We had been landed from the steamboat on a massive grey boulder, on the sides of which, thick as was the atmosphere, we observed dozens of limpets and crowds of “buckies,” and other sea-ware, giving us token of ample employment when we could obtain leisure for a more minute survey of the rocks and stray stones which sprinkle the sea-beach of Corry. In the meantime, that is just after landing, the great, the momentous question on this and every other Saturday night is—is _the_ inn full? A hurried scramble over the jagged stones, and a rush past the very picturesque residence of Mr. Douglas’ pigs, brought us to the inn, and at once decided the question. Mrs. Jamison, the landlady, shook her lawn-bedizened head—the inn, alas, _was_ full, overflowing in fact, for a gentleman had engaged the coach-house! It was feared, too, that every house in the village was in a like predicament, and further inquiry soon confirmed this to us rather awful statement, and so I was left standing at the inn-door, with a bitingly shrewd companion, to solve this problem—Given the barest possible accommodation throughout all Corry for only forty-eight strangers, how to shake fifty into the village, so that each might have somewhere to lay his head? This is a problem, I suspect, that few can answer. What was to be done? The steamboat had gone! Were we then to tramp on to Brodick, with more than a suspicion of a rainy night in the moist atmosphere, or try a shake-down of clean straw in a lime quarry? It might have come to that, and as both of us had before then camped out for a night by the sheltered side of a haystack, we might have arranged, fortified by the aid of a dram, or perhaps two, to pass a tolerable night in the lime cavern beside a very canny-looking horse-of-all-work that we caught a glimpse of through the gloom of the place while peeping into it. But a Douglas to the rescue! And who is Douglas? it will be asked. Well, the ever-active Douglas in his own person combines the offices of boatman, quarrier, postman, butcher, grocer, and general merchant, and is, in fact, to use a Scotch phrase, the “Johnny A’things” of the village—a dealer in— “Meal, barley, butter, and cheese; Soap, starch, blue, and peas; Train-oil, tobacco, pipes, and teas; And whisky and loch leeches.”