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"'Well, well, it is a true thing that we each of us thought that thought, but when the days went and nothing more came of it, the memory of the seeing went too. Then there came the day when the cobble of Aulay MacAulay came out of Borosay into Caisteal-Rhona haven. Glad we were to see the face of Ian mac Iain again, and to hear the sob of joy coming out of the heart of Kirsten, his sister: but when you and Alan MacAlasdair came on shore, it was my voice that then went from mouth to mouth, for I whispered to Morag MacNeill who was next me, that you were the twain that I had seen in the boat.'

"Well, Alan," Ynys added, with a grave smile, "I spoke gently to old Marsail, and told her that after all there was no evil in that seeing, and that for sure it was nothing at all, at all, to see two people in a boat, and nothing coming of that, save happiness for those two, and glad content to be here, with hope like a white swallow nesting for aye under the eaves of our house.

"Marsail looked at me with big eyes.

"'It is no white swallow that builds there, Ynys Bean Alan,' she said.

"But when I asked her what she meant by that, she would say no more. No asking of mine would bring the word to her lips; only she shook her head and averted her gaze from my face. Then, seeing that it was useless, I said to her:

"'Marsail, tell me this: was that sight of yours the sole thing that made the people here on Rona look askance at Alan MacAlasdair?'

"For a time she stared at me with the dim, unrecognizing eyes of those who are ill and in the shadow of death; then, suddenly they brightened, and she spoke:

"'It is not all.'

"'Then what more is there, Marsail Macrae?'

"'That is not for the saying. I have no more to say. Let you, or your man, go elsewhere; that which is to be, will be. To each his own end.'

"'Then tell me this at least,' I asked; 'is there peril for Alan or for me in this island?'

"But from that moment Marsail would say no more, and indeed I saw that a swoon was upon the old woman, and that she heard not or saw not."

After this, Ynys and Alan walked slowly home together, hand in hand, both silent and revolving in their mind as in a dim dusk, that mystery which, vague and unreal at first, had now become a living presence, and haunted them by day and night.

CHAPTER XII
IN THE GREEN ARCADES

"In the shadow of pain, one may hear the footsteps of joy." So runs a proverb of old.

It was a true saying for Alan and Ynys. That night they lay down in pain, their hearts heavy with the weight of some burden which they felt and did not know. On the morrow they woke to the rapture of a new day – a day of absolute beauty, when the stars grew pale in the cloudless blue sky before the uprising of the sun, while the last vapor lifted a white wing from the sea, and a dim spiral mist carried skyward the memory of inland dews. The whole wide wilderness of ocean was of living azure, aflame with gold and silver. Around the promontories of the isles the brown-sailed fish-boats of Barra and Berneray, of Borosay and Seila, moved blithely hither and thither. Everywhere the rhythm of life pulsed swift and strong. The first sound which had awakened the sleepers was of a loud singing of fishermen who were putting out from Aonaig. The coming of a great shoal of mackerel had been signalled, and every man and woman of the near isles was alert for the take. The first sign had been the swift congregation of birds, particularly the gannets and skuas. And as the men pulled at the oars, or hoisted the brown sails, they sang a snatch of an old-world tune, wont to be chanted at the first coming of the birds when spring-tide is on the flow again.

 
"Bui' cheas dha 'n Ti thaine na Gugachan
Thaine 's na h-Eoin-Mhora cuideriu,
Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro!
Bo dhonn! bo dhonn! bo dhonn bheadarrach!
Bo dhonn a ruin a bhlitheadh am baine dhuit
Ho ro! mo gheallag! ni gu rodagach!
Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro —
Na h-eoin air tighinn! cluinneam an ceol!"
 
 
[Thanks to the Being, the Gannets have come.
Yes! and the Great Auks along with them.
Dark-haired girl! – a cow in the fold!
 
 
Brown cow! brown cow! brown cow, beloved ho!
Brown cow! my love! the milker of milk to thee!
Ho ro! my fair-skinned girl – a cow in the fold,
And the birds have come! – glad sight, I see!]
 

Eager to be of help, Alan put off in his boat and was soon among the fishermen, who in their new excitement were forgetful of all else than that the mackerel were come, and that every moment was precious. For the first time Alan found himself no unwelcome comrade. Was it, he wondered, because that, there upon the sea, whatever of shadow dwelled about him on the land was no longer visible?

All through that golden noon, he and the others worked hard. From isle to isle went the chorus of the splashing oars and splashing nets; of the splashing of the fish and the splashing of gannets and gulls; of the splashing of the tide leaping blithely against the sun-dazzle, and the innumerous rippling wash moving out of the west – all this blent with the loud, joyous cries, the laughter, and the hoarse shouts of the men of Barra and the adjacent islands. It was close upon dusk before the Rona boats put into the haven of Aonaig again; and by that time none was blither than Alan Carmichael, who in that day of happy toil had lost all the gloom and apprehension of the day before, and now made haste to Caisteal-Rhona to add to his joy by a sight of Ynys in their home.

When, however, he got there, there was no Ynys to see. "She had gone," said Kirsten Macdonald, "she had gone out in the smaller boat midway in the afternoon, and had sailed around to Aoidhu, the great scaur which ran out beyond the precipices at the south-west of Rona."

This Ynys often did; and, of late, more and more often. Ever since she had come to the Hebrid Isles, her love of the sea had deepened, and had grown into a passion for its mystery and beauty. Of late, too, something impelled to a more frequent isolation; a deep longing to be where no eye could see, and no ear hearken. Those strange dreams which, in a confused way, had haunted her mind in her far Breton home, came oftener now and more clear. Sometimes, when she had sat in the twilight at Kerival, holding her mother's hand and listening to tales of that remote North to which her heart had ever yearned, she had suddenly lost all consciousness of the speaker, or of the things said, and had let her mind be taken captive by her uncontrolled imagination, till in spirit she was far away, and sojourned in strange places, hearing a language that she did not know, and yet which she understood, and dwelt in a past or a present which she had never seen and which yet was familiar.

Since Ynys had known she was with child, this visionariness had been intensified, this longing had become more and more a deep need. Even with Alan she felt at times the intrusion of an alien influence. If in her body was a mystery, a mystery also was in her brain and in her heart.

Alan knew this, and knowing, understood. It was for gladness to him that Ynys should do as she would; that in these long hours of solitude she drank deep of the elixir of peace; and that this way of happiness was open to her as to him. Never did these isolations come between them; indeed they were sometimes more at one then than when they were together, for all the deep happiness which sustained both upon the strong waters of their love.

So, when Alan heard from Kirsten that Ynys had sailed westward, he was in no way alarmed. But when the sun had set, and over the faint blue film of the Isle of Tiree the moon had risen, and still no sign of Ynys, he became restless and uneasy. Kirsten begged him in vain to eat of the supper she had prepared. Idly he moved to and fro along the rocky ledge, or down by the pebbly shore, or across the green airidh; eager for a glimpse of her whom he loved so passing well.

At last, unable longer to endure a growing anxiety, he put out in his boat, and sailed swiftly before the slight easterly breeze which had prevailed since moonrise. So far as Aoidhu, all the way from Aonaig, there was not a haven anywhere, nor even one of the sea caverns which honeycombed the isle beyond the headland. A glance, therefore, showed him that Ynys had not yet come back that way. It was possible, though unlikely, that she had sailed right round Rona; unlikely because in the narrow straits to the north, between Rona and the scattered islets known as the Innse-mhara, strong currents prevailed, and particularly at the full of the tide, when they swept north-eastward, dark and swift as a mill-race.

Once the headland was passed and the sheer precipitous westward cliffs loomed black out of the sea, he became more and more uneasy. As yet, there was no danger; but he saw that a swell was moving out of the west, and whenever the wind blew that way the sea arcades were filled with a lifting, perilous wave, and escape from them was difficult and often impossible. Out of the score or more great corridors which opened between Aoidhu and Ardgorm, it was difficult to know into which to hazard entry in quest of Ynys. Together they had examined all of them. Some twisted but slightly; others wound sinuously till the green, serpentine alleys, flanked by basalt walls hundreds of feet high, lost themselves in an indistinguishable maze.

But that which was safest, and wherein a boat could most easily make its way against wind or tide, was the huge, cavernous corridor known locally as the Uamh-nan-roin, the Cave of the Seals.

For this opening Alan steered his boat. Soon he was within the wide corridor. Like the great cave at Staffa, it was wrought as an aisle in some natural cathedral; the rocks, too, were fluted columnarly and rose in flawless symmetry as though graven by the hand of man. At the far end of this gigantic aisle, there diverges a long, narrow arcade, filled by day with the green shine of the water, and by night, when the moon is up, with a pale froth of light. It is one of the few where there are open gateways for the sea and the wandering light, and, by its spherical shape, almost the only safe passage in a season of heavy wind. Half-way along this arched arcade a corridor leads to a round cup-like cavern, midway in which stands a huge mass of black basalt, in shape suggestive of a titanic altar. Thus it must have impressed the imagination of the islanders of old, for by them, even in a remote day, it was called Teampull-nan-Mhara, the Temple of the Sea. Owing to the narrowness of the corridor, and to the smooth, unbroken walls which rise sheer from the green depths into an invisible darkness, the Strait of the Temple is not one wherein to linger long, save in a time of calm.

Instinctively, however, Alan quietly headed his boat along this narrow way. When, silently, he emerged from the arcade, he could just discern the mass of basalt at the far end of the cavern. But there, seated in her boat, was Ynys; apparently idly adrift, for one oar floated in the water alongside, and the other suspended listlessly from the tholes.

His heart had a suffocating grip as he saw her whom he had come to seek. Why that absolute stillness, that strange, listless indifference? For a dreadful moment he feared that death had indeed come to her in that lonely place where, as an ancient legend had it, a woman of old time had perished, and ever since had wrought death upon any who came thither solitary and unhappy.

But at the striking of the shaft of his oar against a ledge, Ynys gave a low cry and looked at him with startled eyes. Half rising from where she crouched in the stern, she called to him in a voice that had in it something strangely unfamiliar.

"I will not hear!" she cried. "I will not hear! Leave me! Leave me!"

Fearing that the desolation of the place had wrought upon her mind, Alan swiftly moved toward her. The very next moment his boat glided along hers. Stepping from the one to the other, he kneeled beside her.

"Ynys-ghaolaiche, Ynys, my darling, what is it? what gives you dread? There is no harm here. All is well. Look! See, it is I, Alan; Alan, whom you love! Listen, dear; do you not know me; do you not know who I am? It is I, Alan; Alan who loves you!"

Even in that obscure light he could clearly discern her pale face, and his heart smote him as he saw her eyes turn upon him with a glance wild and mournful. Had she indeed succumbed to the sea madness which ever and again strikes into a terrible melancholy one here and there among those who dwell in the remote isles? But even as he looked, he noted another expression come into the beautiful eyes, and almost before he realized what had happened, Ynys's head was on his breast, and she sobbing with a sudden gladness and passion of relief.

The dusk deepened swiftly. In those serpentine arcades darkness grows from hour to hour, even on nights when the moon makes the outer sea a blaze of silver fire. But sweet it was to lie there in that solitary place, where no sound penetrated save the low, soughing sigh of ocean, audible there only as the breath of a sleeper: to lie there in each other's arms, and to feel the beating of heart against heart, knowing that whether in the hazard of life or death, all was well, since they two were there and together.

For long Ynys could say no word. And as for Alan – too glad was he to have her again, to know that she lived indeed, and that his fear of the sea madness was an idle fantasy; too glad was he to urge her to speak, when her recovered joy was still sweet in her heart. But at last she whispered to him how that she had sailed westward from Caisteal-Rhona, having been overcome by the beauty of the day, and longing to be among those mysterious green arcades where thought rose out of the mind like a white bird and flew among shadows in strange places, bringing back with it upon its silent wings the rumor of strange voices, and oftentimes singing a song of what ears hear not. Deeply upon the two had lain the thought of what was to be; the thought of the life she bore within her, that was the tangible love of her and of Alan, and yet was so strangely and remotely dissociate from either. Happy in happy thoughts, and strangely wrought by vague imaginings, she had sailed past precipice after precipice, and so at last into the Strait of the Temple. Just before the last light of day had begun to glide out of the pale green water, she had let her boat drift idly alongside the Teampull-Mhara. There, for a while, she had lain, drowsily content, dreaming her dream. Then, suddenly her heart had given a leap like a doe in the bracken, and the pulses in her veins swung like stars on a night of storm.

For there, in that nigh unreachable and forever unvisited solitude was the figure of a man. He stood on the summit of the huge basalt altar, and appeared to have sprung from out the rock, or, himself a shadowy presence, to have grown out of the obscure unrealities of the darkness. She had stared at him, fascinated, speechless.

When she had said this Ynys stopped abruptly, for she felt the trembling of Alan's hand.

"Go on," he said hoarsely, "go on. Tell me all!"

To his amaze, she did not seem perturbed in the way he had dreaded when she began to tell what she had seen.

"But did you notice nothing about him, Ynys … about his face, his features?"

"Yes. His eyes filled me with strange joy."

"With joy? Oh, Ynys! Ynys! do you know whom —what– it was you saw? It was a vision, a nothingness, a mere phantom; and that phantom was … was … myself!"

"You, Alan! Oh, no, Alan-aghray! dear, you do not know whom I saw – nor do I, though I know it was not you!"

"We will talk of this later, my fawn," Alan muttered. "Meanwhile, hold on to this ledge, for I wish to examine this mass of rock that they call the Altar."

With a spring he was on the ledge. Then, swift and sure as a wild-cat, he scaled the huge bowlder.

Nothing; no one! There was not a trace of any human being. Not a bird, not a bat; nothing. Moreover, even in that slowly blackening darkness he could see that there was no direct connection between the summit or side with the blank, precipitous wall of basalt beyond. Overhead there was, so far as he could discern, a vault. No human being could have descended through that perilous gulf.

Was the island haunted? he wondered, as slowly he made his way back to the boat. Or had he been startled into some wild fantasy, and imagined a likeness where none had been? Perhaps, even, he had not really seen any one. He had read of similar strange delusions. The nerves can soon chase the mind into the dark zone wherein it loses itself.

Or was Ynys the vain dreamer? That, indeed, might well be, and she with child, and ever a visionary. Mayhap she had heard some fantastic tale from Morag MacNeill or from old Marsail Macrae; the islanders had sgeul after sgeul of a wild strangeness.

In silence he guided the boats back into the outer arcade, where a faint sheen of moonlight glistered on the water. Thence, in a few minutes, he oared that wherein he and Ynys sat, with the other fastened astern, into the open.

When the moonshine lay full on her face, he saw that she was thinking neither of him nor of where she was. Her eyes were heavy with dream.

What wind there was blew against their course, so Alan rowed unceasingly. In silence they passed once again the headland of Aoidhu; in silence they drifted past a single light gleaming in a croft near Aonaig – a red eye staring out into the shadow of the sea, from the room where the woman Marsail lay dying; and in silence their keels grided on the patch of shingle in Caisteal-Rhona haven.

But when, once more, Alan found himself with Ynys in the safe quietudes of the haven, he pressed her eagerly to give him some clear description of the figure she had seen.

Ynys, however, had become strangely reticent. All he could elicit from her was that the man whom she had seen bore no resemblance to him, except in so far as he was fair. He was taller, slimmer, and seemed older.

He thought it wiser not to speak to her on what he himself had seen, or concerning his conviction that it was the same mysterious stranger who had appeared to both.

CHAPTER XIII
THE MESSAGE

For days thereafter Alan haunted that rocky, cavernous wilderness where he had seen the Herdsman.

It was in vain he had everywhere sought to find word of this mysterious dweller in those upland solitudes. At times he believed that there was indeed some one upon the island of whom, for inexplicable reasons, none there would speak; but at last he came to the conviction that what he had seen was an apparition, projected by the fantasy of overwrought nerves. Even from the woman, Morag MacNeill, to whom he had gone with a frank appeal that won its way to her heart, he learned no more than that an old legend, of which she did not care to speak, was in some way associated with his own coming to Rona.

Ynys, too, never once alluded to the mysterious incident of the green arcades which had so deeply impressed them both; never, that is, after the ensuing day which followed, when, simply and spontaneously, she told Alan that she believed that she had seen a vision. When he reminded her that she had been convinced of its reality, Ynys answered that for days past she had been dreaming a strange dream, and that doubtless this had possessed her so that her nerves played her false, in that remote and shadowy place. What this dream was she would not confide, nor did he press her.

But as the days went by and as no word came to either of any unknown person who was on the island, and as Alan, for all his patient wandering and furtive quest, both among the upland caves and in the green arcades, found absolutely no traces of him whom he sought, the belief that he had been duped by his imagination deepened almost to conviction.

As for Ynys, day after day, soft veils of dream obscured the bare realities of life. But she, unlike Alan, became more and more convinced that what she had seen was indeed no apparition. Whatever lingering doubt she had was dissipated on the eve of the night when old Marsail Macrae died. It was dusk when word came to Caisteal-Rhona that Marsail felt the cold wind on the soles of her feet. Ynys went to her at once, and it was in the dark hour which followed that she heard once more and more fully the strange story which, like a poisonous weed, had taken root in the minds of the islanders. Already from Marsail she had heard of the Prophet, though, strangely enough, she had never breathed word of this to Alan, not even when, after the startling episode of the apparition in the Teampull-Mhara, she had, as she believed, seen the Prophet himself. But there in the darkness of the low, turfed cottage, with no light in the room save the dull red gloom from the heart of the smoored peats, Marsail, in the attenuated, remote voice of those who have already entered into the vale of the shadow, told her this thing.

"Yes, Ynys, wife of Alan MacAlasdair, I will be telling you this thing before I change. You are for knowing, sure, that long ago Uilleam, brother of him who was father to your man, had a son? Yes, you know that, you say, and also that he was called Donnacha Bàn? No, mo-run-geal, that is not a true thing that you have heard, that Donnacha Bàn went under the wave years ago. He was the seventh son, and was born under the full moon; 'tis Himself will be knowing whether that was for or against him. Of these seven none lived beyond childhood except the two youngest, Kenneth and Donnacha. Kenneth was always frail as a February flower, but he lived to be a man. He and his brother never spoke, for a feud was between them, not only because that each was unlike the other and that the younger hated the older because thus he was the penniless one – but most because both loved the same woman. I will not be telling you the whole story now, for the breath in my body will soon blow out in the draught that is coming upon me; but this I will say to you: darker and darker grew the gloom between these brothers. When Kirsteen Macdonald gave her love to Kenneth, Donnacha disappeared for a time. Then, one day, he came back to Borosay, and smiled quietly with his cold eyes when they wondered at his coming again. Now, too, it was noticed that he no longer had an ill-will upon his brother, but spoke smoothly with him and loved to be in his company. But, to this day, no one knows for sure what happened. For there was a gloaming when Donnacha Bàn came back alone, in his sailing boat. He and Kenneth had sailed forth, he said, to shoot seals in the sea arcades to the west of Rona; but in these dark and lonely passages, they had missed each other. At last he had heard Kenneth's voice calling for help, but when he had got to the place, it was too late, for his brother had been seized with the cramps, and had sunk deep into the fathomless water. There is no getting a body again that sinks in these sea galleries. The crabs know that.

"Well, this and much more was what Donnacha Bàn told to his people. None believed him; but what could any do? There was no proof; none had ever seen them enter the sea caves together. Not that Donnacha Bàn sought in any way to keep back those who would fain know more. Not so; he strove to help to find the body. Nevertheless, none believed; and Kirsteen nic Dugall Mòr least of all. The blight of that sorrow went to her heart. She had death soon, poor thing! but before the cold grayness was upon her, she told her father, and the minister that was there, that she knew Donnacha Bàn had murdered his brother. One might be saying these were the wild words of a woman; but, for sure, no one said that thing upon Borosay or Rona, or any of these isles. When all was done, the minister told what he knew, and what he thought, to the Lord of the South Isles, and asked what was to be put upon Donnacha Bàn. 'Exile forever,' said the Chief, 'or if he stays here, the doom of silence. Let no man or woman speak to him or give him food or drink; or give him shelter, or let his shadow cross his or hers.'

"When this thing was told to Donnacha Bàn Carmichael, he laughed at first; but as day slid over the rocks where all days fall, he laughed no more. Soon he saw that the Chief's word was no empty word; and yet he would not go away from his own place. He could not stay upon Borosay, for his father cursed him; and no man can stay upon the island where a father's curse moves this way and that, forever seeking him. Then, some say a madness came upon him, and others that he took wildness to be his way, and others that God put upon him the shadow of loneliness, so that he might meet sorrow there and repent. Howsoever that may be, Donnacha Bàn came to Rona, and, by the same token, it was the year of the great blight, when the potatoes and the corn came to naught, and when the fish in the sea swam away from the isles. In the autumn of that year there was not a soul left on Rona except Kirsten Macdonald and the old man Ian, her father, who had guard of Caisteal-Rhona for him who was absent. When, once more, smoke rose from the crofts, the rumor spread that Donnacha Bàn, the murderer, had made his home among the caves of the upper part of the isle. None knew how this rumor rose, for he was seen of none. The last man who saw him – and that was a year later – was old Padruic McVurich, the shepherd. Padruic said that, as he was driving his ewes across the north slope of Ben Einaval in the gloaming, he came upon a silent figure seated upon a rock, with his chin in his hands, and his elbows on his knees – with the great, sad eyes of him staring at the moon that was lifting itself out of the sea. Padruic did not know who the man was. The shepherd had few wits, poor man! and he had known, or remembered, little about the story of Donnacha Bàn Carmichael, so, when he spoke to the man, it was as to a stranger. The man looked at him and said:

"'You are Padruic McVurich, the shepherd.'

"At that a trembling was upon old Padruic, who had the wonder that this stranger should know who and what he was.

"'And who will you be, and forgive the saying?' he asked.

"'Am Faidh– the Prophet,' the man said.

"'And what prophet will you be, and what is your prophecy?' asked Padruic.

"'I am here because I wait for what is to be, and that will be for the birth of a child that is to be a king.'

"And with that the man said no more, and the old shepherd went silently down through the hillside gloaming, and, heavy with the thoughts that troubled him, followed his ewes down into Aonaig. But after that neither he nor any other saw or heard aught of the shadowy stranger; so that all upon Rona felt sure that Padruic had beheld no more than a vision. There were some who thought that he had seen the ghost of the outlaw Donnacha Bàn; and mayhap one or two who wondered if the stranger that had said he was a prophet was not Donnacha Bàn himself, with a madness come upon him; but at last these rumors went out to sea upon the wind, and men forgot. But, and it was months and months afterward, and three days before his own death, old Padruic McVurich was sitting in the sunset on the rocky ledge in front of his brother's croft, where then he was staying, when he heard a strange crying of seals. He thought little of that; only, when he looked closer, he saw, in the hollow of the wave hard by that ledge, a drifting body.

"Am Faidh – Am Faidh!" he cried; "the Prophet, the Prophet!"

At that his brother and his brother's wife ran to see; but it was nothing that they saw. "It would be a seal," said Pol McVurich; but at that Padruic had shook his head, and said no, for sure, he had seen the face of the dead man, and it was of him whom he had met on the hillside, and that had said he was the Prophet who was waiting there for the birth of a king.

"And that is how there came about the echo of the thought, that Donnacha Bàn had at last, after his madness, gone under the green wave and was dead. For all that, in the months which followed, more than one man said he had caught a glimpse of a figure high up on the hill. The old wisdom says that when Christ comes again, or the Prophet who will herald Christ, it will be as a herdsman on a lonely isle. More than one of the old people on Rona and Borosay remembered that sgeul out of the seanachas that the tale-tellers knew. There were some who said that Donnacha Bàn had never been drowned at all, and that he was this Prophet, this Herdsman. Others would not have that saying at all, but believed that the mysterious herdsman was indeed Am Buchaille Bàn, the Fair-haired Shepherd, who had come again to redeem the people out of their sorrow. There were even those who said that the Herdsman who haunted Rona was no other than Kenneth Carmichael himself, who had not died, but had had the mind-dark there in the sea caves where he had been lost, and there had come to the knowledge of secret things, and so was at last Am Faidh Chriosd."

A great weakness came upon the old woman when she had spoken thus far. Ynys feared that she would have breath for no further word, but after a thin gasping, and a listless fluttering of weak hands upon the coverlet, whereon her trembling fingers plucked aimlessly at the invisible blossoms of death, she opened her eyes once more and stared in a dim questioning at her who sat by her bedside.

"Tell me," whispered Ynys, "tell me, Marsail, what thought it is that is in your own mind?"

But already the old woman had begun to wander, though Ynys did not know this.

"For sure, for sure," she muttered, "Am Faidh … Am Faidh … an' a child will be born … an' a king he will be, an' … that will be the voice of Domhuill, my husband, I am hearing … an' dark it is, an' the tide comin' in … an' – "

Then, sure, the tide came in, and if in that darkness old Marsail Macrae heard any voice at all, it was that of Domhuill who years agone had sunk into the wild seas off the head of Barra.

An hour later, with tears still in her eyes, Ynys walked slowly home through the cloudy night. All she had heard came back to her with a strange familiarity. Something of this, at least, she had known before. Some hints of this mysterious Herdsman had reached her ears. In some inexplicable way his real or imaginary presence there upon Rona seemed a preordained thing for her. All that dreaming mysticism, which had wrought so much of beauty and wonder into her girlhood in Brittany, had expanded into a strange flower of the imagination – a flower whose subtle fragrance affected her inward life. Sometimes she had wondered if all the tragic vicissitudes which happened at Kerival, with the strange and dreamlike life which she and Alan had led since, had so wrought upon her that the unreal became real, and the actual merely phantasmal; for now she felt more than ever assured that some hidden destiny had controlled all this disastrous mischance, had led her and Alan there to that lonely island.