"She came to me, like a grey mist, beyond the dyke of the green place, near the road. The face of her was grey as a grey dawn, but the voice was hers, though I heard it under a wave, so dull and far was it. And these are her words to me, and mine to her--and the first speaking was mine, for the silence wore me: Am bheil thu' falbh, O mo ghraidh? _B'idh mi falbh, Mùirnean!_ C'uin a thilleas tu, O mo ghraidh? _Cha till mi an rathad so; Tha an't ait e cumhann-- O Mùirnean, Mùirnean! B'idh mi falbh an drùgh Am tigh Pharais, Mùirnean!_ Sèol dhomh an rathad, Mo ghraidh! _Thig an so, Mùirnean-mo, Thig an so!_ Are you going, My dear one? _Yea, now I am going, Dearest._ When will you come again, My dear one? _I will not return this way; The place is narrow-- O my Darling! I will be going to Paradise, Dear, my dear one!_ Show me the way, Heart of my heart! _Come hither, dearest, come hither, Come with me!_ "And then I saw that it was a mist, and that I was alone. But now this night it is that I feel the breath on the soles of my feet." And with that I knew there was no hope. "_Ma tha sin an dàn!_ ... if that be ordained," was all that rose to my lips. It was that night he died. I fell asleep in the second hour. When I woke in the grey dawn, his face was greyer than that, and more cold. FOOTNOTES: [11] _Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich_: the Farm of the Shadowy Clump of Trees. _Cairstine_, or _Cairistine_, is the Gaelic for _Christina_ (for _Christian_), as _Tormaid_ is for Norman, and _Giorsal_ for Grace. "The quiet havens" is the beautiful island phrase for graves. Here, also, a swift and fatal consumption that falls upon the doomed is called "The White Fever." By "the mainland," Harris and the Lewis are meant. [12] _A cockall a' chridhe_: his heart out of its shell--a phrase often used to express sudden derangement from any shock. The ensuing phrase means the month from the 15th of July to the 15th of August, _Mios crochaidh nan con_, so called as it is supposed to be the hottest, if not the most waterless, month in the isles. The word _claar_, used below, is the name given a small wooden tub, into which the potatoes are turned when boiled. THE SEA-MADNESS I know a man who keeps a little store in a village by one of the lochs of Argyll. He is about fifty, is insignificant, commonplace, in his interests parochial, and on Sundays painful to see in his sleek respectability. He lives within sight of the green and grey waters, above which grey mountains stand; across the kyle is a fair wilderness; but to my knowledge he never for pleasure goes upon the hills, nor stands by the shore, unless it be of a Saturday night to watch the herring-boats come in, or on a Sabbath afternoon when he has word with a friend.