ight of something
outside that startled him. It seemed as though great clouds of
golden-white, all ablaze in sunshine, rested on the dark bosom of the
deep. Instantly he went to the window; and then he saw that these clouds
were not clouds at all, but the islands around glittering in the "white
wonder of the snow," and catching here and there the shafts of the early
sunlight that now streamed through the valleys of Mull. The sudden
marvel of it! There was Ulva, shining beautiful as in a sparkling bridal
veil; and Gometra a paler blue-white in the shadow; and Colonsay and
Erisgeir also a cold white; and Staffa pale gray; and then the sea that
the gleaming islands rested on was a mirror of pale-green and
rose-purple hues reflected from the morning sky. It was all dream-like,
so still, and beautiful, and silent. But he now saw that that fine
morning would not last. Behind the house clouds of a suffused yellow
began to blot out the sparkling peaks of Ben-an-Sloich. The colors of
the plain of the sea were troubled with gusts of wind until they
disappeared altogether. The sky in the north grew an ominous black,
until the farther shores of Loch Tua were dazzling white against that
bank of angry cloud. But to Bunessan he would go.

Janet Macleod was not much afraid of the weather at any time, but she
said to him at breakfast, in a laughing way,

"And if you are lost in a snowdrift in Glen Finichen, Keith, what are we
to do for you?"

"What are you to do for me?--why, Donald will make a fine Lament; and
what more than that?"

"Cannot you send one of the Camerons with a message, Keith?" his mother
said.

"Well, mother," said he, "I think I will go on to Fhion-fort and cross
over to Iona myself, if Mr. Mackinnon will go with me. For it is very
bad the cottages are there, I know; and if I must write to the duke, it
is better that I should have made the inquiries myself."

And, indeed, when Macleod set out on his stout young pony Jack, paying
but little heed to the cold driftings of sleet that the sharp east wind
was sending across, it seemed as though he were destined to perform
several charitable deeds all on the one errand. For, firstly, about a
mile from the house, he met Duncan the policeman, who was making his
weekly round in the interests of morality and law and order, and who had
to have his book signed by the heritor of Castle Dare as sure witness
that his peregrinations had extended so far. And Duncan was not at all