of the world. Their
very voices learned a softer note from that lulled hour of the enchanted
season, and the faint blue smoke of their den fires rose and mingled in
the clustered masts or nestled wooing in the drying sails. Then a man in
drink came roaring down the quay, an outrage on the scene, and the magic
of the day was gone! The boats bobbed and nudged each other or strained
at the twanging cord as seamen and fishers spanged from deck to deck;
rose cries in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The
world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the
lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its
marge. Here was merchandise, here the pack and the bale; snuffy men
in perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and piped in high English,
managing the transport of their munitions ashore.

I was standing in the midst of the throng of the quay-head, with my
troubled mind rinding ease in the industry and interest of those people
without loves or jealousies, and only their poor merchandise to exercise
them, when I started at the sound of a foot coming up the stone slip
from the wateredge. I turned, and who was there but MacLachlan? He was
all alone but for a haunch-man, a gillie-wet-foot as we call him, and he
had been set on the slip by a wherry that had approached from Cowal side
unnoticed by me as I stood in meditation. As he came up the sloping
way, picking his footsteps upon the slimy stones, he gave no heed to the
identity of the person before him; and with my mood in no way favourable
to polite discourse with the fellow, I gave a pace or two round the
elbow of the quay, letting him pass on his way up among the clanking
rings and chains of the moored gaberts, the bales of the luggers,
and the brawny and crying mariners. He was not a favourite among the
quay-folk, this pompous little gentleman, with his nose in the air and
his clothing so very gaudy. The Lowlands men might salute his gentility
if they cared; no residenters of the place did so, but turned their
shoulders on him and were very busy with their affairs as he passed. He
went bye with a waff of wind in his plaiding, and his haunch-man as he
passed at a discreet distance got the double share of jibe and glunch
from the mariners.

At first I thought of going home; a dread came on me that if I waited
longer in the town I might come upon this intruder and his cousin, when
it would sore discomfort me to do so.