find that he had not lost the use of his tongue entirely during his long solitude; “although I must own,” added the worthy Udaller, “that when he lived among us, nobody ever made less use of it.”

Mordaunt acquiesced both in what respected his father’s taciturnity, and his dislike to general society; but suggested, at the same time, that the first circumstance rendered his own immediate return[Pg 37] more necessary, as he was the usual channel of communication betwixt his father and others; and that the second corroborated the same necessity, since Mr. Mertoun’s having no other society whatever seemed a weighty reason why his son’s should be restored to him without loss of time. As to his father’s coming to Burgh-Westra, “they might as well,” he said, “expect to see Sumburgh Cape come thither.”

[Pg 37]

“And that would be a cumbrous guest,” said Magnus. “But you will stop for our dinner to-day? There are the families of Muness, Quendale, Thorslivoe, and I know not who else, are expected; and, besides the thirty that were in house this blessed night, we shall have as many more as chamber and bower, and barn and boat-house, can furnish with beds, or with barley-straw,—and you will leave all this behind you!”

“And the blithe dance at night,” added Brenda, in a tone betwixt reproach and vexation; “and the young men from the Isle of Paba that are to dance the sword-dance, whom shall we find to match them, for the honour of the Main?”

“There is many a merry dancer on the mainland, Brenda,” replied Mordaunt, “even if I should never rise on tiptoe again. And where good dancers are found, Brenda Troil will always find the best partner. I must trip it to-night through the Wastes of Dunrossness.”

“Do not say so, Mordaunt,” said Minna, who, during this conversation, had been looking from the window something anxiously; “go not, to-day at least, through the Wastes of Dunrossness.”

“And why not to-day, Minna,” said Mordaunt, laughing, “any more than to-morrow?[Pg 38]”

[Pg 38]

“O, the morning mist lies heavy upon yonder chain of isles, nor has it permitted us since daybreak even a single glimpse of Fitful-head, the lofty cape that concludes yon splendid range of mountains. The fowl are winging their way to the shore, and the shelldrake seems, through the mist, as large as the scart.[19] See, the very sheerwaters and bonxies are making to the cliffs for 

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