lso came, with great sorrow on his face,
and many a good word he spoke of my father; while Captain Gordon
visited us again and again so long as his ship lay in port.

Chapter XXIII. Gray's Inn.

About midway along the crooked, narrow street of Stromness stood
the one house of entertainment of the port--Gray's Inn--where the
wind-bound sailors and idle fishermen usually regaled themselves
and spun yarns. The host, Oliver Gray, who was himself a retired
seaman, had sought to attract his customers by hanging out over his
front door a sign which was calculated to win the good opinion of
all seafaring folk. It was a representation of a clipper in full
sail on a raw green sea. Oliver took great pride in this picture,
and it was commonly believed that he had had a hand in the painting
of it. When it was praised he was profuse in his acknowledgments;
but if a critical captain asked him how it was that, though the
ship was sailing before the wind, yet her colours were all flying
aft, or inquired whether it was grass or cabbages she sailed upon,
Oliver was less eager to claim any artistic ability, and hurried
the critic into the house lest he should also discover that the
shrouds had been omitted by the painter.

Gray's Inn was not an ordinary public house, and beyond the
signboard announcement that "Spiritis and aile is retailed here"
there was little to indicate its commercial character. The parlour
was a large room with a window at each end--one facing the street,
the other being so situated that the seamen sitting at the large
centre table could look out at their ships riding at anchor across
the bay. There was no counter or bar, and the liquor was brought
"ben" by Oliver or his sonsie wife.

One Saturday morning I had to go there to see old David Flett about
a boat that Captain Gordon wanted to buy from him. I found him at
the inn before me, sitting there with a goodly company of Stromness
men and skippers, whose ships were, like the Lydia, undergoing
repairs or waiting for fair winds.

When I went in he was talking with a skipper whom he was evidently
well acquainted with. This was Captain Wemyss of The Duncans,
outward bound for Bombay. Wemyss had been lying in the harbour for
over a week, and now that fair weather had come, and the wind was
veering round to a favourable quarter, he was contemplating
weighing anchor. His vessel was a full-rigged ship, the largest in
the bay; and all the other skippers seemed t