“Ferry well,” said Mackenzie, a trifle disappointed, “but you would find several of the English in the Lewis if you was living here.” These two days in Stornoway were very pleasant. On their previous visit to the town, Mackenzie had given up much of his time to business affairs, and was a good deal away from his guests, but now he devoted himself to making them particularly comfortable in the place, and amusing them in every possible way. He introduced Lavender, in especial, to all his friends there, and was most anxious to impress on the young man that life in Stornoway was, on the whole, rather a brilliant affair. Then was there a finer point from which you could start at will for Inverness, Oban, and such great centres of civilization? Very soon there would even be a telegraphic cable laid to the mainland. Was Mr. Lavender aware that frequently you could see the Sutherland hills from this very town of Stornoway? There Sheila laughed, and Lavender, who kept watching her face always, to read all her fancies and sentiments and wishes in the shifting lights of it, immediately demanded an explanation. “It is no good thing,” said Sheila, “to see the Sutherland hills often, for when you see them it means to rain.” But Lavender had not been taught to fear the rain of the Western Isles. The weather seemed to have conspired with Mackenzie to charm the young man with the island. At this moment, for example, they were driving away from Stornoway along the side of the great bay Northward, until it finds its furtherest promontory in Tiumpan Head. What magnificence of color shone around them in the hot sunlight! Where the ruffled blue sea came near the long sweep of yellow sand, it grew to a bright transparent green. The splendid curve of the bay showed a gleaming line of white where the waves broke in masses of hissing foam; and beyond that curve again long promontories of dark red conglomerate ran out into the darker waters of the sea, with their summits shining with the bright sea-grass. Here, close at hand, were warm meadows, with calves and lambs cropping the sweet-scented Dutch clover. A few huts, shaped like bee-hives, stood by the roadside, close by some deep peat cuttings. There was a cutting in the yellow sand of the bay for the pulling up of the captured whales. Now and then you could see a solan dart down from the blue heavens into the deep blue of the sea, sending up a spurt of water twenty feet high as he disappeared; and far onward between the red precipices and the ruffled waters herds of white sea-fowl flew from crag to crag, or dropped upon the sea to rise and fall with the waves.