Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peats and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the rising sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to the door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said: "She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye this she's fetching the harbour all right at last."
'We've had a jolly fine take, haven't we? said Harry, sauntering up to Reggie, who was busy at the peat-stack. 'Not bad, said Reggie briefly. 'Here, take an armful of these, will you, and carry them into the house. Harry carried in the peats and set them down by the fire-place, where Marjorie was busy frying fish, while Tricksy was making bannocks at the table.
"Bring out her peats," he said, turning to the bystanders; "we have small need, with winter on the road, to waste any of God's gifts!" They obeyed. But as they carried them out, and down to the road, the number of Mistress Conal's friends kept growing, and a laying together of heads began, and a gathering of human fire under glooming eyebrows. It looked threatening.
In this way he supplied the place of newspapers and books, which were scarce commodities in those old days; and he further made himself useful by doing odd work about the steadings and cottages such as building the peats into stacks for the winter, mending a thatch, or even doctoring a cow.
She was just thinking of setting her dress on fire, when she heard the woman's step on the stair. She threw herself on the bed, and pretended to be asleep. Presently she was so, and she had another long nap. When she woke the table had nothing on it but the woman's knitting; the woman was putting peats on the fire, and she made no remark, then or afterwards, on the disappearance of the food.
Elspeth with some difficulty kindled the hard dry peats, and went to put some water into the pot to make porridge. The water in the well at the far end of the cave was turned to solid ice. At the cave's entrance there was a fringe of long icicles hanging like sword blades from the bare rock. All was cold and desolate.
He had faced death to certify his truth to the salt he was eating, and now nothing remained but to withdraw as carefully as might be. He crawled backward, now scuttling from one little rickle of peats left forlornly out on the moor to the next sodden whin bush, the prickles of which yirked him as he threw himself down.
He wondered a moment if his father had yet found her again, and then he kissed the bits of faded script and laid them upon the glowing peats. The money he put in his pocket, and the chest and clothing he resolved to take to Shetland with him. As for the cabin, he decided to give it to Bella Campbell.
He was not in love with her, he was sure of that, but he was interested by a life so vivid, so full of splendid color, grace, and vitality. With a little pride she opened the door of his room, and stirred up the glowing peats, and put the big rush chair before them, "And you can just call me, sir, when you want aught," she said, "I'll go ben noo, and finish my cake baking."
One boy, who was supposed to wash it out, got his education free for keeping the school-house dirty, and the others paid their way with peats, which they brought in their hands, just as wealthier school-children carry books, and with pence which the dominie collected regularly every Monday morning. The attendance on Monday mornings was often small.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking