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of the island seep into her blood again.
    It was early August and the heather was coming into bloom, while all about her the sea was clear and green with the yellow weed rising and falling against the rocks like a living, breathing thing. Far out on the wide blue sea of the Hebrides the triangular dorsal fins of a shoal of sharks rode like distant sails in line astern, and always above her echoed the cry of the sea birds, kittiwakes and divers and cormorants squabbling on the cliff or hobbling after the long-legged herons as they fished placidly along the shore.
    Christine never tired of watching the birds. Her own part of the island was a sanctuary for them and in Little Loch Erradale the seals came to bring up their young. Fat baby seals frolicked and floundered in the shallow green tide, undisturbed, and the sleek dark cows watched them confidently and with pride. They knew that their young were safe, for this had been their hidden breeding-ground for years. The seals were part of Loch Erradale, an integral part, just as she herself was part of the island, Christine thought, coming down the winding white roadway from the moor. When the time came she would take up her heritage.
    If something suggested that time to be now, she did not pursue the thought. Her grandmother was still alive, and Dame Sarah seemed to have taken on a fresh lease of life since her return. She had no idea how desperate the situation was or how soon she was to be faced with complete responsibility. All that mattered for the moment was that life was very pleasant. She was discovering again something that had long been lost to her. The spell of the Islands was upon, her and she did not want to think.
    As she breasted the final rise before Erradale House came into view she picked out the path of the bi-weekly steamer as it rounded the north end of Croma, trailing its streamer of white wake behind it, and suddenly it seemed far more than three days since she had disembarked on the grey quayside at Port-na-Keal. It seemed an age in which she had remained poised on the threshold of the future, waiting, as if she were almost reluctant to step across.
    Nearly at her destination, she was about to turn in between the decrepit gateposts of Erradale House when the sound of a horse’s hoofs rang sharply on the rough metalled road behind her. She had not seen anyone on the moor and she turned in surprise to be confronted by the last person she expected to meet.
    Her companion of the voyage from Oban was riding confidently and deliberately towards her.
    To escape was her first impulse. She did not want to speak to this man, she told herself. He was an impostor, an interloper, a usurper, a person to whom money and possession were the be-all and end-all of existence, a man who could speak of the buying and selling of people’s homes with no more concern than if he had been discussing the sort of cattle she had seen roaming in a vast, rich herd on the Ardtornish side of the ford. He had everything he needed at Ardtornish, everything that money could buy, yet he wanted Erradale, too.
    The whole island. No more, no less. He had come up against a natural opposition and his ruthless answer was the purchase of her home!
    She stiffened as their eyes met and her head was held unconsciously high as she waited for him to speak.
    The Canadian dismounted and came towards her.
    “So we meet again?” he observed, taking off the wide-brimmed hat which he had found so inconvenient on the deck of the steamer.
    It only accentuated his unsuitability for his present role, Christine thought angrily, annoyed by a sudden unmistakable confusion which sent the colour flying into her cheeks in a hot wave. It might be all very well for the Canadian prairies—necessary, in fact—but here, on Croma, it was an affectation, worn no doubt to single him out from the natives, who had more to do than ride a horse across the moors on a bright August day. Horses were practically unknown on the