She had written to him within the
last month a very hot letter indeed, which had afforded no end of
amusement to Mrs Catanach, as she sat in his old lodging over the
curiosity shop, but, I need hardly say, had not reached Malcolm:
and now there was but one night, and the best of all the fisher
families would have nowhere to lie down! Miss Horn, with Joseph
Mair, thought she did well to be angry with Malcolm.
The blind piper had been very restless all day. Questioned again
and again by Meg Partan as to what was amiss with him, he had always
returned her odd and evasive answers. Every few minutes he got up
--even from cleaning her lamp--to go to the shore. He had but
to cross the threshold, and take a few steps through the close,
to reach the road that ran along the sea front of the village: on
the one side were the cottages, scattered and huddled, on the other
the shore and ocean wide outstretched. He would walk straight across
this road until he felt the sand under his feet; there stand for a
few moments facing the sea, and, with nostrils distended, breathing
deep breaths of the air from the northeast; then turn and walk
back to Meg Partan's kitchen, to resume his ministration of light.
These his sallies were so frequent, and his absences so short, that
a more serene temper than hers might have been fretted by them.
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