For eight-and-forty years he had been a butler in the Knight's family, and his reverence for his master went on increasing with his years; in his eyes he was the happy concentration of every good quality of humanity, nor could he bring himself to believe that his like would ever come again.
Opposite to him sat one as unlike him in form and appearance as he was in reality by character: a gaunt, thin, hollow-cheeked man of sixty-six or seven, rueful and sad-looking, with a greenish gray complexion, and a head of short, close gray hair, cut horseshoe fashion over the temples, his long thin nose, pointed chin, and his cold green eye only wanted the additional test of his accent to pronounce him from the North. So it was, Sandy M'Grane was from Antrim, and a keener specimen of the “cold countrie” need not have been looked for.
His dress was a wide-skirted, deep-cuffed brown coat, profusely studded with large silver buttons richly crested, one sleeve of which, armless and empty, was attached to his breast; a dark-crimson waistcoat, edged with silver lace, descended below the hips; black leather breeches and high black boots,—a strange costume, uniting in some respects the attributes of in-door life and the road. On the high back of his oaken chair hung a wide-brimmed felt hat and a black leather belt, from which a short straight sword depended, the invariable companion of his journeys; for Sandy had travelled in strange lands, where protective police were unknown, and his master, Mr. Bagenal Daly, was one who ever preferred his own administration of criminal law, when the occasion required such, to the slower process of impartial justice.
Meagre and fleshless as he looked, he was possessed of great personal strength, and it needed no acute physiognomist to pronounce, from the character of his head and features, that courage had not been omitted among the ingredients of his nature.
A word of explanation may be necessary as to how a western gentleman, as Bagenal Daly was, should have attached to his person for some forty years a native of a distant county, and one all whose habits and sympathies seemed so little in unison with his own part of the country. Short as the story is, we should not feel warranted in obtruding it on our readers if it did not to a certain extent serve to illustrate the characters of both master and man.
Mr. Daly when a very young man chanced to make an excursion to the northern part of the island, the principal object of which was to see the Giant's Causeway, and the scenery in the neighborhood. The visit was undertaken with little foresight or precaution, and happened at the very time of the year when severe gales from the north and west prevail, and a heavy sea breaks along that iron-bound coast. Having come so far to see the spot, he was unwilling to be baulked in his object; but still, the guides and boatmen of the neighborhood refused to venture out, and, notwithstanding the most tempting offers, would not risk their lives by an enterprise so full of danger.
Daly's ardor for the expedition seemed to increase as the difficulty to its accomplishment grew greater, and he endeavored, now by profuse offers of money, now by taunting allusions to their want of courage, to stimulate the men to accompany him; when, at last, a tall, hard-featured young fellow stood forward and offered, if Daly himself would pull an oar, to go along with him. Overjoyed at his success, Daly agreed to the proposal; and although a heavy sea was then running, and the coast for miles was covered with fragments of a wreck, the skiff was Boon launched, and stood out to sea.
“I'll ga wi'ye to the twa caves and Dunluce; but I 'll no engage to ga to Carrig-a-rede,” said Sandy, as the sea broke in masses on the bow, and fell in torrents over them.
After about an hour's rowing, during which the boat several times narrowly escaped being swamped, and was already more than half full of water, they arrived off the great cave, and could see the boiling surf as, sent back with force, it issued beneath the rock, with a music louder than thunder, while from the great cliffs overhead the water poured in a thick shower, as each receding wave left a part behind it.
“The cobble” (so is the boat termed there) “is aye drawing in to shore,” said Sandy; “I trow we 'd better pull back, noo.”