“Maybe I will some day.”
“I see no stock except a shaggy pony or two, or the few black cattle on the moor there,” observed the English gentleman.
“There are both pigs and poultry, if you could find out where they are,” said the laird laughing.
The gentleman looked round in vain, and then applied to farmer Murdoch himself.
“Do ye think we’ve no more cattle than them?” asked he proudly. “There are many more of the kine down below fishing.”
“Cattle fishing! What do you mean?”
“I just mean what I say,—the kine are getting fish for themselves in the pools below, and the pigs——”
The laird explained to his friend that all domestic animals, even horses, relish fish when their other food is poor of its kind; and that it is the custom of the native cattle to go down to the beach at low water, and help themselves out of the pools in which fish have been left by the retiring tide.
“Well, Murdoch; and your pigs and poultry,—where are they? Do your pigs live on wild ducks, and your fowls on sea-weed?”
“Na, na,” said Murdoch. “Where should they be but yonder? Ye’ll see them when ye go in to dinner.”