When Sir Walter Scott visited the Stones of Stennis, my

grandfather put in his pocket a hundred-foot line, which he
unfortunately lost.

`Some years afterwards,' he writes, `one of my assistants
on a visit to the Stones of Stennis took shelter from a storm

in a cottage close by the lake; and seeing a box-measuring-
line in the bole or sole of the cottage window, he asked the

woman where she got this well-knownprofessional appendage.
She said: "O sir, ane of the bairns fand it lang syne at the

Stanes; and when drawing it out we took fright, and thinking
it had belanged to the fairies, we threw it into the bole, and

it has layen there ever since." '
This is for the one; the last shall be a sketch by the

master hand of Scott himself:
`At the village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island,

called Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie
Millie, who helped out her subsistence" target="_blank" title="n.生存；生计；生活费">subsistence by selling favourable

winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who
left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to

propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate,
being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and

gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed
all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she

said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had to wait
some time for it. The woman's dwelling and appearance were

not unbecoming her pretensions. Her house, which was on the
brow of the steep hill on which Stromness is founded, was only

accessible by a series of dirty and precipitous lanes, and for
exposure might have been the abode of Eolus himself, in whose

commodities the inhabitant dealt. She herself was, as she
told us, nearly one hundred years old, withered and dried up

like a mummy. A clay-coloured kerchief, folded round her
neck, corresponded in colour to her corpse-like complexion.

Two light blue eyes that gleamed with a lustre like that of
insanity, an utterance of astonishingrapidity, a nose and

chin that almost met together, and a ghastly expression of
cunning, gave her the effect of Hecate. Such was Bessie

Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of tribute with a
feeling between jest and earnest.'

II
From about the beginning of the century up to 1807 Robert

Stevenson was in partnership with Thomas Smith. In the last-
named year the partnership was dissolved; Thomas Smith

returning to his business, and my grandfather becoming sole
engineer to the Board of Northern Lights.

I must try, by excerpts from his diary and
correspondence, to convey to the reader some idea of the

ardency and thoroughness with which he threw himself into the
largest and least of his multifarious engagements in this

service. But first I must say a word or two upon the life of
lightkeepers, and the temptations to which they are more

particularly exposed. The lightkeeper occupies a position
apart among men. In sea-towers the complement has always been

three since the deplorable business in the Eddystone, when one
keeper died, and the survivor, signalling in vain for relief,

was compelled to live for days with the dead body. These
usually pass their time by the pleasant human expedient of

quarrelling; and sometimes, I am assured, not one of the three
is on speaking terms with any other. On shore stations, which

on the Scottish coast are sometimes hardly less isolated, the
usual number is two, a principal and an assistant. The

principal is dissatisfied with the assistant, or perhaps the
assistant keeps pigeons, and the principal wants the water

from the roof. Their wives and families are with them, living
cheek by jowl. The children quarrel; Jockie hits Jimsie in

the eye, and the mothers make haste to mingle in the
dissension. Perhaps there is trouble about a broken dish;

perhaps Mrs. Assistant is more highly born than Mrs. Principal
and gives herself airs; and the men are drawn in and the

servants presently follow. `Church privileges have been
denied the keeper's and the assistant's servants,' I read in

one case, and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither
more nor less than excommunication, `on account of the

discordant and quarrelsome state of the families. The cause,
when inquired into, proves to be TITTLE-TATTLE on both sides.'

The tender comes round; the foremen and artificers go from
station to station; the gossip flies through the whole system

of the service, and the stories, disfigured and exaggerated,
return to their own birthplace with the returning tender. The

English Board was apparently shocked by the picture of these
dissensions. `When the Trinity House can,' I find my

grandfatherwriting at Beachy Head, in 1834, `they do not
appoint two keepers, they disagree so ill. A man who has a

family is assisted by his family; and in this way, to my
experience and present observation, the business is very much

neglected. One keeper is, in my view, a bad system. This
day's visit to an English lighthouse convinces me of this, as

the lightkeeper was walking on a staff with the gout, and the
business performed by one of his daughters, a girl of thirteen

or fourteen years of age.' This man received a hundred a
year! It shows a different reading of human nature, perhaps

typical of Scotland and England, that I find in my
grandfather's diary the following pregnant entry: `THE

LIGHTKEEPERS, AGREEING ILL, KEEP ONE ANOTHER TO THEIR DUTY.'
But the Scottish system was not alone founded on this cynical

opinion. The dignity and the comfort of the northern
lightkeeper were both attended to. He had a uniform to `raise

him in his own estimation, and in that of his neighbour, which
is of consequence to a person of trust. The keepers,' my

grandfather goes on, in another place, `are attended to in all
the detail of accommodation in the best style as shipmasters;

and this is believed to have a sensible effect upon their
conduct, and to regulate their general habits as members of

society.' He notes, with the same dip of ink, that `the
brasses were not clean, and the persons of the keepers not

TRIG'; and thus we find him writing to a culprit: `I have to
complain that you are not cleanly in your person, and that

your manner of speech is ungentle, and rather inclines to
rudeness. You must therefore take a different view of your

duties as a lightkeeper.' A high ideal for the service
appears in these expressions, and will be more amply

illustrated further on. But even the Scottish lightkeeper was
frail. During the unbrokensolitude of the winter months,

when inspection is scarce possible, it must seem a vain toil
to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to keep an

unrewarded vigil in the light-room; and the keepers are
habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must

unremittingly resist. He who temporises with his conscience
is already lost. I must tell here an anecdote that

illustrates the difficulties of inspection. In the days of my
uncle David and my father there was a station which they

regarded with jealousy. The two engineers compared notes and
were agreed. The tower was always clean, but seemed always to

bear traces of a hasty cleansing, as though the keepers had
been suddenly forewarned. On inquiry, it proved that such was

the case, and that a wandering fiddler was the unfailing
harbinger of the engineer. At last my father was storm-stayed

one Sunday in a port at the other side of the island. The
visit was quite overdue, and as he walked across upon the

Monday morning he promised himself that he should at last take
the keepers unprepared. They were both waiting for him in

uniform at the gate; the fiddler had been there on Saturday!
My grandfather, as will appear from the following

extracts, was much a martinet, and had a habit of expressing