The
wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the
sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty
stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of
Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but
along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that
there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders
of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but
a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the
edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the shores of creation and void
space.
The snow crunched under foot, and at farms all the dogs broke out
barking as they smelt a passer-by upon the road. I met a fine old
fellow, who might have sat as the father in 'The Cottar's Saturday
Night,' and who swore most heathenishly at a cow he was driving.
And a little after I scraped acquaintance with a poor body tramping
out to gather cockles. His face was wrinkled by exposure; it was
broken up into flakes and channels, like mud beginning to dry, and
weathered in two colours, an incongruous pink and grey. He had a
faint air of being surprised--which, God knows, he might well be--
that life had gone so ill with him. The shape of his trousers was
in itself a jest, so strangely were they bagged and ravelled about
his knees; and his coat was all bedaubed with clay as tough he had
lain in a rain-dub during the New Year's festivity.
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