[[1]] A small clock, with weights and pendulum exposed, that is hung against the wall.
"I was born, then, in Skye, and not fifty miles from the spot where I and Creggan here now live."
"You were born in Skye," interrupted Mrs. Nugent, "and yet you never go on shore!"
"Ah, madam! there is a reason for that, which I will presently tell you. But for just one day I shall go, I hope, before I die, and visit a green and lonesome grave close to the cliffs where the sea-birds scream, and where, for ever and for aye, one can hear the moan of the waves—the sweet, sad song of the sea.
"I was born in a beautiful glen, and down near to the beach was my father's cottage, only one of many that clustered here and there, forming a village without either street or lane, and more like the towns one sees in Madagascar than anything else. We were all poor enough, goodness knows, but still we were happy. Our farms were mere crofts, and we tilled only the tops of the ridge with the wooden plough, or what is called the crooked spade. We paid but little rent, it is true, but our wants were easily satisfied. We were called lazy by visitors who in summer passed through the glen. We were not. For well we knew that if we improved our land as some did, the grasping landlord would at once raise our rent.
"We were—and many Skyemen are to this day—in a condition of serfdom. The old feudal system still existed, and we had even to leave our own corn standing until we cut down and stooked that on the minister's large and beautiful glebe. For this we received nothing, and often before we were finished at the manse, a wild, wet storm would come on and our own little patches of grain would be spoiled.
"So far was feudalism carried, that the first and choicest of the fish we caught, whether mullet or saith or codling, had to be given to the minister, and the best of the crabs and lobsters also. In return for this the minister visited the sick, with medicine in his pocket—salts and senna or a nauseous pill. But he never brought food. And many an old man or woman, aye, and many an innocent child died, not of disease, but of sheer starvation, although the minister's barns and stackyards, and the landlord's also, were full to overflowing.
"It was not from choice that we dwelt in those windowless huts, with a raised stone in the centre, around which the fire was built, with simply a hole in the roof to let out the eye-racking smoke when it chose to go.
"But in dark, dreary winters those roof-holes not only permitted a little smoke to escape, but the snow to drift in. The soft, powdery snow also sifted in under the door, and through the apertures in the eaves which did duty as windows.
"It was no uncommon thing for some of these huts to be entirely buried in the snow. When one or two neighbours escaped they dug the rest out. For water we often had to melt the snow.