Miss Horn looked up: there was no one there.
“That’s it! he’s awa’ again! That’s the w’y he’s been duin’ this last hoor, at least, to my knowledge. I saw him watchin’ ilka mov’ ye made, mem, a’ the time ye was doon upo’ the shore—an there he is noo, or was a meenute ago, at the heid o’ the brae, glowerin’ the een oot o’ ’s heid at ye, mem!”
“Div ye ken him?” asked Miss Horn.
“No, mem—’cep’ by sicht o’ ee; he hasna been lang aboot the toon. Some fowk sae he’s dementit; but he’s unco quaiet, speyks to naebody, an’ gien onybody speyk to him, jist rins. Cud he be kennin’ you, no? ye’re a stranger here, mem.”
“No sic a stranger, John!” returned Miss Horn, calling the man by his name, for she recognized him as the beadle of the parish church. “What’s the body like?”
“A puir, wee, hump-backit cratur, wi’ the face o’ a gentleman.”
“I ken him weel,” said Miss Horn. “He is a gentleman—gien ever God made ane. But he’s sair afflickit. Whaur does he lie at nicht —can ye tell me?”
“I ken naething aboot him, mem, by what comes o’ seein’ him sic like ’s the day, an’ ance teetin (peering) in at the door o’ the kirk. I wad hae weised him till a seat, but the moment I luikit at him, awa’ he ran. He’s unco cheenged though, sin’ the first time I saw him.”
Since he lost Phemy, fear had been slaying him. No one knew where he slept; but in the daytime he haunted the streets, judging them safer than the fields or woods. The moment any one accosted him, however, he fled like the wind. He had “no art to find the mind’s construction in the face;” and not knowing whom to trust, he distrusted all. Humanity was good in his eyes, but there was no man. The vision of Miss Horn was like the dayspring from on high to him; with her near, the hosts of the Lord seemed to encamp around him; but the one word he had heard her utter about his back, had caused in him an invincible repugnance to appearing before her, and hence it was that at a distance he had haunted her steps without nearer approach.
There was indeed a change upon him! His clothes hung about him— not from their own ragged condition only, but also from the state of skin and bone to which he was reduced, his hump showing like a great peg over which they had been carelessly cast. Half the round of his eyes stood out from his face, whose pallor betokened the ever-recurring rush of the faintly sallying troops back to the citadel of the heart. He had always been ready to run, but now he looked as if nothing but weakness and weariness kept him from running always. Miss Horn had presently an opportunity of marking the sad alteration.