A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 97 



was pitch dark ; and the road, dangerous with precipices, and 

 blocked up with rough masses of rock and stone, they found 

 wholly impassable with so helpless a burden. And so, admi- 

 nistering some cordials to the poor hapless wretch, they had 

 to leave him in the midst of the storm, with the old wet sail 

 flapping about his ears, and the half-frozen rain pouring in 

 upon him in torrents. He must have passed a miserable 

 night, but it could not have been a whit more miserable than 

 that passed by the minister in the manse. As the wild blast 

 howled around his comfortable dwelling, and shook the case- 

 ments as if some hand outside were assaying to open them, 

 or as the rain pattered sharp and thick on the panes, and 

 the measured roar of the surf rose high over every other sound, 

 he could think of only the wretched creature exposed to the 

 fury of a tempest so terrible, as perchance wrestling in his 

 death agony in the darkness beside the breaking wave, or as 

 already stiffening on the shore. He was early astir next 

 morning, and almost the first person he met was the poor 

 sheep-stealer, looking more like a ghost than a living man. 

 The miserable creature had mustered strength enough to 

 crawl up from the beach. My friend has often met better 

 men with less pleasure. He found a shelter for the poor 

 outcast ; he tended him, prescribed for him, and, on his re- 

 covery, gave him leave to build for himself the hovel at the 

 foot of the crags. The islanders were aware they had got 

 but an indifferent neighbour through the transaction, though 

 none of them, with the exception of the poor creature's son, 

 saw what else their minister could have done in the circum- 

 stances. But the miller could sustain no apology for the ar- 

 rangement that had given him his vagabond father as a neigh- 

 bour ; and oftener than once the site of the rising hovel be- 

 came a scene of noisy contention between parent and son. 

 Some of the islanders informed me that they had seen the 

 son engaged in pulling down the stones of the walls as fast 



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