ched beyond the
city, he never longed for larger space, for wider outlook. Space
and outlook he had skyward--and seaward when he would, but even into
these regions he had never yet desired to go. His world was the
world of men; the presence of many was his greater room; his people
themselves were his world. He had no idea of freedom in
dissociation with human faces and voices and eyes. But now he had
left all these, and as he ran from them a red pall seemed settling
down behind him, wrapping up and hiding away his country, his home.
For the first time in his life, the fatherless, motherless,
brotherless, sisterless stray of the streets felt himself alone.
The sensation was an awful one. He had lost so many, and had not
one left! That gash in Sambo's black throat had slain "a whole
cityful." His loneliness grew upon him, until again he darted aside
from the road into the bush, this time to hide from the Spectre of
the Desert--the No Man. Deprived of human countenances, the face of
creation was a mask without eyes, and liberty a mere negation. Not
that Gibbie had ever thought about liberty; he had only enjoyed: not
that he had ever thought about human faces; he had only loved them,
and lived upon their smiles. "Gibbie wadna need to gang to h'aven,"
said Mysie, the baker's daughter, to her mother, one night, as they
walked home from a merry-making. "What for that, lassie?" returned
her mother. "Cause he wad be meeserable whaur there was nae drunk
fowk," answered Mysie. And now it seemed to the poor, shocked,
heart-wounded creature, as if the human face were just the one thing
he could no more look upon. One haunted him, the black one, with
the white, staring eyes, the mouth in its throat, and the white
grinning teeth.

It was a cold, fresh morning, cloudy and changeful, towards the end
of April. It had rained, and would rain again; it might snow.
Heavy undefined clouds, with saffron breaks and borders, hung about
the east, but what was going to happen there--at least he did not
think; he did not know east from west, and I doubt whether, although
he had often seen the sun set, he had ever seen him rise. Yet even
to him, city-creature as he was, it was plain something was going to
happen there. And happen it did presently, and that with a
splendour that for a moment blinded Gibbie. For just at the horizon
there was a long horizontal slip of blue sky, and through that crack
the topmost arc of the rising