There also, during the
winter, hung the cumulus clouds of Blue Peter's herring nets; for
his cottage, having a garret above, did not afford the customary
place for them in the roof.
When the cave proved to be no longer a secret from the laird's
enemies, Phemy, knowing that her father's garret could never afford
him a sufficing sense of security, turned the matter over in her
active little brain until pondering produced plans, and she betook
herself to her uncle, with whom she was a great favourite. Him she
found no difficulty in persuading to grant the hunted man a refuge
in the loft. In a few days he had put up a partition between the
part which was floored and that which was open, and so made for him
a little room, accessible from the shop by a ladder and a trapdoor.
He had just taken down an old window frame to glaze for it, when
the laird coming in and seeing what he was about, scrambled up
the ladder, and, a moment after, all but tumbled down again in his
eagerness to put a stop to it: the window was in the gable, looking
to the south, and he would not have it glazed.
In blessed compensation for much of the misery of his lot, the
laird was gifted with an inborn delicate delight in nature and her
ministrations such as few poets even possess; and this faculty was
supplemented with a physical hardiness which, in association with
his weakness and liability to certain appalling attacks, was truly
astonishing. Though a rough hand might cause him exquisite pain, he
could sleep soundly on the hardest floor; a hot room would induce
a fit, but he would lie under an open window in the sharpest night
without injury; a rude word would make him droop like a flower in
frost, but he might go all day wet to the skin without taking cold.
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