“How much did ye sell yoursel’ for, Sandy Beg?  It took the son of a Hieland robber like you to tell tales of a honest man’s cargo.  It was an ill day when the Scots cam to Orkney, I trow.”

“She’ll hae petter right to say tat same ’fore lang time.”  And Sandy’s face was dark with a subdued passion that Peter might have known to be dangerous, but which he continued to aggravate by contemptuous expressions regarding Scotchmen in general.

This John Sabay was in no mood to bear; he very soon took offence at Peter’s sweeping abuse, and said he would relieve him at any rate of one Scot.  “He didna care to sail again wi’ such a crowd as Peter gathered round him.”

It was a very unadvised speech.  Ragon lifted it at once, and in the words which followed John unavoidably found himself associated with Sandy Beg, a man whose character was of the lowest order.  And he had meant to be so temperate, and to part with both Peter and Ragon on the best terms possible.  How weak are all our resolutions!  John turned away from Peter’s store conscious that he had given full sway to all the irritation and disappointment of his feelings, and that he had spoken as violently as either Peter, Ragon, or even the half-brutal Sandy Beg.  Indeed, Sandy had said very little; but the malignant look with which he regarded Peter, John could never forget.

This was not his only annoyance.  Paul Calder’s boats were fully manned, and the others had already left for Brassey’s Sound.  The Sabays were not rich; a few weeks of idleness would make the long Orkney winter a dreary prospect.  Christine and his mother sat from morning to night braiding straw into the once famous Orkney Tuscans, and he went to the peat-moss to cut a good stock of winter fuel; but his earnings in money were small and precarious, and he was so anxious that Christine’s constant cheerfulness hurt him.

Sandy Beg had indeed said something of an offer he could make “if shentlemans wanted goot wages wi’ ta chance of a lucky bit for themsel’s; foive kuineas ta month an’ ta affsets.  Oigh! oigh!” But John had met the offer with such scorn and anger that Sandy had thought it worth while to bestow one of his most wicked looks upon him.  The fact was, Sandy felt half grateful to John for his apparent partisanship, and John indignantly resented any disposition to put him in the same boat with a man so generally suspected and disliked.

“It might be a come-down,” he said, “for a gude sailor an’ fisher to coil peats and do days’ darg, but it was honest labor; an’, please God, he’d never do that i’ the week that wad hinder him fra going to the kirk on Sabbath.”

“Oigh! she’ll jist please hersel’; she’ll pe owing ta Beg naething by ta next new moon.”  And with a mocking laugh Sandy loitered away towards the seashore.

CHAPTER II.