1 62 The Naturalist of Cumbrae. 



they wanted could not be supplied. The only biscuits 

 the shop could offer were so covered with red sweet- 

 meats that they were in no way tempting to the 

 appetite of travellers ready for a well-cooked steak or 

 a mutton chop. The highly genial hospitality of 

 which they were in the end partakers is thus described 

 by Mr. Robertson : 



" I inquired," he says, " of the landlord, who had now 

 come forward, if he had any beer. 



" He said he had, but that it could not be drunk on 

 the premises. 



" ( Well,' I said, 'we can drink it outside. Will you 

 please to draw the cork ? ' 



" This he declined to do, nor would he allow it to 

 be done in the house. 



" I said, would he allow me to knock the neck off 

 the bottle outside? 



" We understood that we might do as we pleased 

 outside, but that nothing in that way could be per- 

 mitted inside of the house. We left, not in the best of 

 humour. I brought the bottle with me, but Mrs. 

 Robertson protested that she would not taste the 

 beer. We came, as we thought, to guess pretty truly 

 the cause of the snarly refusal of the grocer to do any- 

 thing for us. He had no doubt seen us coming along 

 conversing with the policeman, and those two carters 

 that we found in the shop when we entered had been 

 getting their dram, and he thought that we were a 

 snare that the policeman was laying to entrap him, 

 for we could not see how he could be so rude if there 

 had not been some cause or another of that kind. 



" We sat down by the roadside. I did break the 



