“I do not in the least conceive what you mean.”
“That’s extrordnar, man—can ye no understand folk’s mother–tongue?—I’ll mak it plain to you. Ye see, whan a thing comes on ye that gate, that’s a dadd—sit still now. Then a paik, that’s a swapp or a skelp like—when a thing comes on ye that way, that’s a paik. But a doof’s warst ava—it’s”——
“Prithee hold; I now understand it all perfectly well.—What, then, is your opinion with regard to these men’s death? How, or what way do you think they were killed?”
“O, sir, there’s naebody can say. It was some extrordnar judgment, that’s out of a’ doubt. There had been an unyerdly raid i’ the Hope that day.”
“What reason have you for supposing such a thing?”
“Because there wasna a leevin soul i’ the hale Hope that day but theirsels—they wadna surely hae felled ane another—It’s, by an’ attour, an awsome bit where they war killed; there hae been things baith seen and heard about it; and I saw an apparition there mysel on the very night before.”
“You saw an apparition at the place the night before, did you? And, pray, what was that apparition like?”
“It was like a man and a woman.”
“Had the figure of the woman no resemblance to any one you had ever seen before? Was it in any degree, for instance, like your master’s daughter?”
“No unlike ava.”