On the morrow I behooved to return to Isle Ornsay, to set out on the following day, with my friend the minister, for Rum, where he purposed preaching on the Sabbath. To have lost a day would have been to lose the opportunity of exploring the island, perhaps forever; and, to make all sure, I had taken a seat in the mail gig, from the postman who drives it, ere going to bed, on the morning of my arrival; and now, when it drove up, I went to take my place in it. The postmaster of the village, a lean, hungry-looking man, interfered to prevent me. I had secured my seat, I said, two days previous. Ah, but I had not secured it from him. "I know nothing of you," I replied; "but I secured it from one who deemed himself authorized to receive the fare; was he so?" "Yes." "Could you have received it?" "No." "Show me a copy of your regulations." "I have no copy of regulations; but I have given the place in the gig to another." "Just so; and what say you, postman?" "That you took the place from me, and that _he_ has no right to give a place to any one: I carry the Portree letters to him, but he has nothing to do with the passengers." A person present, the proprietor or stabler of the horse, I believe, also interfered on the same side; but what Carlyle terms the "gigmanity" of the postmaster was all at stake,--his whole influence in the mail-gig of Portree; and so he argued, and threatened withal, and, what was the more serious part of the business, the person he had given the seat to had taken possession of the gig; and so we had to compound the matter by carrying a passenger additional. The incident is scarce worth relating; but the postmaster was so vehement and terrible, so defiant of us all,--post, stabler, and simple passenger,--and so justly impressed with the importance of being postmaster of Portree, that, as I am in the way of describing rare specimens at any rate, I must refer to him among the rest, as if he had been one of the minor carnivorae of a Skye deposit,--a cuttlefish, that preyed on the weaker molluscs, or a hungry polypus, terrible among the animalculae.