Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/276

270 was fierce. Let the factor rage as he would, Meg was absolute in her determination that if the cruel sentence were carried out — which she hardly expected — her house should be the shelter of those who had received her daughter when her severity had driven her from her home. That would leave her own family and theirs three months to look out for another abode. Certain of Blue Peter's friends ventured a visit of intercession to the factor, and were received with composure and treated with consideration until their object appeared, when his wrath burst forth so wildly that they were glad to escape without having to defend their persons: only the day before had he learned with certainty from Miss Horn that Malcolm was still in the service of the marchioness, and in constant attendance upon her when she rode. It almost maddened him. He had for some time taken to drinking more toddy after his dinner, and it was fast ruining his temper. His wife, who had from the first excited his indignation against Malcolm, was now reaping her reward. To complete the troubles of the fisher-folk, the harbor at Portlossie had, by a severe equinoctial storm, been so filled with sand as to be now inaccessible at lower than half tide, nobody as yet having made it his business to see it attended to.

But in the midst of his anxieties about Florimel and his interest in Clementina, Malcolm had not been forgetting them. As soon as he was a little settled in London he had written to Mr. Soutar, and he to architects and contractors, on the subject of a harbor at Scaurnose. But there were difficulties, and the matter had been making but slow progress. Malcolm, however, had insisted, and in consequence of his determination to have the possibilities of the thing thoroughly understood, three men appeared one morning on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff on the west side of the Nose. The children of the village discovered them, and carried the news; whereupon the men being all out in the bay, the women left their work and went to see what the strangers were about. The moment they were satisfied that they could make nothing of their proceedings, they naturally became suspicious. To whom the fancy first occurred nobody ever knew, but such was the unhealthiness of the moral atmosphere of the place, caused by the injustice and severity of Mr. Crathie, that, once suggested, it was universally received that they were sent by the factor, and that for a purpose only too consistent with the treatment Scaurnose, they said, had invariably received ever since first it was the dwelling of fishers. Had not their fathers told them how unwelcome they were to the lords of the land? And what rents had they not to pay! and how poor was the shelter for which they paid so much! — without a foot of land to grow a potato in! To crown all, the factor was at length about to drive them in a body from the place — Blue Peter first, one of the best as well as most considerable men amongst them! His notice to quit was but the beginning of a clearance. It was easy to see what those villains were about — on that precious rock, their only friend, the one that did its best to give them the sole shadow of harborage they had, cutting off the wind from the north-east a little, and breaking the eddy round the point of the Nose! What could they be about but marking the spots where to bore the holes for the blasting-powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the mean time, they must themselves do what they could. What were they men's wives for, if not to act for their husbands when they happened to be away?

The result was a shower of stones upon the unsuspecting surveyors, who forthwith fled, and carried the report of their reception to Mr. Soutar at Duff Harbor. He wrote to Mr. Crathie, who till then had heard nothing of the business; and the news increased both his discontent with his superiors and his wrath with those whom he had come to regard as his rebellious subjects. The stiff-necked people of the Bible was to him always now, as often as he heard the words, the people of Scaurnose and the Seaton of Portlossie. And having at length committed this overt outrage, would he not be justified by all in taking more active measures against them?

When the fishermen came home and leard how their women had conducted themselves, they accepted their conjectures and approved of their defence of the settlement. It was well for the land-loupers, they said, that they had only the women to deal with.

Blue Peter did not so soon hear of the affair as the rest, for his Annie had not been one of the assailants. But when the 