passions,” replied Mertoun.

“You will hear nothing but the clanging and screaming of scarts, sheer-waters, and seagulls, 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 hear just now my little Minna and Brenda singing in the garden with your Mordaunt. Now, I would rather listen to their little voices, than the skylark which I once heard in Caithness, or the nightingale that I[Pg 12] have read of.—What will the girls do for want of their playmate Mordaunt?”

[Pg 12]

“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,[9] which they once called a garden, and a right in the scathold, and a sixpenny merk of land, that the tenants may fish for you;—eight lispunds[10] 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.

[7] The Udallers are the allodial possessors of Zetland, who hold their possessions under the old Norwegian law, instead of the feudal tenures introduced among them from Scotland.

[7]

[8] Salt-water lake.

[8]

[9] Patch of ground for vegetables. The liberal custom of the country permits any person, who has occasion for such a convenience, to select out of the unenclosed moorland a small patch, which he surrounds with a drystone wall, and cultivates as a kailyard, till he exhausts the soil with cropping, 

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