“I hear,” Ingram remarked, “that good people attribute the change to moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down to want of money.”

“Papa, this boy will have to be put to bed,” Sheila said.

“Well,” Mackenzie answered, “there is not so much money in the place as there wass in the old times.  The shop-keepers do not make so much money as before, when the men were wild and drunk in the daytime, and had plenty to spend when the police-boat did not catch them.  But the fishermen, they are ferry much better without the money; and I can say for them, Mr. Lavender, that there is no better fishermen on the coast.  They are ferry fine, tall men, and they are ferry well dressed in their blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, whether they are drunk or whether they are sober.  Now look at this, sir, that in the worst of weather they will neffer tek whisky with them when they go out to the sea at night, for they think it is cowardly.  And they are ferry fine fellows, and gentlemanly in their ways, and they are ferry good-natured to strangers.”

“I have heard that of them on all hands,” Lavender said, “and some day I hope to put their civility and good-fellowship to the proof.”

That was merely the idle conversation of a summer evening:  no one paid any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert.  Let us now shift the scene of this narrative to Tarbert itself.

When you pass from the broad and blue waters of Loch Fyne into the narrow and rocky channel leading to Tarbert harbor, you find before you an almost circular bay, round which stretches an irregular line of white houses.  There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor, lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is green under the shadow of each boat.  Along the shore stand the tall poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the daylight shining through the empty windows.  Beyond the houses, again, lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors of a late autumn.  The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge of other and varied hues.  In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost underneath the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins stand, an artist has put a rough-and-ready easel, and is apparently busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond.  Some indication of the rich colors of the craft—­their ruddy sails, brown nets and bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls—­already appears on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills in their soft autumnal tints and of the bold blue and white sky moving overhead.  Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of the boats has been placed there on purpose.  A boy seated on some nets occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to inquire when his penance will be over.