“We maun first see what we _can_ du wi’ him. I wad try to keep him mysel’, that is, gien he wad bide--but there’s that jaud Jean! She’s aye gabbin’, an’ claikin’, an’ cognostin’ wi’ the enemy, an’ I canna lippen till her. I think it wad be better ye sud tak chairge o’ ’m yersel’, Malcolm. I wad willin’ly beir ony expense --for ye wadna be able to luik efter him an’ du sae weel at the fishin’, ye ken.” “Gien ’t had been my ain line-fishin’, I could aye ha’ taen him i’ the boat wi’ me; but I dinna ken for the herrin’. Blue Peter wadna objeck, but it’s some much work, an’ for a waikly body like the laird to be oot a’ nicht some nichts, sic weather as we hae to encoonter whiles, micht be the deid o’ ’m.” They came to no conclusion beyond this, that each would think it over, and Malcolm would call in the morning. Ere then, however, the laird had dismissed the question for them. When Miss Horn rose, after an all but sleepless night, she found that he had taken the affairs again into his own feeble hands, and vanished. CHAPTER XXVI. NOT AT CHURCH. It being well known that Joseph Mair’s cottage was one of the laird’s resorts, Malcolm, as soon as he learned his flight, set out to inquire whether they knew anything of him there. Scaurnose was perched almost on the point of the promontory, where the land made its final slope, ending in a precipitous descent to the shore. Beneath lay rocks of all sizes and of fantastic forms, some fallen from the cape in tempests perhaps, some softly separated from it by the slow action of the winds and waves of centuries. A few of them formed, by their broken defence seawards, the unsafe natural harbour which was all the place enjoyed. If ever there was a place of one colour it was this village: everything was brown; the grass near it was covered with brown nets; at the doors were brown heaps of oak-bark, which, after dyeing the nets, was used for fuel; the cottages were roofed with old brown thatch; and the one street and the many _closes_ were dark brown with the peaty earth which, well mixed with scattered bark, scantily covered the surface of its huge foundation-rock. There was no pavement, and it was the less needed that the ways were rarely used by wheels of any description. The village was but a roost, like the dwellings of the sea birds which also haunted the rocks. It was a gray morning with a gray sky and a gray sea; all was brown and gray, peaceful and rather sad. Brown-haired, gray-eyed Phemy Mair sat in the threshold, intently rubbing in her hands a small object like a moonstone. That she should be doing so on a Sunday would have shocked few in Scaurnose at that time, for the fisher-folk then made but small pretensions to religion; and for his part Joseph Mair could not believe that the Almighty would be offended “at seein’ a bairn sittin’ douce wi’ her playocks, though the day _was his_.” “Weel, Phemy, ye’re busy!” said Malcolm.