ds. "Why, man, you're not above fifty."

"Weel, if ye maun tell my story yersels--maybe ye'll gi'e me leave to
turn in, or light my pipe. I'll no' speak if ye've no wish to hear; but
now I mind that I'm eighty-four year old last Thursday was a week, for I
was four-and-twenty when I first had ten years' sleep at Slievochan."

The man's eyes were fixed on space, as though he saw all that he was
about to narrate going on in some strange way in the dim distance; and
except an occasional grunt of interest, a deep-drawn breath, or the
refilling and relighting of a pipe, all was still as he went on.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE SCOTCH SAILOR'S YARN.

All about Slievochan, there was no lassie like Maggie Miller. Her
father was a kind o' overlooker to the Laird o' Taggart, and so was
reckoned weel-to-do. He was an elder o' the kirk, too, mind ye, and had
a farm o' his ain--or what was called a farm, though it was no mair than
might be a sma' holding, with a kye or twa, and fowls and live-stock,
and a bit o' pasture, and eneugh to butter the bannocks and give a
flavour to the parritch; so that he was called a weel-to-do man. I
doubt if any of ye know Slievochan; and it's no deal likely ye would,
for it's but a by-place where, down to the village, a few fisher-bodies
live; and up beyant the hills an' the cliff is the sma' farmers and the
laird's folk, with just the kirk an' the bit shops, and beyond that the
kirk itself, weel out o' sight o' the little whusky shop; and beyant the
widow Gillespie's "Herrin' Boat Inn," where our fishers go at times,
when they ha'e drunk out the ale at their own place, "The Coil," or,
maybe, tasted a runnel o' hollands or brandy, that has no paid the
exciseman, or got the King's mark upo' it.

For there's strange ways amang the fisherfolk? and between them and the
village is a wide difference; though you'll mind that some o' the bodies
wi' a boat o' their ain and a cottage that's as well keepit as they that
was built by the laird himsel'--and perhaps a store o' claes and linen,
and household goods, and a bit o' siller put by at interest--may hold up
their heads even wi' men like Donald Miller, or may speer a word to the
minister, or even ask him to taste a glass of _eau-de-vie_, when he gaes
doon for pastoral veesitation. But, hoot! I'm clavering o' the old
place as it was above fifty years ago, when I was workin' wi' my uncle,
Ivan Dhu, and my Aunt Tibby sat at the door, knit, knit, knitting,