the time.  He would point with his elbow stuck sideways at an acute angle in a manner that was distinctly libellous.  He would do it menacingly with his head, and the indication contemptuous of his left knee was a triumph.  But the finest and most conclusive use of all was his great toe as an index-finger of scorn.  It stuck out apart from all the others, red and uncompromising, a conclusive affidavit of evil conduct.

“It’s near kye-time,” again said Winsome, while Ralph yearned with a great yearning for the boy to betake himself over the moor.  But Andra had no such intention.

“I’se no gaun a fit till I hae showed ye baith what it is to guddle.  For ye mauna gang awa’ to Embro” [elbow contemptuous to the north, where Andra supposed Edinburgh to lie immediately on the other side of the double-breasted swell of blue Cairnsmuir of Carsphairn], “an’ think that howkin’ (wi’ a lassie to help ye) in among the gravel is guddlin’.  You see here!” cried Andra, and before either Winsome or Ralph could say a word, he had stripped himself to his very brief breeches and ragged shirt, and was wading into the deepest part of the pool beneath the water-fall.

Here he scurried and scuttled for all the world like a dipper, with his breast showing white like that of the bird, as he walked along the bottom of the pool.  Most of the time his head was beneath the water, as well as all the rest of his body.  His arms bored their way round the intricacies of the boulders at the bottom.  His brown and freckled hands pursued the trouts beneath the banks.  Sometimes he would have one in each hand at the same time.

When he caught them he had a careless and reckless way of throwing them up on the bank without looking where he was throwing.  The first one he threw in this way took effect on the cheek of Ralph Peden, to his exceeding astonishment.

Winsome again cried “Andra!” warningly, but Andra was far too busy to listen; besides, it is not easy to hear with one’s head under water and the frightened trout flashing in lightning wimples athwart the pool.

But for all that, the fisherman’s senses were acute, even under the water; for as Winsome and Ralph were not very energetic in catching the lively speckled beauties which found themselves so unexpectedly frisking upon the green grass, one or two of them (putting apparently their tails into their mouths, and letting go, as with the release of a steel spring) turned a splashing somersault into the pool.  Andra did not seem to notice them as they fell, but in a little while he looked up with a trout in his hand, the peat-water running in bucketfuls from his hair and shirt, his face full of indignation.

“Ye’re lettin’ them back again!” he exclaimed, looking fiercely at the trout in his hand.  “This is the second time I hae catched this yin wi’ the wart on its tail!” he said.  “D’ye think I’m catchin’ them for fun, or to gie them a change o’ air for their healths, like fine fowk that come frae Embro’!”