* * * * *

So fair shines the morning sun on the white sands of Iona!  The three-days’ gale is over.  Behold how Ulva—­Ulva the green-shored—­the Ool-a-va that the sailors love—­is laughing out again to the clear skies!  And the great skarts on the shores of Erisgeir are spreading abroad their dusky wings to get them dried in the sun; and the seals are basking on the rocks in Loch-na-Keal; and in Loch Scridain the white gulls sit buoyant on the blue sea.  There go the Gometra men in their brown-sailed boat to look after the lobster traps at Staffa, and very soon you will see the steamer come round the far Cailleach Point; over at Erraidh they are signaling to the men at Dubh-Artach, and they are glad to have a message from them after the heavy gale.  The new, bright day has begun; the world has awakened again to the joyous sunlight; there is a chattering of the sea-birds all along the shores.  It is a bright, eager, glad day for all the world.  But there is silence in Castle Dare!

SHEILA IN LONDON

From ‘A Princess of Thule’

She asked if they were lords who owned those beautiful houses built up on the hill, and half-smothered among lilacs and ash-trees and rowan-trees and ivy.

“My darling,” Lavender had said to her, “if your papa were to come and live here, he could buy half a dozen of these cottages, gardens and all.  They are mostly the property of well-to-do shopkeepers.  If this little place takes your fancy, what will you say when you go South—­when you see Wimbledon and Richmond and Kew, with their grand old commons and trees?  Why, you could hide Oban in a corner of Richmond Park!”

“And my papa has seen all these places?”

“Yes.  Don’t you think it strange he should have seen them all, and known he could live in any of them, and then gone away back to Borva?”

“But what would the poor people have done if he had never gone back?”

“Oh, some one else would have taken his place.”

“And then, if he were living here, or in London, he might have got tired, and he might have wished to go back to the Lewis and see all the people he knew; and then he would come among them like a stranger, and have no house to go to.”

Then Lavender said, quite gently:—­

“Do you think, Sheila, you will ever tire of living in the South?”

The girl looked up quickly, and said with a sort of surprised questioning in her eyes:—­

“No, not with you.  But then we shall often go to the Lewis?”

“Oh, yes,” her husband said, “as often as we can conveniently.  But it will take some time at first, you know, before you get to know all my friends, who are to be your friends, and before you get properly fitted with your social circle.  That will take you a long time, Sheila, and you may have many annoyances or embarrassments to encounter; but you won’t be very much afraid, my girl?”