The evening sky was growing red above me when I drove into Isle Oronsay, which consists of perhaps fifteen houses in all. It sits on the margin of a pretty bay, in which the cry of the fisher is continually heard, and into which the _Clansman_ going to or coming from the south steams twice or thrice in the week. At a little distance is a lighthouse with a revolving light.--an idle building during the day, but when night comes, awakening to full activity,--sending now a ray to Ardnamurchan, now piercing with a fiery arrow the darkness of Glenelg. In Isle Oronsay is a merchant's shop, in which every conceivable article may be obtained. At Isle Oronsay the post-runner drops a bag, as he hies on to Armadale Castle. At Isle Oronsay I supped with my friend Mr Fraser. From him I learned that the little village had been, like M'Ian's house, fiercely scourged by rains. On the supper-table was a dish of trouts. "Where do you suppose I procured these?" he asked. "In one of your burns, I suppose." "No such thing; I found them in my potato-field." "In your potato-field! How came that about?" "Why, you see the stream, swollen by three days' rain, broke over a potato-field of mine on the hill-side and carried the potatoes away, and left these plashing in pool and runnel. The Skye streams have a slight touch of honesty in them!" I smiled at the conceit, and expounded to my host the law of compensation which pervades the universe, of which I maintained the trouts on the table were a shining example. Mr Fraser assented; but held that Nature was a poor valuator--that her knowledge of the doctrine of equivalents was slightly defective--that the trouts were well enough, but no reimbursement for the potatoes that were gone. Next morning I resumed my journey. The road, so long as it skirted the sea-shore, was pretty enough; but the sea-shore it soon left, and entered a waste of brown monotonous moorland. The country round about abounds in grouse, and was the favourite shooting-ground of the late Lord Macdonald. By the road-side his lordship had erected a stable and covered the roof with tin; and so at a distance it flashed as if the Koh-i-noor had been dropped by accident in that dismal region. As I went along, the hills above Broadford began to rise; then I drove down the slope, on which the market was held--the tents all struck, but the stakes yet remaining in the ground--and after passing the six houses, the lime-kiln, the church, and the two merchants' shops, I pulled up at the inn door, and sent the horse round to the stable to feed and to rest an hour. [Sidenote: Island of Scalpa.]