“Ay?” said Sheumas, taking his pipe from his mouth, and looking at the spire of smoke rising just forward o’ the mast. The water slipped by, soft and slow. It was only the tide feeling its way up the sea-loch, for there was not a breath of wind. Here and there were dusky shadows: the boats of the fishermen of Inchghunnais. Each carried a red light, and in some were green lanterns slung midway up the mast. No other word was said for a long time. “And I’m wondering,” said Isla at last: “I’m wondering what you’ll think of that story.” Sheumas made no answer to that. He smoked, and stared down into the dark water. After a time he rose, and leaned against the mast. Though there was no light of either moon or lamp, he put his hand above his eyes, as his wont was. “I’m thinking the mackerel will be coming this way to-night. This is the third time I’ve heard the snoring of the pollack … away yonder, beyond Peter Macallum’s boat.” “Well, Sheumas, I’ll sleep a bit. I had only the outside of a sleep last night.” With that Isla knocked the ash out of his pipe, and lay over against a pile of rope, and shut his eyes, and did not sleep at all because of the sick dull pain of the homeless man he was--home, home, home, and Silis the name of it. When, an hour or more later, he grew stiff he moved, and opened his eyes. His mate was sitting at the helm, but the light in his pipe was out, though he held the pipe in his mouth, and his eyes were wide staring open. “I would not be telling me that story, Isla,” he said. Isla answered nothing, but shifted back to where he was before, for all his cramped leg. He closed his eyes again. At the full of the tide, in the deep dark hour before the false dawn, as the first glimmer is called, the glimmer that comes and goes, both men got up, and moved about, stamping their feet. Each lit his pipe, and the smoke hung long in little greyish puffs, so dead-still was it. On the _Brudhearg_, John Macalpine’s boat, young Neil Macalpine sang. The two men on the _Luath_ could hear his singing. It was one of the strange songs of Ian Mòr. O, she will have the deep dark heart, for all her face is fair, As deep and dark as though beneath the shadow of her hair: For in her hair a spirit dwells that no white spirit is, And hell is in the hopeless heaven of that lost spirit’s kiss. She has two men within the palm, the hollow of her hand: She takes their souls and blows them forth as idle drifted sand: And one falls back upon her breast that is his quiet home, And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam. And when she sees the sleep of one, ofttimes she rises there And looks into the outer dark and calleth soft and fair: And then the lost soul that afar within the dark doth roam Comes laughing, laughing, laughing, and crying _Home! Home!_