o were
manoeuvring a little boat a stone-cast away, under the rocky shores of
_Eilean Chaisteil_, and who, on catching a glimpse of me, flung
themselves below the thwarts for concealment. An oar dropped into the
water; there was a hasty arm and half a head thrust over the gunwale to
secure it; and then the urchin to whom they belonged again disappeared.
Meanwhile the boat drifted slowly away: first one little head would
appear for a moment over the gunwale, then another, as if reconnoitering
the enemy; but I still kept my place on deck; and at length, tired out,
the ragged little crew took to their oars, and rowed into a shallow bay
at the lower extremity of the glebe, with a cottage, in size and
appearance much resembling an ant-hill, peeping out at its inner
extremity among some stunted bushes. I had marked the place before, and
had been struck with the peculiarity of the choice that could have fixed
on it as a site for a dwelling: it is at once the most inconvenient and
picturesque on this side the island. A semi-circular line of columnar
precipices, that somewhat resembles an amphitheatre turned outside
in,--for the columns that overlook the area are quite as lofty as those
which should form the amphitheatre's outer wall,--sweeps round a little
bay, flat and sandy at half-tide, but bordered higher up by a dingy,
scarce passable beach of columnar fragments that have toppled from
above. Between the beach and the line of columns there is a bosky talus,
more thickly covered with brushwood than is at all common in the
Hebrides, and scarce more passable than the rough beach at its feet. And
at the bottom of this talus, with its one gable buried in the steep
ascent,--for there is scarce a foot-breadth of platform between the
slope and the beach,--and with the other gable projected to the
tide-line on rugged columnar masses, stands the cottage. The story of
the inmate,--the father of the two ragged boys,--is such a one as Crabbe
would have delighted to tell, and as he could have told better than any
one else.

He had been, after a sort, a freebooter in his time, but born an age or
two rather late; and the law had proved over strong for him. On at least
one occasion, perhaps oftener,--for his adventures are not all known in
Eigg,--he had been in prison for sheep-stealing. He had the dangerous
art of subsisting without the ostensible means, and came to be feared
and avoided by his neighbors as a man who lived on them without