Later, over the fire, I thought of the brightness and the cheer that visitor had brought to my latest winter, night after night; and of how she had always come with the first shadows and the first star; but there, where she was dust, a new time was brightening earth and sea.
NOTE BY THE EDITOR
The island name ‘Selskay’ is not actually found in Orkney; it is a name invented by George Mackay Brown. He also used ‘Hamnavoe’, which is an old Norse word, for the town of Stromness.