"Hoots, my girl, what for d'ye fash yersel an' us too for the like o' sic havers. There's no one aboard who wants to land at Innisròn: an' as for Alastair Macleod, he was na' on the _Clansman_ when we left Greenock, so he could na' well be on her the now! As for you, Ian Maclean, are ye doited, when, wi' neither flag nor green light aloft, ye stop the steamer like this, a' for a lassie's haverin'! Ye'll hear o' this yet, my man, I'se telling ye! Auld fule that ye are, awa' wi' ye! keep aff the wash o' the steamer: ... an' by the Lord, I'll ..." But already the _Clansman_ was forging ahead, and the second-officer's menace was swallowed up in the tumult of churned seas. A minute later the steamer was a dark mass to the nor'-west, with a sheet of white writhing after her, and a swirl of flaming cinders from her funnel riding down the night like a shoal of witch-lights. The wherry rocked heavily, caught as she was in the surge from the screw, and lying adrift in the sliding hollows and rough criss-cross of the waves. Lora sat motionless and speechless. The old man stared down into the darkness of the boat: but though his lips moved continuously, no sound came from them. For a time it was as though a derelict were the sport of the sea, which had a dull moan in it, that partly was from the stifled voice of the tide as it forced its way from the cauldrons of the deep, and partly from the fugitive clamour of breaking waves, and mostly from the now muffled, now loud and raucous sough of the wind as it swung low by the surge, or trailed off above the highest reach of the flying scud. At last, in a whisper, the girl spoke. "Ian, has aught of evil come to Alastair?" "God forbid!" "Do you know anything to his undoing?" "No, _Lora bhàn_." "You have not had the sight upon him lately?" The islesman hesitated a moment. Raising his eyes at last, he glanced first at his companion and then out into the dusk across the waves, as though he expected to see some one or something there in answer to his quest. "I dreamt a dream, Lora, wife of Alastair. I saw you and him and another go away into a strange place. You and the other were as shadows; but Alastair was a man, as now, though he walked through mist, and I saw nothing of him but from the waist upward." Silence followed this, save for the wash of the sea, the moan of wind athwart wave, and the soft rush of the breeze overhead. Ian rose, and made as though he were going to put out the oars; but as he saw how far the boat had drifted from the shore, and what a jumble of water lay between them and the isle, he busied himself with hoisting the patched brown sail. As if no interval had occurred, Lora abruptly called him by name. "Ian," she added, "what does the mist mean? ... the mist that you saw about the feet and up to the waist of Alastair?" There was no reply. Ian let go the sail, secured it, and then seated himself a few feet away from Lora.