Mr. Mackenzie heard not one word or syllable of all this. The dead, passionless look had fallen over the powerful features, and the deep-set eyes were gazing, not on the actual Loch Roag before them, but on a stormy sea that lies between Lewis and Skye, and on a vessel disappearing in the midst of the rain. It was by a sort of instinct that he guided this open boat through the channels, which were now getting broader as they neared the sea, and the tall and grave-faced keeper might have kept up his garrulous talk for hours without attracting a look or a word. It was now the dusk of the evening, and wild and strange indeed was the scene around the solitary boat as it slowly moved along. Large islands--so large that any one of them might have been mistaken for the mainland--lay over the dark waters of the sea, remote, untenanted and silent. There were no white cottages along these rocky shores; only a succession of rugged cliffs and sandy bays, but half mirrored in the sombre water below. Down in the South the mighty shoulders and peaks of Suainabhal and its sister mountains were still darker than the darkening sky; and when at length the boat had got well out from the network of islands and fronted the broad waters of the Atlantic, the great plain of the western sea seemed already to have drawn around it the solemn mantle of the night. “Will you go to Borvapost, Mr. Mackenzie, or will we run her into your own house?” asked Duncan--Borvapost being the name of the chief village on the island. “I will not go on to Borvapost,” said the old man, peevishly. “Will they not have plenty to talk about at Borvapost?” “And it iss no harm tat ta folk will speak of Miss Sheila,” said the gillie with some show of resentment: “it iss no harm tey will be sorry she is gone away--no harm at all, for it was many things tey had to thank Miss Sheila for; and now it will be all ferry different--” “I tell you, Duncan Macdonald, to hold your peace!” said the old man, with a savage glare of the deep-set eyes; and then Duncan relapsed into a sulky silence, and the boat held on its way. In the gathering twilight a long gray curve of sand became visible, and into the bay thus indicated Mackenzie turned his small craft. This indentation of the island seemed as blank of human occupation as the various points and bays they had passed, but as they neared the shore a house came into sight, about half way up the slope rising from the sea to the pasture land above. There was a small stone pier jutting out at one portion of the bay, where a mass of rocks was embedded in the white sand; and here at length the boat was run in, and Mackenzie helped the young girl ashore.