’You do not know all the service you have done; you have saved more than myself from jail, and an innocent wife and children from poverty.  Do let me know your name that I may remember it as long as I live.’

’Daniel M’farlane, and my advice is to quit Scotland right off, for these devils are mad angry at your giving them the slip.  They will get the papers they need from Greenock and have you in jail if you are here tomorrow.’  A grip of the hand, and the stranger was gone.  The whole scene was such a surprise, so novel to me, that every part of it fastened on my memory.

On reaching the brig we found the sailors stowing away casks of water.  Kerr and myself had been given the same berth, and Allan and Robbie had the next one.  Saying he was dead-tired, for he had been on his feet since leaving Greenock, Kerr turned in though the sun had not set.  An hour or so after, a number of men came to the wharf to see him.  I found him asleep.  They asked if I was the lad the officer took along with him to be a witness.  Gathering in a quiet corner they had me repeat all that took place.  They said they were Liberals and glad to hear the black nebs had won.

The noise overhead of washing the deck awoke me, and I knew by the motion of the ship we were sailing.  On getting up I saw Troon several miles behind and Ailsa Craig drawing near.  Allan and myself, with Robbie between us, were snuggled on the lee side of the longboat when Kerr appeared.  He was interested on hearing of the men who came to visit him and said it was hard to be hounded out of Scotland, which he did not wish to leave, for saying constitutional reforms were called for.  ’I am no worse used,’ he added, ’than the man whom that county we are looking at starved when he was among them and built monuments to him when he was dead.’  The town of Ayr was in sight and he named several of the points Burns had named in his songs.  ’Think, my laddies, of a man like Burns being told by the officials over him to keep his Liberal views to himself, that it was not for him to think but to be silent and obedient.  And he had to swallow their order to prevent his losing the petty office which stood between his children and starvation.’

The breeze that had taken the brig so far down the firth soon died away, and we rocked gently south of Ailsa Craig.  In the hold folk were busy getting things in some sort of order, while on deck the sailors were putting everything in shipshape.  This breathing spell was fortunate, for at dark the wind came in squalls, and on rounding the Mull of Cantyre the ocean swells sent most of the passengers to their berths seasick.  I escaped and was able to help the family and Mr Kerr, who almost collapsed, and was not himself for a week.  His first sign of recovery was his craving for a red herring.  The mistress was early up and bustling round to find she had to face an entire change in the methods of housekeeping to which she had been used.  There was a little house between