"What do you want with us here, on I-Mònair, where we do no wrong, O stranger who carry your sorrow in your eyes?" "Tha mi glé sgith. Tha mi flìuch. Tha an t' acras orm. Tha mi glé sgith--tha mi glé sgith--tha mi glé sgith." Alastair spoke in a strange, dull voice. It would have terrified Fearghas and Diònaid more, but that the stranger was so gentle in his manner, and had a look upon his face that awed while it reassured them. "God has sent him," said Diònaid, simply. "The poor lad has not waked--he is in a dream. God do unto us as we do unto this waif from the sea. In His good time He will whisper in the closed ears, and the man will wake, and tell us who he is, and whence he came, and whither he would fain go." "So be it, Diònaid. You have said the word, and a good word it is. When this man's hour has come, God will deliver him. Meanwhile, let us call him Donncha, after the boy we lost nigh upon six-and-twenty years ago, who might have been as tall and comely as this stranger that is now a stranger no more, but of us and one with us." * * * * * And so it was that, from that day, Alastair Macleod, unsought by any, and unrecognised because no one came near who might have known or guessed who he was, abode on I-Mònair with Fearghas the shepherd and his wife Diònaid. He dwelt in peace. Through the long days he wandered about the shores. Often, in the gloaming, he sat on a rock and stared longingly across the waters for he knew not what, for some nameless boon he craved witlessly; stared yearningly through the dusk for something that lay beyond, that, though unseen, brought a mist into his eyes, so that when he reached the peat-fire again, where Diònaid McIan awaited him, he often could not see to eat for a while for the blur of his slow-falling tears. Week succeeded changeless week. The sheep ceased to look up as he passed. The yellow-hammers in the gorse sang even when he stopped brooding by the bush whereon they flitted from branch to branch, looking at him with quiet eyes. It was in the sixth week, after a time of storm which had lapsed into another long spell of exquisite summer, that the dream came to its end. Late one afternoon, a herring-trawler lay off I-Mònair. The skipper, a kinsman of Fearghas, came ashore to give and learn what news there was. Alastair had come back about the usual time from one of his day-long rambles, and, as he approached the door, his quick ear had caught the sound of an alien voice. Whether he overheard the shepherd tell his friend, in turn for the strange and moving tale of Alastair MacDiarmid Macleod, of Innisròn, of the strange visitor he and his wife nourished, with the surmise that he, Donncha, might be no other than the missing man; or whether some other suggestion concerning his removal or identification alarmed him, no one ever knew.