How the young fellow laughed and joked as the party drove away again from the Butt, down the long coast-road to Barvas! He was tenderly respectful and a little moderate in tone when he addressed Sheila, but with the others he gave way to a wild exuberance of spirits that delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. He told stories of the odd old gentlemen of his club, of their opinions, their ways, their dress. He sang the song of the Arethusa and the wilds of Lewis echoed with a chorus which was not just as harmonious as it might have been. He sang the “Jug of Punch,” and Mackenzie said that was a teffle of a good song. He gave imitations of some of Ingram’s companions at the Board of Trade, and showed Sheila what the inside of a government office was like. He paid Mackenzie the compliment of asking him for a drop of something out of his flask, and in return he insisted on the King smoking a cigar which, in point of age and sweetness and fragrance, was really the sort of a cigar you would naturally give to the man whose only daughter you wanted to marry. Ingram understood all this, and was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments that Sheila could overhear. “You poor young things!” he seemed to be saying to himself, “you’ve got all your troubles before you; but, in the meantime you can make yourselves as happy as you can.” Was the weather at last about to break? As the afternoon wore on the heavens became overcast, for the wind had gone back from the course of the sun, and had brought up great masses of cloud from the rainy Southwest. “Are we going to have a storm?” said Lavender, looking along the Southern sky, where the Barvas hills were momentarily growing blacker under the gathering darkness overhead. “Storm?” said Mackenzie, whose notions of what constituted a storm were probably different from those of his guest. “No, there will be no storm. But it is no bad thing if we get back to Barvas very soon.”