elevating
presence than any strutting platitude of Bond street. And when he was at
home he was always about amongst the people. Almost every day he would
look in at some door in the Seaton, and call out a salutation to the
busy house-wife--perhaps go in and sit down for a minute. Now he would
be walking with this one, now talking with that--oftenest with Blue
Peter; and sometimes both their wives would be with them upon the shore
or in the grounds. Nor was there a family meal to which any one or all
together of the six men whom he had set over the Seaton and Scaurnose
would not have been welcomed by the marquis and his Clemency. The House
was head and heart of the whole district.

A conventional visitor was certain to feel very shruggish at first sight
of the terms on which the marquis was with "persons of that sort;" but
often such a one came to allow that it was no great matter: the persons
did not seem to presume unpleasantly, and, notwithstanding his atrocious
training, the marquis was after all a very good sort of
fellow--considering.

In the third year he launched a strange vessel. Her tonnage was two
hundred, but she was built like a fishing-boat. She had great stowage
forward and below: if there was a large take, boat after boat could
empty its load into her, and go back and draw its nets again. But this
was not the original design in her. The after half of her deck was
parted off with a light rope-rail, was kept as white as holy-stone could
make it, and had a brass-railed bulwark. She was steered with a wheel,
for more room; the top of the binnacle was made sloping, to serve as a
lectern; there were seats all round the bulwarks; and she was called the
Clemency.

For more than two years he had provided training for the fittest youths
he could find amongst the fishers, and now he had a pretty good band
playing on wind-instruments, able to give back to God a shadow of His
own music. The same formed the Clemency's crew. And every Sunday evening
the great fishing-boat, with the marquis and almost always the
marchioness on board, and the latter never without a child or children,
led out from the harbor such of the boats as were going to spend the
night on the water.

When they reached the ground all the other boats gathered about the
great boat, and the chief men came on board, and Malcolm stood up
betwixt the wheel and the binnacle, and read--always from the gospel,
and generally words of Jesus, and talked to