t my meals, and when old Madge summoned me to my tea I found my
dinner lying untouched upon the table. At night I read Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, Kant--all those who have pried into what is unknowable.
They are all fruitless and empty, barren of result, but prodigal of
polysyllables, reminding me of men who, while digging for gold, have
turned up many worms, and then exhibit them exultantly as being what
they sought. At times a restless spirit would come upon me, and I would
walk thirty and forty miles without rest or breaking fast. On these
occasions, when I used to stalk through the country villages, gaunt,
unshaven, and dishevelled, the mothers would rush into the road and
drag their children indoors, and the rustics would swarm out of their
pot-houses to gaze at me. I believe that I was known far and wide as the
"mad laird o' Mansie." It was rarely, however, that I made these raids
into the country, for I usually took my exercise upon my own beach,
where I soothed my spirit with strong black tobacco, and made the ocean
my friend and my confidant.

What companion is there like the great restless, throbbing sea? What
human mood is there which it does not match and sympathise with? There
are none so gay but that they may feel gayer when they listen to its
merry turmoil, and see the long green surges racing in, with the glint
of the sunbeams in their sparkling crests. But when the grey waves toss
their heads in anger, and the wind screams above them, goading them on
to madder and more tumultuous efforts, then the darkest-minded of men
feels that there is a melancholy principle in Nature which is as gloomy
as his own thoughts. When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface
would be as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one
spot some little way from the shore, where a long black line projected
out of the water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster.
This was the top of the dangerous ridge of rocks known to the fishermen
as the "ragged reef o' Mansie." When the wind blew from the east the
waves would break upon it like thunder, and the spray would be tossed
far over my house and up to the hills behind. The bay itself was a bold
and noble one, but too much exposed to the northern and eastern gales,
and too much dreaded for its reef, to be much used by mariners. There
was something of romance about this lonely spot. I have lain in my boat
upon a calm day, and peering over the edge I have s