“Ha’vers!  It was David Vedder’s whiskey that turned ma boat tapsalteerie, Geordie Twatt.”

“Thou had better blame Hacon; he turned the boat Widdershins an’ what fule doesna ken that it is evil luck to go contrarie to the sun?”

“It is waur luck to have a drunken, superstitious pilot.  Twatt, that Norse blood i’ thy veins is o’er full o’ freets.  Fear God, an’ mind thy wark, an’ thou needna speir o’ the sun what gate to turn the boat.”

“My Norse blood willna stand ony Scot stirring it up, Sinclair.  I come o’ a mighty kind—­”

“Tush, man!  Mules mak’ an unco’ full about their ancestors having been horses.  It has come to this, Geordie:  thou must be laird o’ theesel’ before I’ll trust thee again with ony craft o’ mine.”  Then Peter Sinclair lifted his papers, and, looking the discharged sailor steadily in the face, bid him “go on his penitentials an’ think things o’er a bit.”

Geordie Twatt went sullenly out, but Peter was rather pleased with himself; he believed that he had done his duty in a satisfactory manner.  And if a man was in a good temper with himself, it was just the kind of even to increase his satisfaction.  The gray old town of Kirkwall lay in supernatural glory, the wondrous beauty of the mellow gloaming blending with soft green and rosy-red spears of light that shot from east to west, or charged upward to the zenith.  The great herring fleet outside the harbor was as motionless as “a painted fleet upon a painted ocean”—­the men were sleeping or smoking upon the piers—­not a foot fell upon the flagged streets, and the only murmur of sound was round the public fountains, where a few women were perched on the bowl’s edge, knitting and gossiping.

Peter Sinclair was, perhaps, not a man inclined to analyze such things, but they had their influence over him; for, as he drifted slowly home in his skiff, he began to pity Geordie’s four motherless babies, and to wonder if he had been as patient with him as he might have been.  “An’ yet,” he murmured, “there’s the loss on the goods, an’ the loss o’ time, and the boat to steek afresh forbye the danger to life!  Na, na, I’m no called upon to put life i’ peril for a glass o’ whiskey.”

Then he lifted his head, and there, on the white sands, stood his daughter Margaret.  He was conscious of a great thrill of pride as he looked at her, for Margaret Sinclair, even among the beautiful women of the Orcades, was most beautiful of all.  In a few minutes he had fastened his skiff at a little jetty, and was walking with her over the springy heath toward a very pretty house of white stone.  It was his own house, and he was proud of it also, but not half so proud of the house as of its tiny garden; for there, with great care and at great cost, he had managed to rear a few pansies, snowdrops, lilies of the valley, and other hardy English flowers.  Margaret and he stooped lovingly over them, and it was wonderful to see how Peter’s face softened, and how gently the great rough hands, that had been all day handling smoked geese and fish, touched these frail, trembling blossoms.