Jamie had not sailed that day to the fishing-ground for various reasons. He had passed a stray pig on the beach; and, moreover, he had on a pair of new boots--both ominous of a bad day's fishing, and, perhaps, of greater evil; so he had spent the noon and evening beside his red-cheeked Mary at the cottage, mending and thoroughly repairing his nets for the morrow; for he believed as implicitly in these augurs of evil as in the mark of St. Peter's thumb on the haddock, and in the wonderful story of the twenty-four beautiful mermaids who swam round Inchkeith, and sought in vain to tempt Abbot William of Holyrood, who dwelt there as a hermit, to trust himself afloat on their tails, which, happily for himself, the Abbot politely declined to do. Mary was pleased that he was at home, for the night was fitful, and dark masses of cloud crossed the face of the moon, which rose slowly above the ness of Fife. The wind swept in sudden gusts down the ferry, and the surf hissed as it rolled on the outer beach; for the sand was thickly strewn with enormous whin boulders, and was not a pistol-shot from the cottage door. Three strange ships had been visible in the offing all day, and, as evening fell, Jamie had observed them stealthily creeping towards the shore; and when the gloaming came on, the head-most vessel was perhaps not three miles from the Gaa sands. When Jamie had scanned her last with his nautical eye he observed her laying off and on, but without manifesting any intention of entering the harbour or requiring a pilot, as she never fired a gun or showed her colours. Not a vessel had passed the ferry that day; all was quiet in the harbour of Dundee, for the old superstition about the ill-luck of sailing on a Friday was still devoutly believed in. The hour was now verging on midnight. Jamie had mended the last hole in his nets, and the pretty Mary looked very sleepy and coy. "Hark, gudeman," said she, interrupting her lilting, "some one tirls the door-pin." At that moment a loud and reiterated knocking was heard, and the door-latch was shaken violently. Jamie relinquished the net for a boat-stretcher, lest the visitor might be, as he muttered, "some ground-shark or uncanny body," and angrily opened the door, saying,-- "Wha the deil's this, makin' sic a dirdum at my door, at this time o' nicht?" "Sir Hew Borthwick," replied that personage, with gruff hauteur; and Jamie perceived that he and two companions were well muffled in cloaks, beneath which he saw their long swords and spurs glittering. The two gentlemen were masked. "Thou knowest me, Jamie Gair, I think?" "Ay, Sir Hew," replied the fisherman, doffing his night-cap, while something of a leer twinkled in his lively grey eyes; "I took ye on board the _Yellow Frigate_ yestreen, for which--" "I owe thee half a lion; here it is. Now, art willing to earn another honest penny?"