When they pulled out again to that cockle-shell craft with its stone ballast and big brown mainsail, the boy was sent ashore and the two companions set out by themselves.  By this time the sun had gone down, and a strange green twilight was shining over the sea.  As they got farther out the dusky shores seemed to have a pale mist hanging around them, but there were no clouds on the hills, for a clear sky shone overhead, awaiting the coming of the stars.  Strange indeed was the silence out here, broken only by the lapping of the water on the sides of the boat and the calling of birds in the distance.  Far away the orange ray of a lighthouse began to quiver in the lambent dusk.  The pale green light on the waves did not die out, but the shadows grew darker, so that Eyre, with his gun close at hand, could not make out his groups of guillemots, although he heard them calling all around.  They had come out too late, indeed, for any such purpose.

Thither on those beautiful evenings, after his day’s work was over, Lavender was accustomed to come, either by himself or with his present companion.  Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his solitude:  he was invariably too eager to get a shot, his chief delight being to get to the bow, to let the boat drift for a while silently through the waves, so that she might come unawares on some flock of sea-birds.  Lavender, sitting in the stern with the tiller in his hand, was really alone in this world of water and sky, with all the majesty of the night and the stars around him.

And on these occasions he used to sit and dream of the beautiful time long ago in Loch Roag, when nights such as these used to come over the Atlantic, and find Sheila and himself sailing on the peaceful waters, or seated high up on the rocks listening to the murmur of the tide.  Here was the same strange silence, the same solemn and pale light in the sky, the same mystery of the moving plain all around them that seemed somehow to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad.  Many a time his heart became so full of recollections that he had almost called aloud “Sheila!  Sheila!” and waited for the sea and the sky to answer him with the sound of her voice.  In these bygone days he had pleased himself with the fancy that the girl was somehow the product of all the beautiful aspects of Nature around her.  It was the sea that was in her eyes, it was the fair sunlight that shone in her face, the breath of her life was the breath of the moorland winds.  He had written verses about this fancy of hers; and he had conveyed them secretly to her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them.  And many a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music, the music of irreparable loss.  What did they say to him, now that he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out of the strange past?—­

  For she and the clouds and the breezes were one. 
  And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sun
  To charm and bewilder all men with the grace
  They combined and conferred on her wonderful face.