He told his grandfather how he had left the mad laird
lying on his face, on the sands between the bored
craig and the rocks of the promontory, and said he
would like to go back to him.
“He’ll be hafing a fit, poor man,”
said Duncan. “Yes, my son, you must co
to him and to your pest for him. After such an
honour as we ’fe had this day, we mustn’t
pe forgetting our poor neighpours. Will you pe
taking to him a trop of uisgebeatha?”
“He taks naething o’ that kin’,”
said Malcolm.
He could not tell him that the madman, as men called
him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights.
The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing
would have been unintelligible to him. He could
readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might
be favoured beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very
moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in a vision
of the future—a wave of time, far off as
yet from the souls of other men, even now rolling
over his; but that a soul should seek after vital content
by contact with its maker, was an idea belonging to
a region which, in the highlander’s being, lay
as yet an unwatered desert, an undiscovered land,
whence even no faintest odour had been wafted across
the still air of surprised contemplation.
About the time when Malcolm once more sped through
the bored craig, the marquis and Lady Florimel were
walking through the tunnel on their way home, chatting
about a great ball they were going to give the tenants.
He found the laird where he had left him, and thought
at first he must now surely be asleep; but once more
bending over him, he could hear him still murmuring
at intervals, “Father o’ lichts! Father
o’ lichts!”
Not less compassionate, and more sympathetic than
Eliphaz or Bildad or Zophar, Malcolm again took his
place near him, and sat watching by him until the
gray dawn began in the east. Then all at once
the laird rose to his feet, and without a look on
either side walked steadily away towards the promontory.
Malcolm rose also, and gazed after him until he vanished
amongst the rocks, no motion of his distorted frame
witnessing other than calmness of spirit. So his
watcher returned in peace through the cool morning
air to the side of his slumbering grandfather.
No one in the Seaton of Portlossie ever dreamed of
locking door or window at night.
The home season of the herring fishery was to commence
a few days after the occurrences last recorded.
The boats had all returned from other stations, and
the little harbour was one crowd of stumpy masts,
each with its halliard, the sole cordage visible, rove
through the top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail,
tanned to a rich red brown. From this underwood
towered aloft the masts of a coasting schooner, discharging
its load of coal at the little quay. Other boats
lay drawn up on the beach in front of the Seaton,
