“He cares for ’s dauchter,” said
Malcolm.
“Ow ay!—as sic fowk ca’ carin’.
There’s no a bla’guard i’ the haill
queentry he wadna sell her till, sae be he was o’
an auld eneuch faimily, and had rowth o’ siller.
Haith! noo a days the last ‘ill come first,
an’ a fish cadger wi’ siller ’ill
be coontit a better bargain nor a lord wantin ‘t:
only he maun hae a heap o’ ‘t, to cower
the stink o’ the fish.”
“Dinna scorn the fish, mem,” said Malcolm:
“they’re innocent craturs, an’ dinna
smell waur nor they can help; an’ that’s
mair nor ye can say for ilka lord ye come athort.”
“Ay, or cadger aither,” rejoined Miss
Horn. “They’re aft eneuch jist sic
like, the main differ lyin’ in what they’re
defiled wi’; an’ ’deed whiles there’s
no differ there, or maist ony gait, maybe, but i’
the set o’ the shoothers, an’ the wag o’
the tongue.”
“An’ what ‘ll we du wi’ the
laird?” said Malcolm.
“We maun first see what we can du wi’
him. I wad try to keep him mysel’, that
is, gien he wad bide—but there’s that
jaud Jean! She’s aye gabbin’, an’
claikin’, an’ cognostin’ wi’
the enemy, an’ I canna lippen till her.
I think it wad be better ye sud tak chairge o’
‘m yersel’, Malcolm. I wad willin’ly
beir ony expense —for ye wadna be able
to luik efter him an’ du sae weel at the fishin’,
ye ken.”
“Gien ‘t had been my ain line fishin’,
I could aye ha’ taen him i’ the boat wi’
me; but I dinna ken for the herrin’. Blue
Peter wadna objeck, but it’s some much work,
an’ for a waikly body like the laird to be oot
a’ nicht some nichts, sic weather as we hae to
encoonter whiles, micht be the deid o’ ’m.”
They came to no conclusion beyond this, that each
would think it over, and Malcolm would call in the
morning. Ere then, however, the laird had dismissed
the question for them. When Miss Horn rose, after
an all but sleepless night, she found that he had taken
the affairs again into his own feeble hands, and vanished.
It being well known that Joseph Mair’s cottage
was one of the laird’s resorts, Malcolm, as
soon as he learned his flight, set out to inquire
whether they knew anything of him there.
Scaurnose was perched almost on the point of the promontory,
where the land made its final slope, ending in a precipitous
descent to the shore. Beneath lay rocks of all
sizes and of fantastic forms, some fallen from the
cape in tempests perhaps, some softly separated from
it by the slow action of the winds and waves of centuries.
A few of them formed, by their broken defence seawards,
the unsafe natural harbour which was all the place
enjoyed.
If ever there was a place of one colour it was this
village: everything was brown; the grass near
it was covered with brown nets; at the doors were
brown heaps of oak bark, which, after dyeing the nets,
was used for fuel; the cottages were roofed with old
brown thatch; and the one street and the many closes
were dark brown with the peaty earth which, well mixed
with scattered bark, scantily covered the surface
of its huge foundation rock. There was no pavement,
and it was the less needed that the ways were rarely
used by wheels of any description. The village
was but a roost, like the dwellings of the sea birds
which also haunted the rocks.
