ed the
little herring smack which lay waiting for them out in the bay. Godfrey
McCulloch went with them, dark-browed, silent. When he lifted his eyes
he could see, across the plain of the middle Rhynns, the reek of the
accursed prison-house of Stranryan still going up to heaven. Then he
laughed a little, also silently.

"They will have to shift," he said: "John Knox was in the right o't.
'Pull down the nests and the craws will fly away.' No more cells for
lads from the ploughtail and the heather. No more bloody whipping-posts,
where one or two are killed out of every draft to put the fear of death
into the others! All gone up in yon puff of smoke!" Then he subsided
into silence and his hard features relaxed as his mind fell upon other
thoughts.

Stair and he were working the little boat while Patsy steered. They were
going up the Solway and the wind behind them was strong and equal. Still
no indication of their destination had been made to Stair. At five of
the afternoon they had passed all the familiar landmarks known to him,
but by the alertness of young McCulloch he judged that they must be near
the haunts allotted to his part of the Band.

The Isle of Man lay faintly blue far to the south, and the hills about
Skiddaw and Helvellyn began to uplift themselves in amethystine ridges.
Towns and villages ran white along the Cumberland coast, and once it
seemed to Stair as if they might be going to land somewhere to the east
of St. Bees. But they were only keeping well out till the twilight of
the evening drew down. They came about in mid-channel and lay some hours
with lowered sail in the lee of a cliffy island. During all this time
Patsy watched the shore intently, and did not speak to him at all. She
held what colloquy was necessary with Godfrey McCulloch, on whose face
there was a quite inscrutable smile. He seemed to be turning over in his
mind some jest known only to himself, perhaps no more than the burning
of the Castle of Stranryan and how well MacJannet's firewood blazed up
when he put the torch to it. But ever and anon he glanced at the
unconscious Stair Garland, when he was looking another way, with an
expression so humorsome that it was evident he considered that in some
way the joke was against him.

At six of the evening, the tide aiding, they had drifted across many
headlands and past carven cliffs of marvellous designs to a long sickle
sweep of strand on which two men could be seen solemnly walking up