MR. MORLAND. It can’t be told quite in a word. It happened seven years ago, when Mary Rose was eleven. We were in a remote part of Scotland--in the Outer Hebrides. SIMON. I once went on shore there from the _Gadfly_, very bleak and barren, rocks and rough grass, I never saw a tree. MR. MORLAND. It is mostly like that. There is a whaling-station. We went because I was fond of fishing. I haven’t had the heart to fish since. Quite close to the inn where we put up there is--a little island. (_He sees that little island so clearly that he forgets to go on._) MRS. MORLAND. It is quite a small island, Simon, uninhabited, no sheep even. I suppose there are only about six acres of it. There are trees there, quite a number of them, Scotch firs and a few rowan-trees, they have red berries, you know. There seemed to us to be nothing very particular about the island, unless, perhaps, that it is curiously complete in itself. There is a tiny pool in it that might be called a lake, out of which a stream flows. It has hillocks and a glade, a sort of miniature land. That was all we noticed, though it became the most dreaded place in the world to us. MR. MORLAND (_considerately_). I can tell him without your being here, Fanny. MRS. MORLAND. I prefer to stay, James. MR. MORLAND. I fished a great deal in the loch between that island and the larger one. The sea-trout were wonderful. I often rowed Mary Rose across to the island and left her there to sketch. She was fond of sketching in those days, we thought them pretty things. I could see her from the boat most of the time, and we used to wave to each other. Then I would go back for her when I stopped fishing. MRS. MORLAND. I didn’t often go with them. We didn’t know at the time that the natives had a superstition against landing on the island, and that it was supposed to resent this. It had a Gaelic name which means ‘The Island that Likes to be Visited.’ Mary Rose knew nothing of this, and she was very fond of her island. She used to talk to it, call it her darling, things like that. SIMON (_restless_). Tell me what happened. MR. MORLAND. It was on what was to be our last day. I had landed her on this island as usual, and in the early evening I pulled across to take her off. From the boat I saw her, sitting on a stump of a tree that was her favourite seat, and she waved gaily to me and I to her. Then I rowed over, with, of course, my back to her. I had less than a hundred yards to go, but, Simon, when I got across she wasn’t there. SIMON. You seem so serious about it. She was hiding from you? MRS. MORLAND. She wasn’t on the island, Simon. SIMON. But--but--oh, but---- MR. MORLAND. Don’t you think I searched and searched? MRS. MORLAND. All of us. No one in the village went to bed that night. It was then we learned how they feared the island. MR. MORLAND. The little pool was dragged. There was nothing we didn’t try; but she was gone.