but little sense of the ultimate purpose of the Landlord--just as the sailor, ignorant of the principles of navigation, pulls ropes and reefs sails and does not discover that he gains much thereby, the same sea-crescent being around him day by day, but in due time a cloud rises on the horizon, and he is in port at last. [Sidenote: The waterspout.] As M'Ian had predicted, I could only move from his house if the weather granted permission; and this permission the weather did not seem disposed to grant. For several days it rained as I had never seen it rain before; a waterspout, too, had burst up among the hills, and the stream came down in mighty flood. There was great hubbub at the house. Mr M'Ian's hay, which was built in large stacks in the valley meadows, was in danger, and the fiery cross was sent through the cotters. Up to the hay-fields every available man was despatched with carts and horses, to remove the stacks to some spot where the waters could not reach them; while at the bridge nearer the house women and boys were stationed with long poles, and what rudely-extemporised implements Celtic ingenuity could suggest, to intercept and fish out piles and trusses which the thievish stream was carrying away with it seaward. These piles and trusses would at least serve for the bedding of cattle. For three days the rainy tempest continued; at last, on the fourth, mist and rain rolled up like a vast curtain in heaven, and then again were visible the clumps of birch-wood, and the bright sea and the smoking hills, and far away on the ocean floor Rum and Canna, without a speck of cloud on them, sleeping in the coloured calmness of early afternoon. This uprising of the elemental curtain was, so far as the suddenness of the effect was concerned, like the uprising of the curtain of the pantomime on the transformation scene--all at once a dingy, sodden world had become a brilliant one, and all the newly-revealed colour and brilliancy promised to be permanent. [Sidenote: The farm of Knock.]