"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 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_,[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.
[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, and then he deserts it, and encloses another. This liberty is so far from inferring an invasion of the right of proprietor and tenant, that the last degree of contempt is inferred of an avaricious man, when a Zetlander says he would not hold a _plantie cruive_ of him.
[10] A lispund is about thirty pounds English, and the value is averaged by Dr. Edmonston at ten shillings sterling.
