At the coming of the moonlight across the water, he laughed low with joy. It was only in the darkness he heard the Voice in the sea which called, called, called, and terrified him so even while it allured him. The waves, dancing and leaping in the yellow shine and breaking into a myriad little cups and fleeting hollows, sang a song that filled him with joy. Then it was that, with erect head, flashing eyes, and proud mien, crowned with moonflowers and sea-poppies, and beautiful in the comeliness of his youth, Alastair appeared before the startled eyes of Lora, who, for the second time, had come down to that shore to woo and win Death. * * * * * When, late that night, Mary Maclean returned, she found Lora in Ealasaid's arms, sobbing and moaning hysterically. It was long ere she was able to learn the exact truth, and at first she doubted if Lora were not suffering from a hallucination. But as the young mother grew calm, and took up her frail babe and kissed it with tears, Mary was won to believe in at least the possibility that the vision was, if not of Alastair in the body, at any rate the wraith of him, allowed to be seen of Lora out of God's pity of her despair. The night was too far gone for anything to be done straightway; but she promised to go forth with Lora at sunrise and see if that white, flower-crowned phantom walked abroad in the day, and was no mere fantasy of the moonshine. She had fallen asleep when, at dawn, Lora aroused her. Without a word, she rose from the chair, wrapped a shawl about her, and then, kissing Lora gently, looked at her with quiet, questioning eyes. "What is it, Mary?" "You still believe that you saw Alastair ... Alastair in the body?" "Yes." "Then had you not better take the child with you? I will carry the little one. If he should see it--perhaps he would...." "You are right, dear friend. God has put that thought into your mind." A few minutes later, the two women passed out into the cold, fresh morning; Mary going first with the child, and keeping, wherever practicable, to the sheep-paths or to the barren ledges that ran out every here and there from the heather and bracken, and this because of the dews which lay heavily, giving a moon-white sheen to the grass, and sheathing every frond and leaf and twig as with crystal, glistening rainbow-hued. They took a path that trailed above the hollow of the moonflowers, and led deviously shoreward by the side of Craig-Geal. When they reached the summit of the grassy brae, where the path diverged, they looked long in every direction. Nowhere could they discern sign of any human being. Not a soul moved upon the upland moors; not a soul moved upon the boulder-strewn, rowan-studded slopes; not a soul moved by the margin of that dead-calm sea, so still that even the whisper of its lip was inaudible, though the faint aerial echo of the crooning of its primeval slumber-song slipped hushfully into the ear.