her reward. To complete the troubles of the fisher-folk, the harbour at Portlossie had, by a severe equinoctial storm, been so filled with sand as to be now inaccessible at lower than half tide, nobody as yet having made it his business to see it attended to. But, in the midst of his anxieties about Florimel and his interest in Clementina, Malcolm had not been forgetting them. As soon as he was a little settled in London, he had written to Mr Soutar, and he to architects and contractors, on the subject of a harbour at Scaurnose. But there were difficulties, and the matter had been making but slow progress. Malcolm, however, had insisted, and in consequence of his determination to have the possibilities of the thing thoroughly understood, three men appeared one morning on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff on the west side of the Nose. The children of the village discovered them, and carried the news; whereupon, the men being all out in the bay, the women left their work and went to see what the strangers were about. The moment they were satisfied that they could make nothing of their proceedings, they naturally became suspicious. To whom the fancy first occurred, nobody ever knew, but such was the unhealthiness of the moral atmosphere of the place, caused by the injustice and severity of Mr Crathie, that, once suggested, it was universally received that they were sent by the factor--and that for a purpose only too consistent with the treatment Scaurnose, they said, had invariably received ever since first it was the dwelling of fishers! Had not their fathers told them how unwelcome they were to the lords of the land? And what rents had they not to pay! and how poor was the shelter for which they did so much--without a foot of land to grow a potato in! To crown all, the factor was at length about to drive them in a body from the place--Blue Peter first, one of the best as well as the most considerable men among them! His notice to quit was but the beginning of a clearance. It was easy to see what those villains were about--on that precious rock, their only friend, the one that did its best to give them the sole shadow of harbourage they had, cutting off the wind from the north-east a little, and breaking the eddy round the point of the Nose! What _could_ they be about but marking the spots where to bore the holes for the blasting-powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were they men’s wives for, if not to act for their husbands when they happened to be away?