This explanation appeared to me very reasonable, and with the suggestion in my mind I determined, should I ever have another opportunity, to put it in practice.

Such an opportunity presented itself sooner than I could have expected.

Chapter XVIII.  The Wreck Of The “Undine.”

Colin Lothian remained at Lyndardy until the following Monday morning.  He slept out in the byre, where such wayfarers as he were always welcome to a supper and a bed, and in the evenings he would come in to the kitchen to sit with my uncle and talk over the affairs of the island, or to read us a chapter out of the well-worn Testament that he carried with him on his wanderings.  For Colin was a religious man and loved his Bible.  He knew most of the Psalms by heart, and often gathered groups of islanders about him to hear him repeat them.  Idlers sometimes scoffed at his fondness for the epistle on Charity; but no one who heard him repeat it could fail to be impressed by its teaching or to recognize the poor wanderer’s sincerity.

Colin was the recognized newsmonger of the Mainland, and it was his habit to travel from parish to parish retailing the gossip of the countryside.  At farm towns which were situated in remote places he was always a welcome guest.  He was well acquainted with the condition of the markets and the state of the fishing and the crops.  He knew the price of butter and of oatmeal, of cattle and of sheep, and his information was often of great value to the farmers in adjusting the values of farm produce.  With the old men he would laugh over the jokes of days that had been; tell them how laird had gone to law with laird, or how poor crofters had been evicted from their holdings for failing to pay their taxes or their rents.  The young women were always ready to hear from him who was to be married at Martinmas, or how Nell So-and-so had been jilted; and he often entertained the young people with strange tales of the brownies, the trows, the kelpies, or other supernatural beings.  In this way he supplied the place of newspapers and books, which were scarce commodities in those old days; and he further made himself useful by doing odd work about the steadings and cottages—­such as building the peats into stacks for the winter, mending a thatch, or even doctoring a cow.

On the Sunday evening at Lyndardy, while the storm still beat upon the land, Colin sat with us round the fireside and smoked with my uncle Mansie.  The talk drifted round to the subject of Carver Kinlay, whose new boat was to be brought from Kirkwall that week.  My uncle did not know for what purpose that new boat was built.

Kinlay was a man who had no settled occupation outside his farm.  Sometimes, it is true, he went out to the herring fishing when the fish were plentiful, and he thought he could make some money by it, and he often made secret passages over to Scotland for no one knew what trade.  But it was for none of these purposes that the new boat was required, for it had been built with a deep keel and a lugger rig, with a view to being a quick sailer.