n-o," groaned Forsyth, "it's a--a--too-tooth!"

"Och! is that all?"

"Have it out, man, at once."

"Ram a red-hot skewer into it."

"No, no; let it alone, and it'll go away."

Such was the advice tendered, and much more of a similar nature, to the
suffering man.

"There's nothink like 'ot water an' cold," said Joe Dumsby in the tones
of an oracle. "Just fill your mouth with bilin' 'ot Water, an' dip your
face in a basin o' cold, and it's sartain to cure."

"Or kill," suggested Jamie Dove.

"It's better now," said Forsyth, with a sigh of relief. "I scrunched a
bit o' bone into it; that was all."

"There's nothing like the string and the red-hot poker," suggested Ruby
Brand. "Tie the one end o' the string to a post and t'other end to the
tooth, an' stick a red-hot poker to your nose. Away it comes at once."

"Hoot! nonsense," said Watt. "Ye might as weel tie a string to his lug
an' dip him into the sea. Tak' my word for't, there's naethin' like
pooin'."

"D'you mean pooh pooin'?" enquired Dumsby.

Watt's reply was interrupted by a loud gust of wind, which burst upon
the beacon house at that moment and shook it violently.

Everyone started up, and all clustered round the door and windows to
observe the appearance of things without. Every object was shrouded in
thick darkness, but a flash of lightning revealed the approach of the
storm which had been predicted, and which had already commenced to blow.

All tendency to jest instantly vanished, and for a time some of the men
stood watching the scene outside, while others sat smoking their pipes
by the fire in silence.

"What think ye of things?" enquired one of the men, as Ruby came up from
the mortar-gallery, to which he had descended at the first gust of the
storm.

"I don't know what to think," said he gravely. "It's clear enough that
we shall have a stiffish gale. I think little of that with a tight
craft below me and plenty of sea-room; but I don't know what to think of
a _beacon_ in a gale."

As he spoke another furious burst of wind shook the place, and a flash
of vivid lightning was speedily followed by a crash of thunder, that
caused some hearts there to beat faster and harder than usual.

"Pooh!" cried Bremner, as he proceeded coolly to wash up his dishes,
"that's nothing, boys. Has not this old timber house weathered all the
gales o' last winter, and d'ye think it's goin' to come down before a
summer breeze? Why, there's a lighthou