“Why not?” asked Mr Graham, with an inquiring smile.
“Because the ocean sudna mak a mou’ at the puir earth-burnie that cudna help what ran intill ’t.”
“It took it in though, and made it clean, for all the pain it couldn’t help either.”
“Weel, gien ye luik at it that gait!” said Malcolm.
In the evening his grandfather came to see him, and sat down by his bedside, full of a tender anxiety which he was soon able to alleviate.
“Wownded in ta hand and in ta foot!” said the seer: “what can it mean? It must mean something, Malcolm, my son.”
“Weel, daddy, we maun jist bide till we see,” said Malcolm cheerfully.
A little talk followed, in the course of which it came into Malcolm’s head to tell his grandfather the dream he had had so much of the first night he had slept in that room—but more for the sake of something to talk about that would interest one who believed in all kinds of prefigurations, than for any other reason.
Duncan sat moodily silent for some time, and then, with a great heave of his broad chest, lifted up his head, like one who had formed a resolution, and said:
“The hour has come. She has long peen afrait to meet it, put it has come, and Allister will meet it.—She’ll not pe your cran’father, my son.”