and caulked it into a sufficiently serviceable condition. He sold
his fish in the town and immediate neighbourhood, where a good many
housekeepers favoured the handsome and cheery young fisherman.

He would now be often out in the bay long before it was time to call
his grandfather, in his turn to rouse the sleepers of Portlossie.
But the old man had as yet always waked about the right time, and
the inhabitants had never had any ground of complaint--a few
minutes one way or the other being of little consequence. He was
the cock which woke the whole yard: morning after morning his pipes
went crowing through the streets of the upper region, his music
ending always with his round. But after the institution of the
gun signal, his custom was to go on playing where he stood until
he heard it, or to stop short in the midst of his round and his
liveliest reveille the moment it reached his ear. Loath as he might
be to give over, that sense of good manners which was supreme in
every highlander of the old time, interdicted the fingering of a
note after the marquis's gun had called aloud.

When Malcolm meant to go fishing, he always loaded the swivel the
night before, and about sunset the same evening he set out for that
purpose. Not a creature was visible on the border of the curving
bay except a few boys far off on the gleaming sands whence the tide
had just receded: they were digging for sand eels--lovely little
silvery fishes--which, as every now and then the spade turned one
or two up, they threw into a tin pail for bait. But on the summit
of the long sandhill, the lonely figure of a man was walking to
and fro in the level light of the rosy west; and as Malcolm climbed
the near end of the dune, it was turning far off at the other:
halfway between them was the embrasure with the brass swivel, and