“Six o’clock?  I’m thinking, Duncan, I would like to go with her as far as Oban or Glasgow.  Oh yes, I will go with her as far as Glasgow.  Be sharp, Duncan, and bring in the boat.”

The keeper stared, fearing his master had gone mad:  “You wass going with her this ferry night?”

“Yes.  Be sharp, Duncan!” said Mackenzie, doing his best to conceal his impatience and determination under a careless air.

“Bit, sir, you canna do it,” said Duncan peevishly.  “You hef no things looked out to go.  And by the time we would get to Callernish it wass a ferry hard drive there will be to get to Stornoway by six o’clock; and there is the mare, sir, she will hef lost a shoe—­”

Mr. Mackenzie’s diplomacy gave way.  He turned upon the keeper with a sudden fierceness and with a stamp of his foot:  “——­ ——­ you, Duncan MacDonald! is it you or me that is the master?  I will go to Stornoway this ferry moment if I hef to buy twenty horses!” And there was a light under the shaggy eyebrows that warned Duncan to have done with his remonstrances.

“Oh. ferry well, sir—­ferry well, sir,” he said, going off to the boat, and grumbling as he went.  “If Miss Sheila was here, it would be no going away to Glesca without any things wis you, as if you wass a poor traffelin tailor that hass nothing in the world but a needle and a thimble mirover.  And what will the people in Styornoway hef to say, and sa captain of sa steamboat, and Scarlett?  I will hef no peace from Scarlett if you wass going away like this.  And as for sa sweerin, it is no use sa sweerin, for I will get sa boat ready—­oh yes, I will get sa boat ready; but I do not understand why I will get sa boat ready.”

By this time, indeed, he had got along to the larger boat, and his grumblings were inaudible to the object of them.  Mr. Mackenzie went to the small landing-place and waited.  When he got into the boat and sat down in the stern, taking the tiller in his right hand, he still held Sheila’s letter in the other hand, although he did not need to reread it.

They sailed out into the blue waters of the loch and rounded the point of the island in absolute silence, Duncan meanwhile being both sulky and curious.  He could not make out why his master should so suddenly leave the island, without informing any one, without even taking with him that tall and roughly-furred black hat which he sometimes wore on important occasions.  Yet there was a letter in his hand, and it was a letter from Miss Sheila.  Was the news about Mairi the only news in it?

Duncan kept looking ahead to see that the boat was steering her right course for the Narrows, and was anxious, now that he had started, to make the voyage in the least possible time, but all the same his eyes would come back to Mr. Mackenzie, who sat very much absorbed, steering almost mechanically, seldom looking ahead, but instinctively guessing his course by the outlines of the shore close by.  “Was there any bad news, sir, from Miss Sheila?” he was compelled to say at last.