The first thing he did was to superintend the painting and laying up of
his boat for the winter. It was placed across the rafters of the barn,
wrapt in tarpaulin.
The light grew shorter and shorter. A few rough rainy days stripped the
trees of their foliage; and although the sun shone out again and made
lovely weather,
Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days,
it was plain to all the senses that the autumn was drawing to a close.
CHAPTER LX.
All the prophetic rumours of a bad harvest had proved themselves false.
Never a better harvest had been gathered in the strath, nor had one
ever been carried home in superior condition. But the passion for
prophecy had not abated in Glamerton. It was a spiritual epidemic over
the whole district.
Now a certain wily pedler had turned the matter over and resolved to
make something of it.
One day there appeared in the streets of Glamerton a man carrying in
his hand a bundle of papers as a sample of what he had in the pack upon
his shoulders. He bore a burden of wrath. They were all hymns and
ballads of a minacious description, now one and now another of which he
kept repeating in lugubrious recitative.
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