was, watching Kob's face for news of some sound wandering through
the vast of the night.

It seemed at times, however, as if either he was not quite deaf, or
he had some gift that went toward compensation. To all motion about
him he was sensitive as no other man. I am afraid to say from how
far off the solid earth would convey to him the vibration of a
stag's footstep. Bob sometimes thought his cheek must feel the wind
of a sound to which his ear was irresponsive. Beyond a doubt he
was occasionally aware of the proximity of an animal, and knew
what animal it was, of which Rob had no intimation. His being,
corporeal and spiritual, seemed, to the ceaseless vibrations of the
great globe, a very seismograph. Often would he make his sign to
Kob to lay his ear on the ground and listen, when no indication had
reached the latter. I suspect the exceptional development in him of
some sense rudimentary in us all.

He had the keenest eyes in Glenruadh, and was a dead shot. Even the
chief was not his equal. Yet he never stalked a deer, never killed
anything, for mere sport. I am not certain he never had, but for Rob
of the Angels, he had the deep-rooted feeling of his chief in regard
to the animals. What they wanted for food, they would kill; but it
was not much they needed, for seldom can two men have lived on less,
and they had positively not a greed of any kind between them. If
their necessity was meal or potatoes, they would carry grouse or
hares down the glen, or arrange with some farmer's wife, perhaps
Mrs. Macruadh herself, for the haunches of a doe; but they never
killed from pleasure in killing. Of creatures destructive to game
they killed enough to do far more than make up for all the game they
took; and for the skins of ermine and stoat and fox and otter they