e-house closes and about the Fisherland
tenements, where seafarers and drovers together sang the maddest
love-ditties in the voices of roaring bulls; beating the while with
their feet on the floor in our foolish Gaelic fashion, or, as one could
see through open windows, rugging and riving at the corners of a plaid
spread between them,--a trick, I daresay, picked up from women, who at
the waulking or washing of woollen cloth new spun, pull out the fabric
to tunes suited to such occasions.

I spent most of the day with John Splendid and one Tearlach Fraser, on
old comrade, and as luck, good or ill, would have it, the small hours of
morning were on me before I thought of going home. By dusk the bulk of
the strangers left the town by the highroads, among them the MacNicolls,
who had only by the cunning of several friends (Splendid as busy as any)
been kept from coming to blows with the MacLachlan tail. Earlier in the
day, by a galley or wherry, the MacLachlans also had left, but not the
young laird, who put up for the night at the house of Provost Brown.

The three of us I have mentioned sat at last playing cartes in the
ferry-house, where a good glass could be had and more tidiness than most
of the hostelries in the place could boast of. By the stroke of midnight
we were the only customers left in the house, and when, an hour after, I
made the move to set out for Glen Shira, John Splendid yoked on me as if
my sobriety were a crime.

"Wait, man, wait, and I'll give you a convoy up the way," he would say,
never thinking of the road he had himself to go down to Coillebhraid.

And aye it grew late and the night more still. There would be a foot
going by at first at short intervals, sometimes a staggering one and a
voice growling to itself in Gaelic; and anon the wayfarers were no more,
the world outside in a black and solemn silence. The man who kept the
ferry-house was often enough in the custom of staying up all night to
meet belated boats from Kilcatrine; we were gentrice and good customers,
so he composed himself in a lug chair and dovered in a little room
opening off ours, while we sat fingering the book. Our voices as we
called the cartes seemed now and then to me like a discourtesy to the
peace and order of the night.

"I must go," said I a second time.

"Another one game," cried John Splendid. He had been winning every bout,
but with a reluctance that shone honestly on his face, and I knew it was
to give Tearlach