Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

436
KYLE niCH.
riding in a hot summer's day ; but that did not exempt
me from paying' two shillings. In the end, the ferry-
boat was not forthcoming, the man was not to be found,
he would not carry a horse if he was, I was obliged to
go without my breakfast, and finding a man with a
cockle-shell of a boat idling along the shore, I left
Roger to the mercy of Mrs. Nicholson, and rowed down
the strait to Eilan Reoch.
On the next day I returned to claim my horse : and
now I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson
united ; a worthy pair. You have no Mr. Dods in your
establishment. Mr. Nicholson immediately opened his
battery, and asked me what business I had to leave my
horse with him so long, " to eat up all people's grass:
he had a mind to let it go : as he supposed I should never
pay for the keep. Now this was a hypothesis Mr. Nichol-
son had no right to form. " I left my horse at his inn
what was his charge."— " He could not make a charge ;
grass was very scarce, and he paid, God knows what, for
his field." I could only presume that his business was to
keep horses and to charge for them. In fact, poor Roger
had been turned loose on the sea-shore, to pick up what
he could ; and Mr. Nicholson, after much calculation,
and grumbling and swearing, determined that, as a great
favour to Lord Mac Donald's friend, he would condescend
to take six shillings for the night's starvation; a sum
greater than the annual rent of all the grass which he
possessed ; muttering again, even when he felt the dul-
cifying touch of the silver, at "people bringing their
horses to eat up all his grass." Thus ended my adven-
ture, as far as Mr. Nicholson's grass was concerned ; but
here Mrs. Nicholson put in her oar, and supposed I had
been " after some of Eilan Reoch's bonny dochters."
— " ;
" What business had I so long at Eilan Reoch ; the lassies
were a hantle too bonny for the like o'me, and if she was