Flemington by Violet Jacob — Read

WHEN Skirling Wattie had delivered his letter to Flemington on the foregoing day, he watched the young man out of sight with disgust, and cursed him for a high-handed jackanapes. He was not used to be treated in such a fashion. There was that about Archie which took his fancy, for the suggestion of stir and movement that went everywhere with Flemington pleased him, and roused his unfailing curiosity. The beggar's most pleasant characteristic was his interest in everybody and everything; his worst, the unseasonable brutality with which he gratified it.

A livelihood gained by his own powers of cajolery and persistence had left him without a spark of respect for his kind. He would have been a man of prowess had his limbs been intact -- and destiny, in robbing his body of activity, had transferred that quality to his brains. His huge shoulders and broad fists, the arrogant male glare of his roving eye, might well hint at the wisdom of providence in keeping his sphere of action to the narrow limits of a go-cart. Those who look for likenesses between people and animals would be reminded by him of a wild boar; and it was almost shocking to anyone with a sense of fitness to hear the mellow and touching voice, rich with the indescribable quiver of pathos and tragedy, that proceeded from his bristly jaws when he sang. The world that it conjured up before imaginative listeners was a world of twilight; of stars that drew a trail of tear-dimmed lustre about the ancient haunted places of the country; stars that had shone on battlefields and on the partings of lovers; that had looked on the raids of the border, and had stood over the dark border-towers among the peat. It was a strange truth that, in the voice of this coarse and humble vagabond, lay the whole distinctive spirit of the national poetry of Scotland.