“That is true enough, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ingram would say, laying back with his two hands clasped around his knee, as usual; “you’ve got to be careful of the opinions that are spread abroad, even in Borva, where not much danger is to be expected. But I don’t suppose our young men are more destructive in their notions than young men always have been. You know every fellow starts in life by knocking down all the beliefs he finds before him, and then spends the rest of his life in setting them up again. It is only after some years he gets to know that all the wisdom of the world lies in the old commonplaces he once despised. He finds that the old familiar ways are the best, and he sinks into being a commonplace person, with much satisfaction to himself. My friend Lavender, now, is continually charging me with being commonplace. I admit the charge. I have drifted back into all the old ways and beliefs--about religion and marriage, and patriotism, and what not--that ten years ago I should have treated with ridicule.” “Suppose the process continues?” suggested Lavender, with some evidence of pique. “Suppose it does,” continues Ingram carelessly. “Ten years hence I may be proud to become a vestryman, and have the most anxious care about the administration of the rates. I shall be looking after the drainage of houses and the treatment of paupers, and the management of Sunday-schools--but all this is an invasion of your province, Sheila,” he suddenly added, looking up to her. The girl laughed and said, “Then I have been commonplace from the beginning?” Ingram was about to make all manner of protests and apologies, when Mackenzie said, “Sheila, it wass time you go in-doors, if you have nothing about your head. Go in and sing a song to us, and we will listen to you; and not a sad song, but a good merry song. These teffles of the fishermen, it iss always drownings they will sing about from the morning till the night.” Was Sheila about to sing in this clear, strange twilight, while they sat there and watched the yellow moon come up behind the Southern hills? Lavender had heard so much of her singing of these fishermen’s ballads that he could think of nothing more to add to the enchantment of this wonderful night. But he was disappointed. The girl put her hand on her father’s head, and reminded him that she had had her big greyhound, Bras, imprisoned all the afternoon, that she had to go down to Borvapost, with a message for some people who were leaving by the boat in the morning, and would the gentleman therefore excuse her not singing to them for this one evening? “But you cannot go away down to Borvapost by yourself, Sheila,” said Ingram. “It will be dark before you return.” “It will not be darker than this all the night through,” said the girl. “But I hope you will let us go with you,” said Lavender, rather anxiously; and she assented with a gracious smile, and went to fetch the great deerhound that was her constant companion.