He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark
eyes; fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an
air somewhat between that of a shepherd and that of a man following
the sea. He never laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible;
prayed much, like the Cameronians he had been brought up among; and
indeed, in many ways, used to remind me of one of the hill-
preachers in the killing times before the Revolution. But he never
got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think, much guidance, by
his piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid of hell; but
he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with envy, and
was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on
his head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like
Rorie, to have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier
ploughed upon his face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow,
like old stained ivory, or the bones of the dead.

'Ay' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the
CHRIST-ANNA. It's an awfu' name.'

I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of
health; for I feared he had perhaps been ill.

'I'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the
body and the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner,' he said
abruptly to Mary, and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir
that we hae gotten, are they no? Yon's a bonny knock (2), but
it'll no gang; and the napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws;