Some
resist and sit resolutely by the fire. Most go and are brought back
again, like Lady Cassilis. A few, of the tribe of Waring, go and are
seen no more; only now and again, at springtime, when the gipsies'
song is afloat in the amethyst evening, we can catch their voices in
the glee.
By night it was clearer, and Maybole more visible than during the
day. Clouds coursed over the sky in great masses; the full moon
battled the other way, and lit up the snow with gleams of flying
silver; the town came down the hill in a cascade of brown gables,
bestridden by smooth white roofs, and sprangled here and there with
lighted windows. At either end the snow stood high up in the
darkness, on the peak of the Tolbooth and among the chimneys of the
Castle. As the moon flashed a bull's-eye glitter across the town
between the racing clouds, the white roofs leaped into relief over
the gables and the chimney-stacks, and their shadows over the white
roofs. In the town itself the lit face of the clock peered down the
street; an hour was hammered out on Mr. Geli's bell, and from behind
the red curtains of a public-house some one trolled out - a
compatriot of Burns, again! - 'The saut tear blin's my e'e.
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