that ever sailed the Frith of Forth. David and Allan were much together,
for David had gone back to the boats as the minister bade him, yet the
duty had been made far easier than he expected. For when Allan understood
how the Promoters' boat had failed them, he purchased a fishing skiff of
his own, and David, and the men whom David hired, sailed her for her
owner. David had his certain wage, the men had the fish, and Allan had a
delight in the whole situation far greater than any mere pleasure yacht
could possibly have given him.

Where there is plenty of money, events do not lag. In a couple of months
the Promoters' cottage was apparently as settled to its new life as ever
it had been to the old one. The "Allan Campbell" was a recognized craft in
the fishing fleet, and generally Allan sailed with her as faithfully as if
his life depended upon the catching of the gray fish. And when the
sea-mood was not on him, he had another all-sufficing occupation. For he
was a good amateur painter, and he was surrounded by studies almost
irresistible to an artistic soul.

The simple folk of Pittenloch looked dubiously at him when he stood before
his easel. There was to them something wonderful, mysterious, almost
uncanny, in the life-like reproduction of themselves and their boats,
their bits of cottages, and their bare-footed bairns--in the painted
glimpses of the broad-billowed ocean; and the desolate old hills, with
such forlorn lights on their scarps, as the gloom of primeval tempests
might have cast.

The controversy about these bits of painted canvas interested every one in
the village; for though Allan talked beautifully about "looking up"
through nature unto nature's God, it was a new doctrine to the Fife
fishers; who had always looked for God in their Bibles, and their