'Yes,' piped Tricksy; 'at four in the morning we were wakened by having pebbles thrown up at our windows, and we had to get up and dress in a brace of shakes.' (Reggie's face darkened. Tricksy was fond of using slang picked up from her brothers, and he felt it his duty to disapprove.) 'Then we didn't know what to do to fill up the time, so we went to Neil's mother's cottage, and Reggie knocked at Neil's window, so that he came out to see what was the matter; and we all went egg-gathering on the rocks.' 'Where's father?' said Allan suddenly; he has been left behind.' 'Go on--all of you!' called Mr. Stewart, who was engaged in talking to a respectably dressed man on the pier; 'don't wait for me.--Take Hamish and Marjorie home, Allan, and give them some breakfast, and tell your mother I shan't be long.' 'I wonder who that is with father,' said Reggie; 'I can't see his face. He looks like a stranger. Father is always having people coming to talk to him now that he has been made a J.P.' 'Allan,' said Marjorie, 'before we go to your house, I think we had better go into Mrs. MacAlister's and get a scone or a piece of oat-cake for Tricksy. She has gone far too long without food. You're hungry, aren't you, Tricksy?' Tricksy nodded. Her little dark face was very pale, and she was struggling with a vexatious desire to cry. 'She always _will_ insist upon doing what the rest of us do, that child,' said Marjorie in an undertone to Hamish; and Hamish looked kindly at the youngest member of the band. 'She has no end of pluck, the little kid,' he aid. 'We'll go to Mrs. MacAlister's shop,' said Marjorie. 'I am sure she must be up by now, and we'll be able to get something.' The young folks pattered along the unevenly paved streets of the little village, which had the sea on one side and grassy cliffs on the other. 'It's curious what a lot of people are about so early,' said Marjorie, as they passed some knots of men and women standing in corners and talking. 'I wonder whether there is anything unusual going on.' The party stopped at the door of a small shop which had some cakes and jars of sweets in the window, and a post-box let into the wall. 'Here's Mrs. MacAlister's,' said Marjorie; 'she has her shop open very early.' The little place was in confusion. The shutters were down, but the shop had not been tidied, and Mrs. MacAlister herself, when she came forward to serve her customers, was pale and had red eyes. 'Is anything the matter, Mrs. MacAlister?' asked Marjorie, while the others looked at the untidy shop in surprise. 'Indeed, Miss Marjorie, I will just be having my shop broken into this night; and they will be opening the post-box and taking away a lot of the letters,' and the woman threw herself into a chair and began talking and lamenting in Gaelic, while the children crowded together open-eyed.