In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly regarded.

So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie--heard, not heeded, and still remembered--had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate--a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless, and august--moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian men.

Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may be decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring.
She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment with approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toilet mirror, and went softly downstairs through the sleeping house that resounded with the sound of afternoon snoring.

Just outside the door, Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not reading, only honouring the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind.

She came near him and stood still.
"I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.
There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up.
She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levity of the morning.
"Ay, lass?
Ye'll have yer ups and downs like me, I'm thinkin'," he observed.
"What for do ye say that ?" she asked.
"O, for naething," says Dand.