m. No human figure should be visible on this remote plain, where
these strange memorials had stood for centuries, exposed to western
gales and the stillness of the winter nights and the awful silence of
the stars. Would not Sheila, at least, understand the bleakness and
desolation of the picture? Of course her father would like to have
everything blue and green. He seemed a little disappointed when it was
clear that no distant glimpse of Borva could be introduced into the
sketch. But Sheila's imagination would be captured by this sombre
picture, and perhaps by and by in some other land, amid fairer scenes
and in a more generous climate, she might be less inclined to hunger for
the dark and melancholy North when she looked on this record of its
gloom and its sadness.

"Iss he going to put any people in the pictures?" said Mackenzie in a
confidential whisper to Ingram.

Ingram got up from the grass, and said with a yawn, "I don't know. If he
does, it will be afterward. Suppose we go along to the wagonette and see
if Duncan has brought everything up from the boat?"

The old man seemed rather unwilling to be cut out of this particular
sketch, but he went nevertheless; and Sheila, seeing the young man left
alone, and thinking that not quite fair, went over to him and asked if
she might be permitted to see as much as he had done.

Lavender shut up the book.

"No," he said with a laugh, "you shall see it to-night. I have
sufficient memoranda to work something out of by and by. Shall we have
another look at the circle up there?"

He folded up and shouldered his camp-stool, and they walked up to the
point at which the lines of the "mourners" converged. Perhaps he was
moved by a great antiquarian curiosity: at all events, he showed a
singular interest in the monuments, and talked to his companion about
all the possible theories connected with such stones in a fashion that
charmed her greatly. She was easily persuaded that the Callernish
"Fir-Bhreige" were the most interesting relics in the world. He had seen
Stonehenge, but Stonehenge was too scattered to be impressive. There
was more mystery about the means by which the inhabitants of a small
island could have hewn and carved and erected these blocks: there was,
moreover, the mystery about the vanished population itself. Yes, he had
been to Carnac also. He had driven down from Auray in a rumbling old
trap, his coachman being unable to talk French. He had seen the
half-cul