‘Ochan, ochan, wass you not seein’ that I was screamin’ till I couldna scream ony more, whatefer?’ ‘Very extraordinary, to be sure. Well, we’ll try ourselves.’ So saying they jumped upon the beach, and, with rather less agility than Sandy had shown, clambered up the stone, while he stood beside the boat. When they were both on the top, they proceeded to shout with such vehemence that they might have been heard on the other side of the bay. Sandy, however, as if intent on hearing the faintest sound, put his hand behind each ear in turn, and bent his head now to one side, now to the other. When the two strangers had had enough of this performance, they came down, and indignantly demanded: ‘Well, Sandy, do you mean to tell us that you did not hear?’ ‘Hear ye!’ said he. ‘Wass you roarin’ at all. I was never hearin’ wan bit.’ He had a remarkable power of expressing astonishment by his mere looks, and put on a face of child-like innocence when he protested that no sound at all had been heard by him. Feeling that they had been ‘sold’ by this apparent ‘natural,’ they left him to fetch his potatoes and pull the boat back himself. But he had his brandy that evening. [Sidenote: AYRSHIRE WITCHES] Removed into asylums, the village idiots lose the opportunity of giving expression to the memorable sayings which free contact with their kinsfolk and the irritation caused by their young persecutors used to produce. But even there their oddity of phrase comes occasionally forward. My old companion, John Young, already referred to, used to tell how, when he was one of the assistant physicians in the Morningside Asylum at Edinburgh, he was one morning reading prayers. The weather being raw and chilly, he had a cough, which interrupted him at the end of the petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ During the pause, one of the patients, sitting in front of him, added in an audible voice, ‘and _butter_.’ The second childhood of old age among people who have been sane all their lives sometimes gives rise to confusion of thought and language such as no half-witted creature can rival. I knew an old Scottish lady who used to make curious lapses of this kind. Her nephew met me one day and said, ‘I must give you auntie’s last. She was in bed, and, calling her maid, said to her: “Jenny, if I’m spared to be taken away soon, I hope my nephew Thomas will get the doctor to open my head, and see if anything canna be done for my hearin’.”’