A Stranger Came Ashore

Each night after that she lay awake for a long time, uneasily listening to the way the old man’s breath wheezed and rattled in his chest.

and then was suddenly jerked wide awake again by the sight of his father’s sixareen coming into the voe.

“Trust who?” asked Robbie, bewildered by this

Robbie kept telling him to rest, not to bother talking; but still Old Da persisted, as if what he had to say was important – even urgent – and Robbie got the strangest feeling that he was trying to utter a warning of some kind.

His nose was big and beaky. His skin was swarthy. His eyes glittered in a sharp and knowing way. He was tall, but very thin and stooped, and he dressed always in black. Besides which, he always wore a tattered, black, schoolmaster’s gown that flapped from his shoulders like a raven’s wings. And like the raven, he was solitary in his habits.