Paul Calder's boats were fully manned, and the others had already left for Brassey's Sound.

The Sabays were not rich; a few weeks of idleness would make the long Orkney winter a dreary prospect.

Christine and his mother sat from morning to night braiding straw into the once famous Orkney Tuscans, and he went to the peat-moss to cut a good stock of winter fuel; but his earnings in money were small and precarious, and he was so anxious that Christine's constant cheerfulness hurt him.
Sandy Beg had indeed said something of an offer he could make "if shentlemans wanted goot wages wi' ta chance of a lucky bit for themsel's; foive kuineas ta month an' ta affsets.

Oigh! oigh!" But John had met the offer with such scorn and anger that Sandy had thought it worth while to bestow one of his most wicked looks upon him.

The fact was, Sandy felt half grateful to John for his apparent partisanship, and John indignantly resented any disposition to put him in the same boat with a man so generally suspected and disliked.
"It might be a come-down," he said, "for a gude sailor an' fisher to coil peats and do days' darg, but it was honest labor; an', please God, he'd never do that i' the week that wad hinder him fra going to the kirk on Sabbath." "Oigh! she'll jist please hersel'; she'll pe owing ta Beg naething by ta next new moon." And with a mocking laugh Sandy loitered away towards the seashore..