some
soil for their kail, and a better prospect from their windows than the
whitewashed wall of the opposite land; but in the matter of air there
was and is no complaint The sea in stormy days came bellowing to the
very doors, salt and stinging, tremendous blue and cold. Staying in town
of a night, I used to lie awake in my relative's, listening to the
spit of the waves on the window-panes and the grumble of the tide, that
rocked the land I lay in till I could well fancy it was a ship. Through
the closes the wind ever stalked like something fierce and blooded,
rattling the iron snecks with an angry finger, breathing beastily at
the hinge, and running back a bit once in a while to leap all the harder
against groaning lintel and post.

The change-house of the widow was on the ground-flat, a but and ben, the
ceilings arched with stone--a strange device in masonry you'll seldom
find elsewhere, Highland or Lowland. But she had a garret-room up two
stairs where properly she abode, the close flat being reserved for trade
of vending _uisgebeatha_ and ale. I describe all this old place so fully
because it bears on a little affair that happened therein on that day
John Splendid and I went in to clink glasses.

The widow had seen that neither of us was very keen on her aqua, which,
as it happened, was raw new stuff brewed over at Karnes, Lochow, and she
asked would we prefer some of her brandy.

"After his lordship's it might be something of a down-come," said John
Splendid, half to me and half to the woman.

She caught his meaning, though he spoke in the English; and in our own
tongue, laughing toothlessly, she said--

"The same stilling, Barbreck, the same stilling I make no doubt
MacCailein gets his brown brandy by my brother's cart from French
Foreland; it's a rough road, and sometimes a bottle or two spills on
the way. I've a flagon up in a cupboard in my little garret, and I'll go
fetch it."

She was over-old a woman to climb three steep stairs for the sake of
two young men's drought, and I (having always some regard for the frail)
took the key from her hand and went, as was common enough with her
younger customers, seeking my own liquor up the stair.

In those windy flights in the fishing season there is often the close
smell of herring-scale, of bow tar and the bark-tan of the fishing nets;
but this stair I climbed for the wherewithal was unusually sweet-odoured
and clean, because on the first floor was the house