One day, when Noreen was tired of her husband, and had gently turned him out of his cabin, he strolled to Murdoch’s door, and lay down to bask in a July sun, his head resting on the wooden step, his fingers stuck into his hair, and his feet reposing among the fishy remains which lay as usual strewed round the door, and saluting more senses than one of the passers by. Hearing a step on the shingle, Dan half opened his eyes, and saw Murdoch approaching with a leaky barrel on his shoulder, from the seams of which the red pickle was dropping down his clothes and meandering over his face. “Them are the briny tears for which ye’ll be never the worse,” cried Dan. “I’d weep such tears every day, if the powers would give me leave.” “Get up, Dan, can’t ye, and let me come in at my own door.” “With all the pleasure in life,” said Dan, pushing the door open, and withdrawing himself as little as was necessary to let Murdoch pass. “Eh! it’s the herrings back again! O, father, what will ye do for the money? What good does the bounty do to them that can’t sell their fish?” resounded from the inside of the cottage in shrill tones of anger. Murdoch swore at the bounty and the Company, and its officers, and at those who, he said, supplanted him. “Well, but what did they say this time?” inquired his wife. “I took the largest barrel we had,—if it did not hold thirty-two gallons, there’s not one in the island that does.” “They did not dispute that this time; how should they? But they say, not a cask that leaks shall be branded for the bounty.” “Never deny the leaking,” said Dan, looking in from the door. “Your own head is pickled as fine as if it stood for the bounty.” Murdoch took no notice of him, but went on impatiently. “And for the rest of the complaint, I may thank you, wife, or Meg, or both of ye. There is not a fish clean gutted in the barrel; there is not one untainted with the sun; and besides, the cask is half full of salt. You women may raise the rent-money as well as you can, for I shall never do it if this is the way you help me.” Meg began to complain that the boat was so foul that the fish were tainted before they came ashore; that her mother had given her something else to do when she should have been curing the fish; that Rob had carried off the knife, so that she was obliged to gut them with her fingers; and that, as her mother would have a large barrel and her father would not catch more fish, what could be done but to fill up the cask with salt? The quarrel was beginning to run high, when Dan interfered to divert the course of the storm. “I wonder,” said he, “ye submit to be troubled with the villains that carry themselves so high. I’d leave them to catch their own fish, and keep cool and comfortable at home.” “We must live, Dan; so you talk only nonsense.”