IN EXILE.

One evening in the olden time Lavender and Sheila and Ingram and old Mackenzie were all sitting high up on the rocks near Borvabost, chatting to each other, and watching the red light pale on the bosom of the Atlantic as the sun sank behind the edge of the world.  Ingram was smoking a wooden pipe.  Lavender sat with Sheila’s hand in his.  The old King of Borva was discoursing of the fishing populations round the western coasts, and of their various ways and habits.

“I wish I could have seen Tarbert,” Lavender was saying, “but the Iona just passes the mouth of the little harbor as she comes up Loch Fyne.  I know two or three men who go there every year to paint the fishing-life of the place.  It is an odd little place, isn’t it?”

“Tarbert?” said Mr. Mackenzie—­“you wass wanting to know about Tarbert?  Ah, well, it is getting to be a better place now, but a year or two ago it wass ferry like hell.  Oh yes it wass, Sheila, so you need not say anything.  And this wass the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that the trawling was not made legal then, and the men they were just like devils, with the swearing and the drinking and the fighting that went on; and if you went into the harbor in the open day, you would find them drunk and fighting, and some of them with blood on their faces, for it wass a ferry wild time.  It wass many a one will say that the Tarbert-men would run down the police-boat some dark night.  And what was the use of catching the trawlers now and again, and taking their boats and their nets to be sold at Greenock, when they went themselves over to Greenock to the auction and bought them back?  Oh, it was a great deal of money they made then:  I hef heard of a crew of eight men getting thirty pounds each man in the course of one night, and that not seldom mirover.”

“But why didn’t the government put it down?” Lavender asked.

“Well, you see,” Mackenzie answered with the air of a man well acquainted with the difficulties of ruling—­“you see that it wass not quite sure that the trawling did much harm to the fishing.  And the Jackal—­that was the government steamer—­she was not much good in getting the better of the Tarbert-men, who are ferry good with their boats in the rowing, and are ferry cunning whatever.  You know, the buying boats went out to sea, and took the herring there, and then the trawlers they would sink their nets and come home in the morning as if they had not caught one fish, although the boat would be white with the scales of the herring.  And what is more, sir, the government knew ferry well that if trawling was put down, then there would be a ferry good many murders; for the Tarbert-men, when they came home to drink whisky, and wash the whisky down with porter, they were ready to fight anybody.”

“It must be a delightful place to live in,” Lavender said.

“Oh, but it is ferry different now,” Mackenzie continued—­“ferry different.  The men they are nearly all Good Templars now, and there is no drinking whatever, and there is reading-rooms and such things, and the place is ferry quiet and respectable.”