We stood looking down a while, for with the stopping of the snow a weight seemed to be lifted from us, and then made our way downwards towards the sea. After our fight upwards, the descent seemed easy and almost calm, although the wind was howling still; but we were close to farmed land now, and company, and once in a field sheltered by the wood of the Point, we came on sheep, standing and lying close in by the trees, and Dan bawled into my ear, "The hogs are doing finely, Hamish; I hadna expected to see them," and I remembered that we were wintering sheep with old Hector of the Point as well as Easdale and Birrican. We struck the shore road and passed the big rock, and the sea was washing over the road, carrying spars, and bamboos, and sailors' beds, and leaving them high and dry on the fields by the roadside.
Groups of noisy seamen passed us with a great clop-clopping of sea-boots, and many little thatch houses we hurried by, until we came to the Quay Inn, where there were many people gathered, and pushed ourselves through drunken, quarrelling sailors to the counter.
[1] Forage.
CHAPTER VII.
WE SAIL IN McKELVIE'S SKIFF TO THE HOLY ISLAND.
Through the throng of bearded sailors we strode and made our way to the kitchen of the Quay Inn. A place sacred to kenspeckle folk it was, and from its smoke-stained rafters hung many pieces of bacon and dried shallots, and there were also bunches of centaury, and camomile, and dandelion root, and bogbean, for the goodman's wife was cunning in medicines of the older-fashioned sort. In this place the noise from the common room was not so plainly heard, and indeed it gave me the impression of a haven from the boisterous spirit there.
As I stood before the blazing fire, guiltily conscious of the puddle of water at my feet where the snow had melted, Dan left the kitchen by a door leading to a yard and stables, and I heard him speaking to some one; and then when he came back there was the goodwife with him, and Dan cried for a long hot drink, for the flesh was frozen on his bones. At that the goodwife, with many "to be sures" and "of courses," hurried herself here and there, and all the time she would be talking of the sheep in this terrible weather, and of our long tramp across the hill; and then she handed us the drink, and would not be having any payment at all for it, for were we not freens of her ain folk (however far out), and strangers too, moreover? And then the low door opened, and the innkeeper entered from the taproom, a dark man, very heavy across the shoulders, and a little bent on his legs like a sailor. I had seen him as we entered, black-bearded, silent, with his two swarthy sons, eyeing his company from below pent-house brows. His eyes, blue and keen, took us in from stem to stern, as the sailors say, and he came close to Dan before the fire, and—
"Ay," says he, "it'll be the boat again," and his voice was a growl.
"Just that," says Dan, sipping his drink, and then he talked quickly, and I heard him tell of Mirren Stuart's message and of Dol Rob Beag's treachery (for he had taken the word to the Preventives of where McGilp kept his cargo in the cove above the Snib before it was carted inland, or stowed in many an innocent-looking smack bound for the mainland).
"Dol Rob Beag will be slipping his cable one of these fine nights," growled the listener; and then, "There's just the caves at the Rhu Ban," [1] says he.