"'Get on,' he said, 'I wish your head were tied up in a bag!' And he tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. 'Set me on the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.' "This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating (it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks! "We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks--the same that Will of the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o' Auchenhay once held for two hours again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves Portowarren--no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the paler edge of the sea. "Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I was held in suspicion for this night's work--as also my wife Bridget. "After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight. "'There,' he cried back, 'let them make what they will of that if ye be called in question. And, hear ye, Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a careless, idle good-for-nothing!'" "Deil or man," broke in my grandmother, who thought she had kept silence long enough, "never was a truer word spoken!" Boyd Connoway looked pathetically about. He seemed to implore some one to stand up in his defence. I would have liked to do it, because of his kindness to me, but dared not before such an assembly and on so solemn an occasion. "I put it to the honourable gentlemen now assembled," said Boyd Connoway, "if a man can rightly be called a lazy good-for-nothing when he rose at four of the morning to cut his wife's firewood----" "Should have done it the night before," interrupted my grandmother. "And was at Urr kirkyard at ten to help dig a grave, handed the service of cake and wine at twelve, rung the bell, covered in the corp, and sodded him down as snug as you, Mr. Fiscal, will sleep in your bed this night----!" "That will do," said the Fiscal, who thought Boyd Connoway had had quite enough rope. "Tell us what happened after that--and briefly, as I said before." "Why, I went over to Widow McVinnie's to milk her cow. It calved only last Wednesday, and I am fond of 'beesten cheese.' Besides, the scripture says, 'Help the widows in their afflictions'--or words to that effect." "After this man Lalor Maitland had got into the boat, what happened?"