wthorn into a house which had incurred his
displeasure.

The men scoffed at him openly, and occasionally gave him surreptitious
pennies. The women and children feared him; and the dogs, to the last
one, detested him but gave him wide berth.

Graeme had very soon run across the little misanthrope and, in his own
black humour, found him amusing. They rarely met without a trial of
wit, or parted without a transfer of coppers from the large pocket to
the small. Wherefore Johnnie made a special nest in the hedge opposite
the cottage, and waylaid his copper-mine systematically and greatly to
his own satisfaction and emolument. But, like the dogs, though on a
lower level, he too was not without his effect on Graeme's spirits,
and if he did not lift him up he certainly at times helped him out of
himself and his gloomy thoughts.

VII

"You're just an unmitigated little humbug, Johnnie," said Graeme, as
he leaned over the wall smoking, to the small boy whose acquaintance
he had made the previous day, and who had promptly foretold a storm
which had not come.

"Unmitigumbug! Guyablle! Qu'es' ce que c'es' que ca?" echoed the small
boy, with very wide eyes.

"You, my son. Your black magic's all humbug. It lacks the essential
attribute of fulfilment. It doesn't work. Black magic that doesn't
work is humbug."

"Black-mack-chick! My Good! You do talk!"

"What about that storm?"

"Ah ouaie! Well, you wait. It come."

"So will Christmas, and the summer after next, if we wait long enough.
On the same terms I foretell thunders and lightnings, rain, hail,
snow, and fiery vapours, followed by lunar rainbows and waterspouts."

"Go'zamin!" said Johnnie, with a touch of reluctant admiration at such
an outflow of eloquence; and then, by way of set-off, "I sec six black
crows, 's mawn'n."

"Ah--really? And what do you gather from such a procession as that
now?"

"Some un's gwain' to die," in a tone of vast satisfaction.

"Of course, of course--if we wait long enough. It's perhaps you.
You'll die yourself sometime, you know."

"Noh, I wun't. No 'n'll ivver see me die. I'll just turn into
sun'th'n--a gull maybe," as one floated by on moveless wing, the very
poetry of motion; and the fathomless black eyes followed it with
pathetic longing.

"Cormorant more likely, I should say."

"Noh, I wun't. I don' like corm'rants. They stink. Mebbe I'll be a
hawk,"--as his eye fell on one, like a brown leaf nailed against the
blue sky.