Rain — Mist — The Jaws 437

ropes still left, but the mass stood helpless and
hopeless.

“You may wonder that we could have stood
still, waiting to see the last o’ them,” Birse, the
post, has said to me in the schoolhouse, “ but,
dominie, I couldna hae moved, magre my neck.
I’m a hale man, but if this minute we was to
hear the voice o’ the Almighty saying solemnly,
‘ Afore the clock strikes again, Birse, the post,
will fall down dead of heart disease,’ what do you
think you would do? I'll tell you. You would
stand whaur you are, and stare, tongue-tied, at
me till I dropped. How dol ken? By the
teaching o’ that nicht. Ay, but there’s a mair
important thing I dinna ken, and that is whether
I would be palsied wi’ fear like the earl, or face
death with the calmness o’ the minister.”

Indeed, the contrast between Rintoul and
Gavin was now impressive. When Tosh signed
that the weavers had done their all and failed, the
two men looked in each other’s faces, and Gavin’s
face was firm and the earl’s working convulsively.
The people had given up attempting to com-
municate with Gavin save by signs, for though
they heard his sonorous voice, when he pitched
it at them, they saw that he caught few words of
theirs. ‘‘ He heard our skirls,”’ Birse said, “ but
couldna grip the words ony mair than we could
hear the earl. And yet we screamed, and the
minister didna. I’ve heard o’ Highlandmen wi’
the same gift, so that they could be heard across
a glen.”

““We must prepare for death,” Gavin said,
solemnly, to the earl, “and it is for your own