“Surely, my son. She should always be keeping her promises.”
He rose, and getting a small stone bottle and his stick from the corner between the projecting inglecheek and the window, left the house, to walk with unerring steps through the labyrinth of the village, threading his way from passage to passage, and avoiding pools and projecting stones, not to say houses, and human beings. His eyes, or indeed perhaps rather his whole face, appeared to possess an ethereal sense as of touch, for, without the slightest contact in the ordinary sense of the word, he was aware of the neighbourhood of material objects, as if through the pulsations of some medium to others imperceptible. He could, with perfect accuracy, tell the height of any wall or fence within a few feet of him; could perceive at once whether it was high or low or half tide, and that merely by going out in front of the houses and turning his face with its sightless eye-balls towards the sea; knew whether a woman who spoke to him had a child in her arms or not; and, indeed, was believed to know sooner than ordinary mortals that one was about to become a mother.
He was a strange figure to look upon in that lowland village, for he invariably wore the highland dress: in truth, he had never had a pair of trowsers on his legs, and was far from pleased that his grandson clothed himself in such contemptible garments. But, contrasted with the showy style of his costume, there was something most pathetic in the blended pallor of hue into which the originally gorgeous colours of his kilt had faded—noticeable chiefly on week-days, when he wore no sporran; for the kilt, encountering, from its loose construction, comparatively little strain or friction, may reach an antiquity unknown to the garments of the low country, and, while perfectly decent, yet look ancient exceedingly. On Sundays, however, he made the best of himself, and came out like a belated and aged butterfly—with his father’s sporran, or tasselled goatskin purse, in front of him, his grandfather’s dirk at his side, his great-grandfather’s skene-dhu, or little black-hafted knife, stuck in the stocking of his right leg, and a huge round brooch of brass—nearly half a foot in diameter, and, Mr Graham said, as old as the battle of Harlaw—on his left shoulder. In these adornments he would walk proudly to church, leaning on the arm of his grandson.
“The piper’s gey (considerably) brokken-like the day,” said one of the fishermen’s wives to a neighbour as he passed them—the fact being that he had not yet recovered from his second revel in the pipes so soon after the exhaustion of his morning’s duty, and was, in consequence, more asthmatic than usual.
“I doobt he’ll be slippin’ awa some cauld nicht,” said the other: “his leevin’ breath’s ill to get.”
“Ay; he has to warstle for ’t, puir man! Weel, he’ll be missed, the blin’ body! It’s exterordinar hoo he’s managed to live, and bring up sic a fine laad as that Malcolm o’ his.”
“Weel, ye see, Providence has been kin’ till him as weel ’s ither blin’ craturs. The toon’s pipin’ ’s no to be despised; an’ there’s the cryin’, an’ the chop, an’ the lamps. ’Deed he’s been an eident (diligent) cratur—an’ for a blin’ man, as ye say, it’s jist exterordinar.”
“Div ye min’ whan first he cam’ to the toon, lass?”
“Ay; what wad hinner me min’in’ that? It’s nae sae lang. Ma’colm ’at’s sic a fine laad noo, they tell me wasna muckle bigger nor a gey haddie (tolerable haddock).”
“But the auld man was an auld man than, though nae doobt he’s unco’ failed sin syne.”