How more than ever beautiful the world seemed! how sweet to the eyes were upland and cliff, the wide stretch of ocean, the flying birds, the sheep grazing on the scanty pastures, and, above all, the homely blue smoke curling faintly upward from the fisher crofts on the headland east of Aonaig! Purposely he retraced his steps by the way of the glen: he would see the woman Morag MacNeill again, and insist on some more explicit word. But when he reached the burnside once more, the woman was not there. Possibly she had seen him coming, and guessed his purpose; half he surmised this, for the peats in the hearth were brightly aglow, and on the hob beside them the boiling water hissed in a great iron pot wherein were potatoes. In vain he sought, in vain called. Impatient, he walked around the bothie and into the little byre beyond. The place was deserted. This, small matter as it was, added to his disquietude. Resolved to sift the mystery, he walked swiftly down the slope. By the old shealing of Cnoc-na-Monie, now forsaken, his heart leaped at sight of Ian coming to meet him. When they met, Alan put his hands lovingly on the old man's shoulders, and looked at him with questioning eyes. He found rest and hope in those deep pools of quiet light, whence the faithful love rose comfortingly to meet his own yearning gaze. "What is it, Alan-mo-ghray; what is the trouble that is upon you?" "It is a trouble, Ian, but one of which I can speak little, for it is little I know." "Now, now, for sure you must tell me what it is." "I have seen a man here upon Rona whom I have not seen or met before, and it is one whose face is known to me, and whose voice too, and one whom I would not meet again." "Did he give you no name?" "None." "Where did he come from? Where did he go to?" "He came out of the shadow, and into the shadow he went." Ian looked steadfastly at Alan, his wistful gaze searching deep into his unquiet eyes, and thence from feature to feature of the face which had become strangely worn of late. But he questioned no further. "I, too, Alan MacAilean, have heard a strange thing to-day. You know old Marsail Macrae? She is ill now with a slow fever, and she thinks that the shadow which she saw lying upon her hearth last Sabbath, when nothing was there to cause any shadow, was her own death, come for her, and now waiting there. I spoke to the old woman, but she would not have peace, and her eyes looked at me. "'What will it be now, Marsail?' I asked. "'Ay, ay, for sure,' she said, 'it was I who saw you first.' "'Saw me first, Marsail?' "'Ay, you and Alan MacAilean.' "'When and where was this sight upon you?' "'It was one month before you and he came to Rona.' "I asked the poor old woman to be telling me her meaning. At first I could make little of what was said, for she muttered low, and moved her head this way and that, and moaned like a stricken ewe. But on my taking her hand, she looked at me again, and then told me this thing--