A disjaskit creature she looked as the wind
drove a scud of dark cloud across her pale face, or when she peered over
the black bank below her, only to be hidden once more by an angry drift
of rain. It was no night for lonely wayfarers. Oxnam and Teviot were
both in spate, and their moan could be heard when the wind rested for a
little and allowed the fir trees to be still. Only for very short
intervals, however, did the tireless wind cease, and always, after a
short respite, the trees were attacked again, and made to beck and bow
their dark heads like the nodding plumes of a hearse. The road from
Crailing was in places dour with mud, heavy-rutted by harvest carts,
with ever and anon a great puddle that stretched across from ditch to
ditch. But dismal or not dismal, the night had apparently no evil effect
on the spirits of the one man who was trudging his homeward way from
Crailing to Eckford.
Dandy Jim, the packman, was a young fellow who wanted more than evil
weather and a dreich, black night to depress him. A fine, upstanding lad
he was, with a glib English tongue that readily sold his wares, and
which, along with a handsome, merry face, helped him with ease into the
good graces of those whom he familiarly knew as "the lasses.
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