trength in the arms of you.
And you must have toes to grip, and thighs to brace you against the
heeling timbers. But to be walking somewhere for long, hitting the road
with your feet like you'd be hitting a wall with your head, it's
unnatural to a sailing man. A half a mile, did you say?"

"Honest man," said wee Shane, troubled, "are you looking for any one in
the house of the McFees?"

"For a woman that bore me and put me to her breast. An old woman now,
decent wee fellow."

"You'll no' find her, honest man."

"She's dead?"

"I saw her with the pennies on her eyes not two months gone."

"So my mother's dead," said the big man. "So my mother's dead. Ah, well,
all her troubles are over. It's forty years since I saw her, and she the
strapping woman. And in forty years she must have had a power of
trouble."

"She looked unco peaceful, honest man."

"The dead are always peaceful, decent wee fellow. So my mother's dead.
Well, that alters things."

"You'll be staying at home then, honest man?"

"I'll be going back to sea, decent wee fellow. I had intended to stay at
home and be with the old woman in her last days, the like of a pilot
that brings a ship in, as you might say. But it would have been queer
and hard. Herself, now, had no word of English?"

"Old Annapla McFee spoke only the Gaidhlig."

"And the Gaidhlig is gone from me, as the flower goes from the
fruit-tree. And there could have been little conversation betwixt us,
she remembering fairs and dances and patterns in the Gaidhlig, and me
thinking of strange foreign ports in the English tongue. Poor company
I'd have been for an old woman and she making her last mooring. I'd have
been little assistance. Forty years between us--strange ports and deep
soundings. Oh, we'd have been making strange."

"Ah, maybe not, honest man."

"How could it have been any other way, decent wee lad? She'd have been
the strange, pitiful old cummer to me, who minded her the strapping
woman, and I'd have been a queer bearded man to her, who minded me only
as a wee fellow, the terror of the glen. People change every day, and
there's a lot of change in forty years.

"And, besides, it would have been gey hard on me, wee lad. The grape and
spade would be clumsy to my hands, there being no life to them after the
swinging spars. And my fingers, used to splicing rope, would not have
the touch for milking a cow. And I'd feel lost, wee fellow, some day and
me plowing a field, to se