maybe from the strength of
the salt in the ground and the wrack, for with high tides the place is
often flooded. We would graze young beasts there all the summer with a
herd-boy at the watching of them. A lonely eerie place for a night
vigil, with nothing but waterfowl and cushies for company; and on a
Sabbath I went there (for a man must see his beasts, no matter for the
evil example of stravaging on the Lord's Day), and when I would be
through with the queys I walked on the little path, on the short turf
well past the grazing, to the place where the rocks on the shore are
very large, and set in droll positions, as though maybe a daft giant of
the old days had cocked them up for his play, and at this place, lying
curled between the smaller boulders, was a man twisting a bit of
tattered rope into fantastic knots, and eyeing his work with a droll
half-pleased look, and his head a little to one side.

I gave him good-day, and he started round suddenly all alert, like a
man well used to handling himself.

"Ay," said he, "there will be mackerel there," and he pointed to the
sea, all a-louping with the fish, and then he unravelled his knots, and
smoothed the strands with hands brown as a bark sail, and hard-looking
as an oak.

"You will be following the sea?"

"Just that," said he, "this long while--seven years maybe. I was at
the herdin' before that with my father--it is a homely thing to be
hearing the crying o' the sheep in the hills. Many's the time I would
be thinking on that when the fog would be round us, and naething to be
listening for but the creaking o' a block in the rigging. Maist
sailor-men have the notion o' a farm," says he, "when they will be at
sea. I am thinking it will come to that wi' me too, when my father is
old and my mother."

"Where is your place?" said I. "Are you from these parts?" for there
was a look about him I kent, and yet could not be naming it.

"Ronald McKinnon is my father," said he.

"And you went to sea years ago," I cried at him, "just before the fair
on the green. You are Angus McKinnon, and Ronald, your father, will be
the proud man."

"Yea, I was thinking you would be kennin' me soon," said he, laughing;
"and my father was telling me you would be walking here on a Sunday.
It will be very sedate in our house this day, and McGilp, that was
master of the _Gull_, waling the Bible for stories of sailing craft;
and my father reading about Jacob, and yon droll tricks he w