we were having since you hef come here.  And what iss a little rain?—­oh, nothing at all.  You will see it will go away whenever the wind goes round.”

With that Mackenzie would again go out to the front of the house, take a turn up and down the wet gravel, and pretend to be scanning the horizon for signs of a change.  Sheila, a good deal more honest, went about her household duties, saying merely to Lavender, “I am very sorry the weather has broken, but it may clear before you go away from Borva.”

“Before I go?  Do you expect it to rain for a week?”