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He was much exercised by the morals of the place, and very religious, except when in drink, which would be mostly every night. On such a night, with Ronald and myself at the table and McGilp opposite, the door opened, and in came Bryde and Hugh with a cold swirl of sleet, and sat down beside us, and Robin McKelvie brought their drink, and old McKelvie came ben to be doing the honours.
In the middle of the night, all of them, with the exception of an old man called Zander, and McKelvie, who had for a long time been suffering from dysentery, were awoke by soldiers coming into their quarters and ordering them to go at once to the Emperor. They were all ushered into a small tent, and many frivolous charges made against them.
And Jock McGilp too would be there, standing off and on, between the stories of his wild seafaring days and the ghost stories of his youth; and Robin McKelvie and his sister that met us on the shore head of the isle that night the Red Laird passed; and there was no Red Roland in her mind these days, for she had weans to her oxter.
"Ye'll lick where that lay, McKelvie, ye ye maker of meats for sailors," and the sweat rolled off his brow, and his voice was a skirl of rage. McKelvie grabbed a horse-pistol from among his kegs. "Ye hound, I'll put a hole in ye that will be hurrying the gaugers tae fill wi' siller," and as quick as light he levelled the pistol and drew the trigger.
"That will be all that is needful," says Hugh with a bow; "there's a yard outside, and maybe McKelvie will be giving us a couple of lanthorns." Never a word said Bryde, but the breath whistled through his nostrils, and we made our way through the kitchen, for it was easier to stop the big burn in spate than these two.
With that the door opened, and McKelvie entered in high sea-boots, but the fear did not leave them, for the Laird was wont to wear sea-boots when the weather was bad on his rocky isle; and with their minds all a-taut for warnings and signs, the tramping in the flagged passage was fearsome enough. Indeed, I breathed the more freely myself when McKelvie entered with Dan at his heels.
Robin McKelvie slipped down the quay-wall as nimbly as a cat, and busied himself with the sail, doing what I know not, though I prayed he might not loosen any reef, and his father followed, more slowly, for he was a heavier man, but wonderfully active in a boat.
There was no sign of the Seagull, for a fog had come down on the firth, and even the melancholy pleasure of seeing Dan's ship again was taken from me. McKelvie stood at the door, and his face was red with running, and streaked with white in places with fatigue. "My father thought ye would make for this place. Rob Beag's no' dead," he said; "the devil has more for him to do yet." Second sight.
"Give him the whisky quick," cried swart Robin McKelvie; "put it down his throat," but Dol Beag lay still. A young man at the door the same exciseman, Gilchrist, that trotted at Mirren Stuart's coat-tails cried in a thin voice, "Christ, he's deid; ye'll swing for this, Dan McBride," and disappeared in the night.
"I ken ye; I will be hearing your whispering," and it seemed to me as if he were a cunning old warrior in the midst of well-tried foes, wary and courageous, and always winning through. But McKelvie spoke to his boat as I have heard horsemen speak to their horses. When a squall struck us and the skiff lay down to it, he would croon softly
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