t came on to blow hard, as it did
once and again during those summer nights, instead of making him feel
small and weak in the midst of the storming forces, it gave him a
glorious sense of power and unconquerable life. And when his watch was
out, and the boat lay quiet, like a horse tethered and asleep in his
clover-field, he too would fall asleep with a sense of simultaneously
deepening and vanishing delight such as he had not at all in other
conditions experienced. Ever since the poison had got into his system,
and crept where it yet lay lurking in hidden corners and crannies, a
noise at night would on shore startle him awake, and set his heart
beating hard; but no loudest sea-noise ever woke him: the stronger the
wind flapped its wings around him, the deeper he slept. When a comrade
called him by name he was up at once and wide awake.

It answered also all his hopes in regard to his companions and the
fisher-folk generally. Those who had really known him found the same old
Malcolm, and those who had doubted him soon began to see that at least
he had lost nothing in courage or skill or good-will: ere long he was
even a greater favorite than before. On his part, he learned to
understand far better the nature of his people, as well as the
individual characters of them, for his long (but not too long) absence
and return enabled him to regard them with unaccustomed, and therefore
in some respects more discriminating, eyes.

Duncan's former dwelling happening to be then occupied by a lonely
woman, Malcolm made arrangements with her to take them both in; so that
in relation to his grandfather too something very much like the old life
returned for a time--with this difference, that Duncan soon began to
check himself as often as the name of his hate with its accompanying
curse rose to his lips.

The factor continued very ill. He had sunk into a low state, in which
his former indulgence was greatly against him. Every night the fever
returned, and at length his wife was worn out with watching and waiting
upon him.

And every morning Lizzy Findlay without fail called to inquire how Mr.
Crathie had spent the night. To the last, while quarreling with every
one of her neighbors with whom he had anything to do, he had continued
kind to her, and she was more grateful than one in other trouble than
hers could have understood. But she did not know that an element in the
origination of his kindness was the belief that it was by Malco