172 WANTED A LODGING. [CHAP. iv. 



question. Mrs. Jamison, the landlady, shook her lawn- 

 bedizened head the inn, alas, was full, overflowing in fact, 

 for a gentleman had engaged the coach-house ! It was feared, 

 too, that every house in the village was in a like predicament, 

 and further inquiry soon confirmed this to us rather awful 

 statement, and so I was left standing at the inn-door, with 

 a bitingly shrewd companion, to solve this problem Given the 

 barest possible accommodation throughout all Corry for only 

 forty-eight strangers, how to shake fifty into the village, so 

 that each might have somewhere to lay his head ? This is a 

 problem, I suspect, that few can answer. What was to be 

 done ? The steamboat had gone ! Were we then to tramp on 

 to Brodick, with more than a suspicion of a rainy night in the 

 moist atmosphere, or try a shake-down of clean straw in a 

 lime quarry ? It might have come to that, and as both of us 

 had before then camped out for a night by the sheltered side 

 of a haystack, we might have arranged, fortified by the aid of 

 a dram, or perhaps two, to pass a tolerable night in the lime 

 cavern beside a very canny-looking horse-of-all-work that we 

 caught a glimpse of through the gloom of the place while 

 peeping into it. 



But a Douglas to the rescue ! And who is Douglas ? it 

 will be asked. Well, the ever-active Douglas in his own per- 

 son combines the offices of boatman, quarrier, postman, 

 butcher, grocer, and general merchant, and is, in fact, to use a 

 Scotch phrase, the "Johnny A'things" of the village a dealer 

 in 



" Meal, barley, butter, and cheese ; 



Soap, starch, blue, and peas ; 



Train-oil, tobacco, pipes, and teas ; 



And whisky and loch leeches." 



It fortunately occurred that a modest maiden lady, a very 

 " civil-spoken" woman indeed, by name Grace Macalister, had 

 been disappointed of two Glasgow gentlemen, who had engaged 



