96 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY; OB, 



avoided by his neighbours as a man who lived on them with- 

 out asking their leave. "With neither character nor a settled 

 way of living, his wits, I am afraid, must have been often 

 whetted by his necessities : he stole lest he should starve. For 

 some time he had resided in the adjacent island of Muck ; 

 but, proving a bad tenant, he had been ejected by the agent 

 of the landlord, I believe a very worthy man, who gave him 

 half a boll of meal to get quietly rid of him, and pulled down 

 his house, when he had left the island, to prevent his return. 

 Betaking himself, with his boys, to a boat, he set out in quest 

 of some new lodgment. He made his first attempt or two 

 on the mainland, where he strove to drive a trade in begging, 

 but he was always recognised as the convicted sheep-stealer, 

 and driven back to the shore. At length, after a miserable 

 term of wandering, he landed in the winter season on Eigg, 

 where he had a grown-up son a miller ; and, erecting a wretch- 

 ed shed with some spars and the old sail of a boat placed slant- 

 ways against the side of a rock, he squatted on the beach, de- 

 termined, whether he lived or died, to find a home on the 

 island. The islanders were no strangers to the character of 

 the poor forlorn creature, and kept aloof from him, none of 

 them, however, so much as his own son ; and, for a time, my 

 friend the minister, aware that he had been the pest of every 

 community among which he had lived, stood aloof from him 

 too, in the hope that at length, wearied out, he might seek 

 for himself a lodgment elsewhere. There came on, however, 

 a dreary night of sleet and rain, accompanied by a fierce storm 

 from the sea ; and intelligence reached the manse late in the 

 evening, that the wretched sheep-stealer had been seized by 

 sudden illness, and was dying on the beach. There could be 

 no room for further hesitation in this case; and my friend 

 the minister gave instant orders that the poor creature should 

 be carried to the manse. The party, however, which he had 

 sent to remove him found the task impracticable. The night 



