It was her own hand put down the helm and herself who called the men to the sheets, for the captain had a sudden slackness in his office and was forward murmuring with his crew. “What ails him?” the lady asked her husband. “You have me there!” he answered her, as puzzled as herself. “I think it is likely there may be some superstition about the island; the name suggests as much, and now that I come to think of it, I remember I once heard as a boy that sailors never cared to land on one or two of the Outer Isles, believing them the domain of witchcraft. We must have passed that island frequently and the captain always kept us wide of it. I will ask him what its story is that makes him frightened for it.” He went forward by-and-by and talked with the captain. “I am a plain man; I have not the education except for boats,” said the seaman, “and I would not set foot on Faoineas for the wide world. You will not get a man in all the Outer Islands, from Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis, who would step on Faoineas if the deck of his skiff was coming asunder in staves below the very feet of him. I am brave myself—oh yes! I come of people exceeding brave and notable for deeds, but there is not that much gold in all the Hebrides, no, nor in the realm of Scotland, would buy my landing in that place yonder.” “Come! come! what is wrong with the island that you should have such a fear of it?” asked Morar, astounded at so strong a feeling. “It is bad for men, and it is worse for women,” said the Captain. “Is it something to hurt the body?” “If it was but the body I would be the first ashore! I have not so much money put past me that I have any need to be afraid for my life,” said the captain. “Are there ghosts there, then?” said Morar, determined to be at the root of the mystery. “Ghosts!” cried the captain. “Where are they not, these gentlemen?” By this time the sloop that Morar’s wife was steering had drawn closer on the island, breaking her way among the billows striving into Harris Sound; and to the gaze of Morar’s wife, and to her great bewilderment, she saw the little glen with its bushes climbing high on either side of it, and the tall, great, dark old Highland trees beyond, and thickets like gardens to the south, and under all the deep cool dusk of shadows she had longed for all those days that she and her husband had sought for the last pang of pleasure in their honeymoon among the Outer Isles. She leaned upon the tiller and stared entranced and unbelieving, for it seemed a fairy isle, such as grows fast in dreams and sinks to the sea-depths again when dawn is on the window. Only when she saw rooks rise with cawings from the branches, and heard the song of birds unknown on the treeless islands, was she altogether convinced of its reality. “Darling,” she cried to her husband, “look! Were we not right? Here’s a forgotten paradise.”