as
she watched for our comin' hame, and went in to make the parritch or
skim the sheep's-head broth, directly the jib o' the _Robert Bruce_
cocked over the ridge, and came tackin' round the Ness o' Slievochan,
with uncle and me looking to the tackle and the gear, and my braw young
cousin Rab at the tiller, wi' his bonnie fair face an' clustering curls,
all blowing in the breeze that lifted us out o' the surf, and sent us in
with a whistle an' a swirl, till the keel was ready to grate upon the
beach. Rab was only eighteen, and we were great friends--though I was
an orphan bairn, and Uncle Ivan had taken me and brought me up--so that
his boy might have been jealous, but there was no jealousy in him.
Uncle was a bachelor when I first went to him, a little raw lad, from
Inverness, and I'd learnt to manage a boat and do fisherman's work
before Rab came, so that I grew to be a strapping lad, and was able to
teach him in his turn. We loved each other weel, Rab and I; and quiet
Auntie Tibbie used to sit knitting, and watch us both with a smile; and
silent Uncle Ivan, with his great limbs, and dark face, and black
locks--though he gave me to know that Rab would have the boat one day,
if not a bigger one or two--would grip my hand and say, "Stick to the
laddie, if aught suld happen, Sandy; for if ye're no my son, ye're next
to him, and not much further frae my heart."

Weel--but about Maggie Miller! Her father, you observe, was a man o'
some substance, and one trusted by the laird; so that the minister, and
the bailie o' the nearest town, an' Mrs Gillespie, an' the farmers all,
ca'd him Mister; and my Uncle Ivan, who had his pounds away in the bank,
ca'd him Mister, too, and would send me or Rab up with a creel o' fish
when we had a fine take, now and then; so that we were on a footing of
visitors; and Maggie would stand and laugh and talk with me, and would
gie Rab a blink, and a rose-blush, and a smile that made us all laugh
taegither, till I used to wonder why it was that I wasn't one of
Maggie's lovers--of which she had three already, not counting Rab, who
was two years younger than she, and, of course, was lookin' at her as a
boy of eighteen always looks at a girl of twenty, too shy to speak, and
too much in love to keep silent, and so talking to anybody who'll listen
to him, which in Rab's case was me.

It wasn't much in my mind that the boy loved her, but someway I'd got
used to thinking of him and her at the same tim