I do not say all this," he added, interrupting himself, as if I were unwilling that you should settle on my estate, Mr. Mertoun-but for Jarlshof-the place is a wild one-Come from where you will, I warrant you will say, like other travellers, you came from a better climate than ours, for so say you all. And yet you think of a retreat which the very natives run away from. Will you not take your glass?"-(This was to be considered as interiectional,)" Then here's to you."

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"My good sir," answered Mertoun, "I am indifferent to climate; if there is but air enough to fill my lungs, I care not if it be the breath of Arabia or of Lapland.” "Air enough you may have," answered Magnus, lack of that somewhat damp, strangers allege it to be, but we know a corrective for that—Here's to you, Mr. Mertoun-you must learn to do so, and to smoke a pipe ; and then, as you say, you will find the air of Zetland equal to that of Arabia. But have you seen Jarlshof?" The stranger intimated that he had not.

"Then," replied Magnus, "you have no idea of your undertaking. If you think it a comfortable roadstead like this, with the house situated on the side of an inland voe, that brings the herrings up to your door, you are mistaken, my heart. At Jarlshof you will see nought but the wild waves tumbling on the bare rocks, and the Roost of Sumburgh running at the rate of fifteen knots an-hour."

"I shall see nothing at least of the current of human passions," replied Mertoun.

"You will hear nothing but the clanging and screaming of scarfs, sheer-waters, and sea-gulls, from daybreak till sunset."

"I will compound," my friend, replied the stranger, "so that I do not hear the chattering of women's tongues."

"Ah," said the Norman, "that is because you hea! just now my little Minna and Brenda singing in the gar den with your Mordaunt. Now, I would rather listen to

Salt-water lake.

their little voices, than the sky-lark which I once heard in Caithness, or the nightingale that I have read of,-What will the girls do for want of their playmate Mordaunt ?”

"They will shift for themselves," answered Mertoun "younger or elder they will find playmates or dupes.— But the question is, Mr. Troil, will you let to me, as your tenant, this old mansion of Jarlshof ?”

;

"Gladly, since you make it your option to live in a spot so desolate.”

"And as for the rent ?" continued Mertoun.

"The rent?" replied Magnus; "hum-why, you must have the bit of plantie cruive, which they once called a garden, and a right in the scat-hold, and a sixpenny merk of land, that the tenants may fish for you; -eight lispunds of butter, and eight shillings sterling yearly is not too much?”

Mr. Mertoun agreed to terms so moderate, and from thenceforward resided chiefly at the solitary mansion which we have described in the beginning of this chapter, conforming not only without complaint, but, as it seemed, with a sullen pleasure to all the privations which so wild and desolate a situation necessarily imposed on its inhabitant.

THE few inhabitants of the township of Jarlshof had at first heard with alarm, that a person of rank superior to their own was come to reside in the ruinous tenement which they still called the Castle. In those days, (for the present times are greatly altered for the better,) the

presence of a superior, in such a situation, was almost certain to be attended with additional burdens and exactions, for which, under one pretext or another, feudal customs furnished a thousand apologies. By each of these, a part of the tenants' hard-won and precarious profits was diverted for the use of their powerful neighbour and superior, the tacksman, as he was called. But the sub-tenants speedily found that no oppression of this kind was to be apprehended at the hands of Basil Mertoun. His own means, whether large or small, were at least fully adequate to his expenses, which, so far as regarded his habits of life, were of the most frugal description. The luxuries of a few books, and some philosophical instruments, with which he was supplied from London as occasion offered, seemed to indicate a degree of wealth unusual in those islands; but, on the other hand, the table and the accommodations at Jarlshof, did not exceed what was maintained by a Zetland proprietor of the most inferior description.

The tenants of the hamlet troubled themselves very little about the quality of their superior, as soon as they found that their situation was rather to be mended than rendered worse by his presence; and, once relieved from the apprehension of his tyrannizing over them, they laid their heads together to make the most of him by various petty tricks of overcharge and extortion, which for a while the stranger submitted to with the most philosophic indifference. An incident, however, occurred, which put his character in a new light, and effectually checked all future efforts at extravagant imposition.

A dispute arose in the kitchen of the Castle betwixt an old governante, who acted as housekeeper to Mr. Mertoun, and Sweyn Erickson, as good a Zetlander as ever rowed a boat to the haaf fishing; which dispute, as is

i. e. The deep-sea fishing, in distinction to that which is practised along shore. 2*

VOL. I.

usual in such cases, was maintained with such increasing heat and vociferation as to reach the ears of the master, (as he was called,) who, secluded in a solitary turret, was deeply employed in examining the contents of a new package of books from London, which, after long expectation, had found its way to Hull, from thence by a whaling vessel to Lerwick, and so to Jarlshof. With more than the usual thrill of indignation which indolent people always feel when roused into action on some unpleasant occasion, Mertoun descended to the scene of contest, and so suddenly, peremptorily, and strictly, inquired into the cause of dispute, that the parties, notwithstanding every evasion which they attempted, became unable to disguise from him that their difference respected the several interests to which the honest governante, and no less honest fisherman, were respectively entitled, in an overcharge of about one hundred per cent. on a bargain of rock-cod, purchased by the former from the latter, for the use of the family at Jarlshof.

When this was fairly ascertained and confessed, Mr. Mertoun stood looking upon the culprits with eyes in which the utmost scorn seemed to contend with awakening passion." Hark you, ye old hag," said he at length to the housekeeper, "avoid my house this instant! and know that I dismiss you, not for being a liar, a thief, and an ungrateful quean,-for these are qualities as proper to you as your name of woman,-but for daring, in my house, to scold above your breath.-And for you, you rascal, who suppose you may cheat a stranger as you would flinch a whale, know that I am well acquainted with the rights which, by delegation from your master, Magnus Troil, I can exercise over you, if I will. Provoke me to a certain pitch, and you shall learn, to your cost, I can break your rest as easily as you can interrupt my leisure. I know the meaning of scat, and wattle, and hawkhen, and

The operation of slicing the blubber from the bones of the whale is called technically, flinching

hagalef, and every other exaction by which your lords, in ancient and modern days, have wrung your withers; nor is there one of you that shall not rue the day that you could not be content with robbing me of my money, but must also break in on my leisure with your atrocious northern clamour, that rivals in discord the screaming of a flight of Arctic gulls."

Nothing better occurred to Sweyn, in answer to this objurgation, than the preferring a humble request that his honour would be pleased to keep the cod-fish without payment, and say no more about the matter; but by this time Mr. Mertoun had worked up his passions into an ungovernable rage, and with one hand he threw the money at the fisherman's head, while with the other he pelted him out of the apartment with his own fish, which he finally flung out of doors after him.

There was so much of appalling and tyrannic fury in the stranger's manner on this occasion, that Sweyn neither stopped to collect the money nor take back his commodity, but fled at a precipitate rate to the small hamlet, to tell his comrades that if they provoked Master Mertoun any farther, he would turn an absolute Pate Stuart on their hand, and head and hang without either judgment

or mercy.

Hither also came the discarded housekeeper, to consult with her neighbours and kindred, (for she too was a native of the village,) what she should do to regain the desirable situation from which she had been so suddenly expelled. The old Ranzellaar of the village, who had the voice most potential in the deliberations of the township, after hearing what had happened, pronounced that Sweyn Erickson had gone too far in raising the market upon Mr. Mertoun; and that whatever pretext the tacksman might assume for thus giving way to his anger, the real grievance must have been the charging the rock-codfish at a penny instead of a halfpenny a pound; he there

+ Meaning, probably, Patrick Stuart, Earl of Orkney, executed for tyranny and oppression, practised on the inhabitants of those remote islands, in the be ginning of the seventeenth century.