You will
read in the Book how Jehovah set aside the sixth. Aye, my lad,
He ordered it broken when it pleased Him. But did you ever read
that He set aside the first or that any man escaped who broke
it?"
He spoke with the deep rich burr of his race and with a structure
of speech that I cannot reproduce here.
"Did you observe," he added, "the graven images that your uncle
has set up? . . . Where is the man the noo?"
"He is gone to Oban," I said.
He sprang up and thrust the stocking and needles into his
sporran.
"To Oban!" He stood a moment in some deep reflection. "There
will be ships out of Oban." Then he put another question to me:
"What did auld Andrew say about it?"
"That my uncle was gone to Oban," I answered, "and had set no
time for his return."
He looked at me queerly for a moment, towering above me in the
deep heather.
"Do you think, my lad, that your uncle could be setting out for
heathen parts to learn the witch words for his hell business in
the boathouse?"
The suggestion startled me. The thing was not beyond all
possibility.
But I felt that I had come to the end of this examination.
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