"Drink to me only with thine eyes," hummed the King of Borva to himself as he sent the two little horses along the coast-road on this warm summer day. He had heard the song for the first time on the previous evening. He had no voice to speak of; he had missed the air, and these were all the words he remembered; but it was a notable compliment all the same to the young man who had brought these pleasant tunes to the island. And so they drove on through the keen salt air, with the sea shining beside them and the sky shining over them; and in the afternoon they arrived at the small, remote and solitary inn of Barvas, placed near the confluence of several rivers that flow through Loch Barvas (or Barabhas) to the sea. Here they proposed to stop the night, so that Lavender, when his room had been assigned to him, begged to be left alone for an hour or two, that he might throw a little color into his sketch of Callernish. What was there to see at Barvas? Why, nothing but the channels of the brown streams, some pasture-land and a few huts, then the unfrequented lake, and beyond that some ridges of white sand standing over the shingly beach of the sea. He would join them at dinner. Mackenzie protested in a mild way: he really wanted to see how the island was to be illustrated by the stranger. There was a greater protest, mingled with compassion and regret, in Sheila's eyes; but the young man was firm. So they let him have his way, and gave him full possession of the common sitting-room, while they set off to visit the school and the Free-Church manse and what not in the neighborhood. Mackenzie had ordered dinner at eight, to show that he was familiar with the ways of civilized life; and when they returned at that hour Lavender had two sketches finished. "Yes, they are very good," said Ingram, who was seldom enthusiastic about his friend's work. But old Mackenzie was so vastly pleased with the picture, which represented his native place in the brightest of sunshine and colors, that he forgot to assume a critical air. He said nothing against the rainy and desolate version of the scene that had been given to Sheila: it was good enough to please the child. But here was something brilliant, effective, cheerful; and he alarmed Lavender not a little by proposing to get one of the natives to carry this treasure, then and there, back to Borvabost. Both sketches were ultimately returned to his book, and then Sheila helped him to remove his artistic apparatus from the table on which their plain and homely meal was to be placed. As she was about to follow her father and Ingram, who had left the room, she paused for a moment and said to Lavender, with a look of frank gratitude in her eyes, "It is very good of you to have pleased my papa so much. I know when he is pleased, though he does not speak of it; and it is not often he will be so much pleased."