ere I lay upon it, and broke as though it
had been scorched. My shoes, too, were all dry and stiff; and as I
began to climb the cliff, very slowly an' painfully, my shirt an'
trousers gave way at knees and elbows. I sat down on the bank of the
path after I'd reached it, a'most dead with faintness an' hunger, so put
my hand in my pocket to find my pipe. It was there, sure enough, along
wi' my steel bacca-box, and there was bacca there too, an' a bit o'
flint to get a light. The bacca was dry as powder, but it eased the
gnawin' of my limbs, and I tottered on.

On to the first cottages, leading to the main street, where I meant to
go first to Mrs Gillespie's, and find some of the fishermen to search
the cliff for the keeper. As I came nearer to those cottages, I could
see that something was stirring in the village, for women an' bairns
were all out in the street, an' in their best claes; and across the
street farther away was a rope bearin' a great flag an' bunches of
heather, an' the people all about Mrs Gillespie's door, an' the by-way
leadin' toward Donald Miller's cottage, and so right up to the kirk. I
could see a' this only when I got closer; but I could na' turn up the
high street. A kind o' fear an' wonder kept me back, an' more than once
I shut my e'en, and stretchit oot my arms all round, to feel whether I
was na' dreamin' it all in the hole of the cliff side, or, maybe, in my
bunk at hame, or on the deck of the _Robert Bruce_, wi' Rab at the
tiller, an' uncle smoking forrard.

I turned up a by-way, and got near to the church itsel', where a man and
woman--strangers to me--were leanin' against the wall, talkin'. I
thought I knew everybody in the place; but these people had just come
out o' a cottage that belonged to auld Nannie Dun, and had turned the
key o' the door as though they lived there, at the sicht o' me coming
along the path.

They eyed me over, too, as I came near, and answered wi' caution, when I
asked what was goin' on the day.

"Weel, it's a weddin' in the kirk," says the wife, "an' sae lang waited
for that it's little wonder a' the toon is oot to give joy to the bonnie
bride an' groom. Ye're a stranger, and where may ye come frae?"

"Nae, nae," I said, between a laugh an' a fright. "Ae body kens me
hereabout; but where's auld Nannie, that ye've come to see to-day;
she'll know me."

The couple looked skeerit. "Auld Nannie Dun was deed an' buried six
years ago come July," said the w