Next day she went back to gaze fascinated at the hole, only to find that
already the dry sand had almost filled it, quite covering the cracked
place where she had kneeled, the turret and the roof. She told no one
but Hunchback Wullie, an old man who tended the green-wood fires in the
huts on the beach, where fish were cured. Excepting her mother, he was
Marcella's only friend--he it was who had soaked her mind in the legends
of Lashnagar and the hills around; he it was who had taught her the
beautiful things learnt by those who grow near to the earth and humble
living things.
She ran down the hillside to him that day, her eyes--the blue-grey eyes
of her people--wide with horror, her long, straight, fair hair, that she
wore in two Marguerite plaits, loosened and swinging in the wind.
Hunchback Wullie was in the first hut, threading the herrings through
their gills on the long strings that went from side to side high up
under the roof. His ruddy brown beard glistered with the shining scales
of the fish, for he had a habit of standing by the hut door looking out
to sea and stroking his beard, when another man would have smoked and
rested.
"Things never come tae an ending, lassie," he said, his little red-brown
eyes looking out over the grey water. "Either for good or for ill
they're always gaun on.
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