Chapter 4 - Page 2

stanes--Odd, that passes a' thing I e'er heard tell of!"

As they approached nearer, Earnscliff could not help agreeing with his
companion. The figure they had seen the night before seemed slowly and
toilsomely labouring to pile the large stones one upon another, as if
to form a small enclosure. Materials lay around him in great plenty, but
the labour of carrying on the work was immense, from the size of most of
the stones; and it seemed astonishing that he should have succeeded in
moving several which he had already arranged for the foundation of his
edifice. He was struggling to move a fragment of great size when the two
young men came up, and was so intent upon executing his purpose, that
he did not perceive them till they were close upon him. In straining
and heaving at the stone, in order to place it according to his wish,
he displayed a degree of strength which seemed utterly inconsistent with
his size and apparent deformity. Indeed, to judge from the difficulties
he had already surmounted, he must have been of Herculean powers; for
some of the stones he had succeeded in raising apparently required two
men's strength to have moved them. Hobbie's suspicions began to revive,
on seeing the preternatural strength he exerted.

"I am amaist persuaded it's the ghaist of a stane-mason--see siccan
band-statnes as he's laid i--An it be a man, after a', I wonder what
he wad take by the rood to build a march dyke. There's ane sair wanted
between Cringlehope and the Shaws.--Honest man" (raising his voice), "ye
make good firm wark there?"

The being whom he addressed raised his eyes with a ghastly stare, and,
getting up from his stooping posture, stood before them in all his
native and hideous deformity. His head was of uncommon size, covered
with a fell of shaggy hair, partly grizzled with age; his eyebrows,
shaggy and prominent, overhung a pair of small dark, piercing eyes,
set far back in their sockets, that rolled with a portentous wildness,
indicative of a partial insanity. The rest of his features were of the
coarse, rough-hewn stamp, with which a painter would equip a giant
in romance; to which was added the wild, irregular, and peculiar
expression, so often seen in the countenances of those whose persons are
deformed. His body, thick and square, like that of a man of middle size,
was mounted upon two large feet; but nature seemed to have forgotten the
legs and the thighs, or they were so very short as to be hidden by the
dress which he wore. His arms were long and brawny, furnished with two
muscular hands, and, where uncovered in the eagerness of his labour,
were shagged with coarse black hair. It seemed as if nature had
originally intended the separate parts of his body to be the members