holds Free Church property, and that he is heartily welcome to hold
it, leaving it to himself to consider whether a benefaction to its full
value, deducting salvage, is not owing, in honor, to the Sustenation
Fund.

It was ten o'clock ere the more fatigued aboard could muster resolution
enough to quit their beds a second time; and then it behooved the
minister to prepare for his Sabbath labors ashore. The gale still blew
in fierce gusts from the hills, and the rain pattered like small shot on
the deck. Loch Scresort, by no means one of our finer island lochs,
viewed under any circumstances, looked particularly dismal this morning.
It forms the opening of a dreary moorland valley, bounded on one of its
sides, to the mouth of the loch, by a homely ridge of Old Red Sandstone,
and on the other by a line of dark augitic hills, that attain, at the
distance of about a mile from the sea, an elevation of two thousand
feet. Along the slopes of the sandstone ridge I could discern, through
the haze, numerous green patches, that had once supported a dense
population, long since "cleared off" to the backwoods of America, but
not one inhabited dwelling; while along a black moory acclivity under
the hills on the other side I could see several groups of turf cottages,
with here and there a minute speck of raw-looking corn beside them,
that, judging from its color, seemed to have but a slight chance of
ripening. The hill-tops were lost in cloud and storm; and ever and anon,
as a heavier shower came sweeping down on the wind, the intervening
hollows closed up their gloomy vistas, and all was fog and rime to the
water's edge. Bad as the morning was, however, we could see the people
wending their way, in threes and fours, through the dark moor, to the
place of worship,--a black turf hovel, like the meeting-house in Eigg.
The appearance of the Betsey in the loch had been the gathering signal;
and the Free Church islanders,--three-fourths of the entire
population--had all come out to meet their minister.

On going ashore, we found the place nearly filled. My friend preached
two long energetic discourses, and then returned to the yacht, "a worn
and weary man." The studies of the previous day, and the fatigues of the
previous night, added to his pulpit duties, had so fairly prostrated his
strength, that the sternest teetotaller in the kingdom would scarce have
forbidden him a glass of our fifty-year-old Madeira. But even the
fifty-year-old Mad