The blind piper had been very restless all day. Questioned again and again by his Mistress Partan as to what was amiss with him, he had given her odd and evasive answers. Every few minutes he got up--even from cleaning her lamp--to go to the shore. He had not far to go to reach it--had but to cross the threshold, and take a few steps through the _close_, and he was on the road that ran along the sea-front of the village. On the one side were the cottages, scattered and huddled--on the other, the shore and ocean, wide outstretched. He would walk straight across the road until he felt the sand under his feet; there stand for a few moments facing the sea, and, with nostrils distended, breathing deep breaths of the air from the north-east, then turn and walk back to Meg Partan's kitchen and resume his ministration of light. These his sallies were so frequent, and his absences so short, that a more serene temper than hers might have been fretted by them. But there was something about his look and behavior that, while it perplexed, restrained her, and instead of breaking out upon him she eyed him curiously. She had found that it would not do to stare at him. The moment she began to do so he began to fidget, and turned his back to her. It had made her lose her temper for a moment, and declare aloud as her conviction that he was after all an impostor, and saw as well as any of them. "She has told you so, Mistress Partan, one hundred thousand times," replied Duncan with an odd smile; "and perhaps she will pe see a little petter as any of you, no matter." Thereupon she murmured to herself, "The cratur' 'ill be seein' something!" and with mingled awe and curiosity sought to lay some restraint upon her unwelcome observation of him.