He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;

fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat

between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never

laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like the

Cameronians he had been brought up among; and indeed, in many ways, used

to remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times before the

Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think,

much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid of

hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with envy,

and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his

head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to

have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his

face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, or

the bones of the dead.

'Ay' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the _Christ-

Anna_. It's an awfu' name.'

I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;

for I feared he had perhaps been ill.

'I'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the body and

the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner,' he said abruptly to Mary,

and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten, are

they no? Yon's a bonny knock {15}, but it'll no gang; and the napery's

by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk sells

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