And lo! he found himself walking with a princess in this wonder-land through that magic twilight that prevails in northern latitudes. Mackenzie and Ingram had gone on in front. The large deerhound, after regarding him attentively, had gone to its mistress's side, and remained closely there. Lavender could scarcely believe his ears that the girl was talking to him lightly and frankly, as though she had known him for years, and was telling him of all her troubles with the folks at Borvabost, and of those poor people whom she was now going to see. No sooner did he understand that they were emigrants, and that they were going to Glasgow before leaving finally for America, than in quite an honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge the government with a shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up suddenly. In the gentlest fashion she told him what she knew of these poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until he was ready to curse the hour in which he had blundered into taking a side on a question about which he cared nothing and knew less.
"But some other time," continued Sheila, "I will tell you what we do here, and I will show you a great many letters I have from friends of mine who have gone to Greenock and to New York and Canada. Oh yes, it is very bad for the old people: they never get reconciled to the change—never; but it is very good for the young people, and they are glad of it, and are much better off than they were here. You will see how proud they are of the better clothes they have, and of good food, and of money to put in the bank; and how could they get that in the Highlands, where the land is so poor that a small piece is of no use, and they have not money to rent the large sheep-farms? It is very bad to have people go away—it is very hand on many of them—but what can they do? The piece of ground that was very good for the one family, that is expected to keep the daughters when they marry, and the sons when they marry, and then there are five or six families to live on it. And hard work—that will not do much with very bad land and the bad weather we have here. The people get downhearted when they have their crops spoiled by the long rain, and they cannot get their peats dried; and very often the fishing turns out bad, and they have no money at all to carry on the farm. But now you will see Borvabost."
Lavender had to confess that this wonderful princess would persist in talking in a very matter-of-fact way. All the afternoon, while he was weaving a luminous web of imagination around her, she was continually cutting it asunder, and stepping forth as an authority on the growing of some wretched plants or the means by which rain was to be excluded from window-sills. And now, in this strange twilight, when she ought to have been singing of the cruelties of the sea or listening to half-forgotten legends of mermaids, she was engaged with the petty fortunes of men and girls who were pleased to find themselves prospering in the Glasgow police-force or educating themselves in a milliner's shop in Edinburgh. She did not appear conscious that she was a princess. Indeed, she seemed to have no consciousness of herself at all, and was altogether occupied in giving him information about practical subjects in which he professed a profound interest he certainly did not feel.
But even Sheila, when they had reached the loftiest part of their route, and could see beneath them the island and the water surrounding it, was struck by the exceeding beauty of the twilight; and as for her companion, he remembered it many a time thereafter as if it were a dream of the sea. Before them lay the Atlantic—a pale line of blue, still, silent and remote. Overhead, the sky was of a clear, pale gold, with heavy masses of violet cloud stretched across from north to south, and thickening as they got near to the horizon. Down at their feet, near the shore, a dusky line of huts and houses was scarcely visible; and over these lay a pale blue film of peat-smoke that did not move in the still air. Then they saw the bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away, toward the east, lay the bulk of the island—dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming westward like a star. But all this was as nothing to the glory that began to shine in the south-east, where the sky was of a pale violet over the peaks of Mealasabhal and Suainabhal. There, into the beautiful dome, rose the golden crescent of the moon, warm in color, as though it still retained the last rays of the sunset. A line of quivering gold fell across Loch Roag, and touched the black hull and spars of the boat in which Sheila had been sailing in the morning. That bay down there, with its white sands and massive rocks, its still expanse of water, and its background of mountain-peaks palely colored by the yellow moonlight, seemed really a home for a magic princess who was shut off from all the world. But here, in front of them, was another sort of sea and another sort of life—a small fishing-village hidden under a cloud of pale peat-smoke, and fronting the great waters of the Atlantic itself, which lay under a gloom of violet clouds.
"Now," said Sheila with a smile, "we have not always weather as good as this in the island. Will you not sit on the bench over there with Mr. Ingram, and wait until my papa and I come up from the village again?"
"May not I go down with you?"
"No. The dogs would learn you were a stranger, and there would be a great deal of noise, and there will be many of the poor people asleep."
So Sheila had her way; and she and her father went down the hillside into the gloom of the village, while Lavender went to join his friend Ingram, who was sitting on the wooden bench, silently smoking a clay pipe.
"Well, I have never seen the like of this," said Lavender in his impetuous way: "it is worth going a thousand miles to see. Such colors and such clearness! and then the splendid outlines of those mountains, and the grand sweep of this loch! This is the sort of thing that drives me to despair, and might make one vow never to touch a brush again. And Sheila says it will be like this all the night through."
He was unaware that he had spoken of her in a very familiar way, but Ingram noticed it.