ursel' if I keep ye here; far frae that, I think
ye'll be a hantle better by it. There'll be nae skaith to the
kintry--just ae mair Hielantman hangit--Gude kens, a guid riddance! On
the ither hand it would be considerable skaith to me if I would let you
free. Sae, speakin' as a guid Whig, an honest freen' to you, and an
anxious freen' to my ainsel', the plain fact is that I think ye'll just
have to bide here wi' Andie an' the solans."

"Andie," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "this Hielantman's
innocent."

"Ay, it's a peety about that," said he. "But ye see in this warld, the
way God made it, we cannae just get a'thing that we want."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XV

BLACK ANDIE'S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK

I have yet said little of the Highlanders. They were all three of the
followers of James More, which bound the accusation very tight about
their master's neck. All understood a word or two of English; but Neil
was the only one who judged he had enough of it for general converse, in
which (when once he got embarked) his company was often tempted to the
contrary opinion. They were tractable, simple creatures; showed much
more courtesy than might have been expected from their raggedness and
their uncouth appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three
servants for Andie and myself.

Dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a prison,
and among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-birds, I thought
I perceived in them early the effects of superstitious fear. When there
was nothing doing they would either lie and sleep, for which their
appetite appeared insatiable, or Neil would entertain the others with
stories which seemed always of a terrifying strain. If neither of these
delights were within reach--if perhaps two were sleeping and the third
could find no means to follow their example--I would see him sit and
listen and look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his
face blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow. The nature
of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight of
them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in
favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the English, but
Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never varied.

"Ay," he would say, "_it's an unco place, the Bass_." It is so I always
think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco by day; and th