"Then it is squeakin' like a mice they are, whatever," he retorted doggedly; "for John Roy wass tellin' it to me." John Roy being Donald's Mrs. Harris, the subject admitted of no further discussion, and the ensuing pause was broken by a sudden question from Paul. "Do you ever find niggerheads about here now? I remember when I was a boy in petticoats----" He took the tiny cowrie of dazzling whiteness she handed him by way of answer, and said no more. How many years, he wondered, was it since he had last thought of niggerheads? Truly the world was a strange place, and a man's brain stranger still. And now the long line, duly baited for skate and haddock, was being paid out and left drifting, moored to floats which seemed to dance away on the waves, as the "Tubhaneer" with sail full spread made for the last, low, sunlit point, and so, entering the Linnhe Loch, headed straight for the blue Kingairloch Hills. To the left lay Lismore, a glimmering strip of green and gold amid the shining sea; behind was Port Appin, with its heather-crested bluff, and spidery-black pier; before them the serrated line of Ardnamurchan, and beyond, faint in the distance, the headland of Mull jutting into a glint of the Atlantic. To the right rose Shuna with its swelling grassy slopes and cross-signed pebble shores, like a fairy island in the summer sea. So further afield Appin House, set in fir knolls, Ardgour lighthouse glimmering to the left, and beyond, all the hills rising clear and cloudless to the peak of Ben Nevis. On Ami's bay a cluster of boats in shore told that the herring were in. "They never come to Loch Eira now," remarked Will, idly. "It is funny, but they don't." "It will not be funny at all, sir," expostulated Donald. "It wass comin' they were every year, sure's I sit here, but it wass old John Mackenzie he wass going after them on the Sabbath, and it wass not coming any more after that they were." "And that is a fact, of course?" asked Will, gravely. "It will not be a fact at all, sir," echoed Donald, "but it was old John himself wass tellin' it to me." "I believe it to be quite true, Mr. Cameron," put in the Reverend James; "indeed I remember the Bishop commenting upon the circumstance in a sermon. He brought it in most beautifully, and so conclusively." "It wass a burnin' shame of the old _bodach_, whatever," grumbled John Macpherson. "Ay! Ay! a dirty trick, whatever." Marjory, watching the sea-pyots wheel and veer against the blue of the distant hills, smiled to herself. The mere thought of the Bishop in his lawn sleeves seemed unreal out there in the sunshine. Everything was unreal save the boat skimming with a little hiss through the water. "There's a steamer rounding the point below Lismore," said Will. "What will she be, I wonder?"