When Mistress Catanach arrived at the opening of a street which was just opposite her own door, and led steep toward the sea-town, she stood, and shading her eyes with her hooded hand, although the sun was far behind her, looked out to sea. It was the forenoon of a day of early summer. The larks were many and loud in the skies above her--for, although she stood in a street, she was only a few yards from the green fields--but she could hardly have heard them, for their music was not for her. To the northward, whither her gaze--if gaze it could be called--was directed, all but cloudless blue heavens stretched over an all but shadowless blue sea; two bold, jagged promontories, one on each side of her, formed a wide bay; between that on the west and the sea-town at her feet, lay a great curve of yellow sand, upon which the long breakers, born of last night’s wind, were still roaring from the north-east, although the gale had now sunk to a breeze--cold and of doubtful influence. From the chimneys of the fishermen’s houses below, ascended a yellowish smoke, which, against the blue of the sea, assumed a dull green colour as it drifted vanishing towards the south-west. But Mrs Catanach was looking neither at nor for anything: she had no fisherman husband, or any other relative at sea; she was but revolving something in her unwholesome mind, and this was her mode of concealing an operation which naturally would have been performed with down-bent head and eyes on the ground. While she thus stood, a strange figure drew near, approaching her with step almost as noiseless as that with which she had herself made her escape from Miss Horn’s house. At a few yards’ distance from her it stood, and gazed up at her countenance as intently as she seemed to be gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, dog-like expression. Decently dressed in black, he stood with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers, gazing immovably in Mrs Catanach’s face. Becoming suddenly aware of his presence, she glanced downward, gave a great start and a half scream, and exclaimed in no gentle tones: “Preserve ’s! Whaur come _ye_ frae?” It was neither that she did not know the man, nor that she meant any offence: her words were the mere embodiment of the annoyance of startled surprise; but their effect was peculiar. Without a single other motion he turned abruptly on one heel, gazed seaward with quick-flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, but, apparently too polite to refuse an answer to the evidently unpleasant question, replied in low, almost sullen tones: “I dinna ken whaur I come frae. Ye _ken_ ’at I dinna ken whaur I come frae. I dinna ken whaur _ye_ come frae. I dinna ken whaur onybody comes frae.”