She renewed her acquaintance with Peter Whaup, the blacksmith, through his wife, who was ill, and received her visits gladly.
"For," she said, "she's a fine douce lass, and speyks to ye as gin ye war ither fowk, and no as gin she kent a'thing, and cam to tell ye the muckle half o' 't."
I wonder how much her friends understood of what she read to them? She did not confine herself to the Bible, which indeed she was a little shy of reading except they wanted it, but read anything that pleased herself, never doubting that "ither fowk" could enjoy what she enjoyed. She even tried the Paradise Lost upon Mrs Whaup, as she had tried it long ago upon Tibbie Dyster; and Mrs Whaup never seemed tired of listening to it. I daresay she understood about as much of it as poets do of the celestial harmonies ever toning around them.
And Peter Whaup was once known, when more than half drunk, to stop his swearing in mid-volley, simply because he had caught a glimpse of Annie at the other end of the street.
So the maiden grew in favour. Her beauty, both inward and outward, was that of the twilight, of a morning cloudy with high clouds, or of a silvery sea: it was a spiritual beauty for the most part. And her sorrow gave a quiet grace to her demeanour, peacefully ripening it into what is loveliest in ladyhood. She always looked like one waiting�-sometimes like one listening, as she waited, to "melodies unheard."
CHAPTER XCI.
One night, in the end of October, James Dow was walking by the side of his cart along a lonely road, through a peat-moss, on his way to the nearest sea-port for a load of coals. The moon was high and full. He was approaching a solitary milestone in the midst of the moss. It was the loneliest place. Low swells of peat-ground, the burial places of old forests, rolled away on every side, with, here and there, patches of the white-bearded canna-down, or cotton-grass, glimmering doubtfully as the Wind woke and turned himself on the wide space, where he found nothing to puff at but those same little old fairies sunning their hoary beards in the strange moon. As Dow drew near to the milestone he saw an odd-looking figure seated upon it. He was about to ask him if he would like a lift, when the figure rose, and cried joyfully,
"Jamie Doo!"
James Dow staggered back, and was nearly thrown down by the slow-rolling wheel; for the voice was Alec Forbes's. He gasped for breath, and felt as if he were recovering from a sudden stroke of paralysis, during which everything about him had passed away and a new order come in. All that he was capable of was to cry wo! to his horse.
There stood Alec, in rags, with a face thin but brown�-healthy, bold, and firm. He looked ten years older standing there in the moonlight.