“What do you think the news will be?” asked Cosmo.
“Think! I’m past thinking,” cried Jaacob, thrusting some imaginary person away; “haud your tongue—can a man think when he’s wound up the length of taking swurd in hand, if need should be? If we dinna get it, we’ll tak it—do ye hear?—that’s a’ I’m thinking in these days.”
And Jaacob swung along the road, working his long arms rather more than he did his feet, so that their action seemed part of his locomotive power. It was astonishing, too, to see how swiftly, how steadily, and with what a “way” upon him, the little giant strode onward, swinging the immense brown hands, knotted and sinewy, which it was hard to suppose could ever have been thrust through the narrow cuffs of his coat, like balancing weights on either side of him. Before them was the long line of dusty summer road disappearing down a slope, and cut off, not by the sky, but by the Eildons, which began to blacken in the fading light—behind them the lights of the village—above, in a pale, warm sky, the one big dilating star and the morsel of moon; but the thoughts of Jaacob, and even of Cosmo, were on a lesser luminary—the red lantern of the coach, which was not yet to be seen by the keenest eyes advancing through the summer dimness from the south.
“Hang the lairds and the ministers!” cried Jaacob, after a pause, “it’s easy to see what a puir grip they have, and how well they ken it. Free institutions dinna agree with the like of primogeniture and thae inventions of the deevil. Let’s but hae a reformed Parliament, and we’ll learn them better manners. There’s your grand Me’mar setting up for a leader amang the crew, presenting an address, confound his impudence! as if he wasna next hand to a swindler himself.”
“Jacob, do you know any thing about his son?” asked Cosmo, eagerly.
“He’s a virtuoso—he’s a dilettawnti; I ken nae ill of him,” said Jaacob, who pronounced these titles with a little contempt, yet secretly had a respect for them; “he hasna been seen in this country, so far as I’ve heard tell of, for mony a day. A lad’s no aye to blame for his father and his mother; it’s a thing folk in general have nae choice in—but he’s useless to his ain race, either as friend or foe.”
“Is he a good fellow, then? or is he like Me’mar?” cried Cosmo.
“Tush! dinna afflict me about thae creatures in bad health,” said Jaacob; “what’s the use o’ them, lads or lasses, is mair than I can tell—can they no’ dee and be done wi’t? I tell you, a docken on the roadside is mair guid to a country than the like of Me’mar’s son!”
“Is he in bad health?” asked the persistent Cosmo.
“They’re a’ in bad health,” said Jaacob, contemptuously, “as any auld wife could tell you; a’ but that red-haired lassie, that Joan. Speak o’ your changelings! how do ye account to me, you that’s a philosopher, for the like of an honest spirit such as that, cast into the form of a lassie, and the midst of a hatching o’ sparrows like Me’mar? If she had but been a lad, she would have turned them a’ out like a cuckoo in the nest.”