Daft Sandy
was laughing all the while.

'Rob, my man, what think ye o' the air-bubbles now? Maybe Daft Sandy
is no sae daft. And do you think I would be going and telling any one
but yourself, Rob? Do you think I would be going and telling any one
that was throwing the broken herring at me, and always a curse for me
when I went near the skiffs, and not once a glass of whisky for an old
man? Well, Rob, I will not ask you for a glass of whisky. If you say
it is a teetotal boat, it is a teetotal boat; but you will not forget
to give me whole herring for bait when you are going out of the bay?'

Rob could not speak; he was breathless. Nor was their work nearly done
when they had got in the net with all its splendid gleaming treasure.
There was not a breath of wind; they had to set to work to pull the
heavy boat back to Erisaig. The gray of the dawn gave way to a glowing
sunrise; when they at length reached the quay, dead-beat with fatigue
and want of sleep, the people were all about.

They were dead-beat; but there were ten crans of herring in that boat.
And you should have seen Rob's air when he counselled Neil and Duncan
and Nicol to go away home and have a sleep, and when he loftily called
on two or three of the boys on the quay to come in and strip the nets.
But the three MacNicols were far too excited to go away. They wanted
to see the great heap of fish ladled out in baskets on to the quay.
Mr. Bailie came along not long after that, and shook hands with Rob,
and congratulated him; for it turned out that while not another Erisaig
boat had that night got more than from two to three crans, the _Mary of
Argyle_ had turned ten crans--as good herring as ever were got out of
Loch Scrone.

Well, the MacNicol lads were now in a fair way of earning an
independent and honourable living, and this sketch of how they had
struggled into that position from being mere wastrels--living about the
shore like so many curlews--may fitly cease here. Sometimes they had
good luck, and sometimes bad luck; but always they had the advantage of
that additional means of discovering the whereabouts of the herring
that had been imparted to them by Daft Sandy. And the last that the
present writer heard of them was this, that they had bought outright
the _Mary of Argyle_ and her nets from the banker; and that they were
building for themselves a small stone cottage on the slope of the hill
above Erisaig; and that Daft Sandy had been taken