Graham's flute music, and maybe that'll help me a bit.--Wadna ye
be takin' hame Meg Partan's blackin' 'at ye promised her?"

"Surely, my son. She should always be keeping her promises." He
rose, and getting a small stone bottle and his stick from the corner
between the projecting inglecheek and the window, left the house,
to walk with unerring steps through the labyrinth of the village,
threading his way from passage to passage, and avoiding pools and
projecting stones, not to say houses, and human beings. His eyes,
or indeed perhaps rather his whole face, appeared to possess an
ethereal sense as of touch, for, without the slightest contact in
the ordinary sense of the word, he was aware of the neighbourhood
of material objects, as if through the pulsations of some medium
to others imperceptible. He could, with perfect accuracy, tell the
height of any wall or fence within a few feet of him; could perceive
at once whether it was high or low or half tide, and that merely
by going out in front of the houses and turning his face with its
sightless eyeballs towards the sea; knew whether a woman who spoke
to him had a child in her arms or not; and, indeed, was believed
to know sooner than ordinary mortals that one was about to become
a mother.

He was a strange figure to look upon in that lowland village,
for he invariably wore the highland dress: in truth, he had never
had a pair of trowsers on his legs, and was far from pleased that
his grandson clothed himself in such contemptible garments. But,
contrasted with the showy style of his costume, there was something
most pathetic in the blended pallor of hue into which the originally
gorgeous colours of his kilt had faded--noticeable chiefly on
weekdays, when he wore no sporran; for the kilt, encountering, from