cargo from the ship, and country folk with teams to carry it away for distribution; the sounds of discharge and loading from the courtyard were added to the sounds of carousal in the house itself. p. 103 Not till long after moonrise did Mother Mag bring me my supper; this night, she brought a mug of steaming spirits with bread and meat; when she had set it down, she giggled shrilly at me; caught at my sleeve with her skinny claw, and cried, “Eat and drink, young master,—drink while your grog’s hot! You’re to travel far this night, and it’s bitter cold. Drink!” Her eagerness warned me, of course, against the grog. I answered, “I’m not thirsty. I’ll not drink. Leave it there!” She mouthed at me, and shook her fist at me; but, going out, paused at the door to shriek at me, “Whether you drink or no, master, you’re going from here to-night. Going, and never coming back!” Dragging the door to with a crash, she descended the stair. p. 105Chapter XIII. Out of the Stone House p. 105 As the night wore on, the clamour dulled; the roisterers were surely drunken or wearied; few seemed astir. I heard the mumble of voices still from the room below me; occasionally the shred of a chanty from the kitchen; at times, the clatter of shoes over the cobbles of the yard, and the outcry of the hound. But ever the wind blew through the night, seeming to cry to me concerning great waters storm-tossed, whereon I should be sailing after this night to the port of no return. Night drew toward the hour before dawn; the moon was long since lost in massing clouds packed high against the heaven by the wind. Lord, how the wind battered at the house, making new clamour when the clamour died below; always it cried to me of storm-tossed waters,—I had this sense upon me, even when my overwrought mind growing dull, I fell asleep upon the bed, and I had the sense still in my dreams. But suddenly I woke with a start and a cry, to understand that pebbles were pattering through the bars and falling into the room, and that a p. 106voice was muttering below the window, “Young Craike,—hey, young Craike!” I snatched the sacking back, and in the grey dawn saw a dark figure perched upon a ladder, his head a foot or so below the sill. p. 106 “Galt!” I whispered. “Hist! They may have heard the stones. Lord, how you slept! D’ye hear
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