, with a wooden seat round
its trunk, and so she sat down in the green twilight of the leaves,
while Bras came and put his head in her lap. Out beyond the shadow
of the tree all the world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great silence
brooded over the long undulations of the Park, where not a human
being was within sight. How strange it was, she fell to thinking, that
within a short distance there were millions of men and women, while
here she was absolutely alone! Did they not care, then, for the
sunlight and the trees and the sweet air? Were they so wrapped up in
those social observances that seemed to her so barren of interest?

"They have a beautiful country here," she said, talking in a rambling
and wistful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing the eager light in his
eyes, as if he were trying to understand. "They have no rain and no
fog; almost always blue skies, and the clouds high up and far away.
And the beautiful trees they have too! you never saw anything like
that in the Lewis, not even at Stornoway. And the people are so rich
and beautiful in their dress, and all the day they have only to think
how to enjoy themselves and what new amusement is for the morrow. But
I think they are tired of having nothing to do; or perhaps, you know,
they are tired because they have nothing to fight against--no hard
weather and hunger and poverty. They do not care for each other as
they would if they were working on the same farm, and trying to save
up for the winter; or if they were going out to the fishing, and very
glad to come home again from Caithness to find all the old people very
well and the young ones ready for a dance and a dram, and much joy and
laughing and telling of stories. It is a very great difference there
will be in the people--very great."

Bras whined: perhaps he understood her better now that she had
involuntarily fallen into something of her old accent and habit of
speech.

"Wouldn't you like, Bras, to be up in Borva again--only for this
afternoon? All the people would come running out; and it is little
Ailasa, she would put her arms round your neck; and old Peter
McTavish, he would hear who it was, and come out of his house groping
by the wall, and he would say, 'Pless me! iss it you, Miss Sheila,
indeed and mir-over? It iss a long time since you hef left the Lewis.'
Yes, it is a long time--a long time; and I will be almost forgetting
what it is like sometimes when I try to think of it. Here it is always