some bread and butter here," he said, but I
'took partic'lar notice,' as Tony puts it, that he ate none of the
bread and butter. And he refused to take a second sip of my tea because
his sensitive nose detected that there had been whiskey in the bottle.

As we walked along the rocks, he placed above high-tide mark what bits
of wreckage he could find, and kept a sharp look-out for any rabbits
which might have fallen over the cliff. The only two we found, however,
had been partially eaten by sea-gulls and rats. "Let 'em hae 'em an'
welcome," said Uncle Jake. "The winter's coming. I can't think how they
poor gulls lives when all the sea round about is a hustle o' froth. I
al'ays feeds 'em when I can. Don't yu think that _they_ gets hungry
tu?"

At Lobster Ledge--a jumble of peaked rocks with pools between--he left
his sack conspicuously on the top of a high stone, and hopped--seemed
to hop--down to a pool. "They'm here!" he cried. I heard them
clatter-clatter into his old cake tin, and then a tin-full rattle into
his sack. On those rocks, where few can step at all without great care,
he raced about, bent down double, and jumped and glided as actively as
an acrobat--a veritable rock-man. "Come here!" he called. "Jest yu turn
over thic stone. Ther's some there. My senses, what gobbets they be! If
they ther fuddle-heads what goes nosing about Broken Rocks, on'y
know'd...."

Underneath the stone, clinging to it and lying on the bed of the pool,
were so many large winkles that instead of picking them out, I found it
quicker to sweep up handfuls of loose stuff and then to pick out the
refuse from the winkles. When Uncle Jake came across an unusually good
pocket he would call me to it and hop on somewhere else. There was an
element of sport in catching the dull-looking gobbets so many together.
I soon got to know the likely stones--heavy ones that wanted coaxing
over,--and discovered also that the winkles hide themselves in a green,
rather gelatinous weed, fuzzy like kale tops, from which they can be
combed with the fingers. They love, too, a shadowed pool which is
tainted a little, but not too much, by decaying vegetable matter. Uncle
Jake likes the stones turned back and then replaced 'as you finds 'em.'

[Sidenote: _WHAT GOBBETS THEY BE!_]

I emptied my baler, holding perhaps a quart, into the ballast-bag. How
one's back ached! How old and rheumaticy had one's knees suddenly
become! Uncle Jake feels nothing of that, for a