I had got wet, and the day continued bad; and so, instead of returning to the evening sermon, which began at six, I remained alone aboard of the vessel. The rain ceased in little more than an hour after, and in somewhat more than two hours I got up on deck to see whether the congregation was not dispersing, and if it was not yet time to hang on the kettle for our evening tea. The unexpected apparition of some one aboard the Free Church yacht startled two ragged boys who were manoeuvring a little boat a stone-cast away, under the rocky shores of _Eilean Chaisteil_, and who, on catching a glimpse of me, flung themselves below the thwarts for concealment. An oar dropped into the water; there was a hasty arm and half a head thrust over the gunwale to secure it; and then the urchin to whom they belonged again disappeared. Meanwhile the boat drifted slowly away: first one little head would appear for a moment over the gunwale, then another, as if reconnoitering the enemy; but I still kept my place on deck; and at length, tired out, the ragged little crew took to their oars, and rowed into a shallow bay at the lower extremity of the glebe, with a cottage, in size and appearance much resembling an ant-hill, peeping out at its inner extremity among some stunted bushes. I had marked the place before, and had been struck with the peculiarity of the choice that could have fixed on it as a site for a dwelling: it is at once the most inconvenient and picturesque on this side the island. A semi-circular line of columnar precipices, that somewhat resembles an amphitheatre turned outside in,--for the columns that overlook the area are quite as lofty as those which should form the amphitheatre's outer wall,--sweeps round a little bay, flat and sandy at half-tide, but bordered higher up by a dingy, scarce passable beach of columnar fragments that have toppled from above. Between the beach and the line of columns there is a bosky talus, more thickly covered with brushwood than is at all common in the Hebrides, and scarce more passable than the rough beach at its feet. And at the bottom of this talus, with its one gable buried in the steep ascent,--for there is scarce a foot-breadth of platform between the slope and the beach,--and with the other gable projected to the tide-line on rugged columnar masses, stands the cottage. The story of the inmate,--the father of the two ragged boys,--is such a one as Crabbe would have delighted to tell, and as he could have told better than any one else.