The form was that of a tall, thin man, a little bent at the knees and bowed in the back, who yet carried himself with no small dignity, cloaked in an air of general apology--as if he would have said, “I am sorry my way is not yours, for I see very well how wrong you must think it.” He wore large strong shoes--I think a description should begin with the feet rather than the head--fit for boggy land; blue, ribbed, woollen stockings; knee-breeches of some home-made stuff: all the coarser cloth they wore, and they wore little else, was shorn from their own sheep, and spun, woven, and made at home; an old blue dress coat with bright buttons; a drab waistcoat which had once been yellow; and to crown all, a red woollen nightcap, hanging down on one side with a tassel. “Weel, Grizzie!” he said, in a gentle, rather sad voice, as if the days of his mourning were not yet ended, “I’m ower sune the day!” He never passed Grizzie without greeting her, and Grizzie’s devotion to him was like that of slave and sister mingled. “Na, laird,” she answered, “ye can never be ower sune for yer ain fowk, though ye may be for yer ain stamack. The taties winna be lang bilin’ the day. They’re some sma’.” “That’s because you pare them so much, Grizzie,” said the grandmother. Grizzie vouchsafed no reply. The moment young Cosmo saw whose shadow darkened the doorway, he rose in haste, and standing with his hand upon the arm of the chair, waited for his father to seat himself in it. The laird acknowledged his attention with a smile, sat down, and looked like the last sitter grown suddenly old. He put out his hand to the boy across the low arm of the chair, and the boy laid his hand in his father’s, and so they remained, neither saying a word. The laird leaned back, and sat resting. All were silent. Notwithstanding the oddity of his dress, no one who had any knowledge of humanity could have failed to see in Cosmo Warlock, the elder, a high bred gentleman. His face was small, and the skin of it was puckered into wrinkles innumerable; his mouth was sweet, but he had lost his teeth, and the lips had fallen in; his chin, however, was large and strong; while his blue eyes looked out from under his narrow high forehead with a softly piercing glance of great gentleness and benignity. A little gray hair clustered about his temples and the back of his head--the red nightcap hid the rest. There was three days’ growth of gray beard on his chin, for _now that he had nobody_, he would say, he had not the heart to shave every morning.