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“Oh, of course! It must be that modern-looking place with large windows. You can see it from our side.” Judith checked in astonishment at the words she had used.
“Our side
”—as though she were a native of Kylsaig Island.

Fiona was laughing softly. “Stuart tells me he built the place for his own use and I’ve taken it over for mine. But, after all, what does it matter? One day we shall be married, so it will belong to both of us then.”

Judith became silent, for she realised that once again she was being gently fended off; warned not to try to establish any kind of permanent association. In the dimness of the car interior she smiled, although she wanted to laugh aloud at the ludicrous situation. A couple of week’s holiday. Then she would return to London. In a few days the island community would have forgotten that she had ever come, or if they remembered, would speak of her as “that dark girl, Mrs. Greenwood’s sister.” With her hand metaphorically on her heart, Judith could now have assured both Fiona and Mairi that she had no designs at all on the men they wanted to marry.

Barbara took up the small change of conversation with Fiona. “Why don’t you take your violin playing seriously?

—Not here, of course. 1 mean go to London where you could train at one of the top academies,” Barbara suggested.

“Oh, no. I’m not going to London,” Fiona snapped out the words. “Except for shopping trips. Besides, I couldn’t leave Granna. She likes me to be here. She knows that one day I’ll take over running the house.”

Andy called that Stuart’s boat was ready and Fiona draped a car rug round her shoulders, for she had brought no coat with her.

“Are you coming across with us?” Stuart asked her.

“Naturally. You don’t expect me to stand on the shore like a fisher-wife, waiting for you to come back, do you?”

“You could drive the car back to the house. I’ll walk back.”

But Fiona stepped into the boat along with the others.

Stuart’s smart cabin cruiser made Andy’s dinghy, to which the two men had attached a tow rope, look like a dilapidated toy boat. Inside the cabin the three girls sat on cushioned seats, although Judith would have preferred to be outside. But Stuart and Andy were discussing technical details about boats and engines and inboard motors, so she thought it better not to intrude.

“I can take you round the point,” she heard Stuart say. “Then you won’t have far to walk. But I’ll have to land nearer this way. There’s a bit of a bank with a convenient bush where you could tie the dinghy.”

The lights of Cruban on the mainland pricked the long Scottish twilight and in the west the sky remained luminous, sharpening the distant shapes of dark grey mountains.

Andy located the spot Stuart indicated, swung the dinghy to the landward side so that he could clamber into it and make fast. When Andy was ashore, Stuart jumped into the dinghy to help the two girls. Barbara went first and Judith followed. Unexpectedly, Stuart lifted Judith in his arms and swung her up to Andy on the bank.

“Come and call on us any time, Judith,” he said warmly. His face was in shadow, but she could imagine the friendly smile that must have accompanied his words.

Andy waited until Stuart untied the tow rope and cast off. Barbara had already begun to walk along the shore, but Judith stood there watching. Fiona leaned against the side of the cabin while Stuart nosed the boat out from the shore. Their goodbyes sang out across the water as the boat with its bobbing light puttered towards the point of Kylsaig.

“Aren’t you glad I warned you not to wear your best evening shoes?” Barbara queried, as she and Judith followed Andy across the soft, grassy stretch before reaching the firmer path.

“Yes, you were quite right,” Judith murmured absently.

Her thoughts were occupied by the memory of that brief, and unexpectedly sweet, moment when Stuart had held her in his arms, even if only for the purpose of hoisting her out of a boat.

Fiona must have seen the incident. Would she be annoyed? How could one reconcile Stuart’s comfortably vague idea that sooner or later Fiona would fall madly in love and marry someone else with Fiona’s calm assumption that Stuart would undoubtedly marry nobody but herself?

By the time they had reached the farmhouse, Judith had pulled herself together. She was here on a fortnight’s holiday, of which quite a slice had already slipped by, and the romantic happenings on Kylsaig or the mainland were really no concern of hers. Tomorrow, the steamer trip and sightseeing would fully occupy her thoughts.

Fiona had promised to meet Barbara and Judith at the ferry and take them by car to the pier, but Stuart was in the driving seat.

After greeting the girls, he said, “Fiona apologises, but she’s not well and doesn’t feel like taking a steamer trip. Nothing serious. One of her usual attacks of migraine.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Barbara answered. “It’s very good of you to drive us down to Cruban.”

At the pierhead, where the steamer was already moored and a queue of passengers waited to go aboard, Stuart grinned at the two girls. “I’ve decided to take a day off and come with you. That is, if you’ll let me intrude.”

“Delighted to have you as escort.” Barbara returned his grin. “But you must have seen Iona and Mull scores of times.”

“Not even Scottish law says that after the thirty-first time a man mustn’t visit them again! You and Judith take your places in the queue. I’ll park my car at the hotel opposite and telephone Granna that I’ll be away for the day.”

He was gone before Barbara could make any further protests. She looked at Judith. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Why should I?” Judith feigned an indifference that was anything but honest, for she was secretly delighted at the prospect of a day in Stuart’s company.

Barbara chuckled. “I’m not at all clear about my own position in this threesome. Perhaps I shall be the intruder.” Barbara’s oblique glance conveyed a good deal more meaning than her actual words.

Judith met her sister’s glance and then stared out to sea. “If you feel
de trop,
you can always take a walk round the deck,” she said with smug blandness. Then the two girls faced each other and burst into laughter. “Remember I’m here for only another eight days,” Judith added.

“Many a man’s downfall has been brought about in less time than that.”

“What do you take me for? Some kind of
femme fatale
?”

“No, but I think Stuart is—at least, shall we say,
interested
in you?”

“Only because I was a sympathetic listener to his schemes for improving Kylsaig.”

Stuart joined the girls again.

“Andy was right about the weather,” he remarked when they had found seats on deck in a comfortable corner. “It’s going to be a really sparkling day.”

Judith watched the lovely colours of morning light on the hills and water as the ship sailed down the Sound of Kylsaig and out into the Firth. Many of the smaller islands looked completely deserted.

“Did anybody ever live there at all?” she asked Stuart.

“At one time there were cottages, even biggish houses on most of them. Now they’re just a home for gulls.” She heard the infinite sadness in his voice, but the next moment his mood changed and he was pointing out to her the various points of interest on Mull, identifying them on the leaflet map in her hand and enlivening his remarks with tales of his boyhood adventures.

At Iona, the steamer discharged the passengers into small motor-boats for landing on the slipway.

“We’ve brought a picnic lunch,” Barbara told Stuart. “There’s ample for three.”

“Or we could all have lunch in the steamer saloon when we go aboard again,” he suggested.

“No, let’s have it here,” Judith said. “If we eat it now, then some of the sightseers will have scattered in different directions.”

They sat on the dunes and ate sandwiches, ham rolls, fruit cake and apples. Gulls inquisitively waddled up to share the meal, but were choosy over what they would eat.

Judith was fascinated by the colours in the water; every green imaginable from eau-de-nil to myrtle, then a wide patch of mauve and, far off, a long streak of purple-blue.

With Stuart to guide them, the two girls explored the partially restored Abbey and the ruined nunnery gardens, the single street of trim, neatly-painted houses. At the small Highland shop for tweeds and silver jewellery, Stuart bought a couple of green translucent pebbles and handed one each to Barbara and Judith.

“They’re real Iona stones and said to be a certain charm against drowning. So if the ship sinks during the journey, you’ll both be among the saved.”

“What a thought!” exclaimed Barbara. “But thank you all the same.”

“As they left Iona with its green cultivated fields and golden shore line and approached the small black island of Staffa, Judith caught something of the excitement of many other passengers. Even on apparently fine days, it was not always possible to land on this fantastic, volcanic island with its lava crown and black, fluted pillars and the celebrated Fingal’s Cave like a sea cathedral.

A couple of ferry-boats came out to the ship and landed parties at the steps from which it was tolerably easy to walk along the roped pathway to the cave. Sheep-like, the sightseers followed each other into the dark recesses, and were amused by the distortion of voice and laughter as they peered above them or at the floor of water where columns writhed in the faint light.

For Judith some of the grandeur was lost, although she had to admit that she herself was also a tourist.' One ought to come alone, or perhaps with a sympathetic companion, to view such an immensity, to look back at the towering columns forming an arch to frame the dazzling sky and blue Atlantic.

Gulls had nested on ledges only four or five feet above the outside path and now showed their displeasure at the disturbance but when the ferry-boats had returned their loads to the ship and the steamer moved again, it seemed to Judith as though a gigantic vacuum-cleaner had sucked every human being from the paths and ledges, leaving the island isolated and free.

“Not a good place to be stranded on some dark and stormy night.” Barbara broke into Judith’s contemplative mood.

“No.”

The steamer called at Tobermory on Mull to land or take on passengers and stores, but there was no time for the day trippers to go ashore.

“You ought to try to find time to visit Mull,” Stuart suggested to Judith. “It’s one of our loveliest islands. Some days the steamers go there, land you at Tobermory for a few hours and pick you up again in the afternoon. Better still, I could—” He broke off to rescue Barbara’s scarf from blowing overboard, so Judith was left to guess at any further suggestions.

On the long run home up the Sound the mountains on either side took on new colours and shapes as the ship glided along, and Judith said impulsively, “The trouble is trying to fit everything into a fortnight’s holiday. I wish I could stay the whole summer.”

When they arrived back in Cruban, a tall man approached Barbara as she reached the foot of the gangway.

“I have my car here,” he said in a low, urgent tone. “Don’t panic, but there’s been a slight accident.”

Barbara’s face blanched under her golden tan. “What is it? Tell me quickly. Andy? The children?”

“Susan fell in the water, but she’s all right. Only shocked, I think.” He was already leading Barbara to his car.

“I could take Barbara and Judith up to my boathouse,” Stuart offered, “and run them across to Kylsaig in no time.”

“Mine is nearer and my boat’s ready,” snapped the other man, whom Judith now recognised as Mr. Mundon, the owner of the Roxburgh Hotel.

Stuart’s glance questioned Judith. “I’d better go with Barbara,” she decided. “Thank you for a lovely day.”

“I hope you’ll find Susan all right. Give her my love.” As the car started off, Barbara wanted details. “What really happened?” she asked worriedly.

Susan and Robbie were playing in the water, I understand, and Susan fell and stunned herself on some rocks.”

“Where?”

“Down by the old slipway not far from your place. It seems that Huntly has recently had a load of stone dumped there. You know his crazy ideas about rebuilding everything on Kylsaig.”

Barbara frowned with exasperation and sighed. Then she remembered Judith in the back of the car. “Oh, Judith, I’m sorry. I forgot to introduce you. This is Mr. Mundon. My sister.”

“Oh, we’ve already met,” Judith said quickly. “At lunch the day I went across with Mairi.”

“Yes, I remember,” he acknowledged.

He turned off the road some distance before the ferry and drove through the massive iron gates Judith had already noticed on her previous trips. So the house on the point was Mr. Mundon’s, but there was no time to catch more than a glimpse, for the car skirted the house and went straight down to a wooden landing-stage where a small motor-boat was tied up.

“I’m taking you round to the other side,” Graham Mundon said, as he cast off and the boat swung across the Sound. “It’s quicker in the end since you won’t have to walk up from the ferry.”

Barbara was still anxious to know everything that had happened, but he was unable to answer all her questions.

“I don’t know very much about it, but I think Robbie had the presence of mind to drag his sister out of the water and then run for help. I suppose after that Andy, or someone else, telephoned for the doctor.”

“How were you able to meet us, then? How did you know about it?”

“My housekeeper was telephoning me about other matters and mentioned that Dr. Findlay had been ferried urgently over to Kylsaig. So I phoned the ferryman and Mrs. Fraser told me the Greenwoods were in trouble and that you and your sister were away for the day on the Iona trip. I thought the best thing I could do was meet you both and get you home quickly.”

“Thank you, Graham. That was kind.” Barbara smiled at him and some of the anxiety lifted from her face.

“Of course nobody would know that Stuart was with us,” Judith said, then wished she had not spoken, for Graham gave her a curiously knowing glance.