Only the tangles can be dried in winter; but the softer parts—the foliage, one may call it—of the red-ware is not lost, but goes to manure the fields, and until a sufficient quantity has been obtained for that purpose none is made into kelp. Each proprietor in the islands has right, generally under a charter from the Crown, to the weed cast up on his shores. Each ware-strand, or beach where drift-weed comes to land, is set apart for a certain number of tenants on the estate to which it belongs, and each brook of ware as it comes ashore is divided among these tenants, usually in proportion to their rents. The general custom is, that it is decided by lot from which portion of the brook each man shall draw his share. The middle is generally considered the best part, as there the weed is in its greatest bulk, and less rolled and beaten by the sea than at the ends; but it may happen that one end is near the only part of the beach where the ware can be carried up, and then the man who draws his lot there is saved much labour. The sharing of the ware is a fertile seed of dispute and an inexhaustible source of quarrel. The “kelp grieve,” or overseer who acts for the proprietor, generally settles all disputes; and each kelper, with the aid of his family, carries up his share of the brook, and spreads it on the drying-greens. These are most frequently links that know not cleek or driver, and upon them in the early morning the ware is spread, as thinly as may be, to be dried on the short, crisp grass by sun and wind. To the man whose daily life is built about with stone and lime, the summer work of the kelpers shines tempting as the waters to Tantalus. He thinks not of that kelper in winter, plunging and struggling with the slippery tangles amid the turmoil of the surf, but dreams only of quiet summer days and the gray glimmer of sunlit waters seen through a veil of drifting smoke. [Illustration: _Kelp-burning._] The links roll down in long, green billows from the ruins of an old feudal castle, where the brown rabbit is the door-ward, and in whose towers the starling nests unscared—roll down to a little bay, where the long waves of the Atlantic come up unceasingly, curving in great, green arches, before they break in thunder of white foam on the brown rocks and yellow sand. Where the grass is thin and scant the sand shines through, and this makes a bad drying-green, as kelp is of less value when mixed with sand. But here is a short, close turf, nibbled upon by rabbits, a racing-ground for lambs, where the thrift or sea-pink meets the meadow-clover, and thyme and crowfoot break in ripples of purple and gold to sweeten all the summer air.