As he put it down, he saw and recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.
'Has he been drinking ?' shouted I to Rorie.
'He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,' returned Rorie in the same high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.
'Then--was he so--in February ?' I inquired.
Rorie's 'Ay' was a cause of joy to me.

The murder, then, had not sprung in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be condemned than to be pardoned.

My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared.

Yet what a scene for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of death, his ear watching for the signs of ship-wreck, surely that, if it were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest superstitions.

Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with an unholy glimmer.
'Eh, Charlie, man, it's grand!' he cried.