company was often tempted to the contrary opinion. They were

tractable, simple creatures; showed much more courtesy than might

have been expected from their raggedness and their uncouth

appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three servants for

Andie and myself.

Dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a

prison, and among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-

birds, I thought I perceived in them early the effects of

superstitious fear. When there was nothing doing they would either

lie and sleep, for which their appetite appeared insatiable, or

Neil would entertain the others with stories which seemed always of

a terrifying strain. If neither of these delights were within

reach--if perhaps two were sleeping and the third could find no

means to follow their example--I would see him sit and listen and

look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his face

blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow. The nature

of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight

of them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in

favourable to alarms. I can find no word for it in the English,

but Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never

varied.

"Ay," he would say, "ITS AN UNCO PLACE, THE BASS."

It is so I always think of it. It was an unco place by night, unco

by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans,

and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually

in our ears. It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When the

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