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The first policeman was stabbed from behind, and flung over the cliff, but there has been no mischief since that time, and the district is very quiet indeed. The moor was blazing in the sun. Bright gorse flamed above the pale green grass, and little pools flashed white rays up to the sky. Hob's Tommy stepped out of doors, and took a long look round.
"He has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious, would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o' Gib's, he would waken them up."
'Well, my lady, and grown into a stalwart lad, was Hob's answer, with an eye on the door, and in a voice as low as his gruff tones would permit. 'And wherefore? What is it? she asked anxiously. 'Be they on the track of my poor boy? 'They may be, answered Hob, 'wherefore I deemed it well to shift our quarters.
'A sorely weary little lady, Daddy Hob, lost from the hawking folk from the Priory, responded Hal, panting a little as he set his burthen down, and Hob's stronger arms received her. Hal next asked whether the flock had come back under charge of Piers, and was answered that all were safely at home, and after 'telling the tale' Hob had set out to find him. 'Thou shouldst not stray so far, he said.
And then he realized that the boy had been right. Feeble and cramped as he was, he would have stood no chance in a race. One of the tinklers was the man called Ecky. He had been running hard, and was mopping his brow. "Hob's seen the brig," he said. "It's droppin' anchor ayont the Dookits whaur there's a bield frae the wund and deep water. They'll be landit in half an 'oor.
Anne was a good deal shocked at the doctrine propounded by the attendant Sister, a mild, good-natured woman in daily life, but the conversation confirmed her suspicions, and put her on her guard as she remembered Hob's warning. She had liked the shepherd lad far too much, and was far too grateful to him, to utter a word that might give him up to the revengers of blood.
The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in one after another, amid the jostle and throng of Hob's children. Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. "When did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?" he whispered slyly. She looked down; she was one blush.
Dand would say; "and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the lassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poet or else I'm nothing." Clem would remind him of old age. "I'll die young, like Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain accomplishment in minor verse. His "Hermiston Burn," with its pretty refrain
Money became scarce in the village, and the men who had savings had to help those who were poorer. When things got almost too bad for bearing, Billy Armstrong said to one of his friends "Look here, you and me and Hob's Tommy will run round to the Tyne, and get some mussels, or else the whole place will be starved when the fine weather comes."
He kept his promise of silence, and indeed his guardians were so much accustomed to his long wanderings that he encountered no questions, only one of Hob's growls that he should always steal away whenever there was a chance of Master Bunce's coming to try to make a man of him.
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