Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895 by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
page 39 of 439 (08%)
page 39 of 439 (08%)
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headlong.
"White floo'ers for the angels, where Gracie's ga'en to! Annie, woman, dinna ye see them by her body--four great angels, at ilka corner yin?" Barbara's voice rose and fell, wayward and querulous. There was no other sound in the house, only the water sobbing against the edge of the ferry-boat. "And the first is like a lion," she went on, in a more even recitative, "and the second is like an ox, and the third has a face like a man, and the fourth is like a flying eagle. An' they're sittin' on ilka bedpost; and they hae sax wings, that meet owre my Gracie, an' they cry withoot ceasing, 'Holy! holy! holy! Woe unto him that causeth one of these little ones to perish! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the deeps o' the Black Water!'" But the neighbours paid no attention to her--for, of course, she was mad. Then the wise folk came and explained how it had all happened. Here she had been gathering flowers; here she had slipped; and here, again, she had fallen. Nothing could be clearer. There were the flowers. There was the dangerous pool on the Black Water. And there was the body of Grace Allen, a young thing dead in the flower of her days. "I see them! I see them!" cried Barbara, fixing her eyes on the bed, her voice like a shriek; "they are full of eyes, behind and before, and they see into the heart of man. Their faces are full of anger, and their |
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