What wrong had
he done her that he should be haunted by this spectre, that did not
threaten, but only looked piteously toward him with eyes full of
entreaty and pain?
He left the shore, and blindly made his way up to the pasture-land
above, careless whither he went. He knew not how long he had been away
from the house, but here was a small fresh-water lake set round about
with rushes, and far over there in the east lay a glimmer of the
channels between Borva and Lewis. But soon there was another light
in the east, high over the low mists that lay along the land. A pale
blue-gray arose in the cloudless sky, and the stars went out one by
one. The mists were seen to lie in thicker folds along the desolate
valleys. Then a faintly yellow whiteness stole up into the sky, and
broadened and widened, and behold! the little moorland loch caught
a reflection of the glare, and there was a streak of crimson here
and there on the dark-blue surface of the water. Loch Roag began to
brighten. Suainabhal was touched with rose-red on its eastern slopes.
The Atlantic seemed to rise out of its purple sleep with the new
light of a new dawn; and then there was a chirruping of birds over
the heath, and the first shafts of the sunlight ran along the surface
of the sea, and lit up the white wavelets that were breaking on the
beach.
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