e. Then they felt a cool freshness in the
hot air; the red ensign swayed a bit; then the great mainsail flapped
idly; and finally the breeze came gently blowing over the sea, and on
again they went through the now rippling water. And as the slow time
passed in the glare of the sunlight, Staffa lay on the still water a
dense mass of shadow; and they went by Lunga; and they drew near to the
point of Gometra, where the black skarts were sitting on the exposed
rocks. It was like a dream of sunlight, and fair colors, and summer
quiet.

"I cannot believe," said she to him, "that those fierce murders and
revenges took place in such beautiful scenes as these. How could they?"

And then, in the broad and still waters of Loch Tua, with the lonely
rocks of Ulva close by them, they were again becalmed; and now it was
decided that they should leave the yacht there at certain moorings, and
should get into the gig and be pulled through the shallow channel
between Ulva and Mull that connects Loch Tua with Loch-na-Keal. Macleod
had been greatly favored by the day chosen at haphazard for this water
promenade: at the end of it he was gladdened to hear Miss White say that
she had never seen anything so lovely on the face of the earth.

And yet it was merely a question of weather. To-morrow they might come
back and find the water a ruffled leaden color; the waves washing over
the rocks; Ben More invisible behind driving clouds. But now, as those
three sat in the stern of the gig, and were gently pulled by the sweep
of the oars, it seemed to one at least of them that she must have got
into fairyland. The rocky shores of Ulva lay on one side of this broad
and winding channel, the flatter shores of Mull on the other, and
between lay a perfect mirror of water, in which everything was so
accurately reflected that it was quite impossible to define the line at
which the water and the land met. In fact, so vivid was the reflection
of the blue and white sky on the surface of the water that it appeared
to her as if the boat was suspended in mid-air--a sky below, a sky
above. And then the beauty of the landscape that enclosed this wonderful
mirror--the soft green foliage above the Ulva rocks; the brilliant
yellow-brown of the sea-weed, with here there a gray heron standing
solitary and silent as a ghost over the pools; ahead of them, towering
above this flat and shining and beautiful landscape, the awful majesty
of the mountains around Loch-na-Keal-