' He said
goodbye to me at a footpath, and crippled wearily off to his work.
It will make your heart ache if you think of his old fingers groping
in the snow.
He told me I was to turn down beside the school-house for Dunure.
And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a babble
of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep road
leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the steep
hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate disrepair,
much apparatus for drying nets, and a score or so of fishers' houses.
Hard by, a few shards of ruined castle overhang the sea, a few
vaults, and one tall gable honeycombed with windows. The snow lay on
the beach to the tidemark. It was daubed on to the sills of the
ruin: it roosted in the crannies of the rock like white sea-birds;
even on outlying reefs there would be a little cock of snow, like a
toy lighthouse. Everything was grey and white in a cold and dolorous
sort of shepherd's plaid. In the profound silence, broken only by
the noise of oars at sea, a horn was sounded twice; and I saw the
postman, girt with two bags, pause a moment at the end of the clachan
for letters.
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