my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the
cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely
more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath
with their play.

The town of Kirkcaple, of which and its adjacent parish of
Portincross my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above
the little bay of Caple, and looks squarely out on the North
Sea. Round the horns of land which enclose the bay the coast
shows on either side a battlement of stark red cliffs through
which a burn or two makes a pass to the water's edge. The bay
itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we lads of the
burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on
long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among the
cliffs; for there there were many deep caves and pools, where
podleys might be caught with the line, and hid treasures
sought for at the expense of the skin of the knees and the
buttons of the trousers. Many a long Saturday I have passed
in a crinkle of the cliffs, having lit a fire of driftwood, and
made believe that I was a smuggler or a Jacobite new landed
from France. There was a band of us in Kirkcaple, lads of my
own age, including Archie Leslie, the son of my father's
session-clerk, and Tam Dyke, the provost's nephew. We
were sealed to silence by the blood oath, and we bore each the
name of some historic pirate or sailorman. I was Paul Jones,
Tam was Captain Kidd, and Archie, need I say it, was Morgan
himself. Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the
Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea. There
we forgathered in the summer evenings and of a Saturday
afternoon in winter, and told mighty tales of our prowess and