"Bekaas we neffer knew but that it was this week, or the week before, or the next week you would come back, Miss Sheila, and you would want your boat; but it wass Mr. Mackenzie himself, it wass he that did all the pentin of the boat; and it iss as well done as Mr. McNicol could have done it, and a great deal better than that mirover." "Won't you steer her yourself, Sheila?" her father suggested, glad to see that she was at last being interested and pleased. "Oh yes, I will steer her, if I have not forgotten all the points that Duncan taught me." "And I am sure you hef not done that, Miss Sheila," Duncan said, "for there wass no one knew Loch Roag better as you, not one, and you hef not been so long away; and when you tek the tiller in your hand it will all come back to you, just as if you wass going away from Borva the day before yesterday." She certainly had not forgotten, and she was proud and pleased to see how well the shapely little craft performed its duties. They had a favorable wind, and ran rapidly along the opening channels, until in due course they glided into the well-known bay over which, and shining in the yellow light from the sunset, they saw Sheila's home. Sheila had escaped so far the trouble of meeting friends, but she could not escape her friends in Borvabost. They had waited for her for hours, not knowing when the Clansman might arrive at Stornoway; and now they crowded down to the shore, and there was a great shaking of hands, and an occasional sob from some old crone, and a thousand repetitions of the familiar "And are you ferry well, Miss Sheila?" from small children who had come across from the village in defiance of mothers and fathers. And Sheila's face brightened into a wonderful gladness, and she had a hundred questions to ask for one answer she got, and she did not know what to do with the number of small brown fists that wanted to shake hands with her. "Will you let Miss Sheila alone?" Duncan called out, adding something in Gaelic which came strangely from a man who sometimes reproved his own master for swearing. "Get away with you, you brats: it wass better you would be in your beds than bothering people that wass come all the way from Styornoway."