“No; she is my aunt, but she is very good to me; takes as much care of me as if I was her own daughter. I don’t belong to this place. They have sent me here for my health.”
At this point they were interrupted by Mrs Anderson herself, who entered with a load of peat, which she flung down, shook her fist at the nose-flattener outside, and turned in astonishment to her visitor.
Of course our shipwrecked friend had to retail his story to the woman, and then learned from her that the island was a very large one, with a name unpronounceable by English lips, that it was very thinly inhabited, that it consisted almost entirely of pasture land, and that “the laird” owned a large portion of it, including the little fishing village of “Cove.”
While the woman was speaking an elderly man entered, whom she introduced as her husband Ian. To him Barret had to re-repeat his story, and then asked if he and his friends could obtain shelter in the village for the night.
“Iss it shelter ye’ll be wantin’? Ye’ll hev that an’ welcome, though it will be of the poorest. But in the mornin’ ye’ll gang up to the hoose, for the laird wud be ill-pleased if we keepit ye here.”
“Pray, who is this laird?” asked Barret; “your wife has already mentioned him.”
“Maister Gordon is his name. He lives near the heed o’ Loch Lossie. It iss over eight mile from here,” said Ian; “an’ a coot shentleman he iss, too. Fery fond o’ company, though it iss not much company that comes this way, for the steam-poats don’t veesit the loch reg’lar or often. He’ll be fery glad to see you, sir, an’ to help ye to git home. But we’d petter be goin’ to tell your freen’s that we can putt them up for the nicht. I’ll go pack with ye, an we’ll take the poy to help an’ carry up their things.”
“You forget that we have been wrecked,” returned Barret with a laugh, “and have no ‘things’ to carry, except our own damp carcases.”
“That’s true, sir, but we’ll be none the worse o’ the poy, what-ë-ver. Come away, Tonal’,” said Ian, as they started back along the shore. “It iss under the Eagle Cliff where ye came to laund, I make no doot?”
“Well, I suppose it was; at least, there is a range of cliffs close to the place where our raft struck.”