He put his hand behind his ear that he might hear better, turned a pair of cunning eyes on David, while his lips pressed themselves together.
'Your mither wor a Papist?
an your feyther wor Sandy Grieve.

Ay, ay--I've yeerd tell strange things o' Sandy Grieve's wife,' he said slowly.
Suddenly Louie, who had been lying full length on her back in the sun, with her hat over her face, apparently asleep, sat bolt upright.
'Tell us what about her,' she said imperiously.
'Noa--noa,' said the old man, shaking his head, while a sort of film seemed to gather over the eyes, and the face and features relaxed--fell, as it were, into their natural expression of weak senility, which so long as he was under the stress of his favourite illusions was hardly apparent.

'But it's true--it's varra true--I've yeerd tell strange things about Sandy Grieve's wife.' And still aimlessly shaking his head, he sat staring at the opposite side of the ravine, the lower jaw dropping a little.
'He knows nowt about it,' said David, roughly, the light of a sombre, half-reluctant curiosity, which had arisen in his look, dying down.
He threw himself on the grass by the dogs, and began teasing and playing with them.

Meanwhile Louie sat studying 'Lias with a frowning hostility, making faces at him now and then by way of amusement.

To disappoint the impetuous will embodied in that small frame was to commit an offence of the first order.
But one might as well make faces at a stone post as at old 'Lias when his wandering fit was on him.