Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/274

270 This devotional auxiliary soon made his appearance; he seemed a personification of penance and famine. He was tall and lean, with a frame of iron, a forehead villanous low, and eyes small, restless and glimmering about in quest of gain, like those of a cat seeking prey in the twilight. His nose was sharp and thin, like the style of a sun-dial; while his lips, though very broad, were too scanty to cover a seam of teeth as rusty as the jaws of an unused fox-trap, and wholly unacquainted with the luxury of the pastoral district, the flesh of lambs or ewes, unless when a friend's house had the scourge of his company. He carried under his arm a mighty Bible, garnished with massy clasps of iron; and entered the abode of his dying friend with the satisfied look of a man proud of his gifts, and conscious of the extensive influence of his intercessions. "Peace be among you," said the goodman of Haudthegrup, "and may God claim his ain in his blessed time and way; when the grain's ready let it go to the threshing-floor, and when the grapes are ripe, take them to the wine-press." So saying, he made a stride or two, and, looking in the face of his ancient friend, thus proceeded to comfort him.

"Bless me, Laird of Warlsworm! ye're no going to leave us; leaving us, too, when golden days are at hand? Never was there such an appearance of a harvest of gold, and the precious things of the earth, all ripening and getting ready for thy sickle and mine. Cheer up, man, ye'll hear the chink of gold in yere left lug for mony a bonnie year yet. Would ye lie there, and let the breath sough away frae atween your lips, like a cow strangled with her tether in a field knee-deep of clover? Look me in the face, I say; bankers are breaking, and the credit of cattle-dealers is cracked—gold will be gold soon, and the rate of interest will rise in Galloway. The crouse and ringing frosts of winter will soon come to purify the air, and make yere auld blood course boldly in yere veins. Then the grass will grow green, the bushes will bud, and the primroses will blow on the bonnie burn bank, and ye'll get yere feet among the braw blooming gowans, that lie scattered o'er the face of the earth, like as mony pieces of a spendthrift's gold. Sae cheer up, man, ye would do wrong to die, and so many blessings awaiting ye."

The Laird of Warlsworm sat erect for a moment; the prospect of life, and the hopes of future gain, passed by him