at passed by the minister in the manse. As the wild blast howled
around his comfortable dwelling, and shook the casements as if some hand
outside were assaying to open them, or as the rain pattered sharp and
thick on the panes, and the measured roar of the surf rose high over
every other sound, he could think of only the wretched creature exposed
to the fury of a tempest so terrible, as perchance wrestling in his
death agony in the darkness beside the breaking wave, or as already
stiffening on the shore. He was early astir next morning, and almost the
first person he met was the poor sheep-stealer, looking more like a
ghost than a living man. The miserable creature had mustered strength
enough to crawl up from the beach. My friend has often met better men
with less pleasure. He found a shelter for the poor outcast; he tended
him, prescribed for him, and, on his recovery, gave him leave to build
for himself the hovel at the foot of the crags. The islanders were aware
they had got but an indifferent neighbor through the transaction, though
none of them, with the exception of the poor creature's son, saw what
else their minister could have done in the circumstances. But the miller
could sustain no apology for the arrangement that had given him his
vagabond father as a neighbor; and oftener than once the site of the
rising hovel became a scene of noisy contention between parent and son.
Some of the islanders informed me that they had seen the son engaged in
pulling down the stones of the walls as fast as the father raised them
up; and, save for the interference of the minister, the hut,
notwithstanding the permission he gave, would scarce have been built.

On the morning of Monday we unloosed from our moorings, and set out with
a light variable breeze for Isle Ornsay, in Skye, where the wife and
family of Mr. Swanson resided, and from which he had now been absent for
a full month. The island diminished, and assumed its tint of diluting
blue, that waxed paler and paler hour after hour, as we left it slowly
behind us; and the Scuir, projected boldly from its steep hill-top,
resembled a sharp hatchet-edge presented to the sky. "Nowhere," said my
friend, "did I so thoroughly realize the Disruption of last year as at
this spot. I had just taken my last leave of the manse; Mrs. Swanson had
staid a day behind me in charge of a few remaining pieces of furniture,
and I was bearing some of the rest, and my little boy Bill, scarce five