120 



THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION. 



to US rather awful statement, and so I was left standing at the 

 inn-door, with a bitingly shrewd companion, to solve this pro- 

 blem — 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 ? 



CORRY HARBOUR. 



This is a problem, I suspect, that few can answer. What was 

 to be done 1 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 1 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-aU-work that we 

 caught a glimpse of through the gloom of the place while 

 peeping into it. 



