“Bam a red-hot skewer into it.”

“No, no; let it alone, and it’ll go away.”

Such was the advice tendered, and much more of a similar nature, to the suffering man.

“There’s nothink like ‘ot water an’ cold,” said Joe Dumsby in the tones of an oracle.  “Just fill your mouth with bilin’ ‘ot water, an’ dip your face in a basin o’ cold, and it’s sartain to cure.”

“Or kill,” suggested Jamie Dove.

“It’s better now,” said Forsyth, with a sigh of relief.  “I scrunched a bit o’ bone into it; that was all.”

“There’s nothing like the string and the red-hot poker,” suggested Ruby Brand.  “Tie the one end o’ the string to a post and t’other end to the tooth, an’ stick a red-hot poker to your nose.  Away it comes at once.”

“Hoot! nonsense,” said Watt.  “Ye might as weel tie a string to his lug an’ dip him into the sea.  Tak’ my word for’t, there’s naethin’ like pooin’.”

“D’you mean pooh pooin’?” enquired Dumsby.  Watt’s reply was interrupted by a loud gust of wind, which burst upon the beacon house at that moment and shook it violently.

Everyone started up, and all clustered round the door and windows to observe the appearance of things without.  Every object was shrouded in thick darkness, but a flash of lightning revealed the approach of the storm which had been predicted, and which had already commenced to blow.

All tendency to jest instantly vanished, and for a time some of the men stood watching the scene outside, while others sat smoking their pipes by the fire in silence.

“What think ye of things?” enquired one of the men, as Ruby came up from the mortar-gallery, to which he had descended at the first gust of the storm.

“I don’t know what to think,” said he gravely.  “It’s clear enough that we shall have a stiffish gale.  I think little of that with a tight craft below me and plenty of sea-room; but I don’t know what to think of a beacon in a gale.”

As he spoke another furious burst of wind shook the place, and a flash of vivid lightning was speedily followed by a crash of thunder, that caused some hearts there to beat faster and harder than usual.

“Pooh!” cried Bremner, as he proceeded coolly to wash up his dishes, “that’s nothing, boys.  Has not this old timber house weathered all the gales o’ last winter, and d’ye think it’s goin’ to come down before a summer breeze?  Why, there’s a lighthouse in France, called the Tour de Cordouan, which rises right out o’ the sea, an’ I’m told it had some fearful gales to try its metal when it was buildin’.  So don’t go an’ git narvous.”

“Who’s gittin’ narvous?” exclaimed George Forsyth, at whom Bremner had looked when he made the last remark.

“Sure ye misjudge him,” cried O’Connor.  “It’s only another twist o’ the toothick.  But it’s all very well in you to spake lightly o’ gales in that fashion.  Wasn’t the Eddy-stone Lighthouse cleared away wan stormy night, with the engineer and all the men, an’ was niver more heard on?”