THE SHORE-SEARCHER. 267 



thwarts, baling-dishes, and other articles of boat gearing as came 

 in his way, even though he knew that they belonged to his neigh- 

 bours, and had only been carried away from their proper places by 

 an unusually high tide or a gale of wind. This was a breach of the 

 etiquette and good-neighbourhood prevailing among boatmen that 

 could not be tolerated. A Drumarbin man, therefore, who had lost 

 some oars in a storm, and suspected that the Fort-William shore- 

 searcher had found and kept them, determined on reprisal, and in 

 hope of curing him of such shabby peculations, to give him a good 

 fright, which could be done the more easily, as the shore-searcher was 

 a nervous, timid creature, brimful of belief in apparitions, ghosts, 

 and ghost stories of the wildest and most improbable character. 

 Getting up one morning after a storm, the Drumarbin man put on 

 a pair of new shoes, and slipping to the shore, unobserved by the 

 wrecker, whom he could see wandering along the beach, as was his 

 custom, in the grey day-break, he lay down at length on the shingle, 

 and covered his head and body down to his ankles with the drift- 

 ware that had been cast up by the storm. All he left exposed was 

 his feet, on which we have said there was a pair of good sub- 

 stantial new shoes. Meanwhile the "wrecker" was advancing 

 along the beach, carefully searching about, and stooping from time to 

 time, oyster-catcher or curlew-wise, in order to pick up such waifs 

 and strays as he fancied worth the while. At last he reached the 

 recumbent and sea-ware-covered Drumarbin man. The shoes at 

 once caught his eye, and as he gazed wistfully on what he con- 

 sidered the most fortunate and valuable jetsam that had fallen to 

 his luck for a long time, he was heard to soliloquise, "A 

 drowned man ! Poor fellow ; but he has good shoes on, and as he 

 can have no more use for them, I may as well take them now as 

 anybody else later in the day." No sooner said than done. 

 Throwing down his bundle of gatherings, he pulled the shoes 

 evenly and steadily off the supposed " body's " feet, and was 



