CHAPTER XII.

A WAKING DREAM.

Not a drawback to the happiness of Angus and Ella now remained, and a

more cheerful family-party was never seen than assembled before the

cottage the next morning to arrange the few preparations necessary

before the marriage, which was to take place in two days.

Angus had finally given up his charge at the farm, and received security

for the payment of what was due to him out of the growing crops which

had been sown and tended by him. He was now about to make the circuit of

the island, and to touch at some others in the Sound, to make known the

time when he should take his first trip, in order that the commissions

of his customers might be ready. Ronald was his companion in this

excursion, from which they hoped to return by the middle of the next

day, before proceeding to meet the new boat. Fergus would accompany them

then to share the honour of bringing home the vessel which was to be the

first regular medium of the commerce of the island; and the next

morning, Ella and Archie were to be received on board and to proceed to

Oban, where the marriage was to take place.

Fergus and Ella were to occupy themselves during Angus’s present

excursion in improving their arrangements within doors. Angus’s goods

had been stored in a safe place; they were now unpacked, and served not

a little to ornament the dwelling and add to its conveniences. With what

a light heart did Ella pursue her employments this day! How gentle was

now her accustomed song, and how tender the glance she cast upon Archie,

from time to time, as he followed her to watch her proceedings and make

his strange remarks upon every new object he saw! Fergus waited upon

them both with all the quiet heedfulness of a girl, while his manly

spirit was eager to be busy upon the tossing sea.

“Ella! What can this be?” he cried, as he unpacked a bag of green baize

which contained some short tubes which seemed meant to fix into each

other.—Archie immediately snatched one and looked through the ends.

“He takes it for a telescope,” said Ella, smiling. “It is a flute; Angus

told me he would play to us, some day. It is played by blowing through

those holes, I believe, and not at the end, like the mouth-piece of a

bag-pipe.”

Fergus tried, and succeeded in producing a tremendous screech. Archie

first started, then laughed, and employed himself for the rest of the

day in applying a piece of alder wood to his mouth and screeching in

like manner.

“His music is as good as mine,” observed Fergus laughing. “I cannot

think how any body can fetch pleasant music out of those holes. I like a

bag-pipe far better.”

“Wait till you hear Angus play to-morrow,” said his sister. “He tells me

that he has heard some musicians play airs that would almost win the

eagle from her prey.”

“I wish he were such a one,” replied Fergus. “I would fain have an eagle

within reach, and pin her carcase to our wall as Angus has done at the

farm.”

“You would be a keen sportsman, Fergus, if you lived within reach of

better game than wild-fowl that lie still to be shot. But, come, lay

aside the flute, and leave off handling your gun, if you wish to be on

the steep to hail their return to-morrow. There is much to be done yet,

and I have a fancy that they will be home earlier than the hour they

bade us look for them.”

The boat was in earlier; but Fergus was already watching on the steep,

with Ella sitting by his side.

“All well?” cried Angus, as he sprang on shore; “why then, everything is

well, for we shall have as much business to manage in this first trip as

if our boat was bound for the port of London, instead of such a poor

place as Oban.”

“A poor place!” exclaimed Ronald. “Well, I suppose travelling abroad

makes one saucy. I never saw Oban, to be sure; but I should judge from

the number of things you are to be desired to buy, that almost any

traffic may be carried on there. Can ye tell Ella some of the articles

you will have to bring back?”

“There are more than I can remember now. One neighbour is going to try

his fortune with a flock, and I am to bring over some ewes with their

lambs. Then a rare housewife wants needles, and her husband hemp to make

nets; and many need barley-meal to make out till harvest. I am glad you

are going with me, Ella, for I am to have a commission for some woman’s

finery that I know less how to bargain for than for sheep and hemp. I

shall often have such articles in my freight, for shall women be within

reach of caps and ribbons and not buy?”

“You may reckon on beginning with me,” said Ella, smiling. “I purpose

trafficking for caps.”

There was more in this to delight Angus than would have met an English

ear. The Highland women wear no caps till they can assume the matronly

curch with which it was now Ella’s purpose to provide herself. She led

the way into the dwelling to show how she and Fergus had been employed.

“You have been as busy as we, Ella; so now let us make holiday for the

two hours that we are waiting for the tide. It is full soon to start

again: but the better we use the tide, the sooner we shall come back for

you and Archie. Where is Archie?”

“On the Storr since day-break. Would ye let him hear the flute?—that is,

if ye can make it heard so far, for we shall not win him home while day

lasts.”

Angus went out upon the beach, and his companions seated themselves

round him upon the shingle; and now, how astonished was Fergus to hear

what music might be brought out of a flute! Its clear sweet notes

reached Archie on his rock. He came out to the mouth of his hole at the

first sound, and stood intently listening while Angus played a slow air,

and danced merrily when it was changed to a jig. As often as it ceased,

he clapped his hands impatiently for more.

“O Angus,” cried Ella, “ye have brought a new pleasure to Archie!” and

Angus took this as it was meant,—as a strong expression of gratitude.

“How piercing the note is!” cried Ronald. “If you played among the dells

higher up, the rocks would be long in letting the music drop.”

“And if this sea were smooth water like an inland lake,” said Angus, “I

could make the people in Scarba hear me. I have heard it as far over

water where there was no ripple and when not a breath was stirring.”

The lads had seldom known so serene a state of the air as this, and

could not even conceive of waters that had not more or less swell.

On looking round, Ella perceived that the musician had other auditors

than Archie and themselves. The tenants of the farm were peeping over

the ridge behind, and the Murdochs were stationed at the point of the

promontory to the left which separated their cove from Ella’s. Though

Angus put up his instrument, they still lingered, at first hoping to

hear it again, and then being curious to see the preparations for

embarking.

“Take care of yourself and Archie till the morn,” said Ronald, “and then

be up with the sun,—bright may he shine!—and see us cut across the

Sound; and be sure ye await us at the quay, for that is where ye must

get on board.”

“It will save us a circuit if we push off from the quay now,” said

Fergus, “since we have to bear down due south some way, and we can

easily carry the boat over the bar.”

Angus thought the same. Just as they were hoisting the bark on their

shoulders, the young Murdochs came up; Rob to ask a passage a little way

down the Sound, and the girls to keep Ella company for a while.

“Archie is in his merriment to-day,” said one; “he has scarce ceased

dancing since he heard the music.”

“He knows what is doing now,” observed the other; “see him climbing to

the top to see them push off.”

The girls and Ella then walked slowly up the path from the beach to a

point whence they might watch the boat set off, and trace it for a

considerable way. It was a bright and serene afternoon; there were no

rough gales abroad, and the swell of the sea was no greater than in the

calmest days of that region. The air was so clear that the mountain

lights and shadows were distinctly visible as their peaks rose one

behind another on the eastern horizon. Within the shadow of the Storr,

the water was of the deepest green, while beyond, long streaks of

glittering light extended from island to island, and grew broader as the

sun descended.

The little boat pushed off from the quay in good style, with two pair of

oars, the three boatmen of Ella’s household having waved their bonnets

and cheered before they stept in, in honour of the spectators. It was

necessary to pull strongly and evenly till they should have crossed the

rapid current which flowed round the Storr: but Rob, heedless of this,

and remembering that he had not cheered and waved his bonnet, suddenly

started up, threw down his oar, destroyed the balance, and upset the

boat.—What shrieks rang from rock to rock, as the bark tumbled in the

current, and the rowers were borne, in spite of their struggles, down,

down, far and fast by the sweeping waters! Ella clasped her hands above

her head, and uttered no sound after the first shriek. Her companions

ran hither and thither with loud lamentations. The people at the farm

did what these girls should have done; they ran down with all speed to

desire Murdoch to get out his boat.

“There’s one safe!” cried Meg; “the rock is but just above the water,

but he is sitting upon it.”

“O God!” groaned Ella, “save me from praying which it may be!”

Another soon appeared on the same point; but nothing could yet be seen

of the other two.

Archie had beheld all this, and more: he could overlook Murdoch’s

proceedings also from his pinnacle. He was strongly wrought upon; for no

one understood better the signs of emotion, whether or not he understood

the cause. He acted with rapidity and strength, as if suddenly inspired

by reason; but alas! his energy could only manifest itself in the way of

imitation. The moment he saw Murdoch’s boat hastily launched, he ran

down to his “floating place,” as he called it, rolled his cask into the

water and got into it. Murdoch alone saw him standing up and waving his

bonnet, before he reached the eddy, which could not but be fatal to

him.—The cask came up again,—empty—and floated round the point, as

Archie had no doubt foreseen it would, and at length arrived within

Fergus’s reach, and was the means of saving him. He clung to it, not

aware of the nature of the friendly support, till taken up by Murdoch’s

boat. The two who had reached the rock were Angus and Ronald; and Rob

had had his wits so sharpened by the plunge, as to perceive that he had

better not leave hold of the oar he had clung to at first. He too was

taken up; so that Ella believed that all had come safe out of this awful

peril,—she alone being ignorant of what had happened at the Storr. When

she joined her brothers on the beach, they stood a moment aloof from her

embrace, with countenances in which there was as much of solemn

compassion as of grief. Angus was down upon his face; Murdoch alone

uttered a few broken words. It was some time before she could comprehend

or would believe what had happened, and then she was the only one who

retained her self-command.

An expression of unspeakable anguish passed over her countenance as

Fergus mourned that he had been saved by Archie’s loss.

“Nay, Fergus,” said she, “let us leave it to Him who guides us, to show

whose life had best be taken and whose left. God knows I strove for this

before I knew his pleasure; and now that we do know it, let us question

neither the purpose nor the means.—Let us devoutly bless Him that you

are here.”

While Angus took her home, the neighbours dispersed in search of the

body, which could not, however, be found, and was supposed to have been

carried by the current far out of reach. When all had gone home for the

night, and her companions had for some time retired to hide their grief,

or to forget it for a while in sleep, Ella stole out alone, and passed

the night among the rocks,—a night, whose natural beauty was worthy to

succeed to that of the day that was gone. It was light; and this it was

which, giving the faint hope of recovering the body, took Ella abroad.

The red lights of the west had not wholly vanished when the grey dawn

began to glimmer, while, in mid sky, the stars twinkled as if in

rivalship of the sparkles below. The sea was, as it often is in that

region, highly luminous; and as Ella sat watching the eddy within which

Archie had sunk, her eye marked, and not without pleasure even now, the

gleam which broke on the crest of every wave, and was scattered in

showers of sparkles as far as the spray could reach.

There she was found by Angus, at day-break.

“You have not been in his cave?” said he.

“No,” replied Ella. “I will go there first when you and the lads have

left me.”

“Left you! and when will that be?”

“In a few hours, I hope,” she replied, smiling. “I must see that Archie

is still honoured by being kept apart from that in which he had no

share. The business of our days went on without him while he lived, and

it shall go on now, if it were only to show that he bore no part in it.

You must perform your promises to our neighbours, Angus, and discharge

their business, and then you can come back to me with an easy mind.”

“I will,” replied Angus; “and I will not ask you to go with me this

time. It is for you to say whether there is cause for your remaining

behind.”

“There is; this once,—not longer, Angus. I cannot give up the hope of

laying Archie beneath the cross beside my father. This will either be

done or given up before your next voyage, and then I will go.”

For some hours of the morning of their intended marriage-day, Angus and

Ella were wandering along the shores engaged in the most melancholy

search in which eye and heart can be employed. At length Angus pointed

to a sign which could scarcely be misunderstood. He had observed an

osprey winging its flight for some distance over the sea, and now

perceived that it was joined by another, and that both were hovering as

if about to stoop. Endeavouring to scare them with cries, he hastened

onwards, followed by Ella, for some distance towards the south-west, and

succeeded in finding the object of their search. Archie lay, as if

asleep, on a beach of fine sand, still grasping the bosom of his plaid

which contained the gathered treasures of the day.—Long were those weeds

and feathers kept as memorials of Archie’s pleasures: they were Ella’s

only hoard.

Angus returned from his first voyage with the lads in safety, and in

time to lay Archie’s head in the grave. This done, Ella acknowledged

that no duty remained to prevent her fulfilling all her promises. She

accompanied him, the next week, to Oban, and returned his wife.

----------------------------

Having illustrated the leading principles which regulate the PRODUCTION

of Wealth, we proceed to consider the laws of its DISTRIBUTION.

The classes concerned in production are (as we have seen) two, Labourers

and Capitalists; but the latter class is usually divided into two, viz.—

Those who hold in possession the natural agents of production, as

Land-owners; and

Those who employ these natural agents, as Farmers, or others who apply

capital to land or water.

Of these three classes, among whom distribution takes place,

Labourers receive their share as Wages,

Capitalists as Profits,

Land-owners as Rent.

We proceed first to Rent, for reasons which will appear when we treat of

Wages and Profits; and, for the sake of clearness, shall confine our

Summary to the explanation of Land-Rent.

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume_.

The total Rent paid by a farmer includes real Rent, and much besides;

viz. the profits of the capital laid out by the land-owner upon the

estate.

Real RENT is that which is paid to the land-owner for the use of the

original, indestructible powers of the soil.

Land has these powers in different degrees.

The most fertile being all appropriated, and more produce wanted, the

next best soil is brought into cultivation; then land of the third

degree, and so on, till all is tilled that will repay tillage.

An unequal produce being yielded by these different lands, the surplus

return of all above the lowest goes to the land-owner in the form of

Rent.

The same thing happens when repeated applications of capital are made to

the same land for the sake of increasing its productiveness. The produce

which remains over the return to the least productive application of

capital, goes to the land-owner in the form of Rent.

RENT, therefore, consists of that part of the return made to the more

productive portions of capital, by which it exceeds the return made to

the least productive portion.

New lands are not tilled, and capital is not employed for a less return,

unless the produce will pay the cost of production.

A rise of prices, therefore, creates, and is not created by, Rent.

When more capital is employed in agriculture, new land is tilled, a

further outlay is made on land already tilled; and thus also Rent arises

from increase of capital.

When capital is withdrawn from agriculture, inferior, _i. e._ the most

expensive soils, are let out of cultivation; and thus Rent falls.

A rise of Rent is, therefore, a symptom, and not a cause, of wealth.

The tendency of Rent is, therefore, to rise for ever in an improving

country.—But there are counteracting causes.

Art increases production beyond the usual returns to capital laid out:

prices fall in proportion to the abundance of the supply, and Rent

declines.

Improved facilities for bringing produce to market, by increasing the

supply, cause prices to fall and Rent to decline.

London: Printed by W. CLOWES, Stamford-street.

ILLUSTRATIONS

OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

No. VI.

WEAL AND WOE

IN

GARVELOCH.

=A Tale.=

BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

_SECOND EDITION._

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1832.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Stamford Street

WEAL AND WOE

IN

GARVELOCH.

=A Tale.=

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

_SECOND EDITION._

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1832.

CONTENTS.

WEAL AND WOE IN GARVELOCH.

1. Times are changed 1

2. Neighbourly chat 17

3. Kindred not kindness 27

4. Looking before and after 38

5. More haste than good speed 51

6. A dreary prospect 67

7. The discipline of the Teachable 83

8. The discipline of the Unteachable 105

9. Troubles never come alone 121

10. Conclusion 133

WEAL AND WOE

IN

GARVELOCH.

----------------------------

CHAPTER I.

TIMES ARE CHANGED

About ten years before the period at which our story opens, the laird of

Garveloch had transferred his property in that and the neighbouring

isles to a large Fishing Company. The terms of the bargain were

advantageous to both parties. The laird was to receive, in addition to

the annual rent which his island-tenants had been accustomed to pay, and

which did not amount to more than sixty guineas a year all together, a

sum of several hundred pounds in consideration of the improvements to be

effected on the property. As there was little prospect of such

improvements being effected, to the extent of some hundreds of pounds,

by himself or his poor tenants, the transaction was evidently a

profitable one to him; while the Company reasonably expected that the

changes they were about to introduce would much more than repay their

advance—an expectation which was not disappointed. Among the numerous

fishing stations established by this opulent Company, there was one in

Islay. A warehouse was erected, where salt for curing the fish, hemp for

making nets, timber for boat-building, staves for cooperage, and all

materials necessary for the apparatus of an extensive fishery, were

stored. A curing-house, a building-yard, and a cooperage were at hand; a

pier, around which there was a perpetual traffic of boats, stretched out

into the sea. A little town had risen round these buildings, where but a

few years before there had been only a congregation of sea-fowl. Where

their discordant cries alone had been heard, there now prevailed a

mingling of sounds, not more musical to the ear perhaps, but by far more

agreeable to the heart. The calls of the boatmen, the hammer of the

cooper, the saw of the boat-builder, the hum from the curing-house,

where women and girls were employed in gutting, salting, and packing the

herrings, and drying the cod, the shouts and laughter of innumerable

children at play among the rocks,—all these together formed such a

contrast to the desolation which prevailed ten years before, that the

stranger who returned after a long absence scarcely knew the place to be

the same.

Nor was the change less remarkable in others of the islands. Rows of

dwellings stretched along many a favourable line of beach, and huts

peeped out of a cove here and there, where no trace of man had been

formerly seen, but an occasional kelping fire. On Garveloch a fishing

village had arisen where the dwelling of Angus and Ella had for some

years stood alone. The field which they had cultivated from the year of

their marriage till the establishment of the Fishing Company, was now

covered with cottages; and a row of huts, most of them with a patch of

ground behind, stretched from the bar on the one hand, to the promontory

which had been Ronald’s on the other. Angus and Ella lived in the old

house; but it was so much enlarged and improved as to look like a new

one: it was the best in the village; and it was made so for comfort, not

for show. There were nine children to be housed; and both their parents

knew enough of comfort to see the necessity of providing room and

ventilation if they wished to keep their large family in health and good

habits. They had worked hard, and on the whole successfully; and though

the perpetual calls upon them prevented their laying by much in the form

of money, they had been able to provide their dwelling with more

convenient furniture, and their children with more decent clothing, than

was usually thought necessary in the society of which they formed a

part.

Angus’s vessel had yielded him all the profit he had expected, and more.

Before the Company was established, he had usually had business enough

committed to him to make it answer to cross the Sound twice a week; and

since the fishing station had been opened in Islay, he had made a double

use of the Flora, as his boat was now called. The possession of a decked

vessel had enabled him to share the herring bounty; and he now gave his

principal attention to the fishery, only following the coasting trade in

spring and autumn,—the intervals of the herring seasons.

As they possessed so great a treasure in this boat, now of the rank of a

herring-buss, Angus and Ella thought they could afford to give the old

boat to Fergus for a wedding present, and thus enable him to fish for

cod on his own account, instead of being a hired fisherman on board one

of the Company’s vessels. Those who had only open boats were excluded

from the herring fishery by the bounty, which was granted to the produce

of decked vessels only, and which therefore gave an advantage to such

produce in the market which could not be contested; but there was a fair

sale for cod, however caught; and now that a market was always open at

hand, the possession of a boat seemed to Fergus to afford a prospect of

a certain and sufficient maintenance. He married at one-and-twenty, a

year after the opening of the station in Islay, and in consequence of

it; for he fell in love with a girl who had come with her family to

settle at the station as fishers. Janet was young and giddy, and quite

willing to leave her father, who was only a hired fisherman, for a

husband who had a boat of his own; and, after a short courtship, the

young folks settled down in a cottage within a stone’s throw of Angus’s

house. They had made a shift to get on till now, though their family

increased every year; and as they had never suffered actual want, they

began to think they never should, and to smile at some of Ronald’s wise

sayings. Fergus declared that, if one or two seasons of extraordinary

plenty would come, so as to enable him to get a new boat, he should have

no anxiety remaining. He had been anxious when he had only one child to

feed; and he was apt to be anxious at times now that he had five: but if

he was but sure of being able to continue his fishing, he would trust

that Providence would feed them as they had hitherto been fed. But if

these rare seasons should not come, Ronald observed, what was to be

done? for the boat was wearing out fast. It must be patched and mended

to the last, Fergus replied, and he must still hope for extraordinary

profits some happy year. He said nothing, though he probably thought

much, of the consequences of a season of failure.

Ronald was free from all cares of this kind, though he had had his share

of trouble in other ways. He was a single man and engaged in a good

business, and therefore well provided for as to external comfort. He was

a cooper at the station in Islay, and as casks were wanted as long as

fish were caught, he had reason to suppose himself supplied with

employment as long as the establishment should be kept up. He was truly

happy to be able to afford assistance to her who had carefully tended

his youth, and received Ella’s eldest boy with the intention of teaching

him his trade. The trouble from which we have mentioned that Ronald

suffered arose from disappointment in an attachment he had formed and

long cherished. He had loved a maiden who came in the train of the

company, but his friend Cuthbert had won her, and after having made her

happy for a few short years, had been taken from her by an accident at

sea, leaving her with four children, and no possessions but such as his

industry had earned. The widow Cuthbert lived in Garveloch, and

supported her little family by net-making. She was respected by all her

neighbours, and loved as much as ever by Ronald, who, however, conducted

himself towards her as the widow of his friend, rather than as the

object of his early and long attachment.

The widow Cuthbert was regarded as the lady of the island, though she

was no richer, no better dressed, and, for all her neighbours knew, no

better born than any around her. She was better educated; and this was

her title to distinction. No one else, except Angus, had seen so much of

the world; and even he could not make a better use of what he had

learned. There was a sober truth in the judgments she formed of people

and of circumstances, which was all the more impressive from the modesty

with which she held her opinions, and the gentleness with which she

declared them. Those opinions were respected by all, from the highest to

the lowest,—from Ella down to Meg Murdoch. Her management of her little

family was watched by all who cared for the welfare of their children,

and her skill and industry in her occupation were marvelled at by those

who did not attempt to imitate her.

It would have amused an attentive observer to see how a distinction of

ranks was already growing up in the little society of Garveloch, where

none had originally brought wealth enough to authorize such distinction.

Next to the widow Cuthbert ranked the farmer and his family—the Duffs,

who were looked up to from their great importance as corn-growers to the

society. The produce of their fields being much in request, they had

enlarged their farm, and improved it to a great extent. By means of the

more ample supplies of manure afforded by the curing of so much fish,

and through the help of the better implements and modes of tillage which

their prosperity enabled them to use, their land produced twice as much

as when they had entered upon the farm, fifteen years before. They had

every inducement to go on increasing its productiveness; for corn still

fell short, and supplies were brought now and then from other islands to

make out till harvest. Of late, indeed, the demand had somewhat

lessened, as an Irish family had set the example of growing potatoes in

their patch of ground, and many of their neighbours had done the same,

with the hope of saving the expense of oat and barley meal. Among these

were the former tenants of the farm, the Murdochs, who, having failed in

all their undertakings, now had recourse to what they supposed an easy

and nearly infallible method of getting a living. They had sunk from

year to year, and there was little hope of their rising again when they

began to place their dependence on potato tillage. They now filled a

station as much below that of Ella and her husband as Ella’s had been

supposed below theirs on the day of her father’s funeral. Murdoch had

not parted with any of his pride or jealousy as he parted with his

worldly comforts. He still looked with an evil eye on Angus; and, when

disposed to vent his complaints or seek counsel, went to new comers in

preference to old neighbours. He was particularly intimate with the

O’Rorys, who lived in a cottage next to his own, and who were of an age

and in circumstances too unlike his own to come into comparison with him

in any way.

Dan O’Rory was a lad of twenty, who had brought over his yet younger

wife to seek employment in the Garveloch fishery, as there was none to

be had at Rathmullin. He had not yet been able to make interest for

wages on board one of the busses, and he had no boat of his own; so he

dug up and planted his potato-ground, and was content, talking of future

doings, but caring little as yet whether they ever came to pass. One

evil of their coming to pass, indeed, would be that there would be no

longer time for talk, which Dan loved full as well as did Noreen, his

wife.

One day, when Noreen was tired of her husband, and had gently turned him

out of his cabin, he strolled to Murdoch’s door, and lay down to bask in

a July sun, his head resting on the wooden step, his fingers stuck into

his hair, and his feet reposing among the fishy remains which lay as

usual strewed round the door, and saluting more senses than one of the

passers by. Hearing a step on the shingle, Dan half opened his eyes, and

saw Murdoch approaching with a leaky barrel on his shoulder, from the

seams of which the red pickle was dropping down his clothes and

meandering over his face.

“Them are the briny tears for which ye’ll be never the worse,” cried

Dan. “I’d weep such tears every day, if the powers would give me leave.”

“Get up, Dan, can’t ye, and let me come in at my own door.”

“With all the pleasure in life,” said Dan, pushing the door open, and

withdrawing himself as little as was necessary to let Murdoch pass.

“Eh! it’s the herrings back again! O, father, what will ye do for the

money? What good does the bounty do to them that can’t sell their fish?”

resounded from the inside of the cottage in shrill tones of anger.

Murdoch swore at the bounty and the Company, and its officers, and at

those who, he said, supplanted him.

“Well, but what did they say this time?” inquired his wife. “I took the

largest barrel we had,—if it did not hold thirty-two gallons, there’s

not one in the island that does.”

“They did not dispute that this time; how should they? But they say, not

a cask that leaks shall be branded for the bounty.”

“Never deny the leaking,” said Dan, looking in from the door. “Your own

head is pickled as fine as if it stood for the bounty.”

Murdoch took no notice of him, but went on impatiently. “And for the

rest of the complaint, I may thank you, wife, or Meg, or both of ye.

There is not a fish clean gutted in the barrel; there is not one

untainted with the sun; and besides, the cask is half full of salt. You

women may raise the rent-money as well as you can, for I shall never do

it if this is the way you help me.”

Meg began to complain that the boat was so foul that the fish were

tainted before they came ashore; that her mother had given her something

else to do when she should have been curing the fish; that Rob had

carried off the knife, so that she was obliged to gut them with her

fingers; and that, as her mother would have a large barrel and her

father would not catch more fish, what could be done but to fill up the

cask with salt? The quarrel was beginning to run high, when Dan

interfered to divert the course of the storm.

“I wonder,” said he, “ye submit to be troubled with the villains that

carry themselves so high. I’d leave them to catch their own fish, and

keep cool and comfortable at home.”

“We must live, Dan; so you talk only nonsense.”

“True, neighbour; all that are not gentlemen must live. But there’s

nothing in life easier than to live without their help; and I’d be proud

to do it, if it were only to see them standing and standing all day, and

many days, to see the shoals go by, and never a boat out to catch a fish

for them. I’d go ten miles any day to see them stand idle, with all

their sheds and cranes, and the new pier with the boats lying about it

as if all the world was asleep. There would be easy work for a summer’s

day!”

“Easy enough for them, Dan, but hard enough for us that have not our

pockets full of money like them.”

“Never mind the money; where’s the money that will buy such a sunshine

as this?”

“If people like the sunshine as well with bare limbs and an empty

stomach, Dan, I have nothing to say to them. For my part, I begin to

feel the north wind chilling, now I am growing old; and I can’t fish

till I have had my morning meal.”

“O, the morning meal is the pleasantest thing in nature when it gives

one no trouble; and if you would do as I do, you would have one every

day in the year, without giving a triumph to them villains. Just bestir

yourself to plant your potatoes, and then you are provided without more

words. O, people should go to old Ireland to learn how to live!”

“I thought Ireland had been a bad place to live in.”

“Devil a bit, neighbour. It is the cheerfullest, brightest land the

saints reign over,—glory to them for it!”

“Then what brought you here?”

“Just somebody told Noreen’s father that one might fish guineas in these

seas; so he had us married, and sent us over; but, as I tell Noreen,

there is less gold here than at Rathmullin, seeing that the sun shines

one half less. But we make ourselves content, as they do in Ireland; and

that a man may do all the world over—let alone a woman that has a gentle

cratur like me for a husband.”

“But how would you have me make myself content, when I can’t sell my

fish either fresh or salted? I thought you had had more feeling for your

neighbours, Dan.”

“I! God help me, I’m as tinder-hearted as a lord’s lady. It is because I

am so tinder-hearted that I would have nobody bother themselves. Just

give a man a cabin, and a bit of ground, and a spade, and a girl for a

wife to crown all, and why should he trouble himself till the stars fall

out of the sky?”

“And is that the way you do in Ireland?”

“Just so; and that is why Ireland is better than any other land.”

“But I have more to provide for than my wife,” said Murdoch, casting a

look towards his little field.

“Make Rob dig it for you the first year,” said Dan; “and if there is

potatoes enough, well and good; and if not, go fish for what is wanting,

or let Rob get a potato-ground for himself.”

“But we shall want clothes, and money for rent.”

“Tell the Company you’ll work out the rent, or sell your boat for it, or

beseech the saints that love to help. Any way better than bother

yourself.”

“Anything rather than bother myself,” repeated Murdoch to himself, under

the united provocations of heat, fatigue, disappointment, and jealousy.

“I’ll be free of them all, and never trouble myself to offer another

fish to any man breathing. I can get fowl to help out our potatoes, and

then we shall do well enough.”

At this moment he saw farmer Duff approaching, and gave the hint to Dan,

that he should observe how the farmer would behave when it should appear

that he was to have no more custom from either family.

Duff declined the seat offered him by Murdoch’s wife, as his first

desire was to get to windward of that which strewed the ground where Meg

had been curing fish. He asked Murdoch to walk a little way with him;

but as Murdoch declined, Duff took the liberty of closing the door, and

attempting to open the shutter which occupied the unglazed window.

“I live on the height, you know,” said he, “and out of the way of your

kind of business, so that I may seem to you over nice; but I was going

to offer to relieve you of this litter. I have been round the village to

engage for all the offal of the season, and I will take up yours at the

same price with the rest.”

“I can’t spare it, farmer.”

“Well, just as you please; but I really hope you are going to remove it

directly, for your health’s sake.”

“I trust my health will serve me to sow and gather many a crop that

shall cost me less than your oatmeal, and be more wholesome than the

pickles in yonder barrel. I have done with herrings for ever. Do you

know any one that wants a boat, farmer?”

“More than you have boats to sell. There’s Dan, for one. Dan, you mean

to be a fisherman?”

“Perhaps I may, if the station offers me a place in a buss without any

trouble; but I could not bother myself with a boat. Murdoch and I are

content to be easy with our potatoes, no offence to you, I hope.”

“None whatever. The only offence in the case is the offence of a wet

season, if such a one should come;—where will the offence be then?”

“After a wet season comes a dry,” said Dan; “and the powers will

preserve us to witness it.”

“Let me see your boat,” said Duff. “Your relation Fergus was looking at

his this morning as if he thought it would bear little more patching.”

“Mine is nearly as old as his, but it will last a few fair seasons yet,

I expect. I will make him the offer of it.”

Duff was going there now; and having no more time to spare, Murdoch and

he set off together, leaving Dan to bask as before, or to vary his

amusements by watching the flow of the tide.

As they went, they looked in on Ella, with whom Duff wished to negociate

as with Murdoch. Ella was in the shed built for a curing-house,

surrounded by her children, three or four of whom were assisting her in

her employment of salting and packing herrings, and the rest amusing

themselves with playing hide and seek among the barrels.

“What a store of new barrels!” exclaimed Murdoch: “You must lose much by

the old ones.”

“Not at all,” replied Ella: “they serve for our coasting trade when they

will no longer do for the Company. If we often got such a cask as this,”

pointing to one beside her, “we should seldom have to buy. Kenneth made

that.”

“Your boy Kenneth!” exclaimed Murdoch. “Impossible!”

“He has been well taught by his uncle,” said Duff, “and has good

materials. See, the staves are half an inch thick, and even throughout,

and the flags laid between the seams at both ends, and the hoops as

regular and well fastened as Ronald himself could have made them.”

“You will only waste such a barrel,” said Murdoch, “if you let the

children touch the fish. My Meg has wasted tons of fish and bushels of

salt.”

Little Annie, who was sprinkling the salt at this moment, turned very

red, and looked at her mother as petitioning for a defence. Ella smiled

as she invited Murdoch to look and see how evenly the fish were packed,

and told him that there was a trial of skill among the children this

day, and that it was to be determined, when her husband came home,

whether Annie’s salting was worthy of Kenneth’s barrel.

“Kenneth is not to see till all is done,” said Annie; “he is helping

uncle Fergus to mend his boat, and uncle Fergus says he will make it

last much longer than any body else could do but uncle Ronald.”

“Ronald sent him this very morning, when he was most wanted,” said Ella.

“His father should have seen the landing. He brought me this barrel as a

present, and he himself thought of bringing his tools and some staves in

case Fergus’s boat wanted mending, which it did sadly. You will excuse

our going on with our work, neighbours, for you know it will not do to

lose time in this weather; but the little ones will get you all you want

if you will step within. Go, my little maids, and set out the bannocks

and the cheese, and I will bring the whisky.”

Duff could not stay, however, longer than to settle when to send his

pony and panniers for the offal.

“Surely that cannot be little Kenneth!” exclaimed Murdoch, when, guided

by the echo of hammering among the rocks, they came in sight of a fine

tall lad repairing a boat. “Yes, it is Kenneth, so like his father, and

just as handsome!”

Kenneth looked modestly happy when his uncle declared that he did not

want to purchase Murdoch’s boat, as he believed his own would be the

best of the two by the time Kenneth went back to Islay.

Murdoch wondered why his children gave nothing but trouble while they

were young, and did little but damage now that they were grown up, while

other people made a profit of theirs. He took a poor price, paid in

produce, from a cottager for his crazy boat, and went home wishing that

he had sent Rob to learn something at the station, as he could teach him

nothing at home.

----------------------------

CHAPTER II.

NEIGHBOURLY CHAT

At a late hour of this night, the young widow Cuthbert was still busy,

as she had been all day, at her employment of net-making. The song with

which she lulled her infant to sleep had long ceased, and she pursued

her work in perfect silence by the dim light of her solitary lamp; her

thoughts were alternately with the children who lay sleeping around her,

and with the husband whose place of long repose was beneath the waters.

As often as a little hand stirred above the coverlid, or a rosy cheek

was turned upon its pillow, the anxious mother gazed and watched, and as

often as the gust swept past, or a larger billow broke upon the shingle,

her heart throbbed as if she was still awaiting the return of him who

should never more return. She started, at length, on hearing a tap at

her door.

“It is only Ella,” said a voice from the outside; and the widow hastened

to open the door.

“Your husband, your husband!” she exclaimed; “no ill to him I trust. You

are not in fear for him, Ella?”

“He is safe home, thank Him who guides the storms!” replied Ella: “but

it is a gusty night.”

“Ye look cold and your plaid drips,” said the widow, setting down the

lamp, and applying more fuel to her smouldering fire. “What brings ye

here so late, Ella?”

“Only a message from Angus about the nets, which I should have left till

the morn, but that Kenneth and I saw a glimmer beneath your door, and I

knew I should find you at your occupation. We press you too close for

your work, Katie. It’s an ill thing for sad hearts to watch so late.

Better that we should do without our nets, than that you should look as

you do now.”

“’Tis for my bairns,” said Katie, “or I would not undergo it. O, Ella! I

have been jealous of you these two hours past, if, as I supposed, you

were on the rock looking out.”

“No wonder, Katie; and yet I could have found in my heart to be jealous

of Fergus’s wife, and all the wives that were serving their husbands by

the fireside, instead of breasting the wind, and mistaking every jet of

the surge for a sail, as I have been doing since the sun went down. But

I had Kenneth to while away the time with, and help to keep in the

light. He showed me how they hoist the lanterns at the station, and our

signals will be better managed from this night forward. O Katie, you

must see Kenneth, and I must tell you all that his uncle has done for

him.”

“But your husband,” interrupted the widow; “how long was he? and in what

style did his boat come ashore? and which of you first saw him? and——”

“Now, Katie, why will ye be ever asking such questions as you know it

wounds me to answer? I have told you he is home safe. He has brought

such a store of fish, that, busy as the curers have been on board, there

is as much left for the lassies and me to do to-morrow as we can finish

before the twenty-four hours are gone. And that reminds me of the nets:

Angus must have those he ordered within three days, he bids me tell you;

but let us look about for some one to help you, instead of your toiling

with your fingers, and harassing your spirits through the night.”

“We must toil while the season lasts,” replied Katie; “and as for the

wear of spirits,” she continued smiling, “that is all fancy, and must be

got over. I have nothing now to tremble for—no need to listen and look

out, and I must learn not to heed the storm further than to be thankful

that my bairns have about them all that makes a storm harmless. If this

was a time of hardship, Ella, like some that have been known here, how I

might have envied some who were kept watching, not by cold or hunger,

but only by having more employment than they could finish in the day!”

“It is a rich season, indeed,” said Ella. “The shoals are such as Angus

never saw before, for the multitude and the quality of the fish; and

what is more, the crops are coming up kindly, and farmer Duff says that

he reckons on the best harvest he has had since he took the farm.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Katie. “This plenty may prevent the price from

rising, and nothing else could. It almost frightens me sometimes when I

see the numbers that are growing up, to think how we are to get oat and

barley meal for them all.”

“If you had been here all the sixteen years since I first came to this

bay,” said Ella, “you would wonder at the change, and be thankful to see

how improvements have risen as wants increased. Now trim your lamp, and

go on with your business; it will be some time yet before my husband and

Kenneth have finished with the boat and come for me.—Surely you make

your meshes more than an inch wide;—no, the exact measure.—Well, that is

one of the improvements I speak of.”

“It was folly, indeed,” replied Katie, “to use such nets as I used to

make—nets that caught the fry and let the full grown go free. That was

the quickest way to make every season worse than the last. Then there

are the boats, so much safer from having pumps, so much more favourable

to the fish from being cleaner, and so much better built, that our

fishers need not lose their time in short trips, but can push out into

the deep seas, and stay many days together. All these things help to

make fishing profitable.”

“Besides,” said Ella, “they help farming, which is of as much importance

to us as the fishing. Corn from abroad is so dear, that we should be

little better off than before, if farmer Duff did not grow more than

Murdoch once did.”

“The people in the other islands and in Lorn want all they can grow as

much as we,” replied Katie, “for their fishery grows with ours. Meat and

bannocks are as dear in all the countries round as they were here last

year.”

“Then we may thank farmer Duff for all the pains he has taken with the

soil of his fields and the stock of his pastures. He reaps just double

what he reaped fifteen years ago.”

“And so he had need, for there are more than double the number of mouths

to feed. Besides the strangers that have come to settle, look at the

families that have grown up. Where Mr. Callum used to spend a few days

now and then, there is Mary Duff’s husband and her five bairns; then

there are your nine, Ella—how your household is increased!”

“There lies one brother under the gray stone,” said Ella, “and Ronald

seeks his bannocks elsewhere; but there is Fergus’s tribe as well as my

own; and setting one against Murdoch’s son that died, and another

against his daughter that went off with the soldier, there is still more

than double the number by far.”

“Even supposing,” added Katie, “that Murdoch’s daughter does not come

back upon her father with her children, which I have heard is likely.

But, Ella, Duff’s farm ought to yield double and double for ever, if it

is to go on to feed us, for our children will marry and have their

little tribes as we have. If you and I live to be like many grandmothers

in these islands, we shall see our twenty or thirty grand-children, and

perhaps our eighty or ninety great-grand-children.”

“And then,” replied Ella, “may God keep us from the poverty that weighs

on such! May we never see our strong men wasting on shell-fish and

weeds, and our aged people dropping cold and hungry into their

deathbeds, and our young mothers tending their sickly infants, knowing

that food and warmth might save them, and unable to bring them either

the one or the other!”

“Do not let us think of it,” said Katie, looking round upon her domestic

comforts. “Providence has blessed us thus far, and let us not be too

keen to foresee the evil day that man’s power cannot remove.”

Ella was silent. Katie proceeded,—

“Surely man cannot remove that day, Ella, though you say nothing. Let

farmer Duff do all he can; let every foot of land be tilled that will

nourish an ear of barley, still the day may come; and what else can man

do?”

Ella made no direct reply. Presently she observed that Dan and his wife

seemed not to care for the evils of such a time, since they lived by

choice on the poorest food, and provided themselves with nothing that

they could lose in the worst of seasons.

“They are content, always content,” observed the widow; “and they say

they have all that is necessary; and they wonder that we can trouble

ourselves to obtain anything that is not necessary: but I tell them we

do not; I think a chimney, and a window, and bedding, and decent clothes

all necessary for the children.”

“Unless you would have them live like pigs in a sty,” observed Ella.

“When God gave us the charge of these little ones, he gave us no leave

that ever I heard of to expose them to sickness and hardship, and to

corrupt them by letting them live like brutes. By making them helpless

and quick in their feelings, he has shown as plainly as if he sent a

prophet to tell us, that we are to tend them as carefully and keep them

as innocent as ever our labour and forethought can help us to do.

Whenever I see a little one grovelling in dirt, or pining in want, or

given to vice such as it should not even have heard of, I always feel as

if God’s plain-spoken message had been at some time misunderstood;

either that the trust has been wrongly undertaken or wrongly managed.”

“I knew you thought so, Ella; and yet what can we say when parents see

and mourn all this, and cannot help themselves?”

“We can only say that if both father and mother have considered and

judged for the best, and worked hard, and denied themselves, no fault

rests with them. Where the fault lies in such a case is a thing that

Angus and I have talked over many a time. But such a case does not

concern those we were speaking of—those who are content with

destitution, when they might have comfort.”

The widow looked on her children and sighed.

“Nay,” said Ella, smiling, “there is no need for you to sigh. You might

carry your bairns to Inverary, and match them with the duke’s, and not a

stronger, or fairer, or more innocent would you find among them all.”

“May it please Providence to keep them so!”

“Why should you fear? You have comfort about you, and a prospect of

abundance. Keep your tears for a darker day, if there be such in the

years to come.”

“Every day is dark to me now,” thought the widow; but she kept down a

feeling that seemed ungrateful. Ella went on, anxious to cheer her.

“I watched your little Hugh this morning, as he and my younger ones were

playing on the sands, and I thought he looked as if he was made to carry

his own way through the world. You should have seen him managing the

dragging of the pool with the ragged net Angus gave the children. You

would have thought he had been to the station to take a lesson of the

superintendent, by his direction of the rest.”

“Aye, I am afraid he is overbearing,” replied the mother.

“Not at all; only spirited. If you keep him innocent with such a spirit

as he has, he may be anything; he may be like Ronald himself, who is so

fond of him. O, he is not overbearing. I saw him let go the net the

moment little Bessie was frightened at your dog that jumped upon her;

and he carried her through the water that was too deep for her to wade,

as soon as ever she began to cry for me. Now I think of it, Ronald did

take him to the station once, surely.”

“Yes; not very long ago, the last time he was here; and Hugh saw the

superintendent as you suppose, and has been full of imitation of all

that he saw ever since.”

“He may be superintendent himself some day or other, Katie. But does not

he love Ronald very much?”

“Very much; as he ought to do.”

“All my children do,” replied Ella. “It is always a happy time when

uncle Ronald comes. The same man that the officers respect above all who

are under them is as much beloved by the little ones as if he were a

soft-hearted girl.”

“You had the making of Ronald, and I give you joy of your work,” said

the widow.

“Ah, Katie, that is the way you always silence me about Ronald,” said

Ella, smiling.

“Well, then, tell me about Fergus: he is your work too.”

“You know all I can say about him,” said Ella, sighing. “You know my

pride in him, and that this very pride makes me the more grieved when I

see his temper harassed and soured by care, as I feel it must go on to

be, more and more. I am always in dread of a quarrel with one neighbour

or another; and more than ever now, in the high fishing season.”

“Surely he has less care now than at other times,” observed the widow.

“There is just now abundance for every body.”

“True; but this is the time for revenge. If Fergus has carried himself

high towards any neighbour, or given the sharp words that are never

forgotten, now is the time for his nets to be cut, or his boat set

adrift, or what he has fished in the day carried off in the night.”

“There are those in Garveloch, I know,” said Katie, “who can bring

themselves to do such things.”

“Let us mention no names, Katie; but thus it is that men shame their

race, and spurn the gifts they little deserve. To think that we cannot

enjoy a plentiful season in peace and thankfulness, but that some must

injure, and others complain! These are times when we should leave it to

the osprey to follow a prey, and to the summer storms to murmur. Hark!

there is Angus’s step outside; and time it is, for it cannot be far from

midnight.”

The widow invited Angus in to warm himself by her now bright fire; but

it was time for rest. Kenneth had gone home an hour before.

“He would find supper on the board,” said Ella; “and now, Angus, you

will be glad to do the same.”

Katie promised the nets within three days; and as soon as she had closed

the door behind her guests, sat down again for one other hour to help

the fulfilment of her promise, and then slept all the better for having

watched till the wind went down.

----------------------------

CHAPTER III.

KINDRED NOT KINDNESS

It was not very long before Ella’s fears on account of her brother

Fergus were in part realized, though the evil day was deferred by an

arrangement offered by Angus and eagerly accepted by his brother-in-law.

The herring fishery being peculiarly abundant this year, Angus wanted

more help on board his vessel; and as it was expected that the cod would

be plentiful in proportion, Angus might in his turn assist Fergus, when

the herring shoals were past, and the cod which follow to make prey of

them should become the chief object of the fishery. Fergus laboured from

July to October for a certain share of the herring produce; and Angus

was to go out with Fergus in all the intervals of his coasting trips

during the late autumn and winter. While Fergus was on board Angus’s

vessel, all went well; for Angus had no enemies. He might spread his

nets to dry on the beach, and his youngest child was guard enough to set

over them. He never left his fish on board all night, while he was at

home, thinking it wrong to put such a temptation to theft in the way of

any one; but if he had, no harm would have been done out of malice to

himself, as was too frequently the practice in this fishery.

Poor Fergus was not so secure, as he had found before, and was destined

to find again. Like most men of hasty tempers, who are besides subject

to care, he had enemies among those who did not know how to make

allowance for him, and were not disposed to forgive harsh expressions

which the offender was apt to forget that he had used. Dan, easy and

content as he seemed to be, had the selfishness common to lazy people;

and there is no more inveterate enemy to good-will than selfishness. Dan

was not, like many of his countrymen, ready with his oaths and his

cudgel at a moment’s warning, if anything went amiss; but Dan could

drawl out the most provoking things imaginable, and enjoy their effect

upon an irritable person, and show that he enjoyed it; and having thus

encouraged a quarrel, in which he did not give his adversary the

satisfaction of bearing his share heartily, he let it drop; but had no

objection to see it carried on by somebody else. He amused himself with

watching what befel Fergus, and with laughing at every little distress

which arose subsequent to a certain dispute which had once occurred

between them. He did no harm with his own hands, but people knew that he

did not object to seeing it done; and such sympathy affords great

advantage to the doers of mischief. Among these was Rob Murdoch, a doer

of mischief by nature as some said,—at all events by habit, and very

often by express will. Rob had never felt at ease with Ella or any of

the family since the day of his upsetting the boat; though there was

never a look or word from any of them which could have made him

uncomfortable, if his own consciousness had not. He was always ready to

suppose offence, and found no difficulty in creating it where he was not

liked, and only tolerated on account of long neighbourhood and distant

relationship. He kept out of Ella’s way, for he was mightily afraid of

her. He hated Angus, having been formerly taught by his father that

Angus was a traitor who intended to supplant him, and the impression

remained on his stupid mind long after the cause had been removed.

Ronald was out of his way entirely; and Fergus was therefore the only

one exposed to his poor spite, while he was the one least able to

disregard it. The time had been when Fergus would have scorned the idea

of being moved by anything Rob could say; but Fergus was more easily

moved than formerly, and it stung him to hear Rob predict, as he lounged

on the shore, that the wind would be contrary when Fergus wished it

fair; to be met on his return from an unsuccessful expedition with the

news that everybody else had caught a vast deal of fish; and, above all,

to see the enemy fretting the children into a passion, which was a

frequent pastime of Rob’s when he had nothing better to do. Out of these

provocations arose quarrels; and out of quarrels, Rob’s desire of

revenge; a desire which he could gratify only in a small way as long as

Fergus worked for his brother-in-law. Rob asked several times for the

loan of Fergus’s boat during the herring season; and as he made the

request in his father’s name, it was not refused; but when it was found

that the boat received some injury each time, Fergus very reasonably

desired Rob to repair the mischief as often as he caused it. Being too

lazy to do this, the loan was denied to him, and then he made bold to

use the boat without leave when he knew that Fergus was absent; and the

exclamations of the children having brought their mother out to see what

was the matter, the ill-will was not lessened by the addition of a

woman’s tongue. No terms were kept after the railing bout between Rob

and Janet on the sands: they regarded and acted towards each other as

enemies from that day forward.

Angus offered Fergus a benefit, as he called it, to finish off the

season with; that is, all the fish caught in the last trip were to be

Fergus’s; and to the winnings of this trip he looked for the means of

finally making up his rent, and of improving the clothing of the

children before the winter. The signs of the weather were anxiously

watched by himself and his family, the nets were carefully repaired, the

casks looked to, more salt brought in from the station, and every

preparation completed the evening before, when the nets and stores were

carried on board, and all made ready for starting at dawn. It was a

misty morning, such as would not have tempted either Janet or Ella

abroad if this had been any other trip than the last of the season: but

as it was, they attended their husbands down to the shore, with their

children flocking about them. As it was too foggy to let them see the

vessel at fifty yards distance from the beach they presently returned,

walking so slowly, that before they reached home the mists had partly

dispersed at the appearance of the rising sun, and opened a prospect

along the shore.

“There’s Rob turning the point,” cried one of the little ones.

“Rob at this time of the morning? Impossible!” said Ella. “They that

have no more to do than he are not stirring so early. It is he, however.

Look, Janet, how he peeps at us from behind the rock! I will go and

speak with him, for he has no quarrel with me, and I do not forget we

are cousins.”

It was not so easy, however, to catch him. When he saw Ella approaching,

he withdrew from sight; and when she turned the point, he was already

high up among the rocks, on a path which he could not have reached

without exercising more activity than was his wont.

“I believe the man thinks,” said Ella to herself, “as Mr. Callum used to

do, that I am a witch, for he flees me as a fowl flees the hawk. If I

could but win his ear for half an hour, there might be an end of this

ill-will between him and Fergus, which is a scandal to relations, and to

those who, living far from war, ought to live in peace.”

Where enmity once creeps in, it is difficult to preserve peace with any

of the parties concerned. After having missed Rob, Ella found that Janet

was offended at her having sought him; and it was with some difficulty

that she brought her sister-in-law to acknowledge that a quarrel has

done quite enough mischief when it separates two families, and that no

advantage can arise from its involving a third.

Before many hours had elapsed, the children came running to their

mother, crying—

“The boat! the boat! She is warping into the Bay. Father will be on

shore presently.”

“It cannot be our boat!” said Ella, turning pale, however, as she spoke.

“It must be one of the station boats.”

A glance showed her that it was indeed her husband’s vessel coming in

already, instead of three or four days hence, as she had expected. Her

only way of accounting for this quick return was by supposing that some

accident had happened on board. The wind was contrary, so that it must

be some time before the crew could land, and Ella was not disposed to

wait for tidings. She commanded her children not to go out and tell

Janet, who, being busy within doors, might not know of the return; and

then went down to the place where Murdoch’s old boat was lying, obtained

a hasty leave to use it and help to launch it, seized the oars and

pushed off, and was presently alongside her husband’s vessel. Fergus was

already half over the side, ready to jump down to his sister, and

impatient to gain the shore, while Angus in vain attempted to hold him

back.

“Push off, Ella!” cried Angus. “Do not come near till I bring him to

reason.”

Seeing that her husband and brother were both safe, Ella repressed her

anxiety to know what had happened, and by one vigorous pull shot off out

of Fergus’s reach. He threw himself back into the vessel, and trod the

little deck like one in a towering passion.

“My husband! my brother!” cried Ella, in a tone which reached the hearts

of both, “you have not quarrelled?”

“O no! nor ever shall,” said Angus, laying his hand on Fergus’s

shoulder, “and least of all this day.”

“Do you think I could fall out with Angus?” said Fergus. “No! I must be

sunk indeed before I could do that. It is he who has kept me from ruin

till now, and it is he who would make me think I am not ruined to-day.”

Ruined!—The truth was soon told. Fergus’s nets were destroyed. They had

been safe the night before. This morning, when he was preparing to throw

them, he found them cut almost to shreds. If he had had money to buy

more, they could not be provided in time. The season was over; his

benefit was lost; and with it went all hopes of making up his rent by

the day it would become due, and of supplying the additions he had

proposed to the comforts of his little ones.

Ella’s suspicions lighted upon Rob even before she heard Fergus declare

that it could be nobody else. A sudden thought having struck her, she

came alongside once more, and having communicated with her husband in a

tone which Fergus could not overhear, she again departed, shaping her

course for Murdoch’s dwelling.

Rob was lying on the beach asleep, as she expected; and beside him was

Dan, also asleep. If they had been awake, they would not have seen

Angus’s vessel which was now behind the point to their right. Ella

stepped on shore and wakened Rob, saying,

“I see you have no business of your own this bright noon, Rob; so come

and take an oar with me.”

Rob started up when he saw who was standing over him. He wished his tall

cousin far over seas, or anywhere but at his elbow.

“Ask Dan,” said he. “Dan! here’s my cousin Ella wants a trip. Take an

oar with her, will ye?”

“No,” replied Ella. “Let Dan finish his dream.”

“Meg is stouter than I at the oar,” pleaded Rob.

“It is you that I want, and that this moment,” said Ella, pointing his

way to the boat, towards which Rob shuffled unwillingly, like a

school-boy going in search of the rod with which he is to be whipped.

Instead of giving him an oar, Ella took both; and as he sat opposite her

with nothing to do, he felt very silly, and this feeling was a bad

preparation for what was to follow. When they were fairly beyond the

breakers, Ella rested on her oars, and, looking her companion full in

the face, asked him where he had passed the previous night. Rob looked

up to the sky, back to the shore, and around upon the waters, and then

scratching his head, asked,

“What was that ye said, cousin Ella?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Well; where should I have passed the night?”

“That is for you to answer. I ask again where you were when the moon set

last night?”

Rob shuffled in his talk as well as in his gait. He told how he

oftentimes spent his time on the rocks rather than bear the smell of

putrid fish under his father’s roof; and how Meg had foretold a bad

night, and it turned out fine; and many other things that had nothing to

do with Ella’s question. She let him go on till, by turning the point,

they came in sight of the Flora standing south-west. She directed his

attention to it, saying that the Flora was her object. Rob swore a deep

oath and demanded to be set on shore again, cursing himself for having

come without knowing whither he was to be taken. Ella’s steady eye was

still upon him when she asked the reason of this sudden horror of

meeting his cousins and boarding their boat: adding,

“I fancy it is not so very long since you were on board the Flora of

your own accord.”

Rob had sense enough to see that he only betrayed himself by showing

eagerness to get back, and therefore held his peace till they approached

the Flora, when he hailed Angus, requesting him to help Ella on board;

and then said to his companion,

“I’ll take the boat straight back with pleasure, cousin, with your

thanks, I suppose, to Duncan Hogg for the use of it.”

“Not yet,” said Ella; “I have more to say to you. Now, Rob, tell me

honestly whether you were at home all last night, and here the mischief

may end; but if you will not give an account to us, you must to the

magistrate at the station. If you are innocent you can have no objection

to clear yourself; if you are guilty, depend upon it you will meet with

more mercy from your cousins than from a stranger who comes to execute

justice?”

“As sure as ever anything happens, you always suspect me,” muttered Rob.

“What care I what happens to Fergus, or what he makes of his benefit?”

“O then, you know what has happened,” observed Ella, “and yet I have not

told you.”

Rob, finding that he only gave new occasion of suspicion by everything

he said, took refuge in sullen silence, got on board at Ella’s command,

and sat immovably looking at the sea as they steered for Islay, having

fastened the little boat to the stern of the Flora.

Rob’s courage or obstinacy failed him when the station became visible,

the white house of Mr. M’Kenzie, the magistrate, appearing at some

little distance above and behind the pier, the cooperage, the curing

house and the village. Ella, who watched an opportunity of saving the

culprit from a public exposure, was by his side the moment he showed an

inclination to speak.

“If ye will only just say ye are willing to make reparation, and will

never play such an unkind prank again,” said she, “I will intercede with

Fergus to forgive you.”

“What may be the cost of the nets?”

“More than you can make up without hard work; but it may be made up; and

I would fain set ye home, Rob, without having seen the magistrate’s

face.”

Rob muttered that he did not see why he should be brought to justice

more than others that did the same trick. It was but a prank; and when

they were boys and no magistrate within reach, nobody talked of

justice.—Ella reminded him that Mr. Callum had united all the offices of

law and justice in his own person when the island was inhabited by few

except themselves; but that circumstances had now changed, and relations

multiplied, and that property must be protected from the player of

pranks as well as from the thief.

Fergus, touched by the kindness of his brother and sister, controlled

his passion, and received Rob’s submission with more grace than it was

tendered with, agreeing to take compensation as the offender should be

able to give it, provided nets could be obtained at the station on

promise of future payment.

----------------------------

CHAPTER IV.

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER.

None of the party left the station without having seen the face of the

magistrate. He was in the store-house when Fergus went to make his

application for nets.

“What makes you want so many feet of netting at once?” asked Mr.

Mackenzie; “and in such a hurry too. I hope yours have not been

destroyed?”

“Indeed but they have, your honour; and another such loss would destroy

me.”

“The law must be put in force in its utmost rigour,” declared the

magistrate;—whereupon Rob hastily withdrew to the cooperage, where he

might be out of sight. “Scarcely a day passes,” continued Mr. Mackenzie,

“without information of some act of violence or another. How do you

suppose this happens, Mr. Angus?”

“Through jealousy, I believe, sir. We seldom hear of thefts——”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Angus. I have had several complaints within a

few days of depredations on the fishing grounds in the lochs where the

cod are just showing themselves.”

“I rather think even these thefts must arise from revenge more than from

a desire of gain; for there is or ought to be no want at present through

the whole extent of the fishery. Some, like my brother Fergus, are

reduced to difficulty by the destruction of their implements; but in

such a season as this, there can be no absolute distress for any who are

willing to work.”

“I scarcely know which is the most painful,” replied the magistrate; “to

see men snatching bread out of one another’s mouths through jealousy and

spite, or under the impulse of pressing want. The worst of it is, the

last usually follows the first. This enemy of your brother’s, who has

been injuring him now without a pretence, may plead starvation in excuse

for some other act of violence hereafter.”

“I trust you are mistaken, sir,” replied Angus. “I trust the miseries of

poverty that I have seen elsewhere are far from our shores.”

“The first sign of their approach, Angus, is when men begin to fancy

their interests opposed to each other,—which the interests of men in

society can never be. Fair competition leads to the improvement of the

state of all; but the jealousy which tempts to injure any interest

whatever is the infallible token that distress is at hand. You have seen

enough of the world to know this to be a general truth, Angus. Why do

you dispute it in the present case?”

“Perhaps my own interest in the issue blinds me,” returned Angus. “I

have seen enough in other countries of what you describe to make me

melancholy when I witness men pulling one another’s fortunes to pieces

instead of building up the prosperity of the whole by labouring together

at that of every part. Whether I hear of different classes in a

commercial country petitioning for impediments to be thrown in one

another’s way, or see (as I saw in Canada) jealous neighbours levelling

one another’s fences in the dark, or laying siege to them in the

day-time, I feel sure that destruction is ready to step in and beggar

them all, whether it be in the shape of a prohibitory duty imposed by

government, or of wild cattle that come to trample down the corn on

which the quarrellers depend.”

“You once told us of some who united to make a road,” said Ella, who had

now joined her husband. “That was wiser than pulling down fences.”

“Where all helped to give each other the fair advantage of a road,”

replied her husband, “a flourishing settlement presently arose among the

fertile fields. Where the fences were levelled, there was soon no need

of fences. Some who had dwelt within them lay under the sod, hunger

having cut short their days, and others were gone in search of food,

leaving their fields to grow into a wilderness once more.”

“Theirs was indeed the lowest degree of folly that can be conceived.”

“Not quite,” observed Mr. Mackenzie. “I can fancy a lower, though I do

not ask you to receive it as fact. This letting in of wild cattle to

trample the corn took place when but few wanted to be fed, and those few

had immediate resources. If, instead of this act of folly, the

perpetrators had waited till hundreds and thousands were in expectation,

with an appetite which the most ample harvests could not satisfy, and

had set fire to the produce at the very season when it was most wanted,

under the idea of vexing the holders of the land, what would you say

then?”

“There is nothing to be said, sir, but that such would be an act of mere

madness,—too evidently madness to be committed by more than an

individual, and that individual an escaped maniac.”

“The school of ignorance is the innermost court of Bedlam,” replied Mr.

Mackenzie; “and while there are any patients remaining in it, it is

possible that corn-stacks may be burned by discontented people with the

notion of revenging the wrongs of the starving. But I put it only as a

possibility, you know.—Can it be, Angus, that you do not see the

tendency of the acts of violence that are disturbing this very district?

Do you not see distress and ruin in full prospect if they are not

checked, and if, moreover, the temper of the people be not directly

reversed?”

“Our resources are so improved that I would fain hope the best; and yet

our numbers increase in full proportion, so that we had not need waste

any of our capital.”

“I think not indeed. I have been visiting every station on the coast and

in the islands, and I find the same state of things everywhere,—a

prosperity so unusual in these districts, that the people think their

fortune secure for ever, while they are hastening, by every possible

means, the approach of distress.”

“I hope you find the farms and pastures improving with the fishery?”

observed Angus.—“Everything depends upon the food keeping pace with the

employment.”

“The farms are improving to the utmost that skill and labour can make

them improve. There is the powerful stimulus of an increasing demand,

while there are increasing facilities of production. There is more

manure, there are better implements, and more cattle; so that some farms

produce actually double what they did when the fishery began.”

Angus shook his head, observing that this was not enough.

“They have done their best already in the way of increase,” said he.

“They may be improved for some time to come, and to a great degree; but

each improvement yields a less return: so that they will be further and

further perpetually from again producing double in ten years; and all

this time the consumers are increasing at a much quicker rate.”

“Not double in ten years surely?” said Ella.

“Certainly not; but say twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred, any number of

years you choose;—still, as the number of people doubles itself for

ever, while the produce of the land does not, the people must increase

faster than the produce. If corn produced corn without being wedded to

the soil, the rate of increase might be the same with that of the human

race. Then two sacks of barley might grow out of one, and two more again

out of each of those two—proceeding from one to two, four, eight,

sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on.”

“If capital could be made to increase in this way, I see, Angus, that

there could never be too many people in the world, or in our little

world, Garveloch.”

“Or if, on the other hand, human production could be kept down to the

same rate with the production of our fields, we need have no fear of a

deficiency of food. If the number of producers increased only in

proportion to the increase of food, there would be no distress of the

kind our islands were formerly afflicted with, and may be afflicted with

again. But nobody thinks of establishing such a proportion; and in the

meanwhile, food is yielded, though in larger quantities, in less and

less proportions, while the eaters go on doubling and doubling their

numbers perpetually.”

“Then, to be sure, it is madness to destroy one another’s means of

living,” cried Ella. “It seems the first duty of everybody to increase

the production of food; and yet, here we are, cutting one another’s nets

to pieces, and driving the fish away on which we depend for our

subsistence!”

“You do not wonder now,” said Mr. Mackenzie, “at my grief for the

ignorance of the people, and my disgust at the quarrels that have such

consequences. I assure you the season is actually lost in some of the

northern lochs; for, not only are some fishers left without nets or

lines, but the fish have made no stay, being alarmed by tumult; and it

is but too probable that they will not return.”

“And all this time,” continued Angus, “these very quarrellers go on

marrying early, and raising large families—that is, they bring offspring

into the world while they are providing as fast as possible for their

future starvation.”

“There is no need to do here as the Romans did,” said Mr. Mackenzie,

“and as many other nations have done—no need to offer bounties for the

increase of population.”

“I think not indeed,” said Ella. “It seems a thing to be checked, rather

than encouraged.”

“All depends on time and circumstances, Ella. When Noah and his little

tribe stepped out of the ark into a desolated world, the great object

was to increase the number of beings, who might gather and enjoy the

fruits which the earth yielded, in an abundance overpowering to the few

who were there to consume. And the case is the same with every infant

nation which is not savage.”

“Savages do not value or subsist upon the fruits of the earth so much as

upon the beasts of the field,” said Ella;—“at least so Angus told me of

those who have retreated from before us in America.”

“Savages care for little beyond supplying the pressing wants of the

moment,” replied Angus. “They make no savings; they have no capital; and

their children die off as fast as poverty and disease can drive them out

of the world. There is no growth of either capital or population among

savages.”

“Those have indeed a poor chance for life and health,” said Mr.

Mackenzie, “whose parents feed at the best on raw roots and berries, who

sometimes keep themselves alive by swallowing grubs and worms, and at

other times fast for a week together. Shrunk, deformed, and weakly

themselves, their offspring are little likely to survive a scarcity,

even if it were possible to rear them under the most favourable

circumstances.”

“It is absurd,” said Angus, “to doubt the rate at which the human race

increases on account of the decrease of numbers among savages. The whole

question is concerning the proportion which capital and population bear

to each other; and it cannot therefore be tried where no capital

exists.”

“I suppose,” observed Ella, “that flocks and herds are the first capital

which a tribe possesses in any large quantity. How do numbers increase

among people who seek pasture but do not till the ground?”

“Such tribes are most numerous where pastures are fine, and weak where

the natural produce of the earth is scanty. But each continues a tribe,

and cannot become a nation while following a pastoral life. Their flocks

cannot multiply beyond a certain point unless the food of the flocks is

increased; and they who subsist upon the flocks cannot, in like manner,

multiply beyond a certain point, unless the flocks on which they feed

are multiplied.”

“But they not only do not increase,” observed Mr. Mackenzie, “they are

lessened perpetually by one or another of the unfortunate accidents to

which their condition subjects them. Pastoral tribes are particularly

prone to war. Instead of keeping possession of a certain territory on

which they always dwell, they rove about from one tract of country to

another, leaving undefended some which they call their own;—another

tribe takes possession; and then comes a struggle and a destructive war,

which reduces their numbers. Many of these tribes live in a state of

continual hostility, and therefore dwindle away.”

“But when they begin to settle and till the ground,” said Ella, “I

suppose their numbers increase again.”

“Yes; the Jews, after they were established in Canaan, became an

agricultural nation, and multiplied very rapidly. It was made, both by

their laws and customs, a point of duty to marry and to marry young; and

when the check of war was removed, their small territory became very

thickly peopled.”

“I suppose it was to repair the waste of war,” said Ella, “that the

bounty on population was offered among the Romans.”

“Not only from this cause,” replied Mr. Mackenzie, “but to repair the

breaches made in other ways. In the early days of Rome, the population

was too large for the capital in intervals of peace, as appears from the

law of their king Romulus, that no child should be exposed to die in the

desert before three years of age—a proof that it had been the previous

practice to expose children under that age. In after times—in the days

of Roman glory—the population was apt to decrease, even in times of

peace, from the faults in the distribution of property. The land had

fallen into the hands of a few great proprietors, and was not tilled by

free labour. Swarms of slaves were brought in from all conquered

countries, and they alone were employed where free labour should have

claimed a share of labour and reward; and there was therefore no

subsistence for a middling and lower class of free people. Their numbers

dwindled so as to alarm their rulers and give occasion to express laws

for the encouragement of population. If, instead of passing laws to

promote early marriages, and offering privileges to those who had a

certain number of children, the Roman emperors had allowed liberty to

the people they governed to labour and subsist, there would have been no

complaint of a deficiency of numbers, but rather an inquiry, as there is

among us, how all that are born are to be fed?”

“But do you mean, sir,” said Angus, “that there were not children born

to the lower classes of the Romans, or that they were born and died

through want?”

“Multitudes that were born died immediately, from being exposed; and

besides this, marriage was less practised during these ages of the Roman

empire than among the same number of people in any other country.”

“The laws were not of much use then.”

“And how can we wonder, when it was actually the custom to give away

corn gratis to thousands upon thousands who had no means of earning it!

What inducement has a man to marry, when he must either expose his

children, or see them die at home, or take his chance of a gratuitous

dole of food for them? The laws, if they acted at all, would not act

upon these large classes, but upon those of a higher rank, who would

marry if there were no law.”

“If in any country,” observed Ella, “there are no laws to encourage or

to check marriage, it seems as if that country ought to afford a fair

example of the natural increase of numbers.”

“Nay,” said her husband, “human laws have little influence in this case,

while the natural laws which regulate the production of life and of

capital are seldom suffered to act unchecked. Leave the people of any

country as free as you please to marry or not as they like, still, if

capital is controlled in any way, the population is controlled also.”

“Where then,” inquired Ella, “does capital act the most freely? Where in

the world may we see an example of the natural proportions in which men

and subsistence increase?”

“There has never been an age or country known,” replied Mr. Mackenzie,

“where at once the people have been so intelligent, their manners so

pure, and their resources so abundant, as to give the principle of

increase an unobstructed trial. Savage life will not do, because the

people are not intelligent. Colonies will not do, because they are not

free from vicious customs. An old empire will not do, because the means

of subsistence are restricted.”

“A new colony of free and intelligent people in a fertile country

affords the nearest approach to a fair trial,” observed Angus. “In some

of the best settlements I saw in America, the increase of capital and of

people went on at a rate that would scarcely be believed in an old

country.”

“And that of the people the fastest, I suppose?”

“Of course; but still capital was far a-head, though the population is

gaining upon it every year. When the people first went, they found

nothing but capital—all means of production and no consumers but

themselves. They raised corn in the same quantity from certain fields

every year. There was too much corn at first in one field for a hundred

mouths; but this hundred became two, four, eight, sixteen hundred, and

so on, till more and more land was tilled, the people still spreading

over it, and multiplying perpetually.”

“And when all is tilled and they still multiply,” said Ella, “they must

improve their land more and more.”

“And still,” said Angus, “the produce will fall behind more and more, as

every improvement, every outlay of capital yields a less return. Then

they will be in the condition of an old country like England, where many

are but half fed, where many prudent determine not to marry, and where

the imprudent must see their children pine in hunger, or waste under

disease till they are ready to be carried off by the first attack of

illness.”

“May this never be the case in Garveloch!” cried Ella.

“The more waste of capital there is,” said Mr. Mackenzie, “the sooner

will that day come.”

“But our islands are now in the state of a new colony, like that Angus

was speaking of,” said Ella. “Want must be far from us at present.”

“Except that we have not a fertile soil or a good climate,” replied her

husband. “It is true we do not depend entirely on corn;—we had not need

for our home supply can never be large. We have the resource of fish,

but it is so precarious a resource, that we ought to keep some means of

subsistence in reserve. If the herrings should desert us for a season or

two, and the harvest fail, some of us must starve, or all be

half-starved, unless we have a stock in reserve.”

“Poor Fergus!” exclaimed Ella. “No wonder he was grieved and angry this

morning! Five children and no capital stored up! He may well watch the

seasons and tremble at a storm.”

“I am sorry,” observed Mr. Mackenzie, “that he will not give up the name

of the offender who has injured him. It is necessary to the public

safety that this wanton destruction of property should be put an end to;

and I give it in charge to you, Angus, to see that full compensation is

made, or that the culprit is delivered into my hands to be made an

example of. If it had been generally known that I am here to administer

the law, I would not have yielded this much; but as I have only just

arrived, and am but beginning to make known the law, I do not insist on

an information being laid this time. Henceforward I always shall; for

connivance at an offence is itself an offence.”

----------------------------

CHAPTER V.

MORE HASTE THAN GOOD SPEED.

Fergus meanwhile was consulting Ronald as to the best mode in which

Rob’s labour could be applied towards repairing the damage he had

caused. He was too stupid and awkward to be entrusted with any

occupation in which he would not be overlooked by some more competent

person; and Ronald knew, though he did not say so, that there would be

perpetual danger of a quarrel if Rob became Fergus’s assistant in

fishing. Ronald, therefore, kindly offered to give Rob some inferior

employment about the cooperage, providing for his support out of his

wages, and paying the rest over to Fergus till the whole debt should be

cleared. Rob, to whom all labour was disagreeable alike, sulkily

consented, and swore at himself and everybody else when he saw the Flora

clear out from the little harbour, and leave him behind to repair by the

labour of weeks and months the mischief he had done in two short hours.

He had not only the cost of the nets to pay, but the amount which Fergus

would have cleared by the benefit he was now prevented from taking.

While he was involuntarily saving during this winter, his neighbours in

Garveloch were going on as variously as might be expected from the

difference in their knowledge, in their desires, and in their habits.

The Company was prosperous in a very high degree, and so, therefore,

might their labourers of every rank have been; but in this society, as

in all, some were wise and some were foolish; some provided for a time

of darkness, and some did not.

None were more provident than Angus and Ella, or provident in a wiser

manner. Seeing so clearly as they did the importance of an increase of

capital in a society which was adding to its numbers every day, they

reflected and consulted much on the modes and rates of increase of

capital differently applied, and saw that the interest of the Company,

and of every individual employed by it, was one and the same. Since

capital grows from savings only, there seemed no hope that that of the

Company should keep pace with the demands upon it; but something might

be done by increasing the value of the capital,—by making it secure, by

lessening the attendant expenses, by using every possible method of

making production easy and rapid. If all the corn that was raised in the

islands had been used for seed-corn, instead of nine-tenths of it being

eaten; if all the fish had been turned into its market-price on the

spot, without any expense of curing, packing, and conveying, this

capital would still have doubled itself much more slowly than the number

of people who were to subsist upon it; and when their subsistence and

all attendant expenses were subtracted, the process became much slower.

Yet it was a favourable time and a favourable set of circumstances for

capital to grow in. The property was secure, being under the protection

of law well administered, and under the management of an united body of

directors. The expenses were small, the position of the different

stations being advantageous, and the required apparatus very simple.

Production was at the same time easy; for the herrings came regularly,

and the seasons had thus far been favourable. Here, then, capital might

grow, if ever or anywhere; and it did grow; but the demands upon it grew

still faster; and therefore Angus and Ella guarded the capital of their

employers as if it had been their own, while they added to their private

store as fast as was consistent with a due enjoyment of the fruits of

their labour. Though they had nine children, they were at present in

more favourable circumstances for saving than some of their neighbours

who had few or none. Dan and his Noreen, for instance, saved nothing;

how should they, when their hut scarcely protected them from the rain

and snow, or their clothing from the chilling winds,—when there was not

even the slightest preparation made for the tender little one that was

soon to come into their charge? There can be no saving expected from

those whose commonest wants are not supplied. The Murdochs were in

nearly as poor a condition; and since they had never managed to avoid

sinking, even in their best days, it was scarcely likely that they

should now. Fergus toiled and toiled, and just continued to keep his

place in the little society, but he could do no more. The consumption of

his family just equalled the supply afforded by his labour, so that he

could not, with all his efforts, set apart anything to begin saving

upon. His nest-egg (whenever he thought he had one) had always

disappeared before the day was out. There was nothing for it, but hoping

that good seasons and full employment would last till his boys’ labour

should more than equal their consumption, and should not only release

him from the charge of their maintenance, but assist in the support of

the little ones, who must be nearly helpless for years to come.

If this society had been constituted like that of Rome, of which we have

spoken, there would have been little or no saving, and therefore no

provision for an increase in the number of its members. Where society is

composed of a few very rich people and a multitude very poor, the least

saving of all is made. The rich only _can_ save in such a case, and they

do not perceive a sufficient motive for doing so. They reckon on being

always rich, and do not see why they should not enjoy their wealth to

the utmost, year by year. Where society is composed of a few moderately

rich and many sufficiently supplied with necessaries, there is a much

better chance of an accumulation of capital, since the majority of the

people have then a hope of raising their children to the rank of the

moderately rich. They are free from the recklessness of the miserably

poor, and from the thoughtless extravagance of the possessors of

overgrown wealth. To this middling class belonged Angus, the widow

Cuthbert, Ronald and the Duffs; and they therefore made the largest

savings in proportion to their earnings. Mr. Mackenzie spent all his

income, having no children, and feeling himself provided for for life.

The naval superintendent, captain Forbes, a spirited young officer, was

so far from attempting to save, that he flung his money about during his

flying visits to the stations till he had none left, and barely escaped

debt. But Duff, who was not placed beyond the danger of bad seasons,

widow Cuthbert, and Angus, who had children dependent on them, and

Ronald, who regarded the families of Ella and Fergus with strong

affection, had motives to save, and did their full share towards making

the capital of the society grow.

One day the next spring, Ronald appeared before his sister’s door.

“Welcome, brother!” exclaimed Ella. “Is it a leisure day with you? and

are you come to spend it with us?”

“It is a leisure day, and the last I shall have for long; and I am come

to tell you why, and to consult with Angus about a little business of

his. This is the reason that I came myself instead of sending Kenneth.”

“I began to think you never meant to come, you have been so considerate

in sparing Kenneth. But sit ye down,—aye, outside the door if you like,

for it is a true spring day,—and Angus will be up from the boat

presently.”

Angus was soon seen hastening to meet Ronald, who then told his news.

Captain Forbes had arrived at the islay station in high spirits. A new

market for their produce was unexpectedly opened in the West Indies. It

was his belief that all the fish they could possibly prepare during the

season would be insufficient to meet the sudden demand; and he came to

see how many boats could be mustered, and how many labourers could be

withdrawn from other employments to aid in the fishery.

“Now is Fergus’s time,” said Ella, “for getting his two boys hired at

the station. They are young, to be sure; but as so many labourers are

wanted, their services will be received, I dare say.”

“Now is Rob’s time for clearing off his debt to Fergus,” observed Angus;

“for I suppose, Ronald, wages will rise at the cooperage. More barrels

will be wanted than you can easily prepare.”

“No doubt,” replied Ronald. “Now is your time, Angus, for building the

platform you were talking of last year; and I came to offer what help I

can. I will spare Kenneth for a week now to work with you; and I give

you notice that you must take him now or not at all. And if there should

be any difficulty about the little capital wanted for the work, I have a

few pounds which are much at your service.”

Angus thankfully accepted the offer of his boy’s help, but had no

occasion to borrow money. He should lose no time, he said, in erecting

his platform, if the tidings Ronald brought should prove correct. Much

time and labour in lading and unlading his vessel might be economized by

the employment of a crane; and he thought he could not invest his

savings better than in making such a provision at the commencement of a

busier season than had ever been known in Garveloch.

Ella’s apprehension was that the demand would be only temporary. On this

head Ronald could give her no satisfaction, as he did not know enough of

the circumstances to judge: but he thought that all who were called upon

to use only their labour, or a small capital which yields a quick

return, might rejoice in this sudden prosperity without any fear of

consequences; and even Angus’s investment of fixed capital would be

perfectly safe. If it was doubtful the year before whether the erection

of a platform and crane would not be worth while, it could scarcely fail

to answer now, when there was to be a large addition to the profits of

an ordinary season, even if that addition should be only temporary.

Angus proposed going to the spot to take measurements, and make an

estimate of the expense.

“If you will wait till noon is past,” said Ella, “I can go with you. I

must be taught your plan, Angus, that I may answer for you when you are

absent.”

Another object in this delay was to set her brother at liberty to go

where she knew his heart was all this time. While she was finishing her

household business, uncle Ronald went down with some of the little ones

to launch a tiny boat,—a present from Kenneth,—in one of the pools on

the beach. Their mother heard their shouts of glee, and thought within

herself that there were no festival days like those when her brother or

her boy came from the station.

In a few minutes the children were playing without their uncle’s

assistance. He had gone to the widow Cuthbert’s. Katie frankly held out

her hand as he entered, and bade him welcome to Garveloch. She was just

spreading the table for dinner, and invited him to sit down with herself

and the children: but when he declined, she made no ceremony, but called

the little ones from their play; and the meal went forward as if no

guest had been there, except that Katie conversed freely with her friend

Ronald.

“Hugh is much grown,” observed Ronald. “I did not know him at first when

he came to see me land.”

“I knew you though,” cried Hugh, “and I went to see whether you brought

me a tub like the one you gave Bessie. I want a tub for my fish when I

catch any.”

“I will make you a tub bigger than Bessie’s, and Kenneth shall bring

it.”

“I wish you would bring it,” cried Hugh. “You promised me a boat the

last time you came, a long, long while ago, and you never sent it.”

“Yes, indeed I did, Hugh, and I thought Kenneth had given it to you.”

Katie explained that it had been delivered safe, but had strangely

disappeared before Hugh had seen it; and that as he never asked about

it, she had not vexed him with explaining what had happened.

“Why did not you ask me for another?” said Ronald. “I do wish you would

be free with me as an old friend.”

“Indeed I always am,” replied Katie. “I would ask a favour of you as

easily as of Angus or Fergus.”

After a moment’s pause, Ronald told his tidings of the prospect of a

busy season, and offered to purchase hemp for the widow and send it by

Kenneth, before the price should rise, if she had not already a

sufficient stock for her net-making for the year. Katie thankfully

accepted his services, and looked so cheerfully round upon her children,

when she heard of the approaching prosperity, that Ronald was glad he

had taken courage to come and tell her.

When the meal was over, Katie took up her employment and seemed far from

wishing that Ronald should go; but she kept little Hugh beside her to

show Ronald how he was learning to help his mother in her work.

By the time several subjects of mutual interest had been talked over,

Ronald recollected that the hour was long past when he ought to have met

Angus on the beach, and he rose to go, offering to look in again in the

evening before his departure; to which Katie made no objection.

Dinner was over at Angus’s house, but Ella, who guessed where her

brother was, would not have him called.—She suspected the truth,—that he

came to observe whether there was any chance of his winning Katie at

last, and to consult his sister, in case of being unable to discover for

himself how Katie felt towards him. He was rather disheartened by the

interview. She was so frank and friendly in her manner that he could not

believe she felt any of the restraint he laboured under—anything more

than the regard which she testified to his sister and brother. Ella

could not contradict him. She was far from thinking the case a hopeless

one; but she believed that time and patience were still and would long

be necessary. She assured her brother that precipitation would probably

ruin all; and that his best chance was in quietly waiting till he should

have further opportunities of winning upon her. This determined Ronald

not to speak at present, as, in his impatience of suspense, he had

nearly resolved to do.

When the little party went down to the place where Angus proposed to

erect his new building, several loungers gathered round to watch what

was going to be done. Ronald was looked upon as so awfully learned a

man, especially when using his rule and frowning over his calculations,

that strangers,—such strangers as were in Garveloch,—did not venture to

speak to him. They made their inquiries of the children in preference.

First came Noreen lagging along the shore in the gray cloak which she

was supposed never to put off, as she had never been seen without it,

winter or summer. Wrapt in it, and hanging over her arm, head downwards,

was her baby, feebly crying, as usual, and as usual disregarded; for

nothing short of a shrill scream seemed to be thought by Noreen worthy

of attention. Her cap was nearly the same colour as her cloak, and her

hair did not tend to ornament her further than by helping to conceal a

black eye.

“Annie, darling, and how busy you all seem! And you nursing the babby as

if you’d had one in your arms all your days, my darling.”

“I dare not hold him as you hold your’s,” said Annie. “Look! the little

thing’s face is as black——O look!”

“As black as your eye,” cried Bessie.

“Is it my eye, darling? O, it’s a trifle that Dan gave me,—the

villain,—when the spirits were in him.”

“What! did Dan strike you?” cried Annie, who was old enough to know that

husbands and wives should not fall out like children.

“Strike me, darling! Yes, and the babby too. O, you should have heard

the babby bawl as loud as me.”

“Is not Dan very sorry?” asked Annie, coaxing the unfortunate infant.

“Is it sorry the ruffian would be? Not he; and why should he? ’Twas the

spirits that made him a villain for the time; but he is the mildest

husband of a noon-time that ever was seen. So, darling, don’t you go and

dream he isn’t a good enough man for me. Heaven’s blessing on him!—He

never bothers me as your father would, Annie. We’re just content,

without all the measuring and building, and salting and packing, that

you have to do at the father’s bidding, my darling. What’s all this

trouble about now?”

Annie was too anxious to defend her father to answer the question

immediately; so Noreen turned round to the little ones who were jumping

from the ledges of rock.

“And what’s all this trouble about, jewels?”

“The captain is coming! the captain is coming!” cried they.