He could have
broken forth in curses; he could have stood there, like a
mortified tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his gall upon
her by the hour - or so he thought; and the next moment his
heart bled for the girl. 'Poor creature, it's little she
knows!' he sighed. 'Let her enjoy herself while she can!'
But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at him on the
Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome to a sick-
hearted bystander?
The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested
another; and he plodded off toward Craigleith. A wind had
sprung up out of the north-west; it was cruel keen, it dried
him like a fire, and racked his finger-joints. It brought
clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that blotted
heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among
the hazelled rubbish heaps that surround the caldron of the
quarry, and lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched
close along the earth, the stones were cutting and icy, the
bare hazels wailed about him; and soon the air of the
afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal
harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's
limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of change;
now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints
abraded him, was almost pleased; now he would crawl to the
edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down.
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