Page:The Mystery of the Sea.djvu/70

56 was one long enjoyment. On Monday evening there was a sunset which I shall never forget. The whole western sky seemed ablaze with red and gold; great masses of cloud which had rolled up seemed like huge crimson canopies looped with gold over the sun throned on the western mountains. I was standing on the Hawklaw, whence I could get a good view; beside me was a shepherd whose flock patched the steep green hillside as with snow. I turned to him and said:

"Is not that a glorious sight?"

"Aye! 'Tis grand. But like all beauty o' the warld it fadeth into naught; an' is only a mask for dool."

"You do not seem to hold a very optimistic opinion of things generally." He deliberately stoked himself from his snuff mull before replying:

"Optimist nor pessimist am I, eechie nor ochie. I'm thinkin' the optimist and the pessimist are lears alike; takin' a pairt for the whole, an' so guilty o' the logical sin o' a particulari ad universale. Sophism they misca' it; as if there were anything but a lee in a misstatement o' fac'. Fac's is good eneuch for me; an' that, let me tell ye, is why I said that the splendour o' the sunset is but a mask for dool. Look yon! The clouds are all gold and glory, like a regiment goin' oot to the battle. But bide ye till the sun drops, not only below the horizon but beyond the angle o' refraction. Then what see ye? All grim and grey, and waste, and dourness and dool; like the army as it returns frae the fecht. There be some that think that because the sun sets fine i' the nicht, it will of necessity rise fine i' the morn. They seem to no ken that it has to traverse one half o' the warld ere it returns; and that the averages of fine and foul, o' light and dark hae to be aye maintained. It may be that the days o' fine follow ane anither fast; or that the foul times linger likewise. But in the end, the figures of fine and