It was his hope that his ears had played him false. When he glanced about him and saw the sombre flame in the eyes of Aulay MacNeill, staring at him out of the dusk, he knew that which Oisìn, the son of Fionn, cried in his pain: “his soul swam in mist.” II For all the evil omens, the marriage of Anne and Mànus MacCodrum went well. He was more silent than of yore, and men avoided rather than sought him; but he was happy with Anne, and content with his two mates, who were now Callum MacCodrum and Ranald MacRanald. The youth Donull had bettered himself by joining a Skye skipper, who was a kinsman; and Aulay MacNeill had surprised everyone except Mànus by going away as a seaman on board one of the _Loch_ line of ships which sail for Australia from the Clyde. Anne never knew what had happened, though it is possible she suspected somewhat. All that was known to her was that Marcus and Gloom Achanna had disappeared, and were supposed to have been drowned. There was now no Achanna upon Eilanmore, for Sheumais had taken a horror of the place and his loneliness. As soon as it was commonly admitted that his two brothers must have drifted out to sea, and been drowned, or at best picked up by some ocean-going ship, he disposed of the island-farm, and left Eilanmore for ever. All this confirmed the thing said among the islanders of the West--that old Robert Achanna had brought a curse with him. Blight and disaster had visited Eilanmore over and over in the many years he had held it, and death, sometimes tragic or mysterious, had overtaken six of his seven sons, while the youngest bore upon his brows the “dusk of the shadow.” True, none knew for certain that three out of the six were dead, but few for a moment believed in the possibility that Alison and Marcus and Gloom were alive. On the night when Anne had left the island with Mànus MacCodrum he, Sheumais, had heard nothing to alarm him. Even when, an hour after she had gone down to the haven, neither she nor his brothers had returned, and the _Luath_ had put out to sea, he was not in fear of any ill. Clearly, Marcus and Gloom had gone away in the smack, perhaps determined to see that the girl was duly married by priest or minister. He would have perturbed himself little for days to come, but for a strange thing that happened that night. He had returned to the house because of a chill that was upon him, and convinced, too, that all had sailed in the _Luath_. He was sitting brooding by the peat-fire, when he was startled by a sound at the window at the back of the room. A few bars of a familiar air struck painfully upon his ear, though played so low that they were just audible. What could it be but the Dàn-nan-Ròn; and who would be playing that but Gloom? What did it mean? Perhaps, after all, it was fantasy only, and there was no _feadan_ out there in the dark. He was pondering this when, still low, but louder and sharper than before, there rose and fell the strain which he hated, and Gloom never