around them; with its splendid masses of granite; and its spare grass a
brown-green in the warm sun; and its bays of silver sand; and its
sea-birds whiter than the white clouds that came sailing over the blue.
She recognized only the awfulness and the loneliness of that wild shore;
with its suggestions of crashing storms in the night-time, and the cries
of drowning men dashed helplessly on the cruel rocks. She was very
silent all the way back, though he told her stories of the fairies that
used to inhabit those sandy and grassy plains.

And could anything have been more magical than the beauty of that
evening, after the storm had altogether died away? The red sunset sank
behind the dark olive-green of the hills; a pale, clear twilight took
its place, and shone over those mystic ruins that were the object of
many a thought and many a pilgrimage in the far past and forgotten
years; and then the stars began to glimmer as the distant shores and the
sea grew dark; and then, still later on, a wonderful radiance rose
behind the low hills of Mull, and across the waters of the Sound came a
belt of quivering light as the white moon sailed slowly up into the sky.
Would they venture out now into the silence? There was an odor of
new-mown hay in the night air. Far away they could hear the murmuring
of the waves around the rocks. They did not speak a word as they walked
along to those solemn ruins overlooking the sea, that were now a mass of
mysterious shadow, except where the eastern walls and the tower were
touched by the silvery light that had just come into the heavens.

And in silence they entered the still churchyard, too, and passed the
graves. The buildings seemed to rise above them in a darkened majesty;
before them was a portal through which a glimpse of the moonlight sky
was visible. Would they enter then?

"I am almost afraid," she said, in a low voice, to her companion, and
the hand on his arm trembled.

But no sooner had she spoken than there was a sudden sound in the night
that caused her heart to jump. All over them and around them, as it
seemed, there was a wild uproar of wings; and the clear sky above them
was darkened by a cloud of objects wheeling this way and that, until at
length they swept by overhead as if blown by a whirlwind, and crossed
the clear moonlight in a dense body. She had quickly clung to him in her
fear.

"It is only the jackdaws--there are hundreds of them," he said to her;
but even his voic