I will own I
was not sorry to think he had had a merry New Year, and been young
again for an evening; but I was sorry to see the mark still there.
One could not expect such an old gentleman to be much of a dandy or
a great student of respectability in dress; but there might have
been a wife at home, who had brushed out similar stains after fifty
New Years, now become old, or a round-armed daughter, who would
wish to have him neat, were it only out of self-respect and for the
ploughman sweetheart when he looks round at night. Plainly, there
was nothing of this in his life, and years and loneliness hung
heavily on his old arms. He was seventy-six, he told me; and
nobody would give a day's work to a man that age: they would think
he couldn't do it. 'And, 'deed,' he went on, with a sad little
chuckle, ''deed, I doubt if I could.' He said goodbye to me at a
footpath, and crippled wearily off to his work. It will make your
heart ache if you think of his old fingers groping in the snow.
He told me I was to turn down beside the school-house for Dunure.
And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a
babble of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep
road leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the
steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate
disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and a score or so of
fishers' houses.
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