That was the message that came to him out of the darkness, and it seemed to him as if the sea and the night and the sky were wailing over the loss of his Sheila. He walked away from the house and up the hill behind. Led by the sound of the pipes, that grew louder and more unearthly as he approached, he found himself at length on a bit of high table-land overlooking the sea, where Sheila had had a rude bench of iron and wood fixed into the rock. On this bench sat a little old man, humpbacked and bent, and with long white hair falling down to his shoulders. He was playing the pipes--not wildly and fiercely, as if he were at a drinking-bout of the lads come home from the Caithness fishing, nor yet gayly and proudly, as if he were marching at the head of a bridal-procession, but slowly, mournfully, monotonously, as though he were having the pipes talk to him. Mackenzie touched him on the shoulder, and the old man started. "Is it you, Mr. Mackenzie?" he said in Gaelic. "It is a great fright you have given me." "Come down to the house, John. The lads from Habost and Alister, and some more will be coming; and you will get a ferry good dram, John, to put wind in the pipes." "It is no dram I am thinking of, Mr. Mackenzie," said the old man. "And you will have plenty of company without me. But I will come down to the house, Mr. Mackenzie--oh yes, I will come down to the house--but _in a little while_ I will come to the house." Mackenzie turned from him with a petulant exclamation, and went along and down the hill rapidly, as he could hear voices in the darkness. He had just got into the house when his visitors arrived. The door of the room was opened, and there appeared some six or eight tall and stalwart men, mostly with profuse brown beards and weatherbeaten faces, who advanced into the chamber with some show of shyness. Mackenzie offered them a rough and hearty welcome, and as soon as their eyes had got accustomed to the light bade them help themselves to the whisky on the table. With a certain solemnity each poured out a glass and drank "_Shlainte!_" to his host as if it were some funeral rite. But when he bade them replenish their glasses, and got them seated with their faces to the blaze of the peats, then the flood of Gaelic broke loose. Had the wise little girl from Suainabost warned these big men? There was not a word about Sheila uttered. All their talk was of the reports that had come from Caithness, and of the improvements of the small harbor near the Butt, and of the black sea-horse that had been seen in Loch Suainabhal, and of some more sheep having been found dead on the Pladda Isles, shot by the men of the English smacks. Pipes were lit, the peats stirred up anew, another glass or two of whisky drunk, and then, through the haze of the smoke, the browned faces of the men could be seen in eager controversy, each talking faster than the other, and comparing facts and fancies that had been brooded over through solitary nights of