At last, in a whisper, the girl spoke.
"Ian, has aught of evil come to Alastair?"
"God forbid!"
"Do you know anything to his undoing?"
"No, Lora bhàn."
"You have not had the sight upon him lately?"
The islesman hesitated a moment. Raising his eyes at last, he glanced first at his companion and then out into the dusk across the waves, as though he expected to see some one or something there in answer to his quest.
"I dreamt a dream, Lora, wife of Alastair. I saw you and him and another go away into a strange place. You and the other were as shadows; but Alastair was a man, as now, though he walked through mist, and I saw nothing of him but from the waist upward."
Silence followed this, save for the wash of the sea, the moan of wind athwart wave, and the soft rush of the breeze overhead.
Ian rose, and made as though he were going to put out the oars; but as he saw how far the boat had drifted from the shore, and what a jumble of water lay between them and the isle, he busied himself with hoisting the patched brown sail.