“Then I’ll be a swan! and I’ll fly round and round Iona, and whenever you or Ian want to go to the mainland, I’ll take you on my back.” Suddenly Peterkin sprang to his feet, and jumped to and fro, clapping his hands. “Ah, how I would love it!” he exclaimed. “Love what, dearie?” “Love to see Ian fall off my back and go plump in among the herrings in the Sound! _What_ a splash he would make!” “And poor Ian---- Why, he might be drowned, Peterkin!” “Oh, no; I would swoop down the way a gannet does when it sees a fish, and would scoop him up with my bill.” The picture was too much for Peterkin. The thought of grabbing the dripping half-drowned Ian in his bill, and of soaring away with him to the white dry sands, was better than any dream of the fairies he had ever had, even than that when he rode a fairy horse in the guise of a white mouse, with grasshoppers for hounds, and a great bumble-bee as a wild boar for the occasion. He threw himself on the floor in front of the hearth, and rolled over and over, contorting his small body into alarming convulsions, clapping his hands, and laughing, laughing, laughing. Eilidh, too, let the laughter take her, and then Ian found it sweet; and soon the little room was full of joyous laughter upon laughter, and of the leaping flame-light from the blazing log on the peats, and of the dancing of the shadow-men in the corners and up and down the walls. “The swans! The swans!” cried Peterkin suddenly, as he grabbed wildly at some shadowy shapes which slid along the floor. But these swans proved as tantalising as the wind-shadows on the grass which so often he chased, and suddenly in a flash they disappeared altogether. They seemed to spring right into Ian Mor; at any rate it was in his arms that Peterkin found himself. “Where are the shadows? Where are the shadows, Ian?” he cried: “I believe you are hiding them inside yourself! Where are they? Where are they?” “Why, you boykin, where could they be?” “They are in your heart, Ian! I know they are! I see them! I see them!” Ian glanced at Eilidh. Then, putting his arm round Peterkin, he laid his lips against his downy cheek and whispered: “Yes, my little lad, you’ve guessed right.” “Then why don’t you chase them out, Ian?” Again Ian Mor glanced at Eilidh. “They live there, lennavan-mo. They jumped out because of your laughter, but they are back now.” “Then I’ll be laughing often, Ian dear, and some day I’ll catch them and drive them out into the sunshine, and then they’ll melt--ay, ay, they’ll melt for sure, Ian, and what will you be after doing then?” “Well, like Fionula and the wild swans, Peterkin, I’ll rise up and soar away on the great flood of the sun across the sea till I come to Hy Brásil, the Isle of Youth far away in the West.” “Yes, I know,” Peterkin said gravely: “Hy Brásil: Eilidh told me that is where she and you are going to live. Will you take me there too?” “Yes, you will come there too, mochree, some day.”