The encampment looked weird indeed as seen in the cruel light of day.
The women were cooking oatmeal on iron girdles, but the fire burned
smokily, and the cake I got was no better than dough. They were a
disjaskit lot, with tousled hair and pinched faces, in which shone
hungry eyes. Most were barefoot, and all but two--three were ancient
beldames who should have been at home in the chimney corner. I noticed
one decent-looking young woman, who had the air of a farm servant; and
two were well-fed country wives who had probably left a brood of
children to mourn them. The men were little better. One had the sallow
look of a weaver, another was a hind with a big, foolish face, and
there was a slip of a lad who might once have been a student of
divinity. But each had a daftness in the eye and something weak and
unwholesome in the visage, so that they were an offence to the fresh,
gusty moorland.
All but Muckle John himself. He came out of his tent and prayed till
the hill-sides echoed. It was a tangle of bedlamite ravings, with long
screeds from the Scriptures intermixed like currants in a bag-pudding.
But there was power in the creature, in the strange lift of his voice,
in his grim jowl, and in the fire of his sombre eyes.
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