THE MAINS.
They reached at length the valley road. The water that ran in the
bottom was the Lorrie. Three days ago it was a lively little stream,
winding and changing within its grassy banks--here resting silent
in a deep pool, there running and singing over its pebbles. Now it
had filled and far overflowed its banks, and was a swift river. It
had not yet, so far up the valley, encroached on the road; but the
torrents on the mountain had already in places much injured it, and
with considerable difficulty they crossed some of the new-made gullies.
When they approached the bridge, however, by which they must cross the
Lorrie to reach the Mains, their worst trouble lay before them. For the
enemy, with whose reinforcements they had all the time been descending,
showed himself ever in greater strength the farther they advanced; and
here the road was flooded for a long way on both sides of the bridge.
There was therefore a good deal of wading to be done; but the road was
an embankment, there was little current, and in safety at last they
ascended the rising ground on which the farm-building stood. When they
reached the yard, they sent Gibbie to find shelter for Crummie, and
themselves went up to the house.
“The Lord preserve ’s!” cried Jean Mavor, with uplifted hands, when she
saw them enter the kitchen.
“He’ll dee that, mem,” returned Janet, with a smile.
“But what _can_ he dee? Gien ye be droont oot o’ the hills, what’s to
come o’ his i’ the how? I wad ken that!” said Jean.
“The watter’s no up to yer door yet,” remarked Janet.
“God forbid!” retorted Jean, as if the very mention of such a state of
things was too dreadful to be polite. “--But, eh, ye’re weet!”
“_Weet_’s no the word,” said Robert, trying to laugh, but failing from
sheer exhaustion, and the beginnings of an asthmatic attack.
The farmer, hearing their voices, came into the kitchen--a middle-sized
and middle-aged, rather coarse-looking man, with keen eyes, who took
snuff amazingly. His manner was free, with a touch of satire. He was
proud of driving a hard bargain, but was thoroughly hospitable. He had
little respect for person or thing, but showed an occasional touch of
tenderness.
“Hoots, Rob!” he said roughly as he entered, “I thoucht ye had mair
sense! What’s broucht ye here at sic a time?”
But as he spoke he held out his snuff-box to the old man.
“Fell needcessity, sir,” answered Robert, taking a good pinch.
“Necessity!” retorted the farmer. “Was ye oot o’ meal?”
“Oot o’ dry meal, I doobt, by this time, sir,” replied Robert.
“Hoots! I wuss we war a’ in like necessity--weel up upo’ the hill
i’stead o’ doon here upo’ the haugh (_river-meadow_). It’s jist clean
ridic’lous. Ye sud hae kenned better at your age, Rob. Ye sud hae
thoucht twise, man.”
“’Deed, sir,” answered Robert, quietly finishing his pinch of snuff,
“there was sma’ need, an’ less time to think, an’ Glashgar bursten,
an’ the watter comin’ ower the tap o’ the bit hoosie as gien ’twar a
muckle owershot wheel, an’ no a place for fowk to bide in. Ye dinna
think Janet an’ me wad be twa sic auld fules as pit on oor Sunday claes
to sweem in, gien we thoucht to see things as we left them whan we
gaed back! Ye see, sir, though the hoose be fun’t upo’ a rock, it’s
maist biggit o’ fells, an’ the foundation’s a’ I luik even to see o’ ’t
again. Whan the force o’ the watter grows less, it’ll come doon upo’
the riggin’ wi’ the haill weicht o’ ’t.”
“Ay!” said Janet, in a low voice, “the live stanes maun come to the
live rock to bigg the hoose ’at’ll stan’.”
“What think ye, Maister Fergus, you ’at’s gauin’ to be a minister?”
said Robert, referring to his wife’s words, as the young man looked in
at the door of the kitchen.
“Lat him be,” interposed his father, blowing his nose with unnecessary
violence; “setna him preachin’ afore ’s time. Fess the whusky, Fergus,
an’ gie auld Robert a dram. Haith! gien the watter be rinnin’ ower the
tap o’ yer hoose, man, it was time to flit. Fess twa or three glaisses,
Fergus; we hae a’ need o’ something ’at’s no watter. It’s perfeckly
ridic’lous!”
Having taken a little of the whisky, the old people went to change
their clothes for some Jean had provided, and in the mean time she made
up her fire, and prepared some breakfast for them.
“An’ whaur’s yer dummie?” she asked, as they re-entered the kitchen.
“He had puir Crummie to luik efter,” answered Janet; “but he micht hae
been in or this time.”
“He’ll be wi’ Donal i’ the byre, nae doobt,” said Jean: “he’s aye some
shy o’ comin’ in wantin’ an inveet.” She went to the door, and called
with a loud voice across the yard, through the wind and the clashing
torrents, “Donal, sen’ Dummie in till ’s brakfast.”
“He’s awa till ’s sheep,” cried Donal in reply.
“Preserve ’s!--the cratur ’ll be lost!” said Jean.
“Less likly nor ony man aboot the place,” bawled Donal, half angry with
his mistress for calling his friend _dummie_. “Gibbie kens better what
he’s aboot nor ony twa ’at thinks him a fule ’cause he canna lat oot
sic stuff an’ nonsense as they canna haud in.”
Jean went back to the kitchen, only half reassured concerning her
brownie, and far from contented with his absence. But she was glad to
find that neither Janet nor Robert appeared alarmed at the news.
“I wuss the cratur had had some brakfast,” she said.
“He has a piece in ’s pooch,” answered Janet. “He’s no oonprovidit wi’
what can be made mair o’.”
“I dinna richtly un’erstan’ ye there,” said Jean.
“Ye canna hae failt to remark, mem,” answered Janet, “’at whan the
Maister set himsel’ to feed the hungerin’ thoosan’s, he teuk intil ’s
han’ what there was, an’ vroucht upo’ that to mak mair o’ ’t. I hae
wussed sometimes ’at the laddie wi’ the five barley loaves an’ the twa
sma’ fishes, hadna been there that day. I wad fain ken hoo the Maister
wad hae managed wantin’ onything to begin upo’. As it was, he aye hang
what he did upo’ something his Father had dune afore him.”
“Hoots!” returned Jean, who looked upon Janet as a lover of conundrums,
“ye’re aye warstlin’ wi’ run k-nots an’ teuch moo’fu’s.”
“Ow na, no aye,” answered Janet; “--only whiles, whan the speerit o’
speirin’ gets the upper han’ o’ me for a sizon.”
“I doobt that same speerit ’ll lead ye far frae the still watters some
day, Janet,” said Jean, stirring the porridge vehemently.
“Ow, I think not,” answered Janet very calmly. “Whan the Maister
says--_what’s that to thee?_--I tak care he hasna to say ’t twise, but
jist get up an’ follow him.”
This was beyond Jean, but she held her peace, for, though she feared
for Janet’s orthodoxy, and had a strong opinion of the superiority
of her own common sense--in which, as in the case of all who pride
themselves in the same, there was a good deal more of the _common_ than
of the _sense_--she had the deepest conviction of Janet’s goodness,
and regarded her as a sort of heaven-favoured idiot, whose utterances
were somewhat privileged. Janet, for her part, looked upon Jean as “an
honest wuman, wha ’ll get a heap o’ licht some day.”
When they had eaten their breakfast, Robert took his pipe to the barn,
saying there was not much danger of fire that day; Janet washed up the
dishes, and sat down to her Book; and Jean went out and in, attending
to many things.
Mean time the rain fell, the wind blew, the water rose. Little could
be done beyond feeding the animals, threshing a little corn in the
barn, and twisting straw ropes for the thatch of the ricks of the
coming harvest--if indeed there was a harvest on the road, for, as
the day went on, it seemed almost to grow doubtful whether any ropes
would be wanted; while already not a few of last year’s ricks, from
farther up the country, were floating past the Mains, down the Daur
to the sea. The sight was a dreadful one--had an air of the day of
judgment about it to farmers’ eyes. From the Mains, to right and left
beyond the rising ground on which the farm buildings stood, everywhere
as far as the bases of the hills, instead of fields was water, yellow
brown, here in still expanse or slow progress, there sweeping along in
fierce current. The quieter parts of it were dotted with trees, divided
by hedges, shaded with ears of corn; upon the swifter parts floated
objects of all kinds.
Mr. Duff went wandering restlessly from one spot to another,
finding nothing to do. In the gloaming, which fell the sooner that
a rain-blanket miles thick wrapt the earth up from the sun, he came
across from the barn, and, entering the kitchen, dropped, weary with
hopelessness, on a chair.
“I can weel un’erstan’,” he said, “what for the Lord sud set doon Bony
an’ set up Louy, but what for he sud gar corn grow, an’ syne sen’ a
spate to sweem awa wi’ ’t, that’s mair nor mortal man can see the sense
o’.--Haud yer tongue, Janet. I’m no sayin’ there’s onything wrang; I’m
sayin’ naething but the sair trowth, ’at I canna see the what-for o’
’t. I canna see the guid o’ ’t till onybody. A’thing’s on the ro’d to
the German Ocean. The lan’ ’s jist miltin’ awa intil the sea!”
Janet sat silent, knitting hard at a stocking she had got hold of, that
Jean had begun for her brother. She knew argument concerning the uses
of adversity was vain with a man who knew of no life but that which
consisted in eating and drinking, sleeping and rising, working and
getting on in the world: as to such things existing only that they may
subserve a real life, he was almost as ignorant, notwithstanding he was
an elder of the church, as any heathen.
From being nearly in the centre of its own land, the farm-steading of
the Mains was at a considerable distance from any other; but there
were two or three cottages upon the land, and as the evening drew on,
another aged pair, who lived in one only a few hundred yards from the
house, made their appearance, and were soon followed by the wife of the
foreman with her children, who lived farther off. Quickly the night
closed in, and Gibbie was not come. Robert was growing very uneasy;
Janet kept comforting and reassuring him.
“There’s ae thing,” said the old man: “Oscar’s wi’ ’im.”
“Ay,” responded Janet, unwilling, in the hearing of others, to say a
word that might seem to savour of rebuke to her husband, yet pained
that he should go to the dog for comfort--“Ay; he’s a well-made animal,
Oscar! There’s been a fowth o’ sheep-care pitten intil ’im. Ye see
him ’at made ’im, bein’ a shepherd himsel’, kens what’s wantit o’ the
dog.”--None but her husband understood what lay behind the words.
“Oscar’s no wi’ im,” said Donal. “The dog cam to me i’ the byre, lang
efter Gibbie was awa, greitin’ like, an’ luikin’ for ’im.”
Robert gave a great sigh, but said nothing.
Janet did not sleep a wink that night: she had so many to pray for.
Not Gibbie only, but every one of her family was in perils of waters,
all being employed along the valley of the Daur. It was not, she said,
confessing to her husband her sleeplessness, that she was afraid. She
was only “keepin’ them company, an’ haudin’ the yett open,” she said.
The latter phrase was her picture-periphrase for _praying_. She never
said she _prayed_; she _held the gate open_. The wonder is but small
that Donal should have turned out a poet.
The dawn appeared--but the farm had vanished. Not even heads of growing
corn were anywhere more to be seen. The loss would be severe, and John
Duff’s heart sank within him. The sheep which had been in the mown
clover-field that sloped to the burn, were now all in the corn-yard,
and the water was there with them. If the rise did not soon cease,
every rick would be afloat. There was little current, however, and
not half the danger there would have been had the houses stood a few
hundred yards in any direction from where they were.
“Tak yer brakfast, John,” said his sister.
“Lat them tak ’at hungers,” he answered.
“Tak, or ye’ll no hae the wut to save,” said Jean.
Thereupon he fell to, and ate, if not with appetite, then with a will
that was wondrous.
The flood still grew, and still the rain poured, and Gibbie did not
come. Indeed no one any longer expected him, whatever might have become
of him: except by boat the Mains was inaccessible now, they thought.
Soon after breakfast, notwithstanding, a strange woman came to the
door. Jean, who opened it to her knock, stood and stared speechless.
It was a greyhaired woman, with a more disreputable look than her
weather-flouted condition would account for.
“Gran’ wither for the deuks!” she said.
“Whaur come _ye_ frae?” returned Jean, who did not relish the freedom
of her address.
“Frae ower by,” she answered.
“An’ hoo wan ye here?”
“Upo’ my twa legs.”
Jean looked this way and that over the watery waste, and again stared
at the woman in growing bewilderment.--They came afterwards to the
conclusion that she had arrived, probably half-drunk, the night before,
and passed it in one of the outhouses.
“Yer legs maun be langer nor they luik than, wuman,” said Jean,
glancing at the lower part of the stranger’s person.
The woman only laughed--a laugh without any laughter in it.
“What’s yer wull, noo ’at ye _are_ here?” continued Jean with severity.
“Ye camna to the Mains to tell them there what kin’ o’ wather it wis!”
“I cam whaur I cud win,” answered the woman; “an’ for my wull, that’s
naething to naebody noo--it’s no as it was ance--though, gien I cud get
it, there micht be mair nor me the better for ’t. An’ sae as ye wad
gang the len’th o’ a glaiss o’ whusky--”
“Ye s’ get nae whusky here,” interrupted Jean, with determination.
The woman gave a sigh, and half turned away as if she would depart.
But however she might have come, it was plainly impossible she should
depart and live.
“Wuman,” said Jean, “ken an’ I care naething aboot ye, an’ mair, I
dinna like ye, nor the luik o’ ye; and gien ’t war a fine simmer nicht
’at a body cud lie thereoot, or gang the farther, I wad steek the door
i’ yer face; but that I daurna dee the day again’ my neebour’s soo; sae
ye can come in an’ sit doon an’, my min’ spoken, ye s’ get what’ll haud
the life i’ ye, an’ a puckle strae i’ the barn. Only ye maun jist hae a
quaiet sough, for the gudeman disna like tramps.”
“Tramps here, tramps there!” exclaimed the woman, starting into high
displeasure; “I wad hae ye ken I’m an honest wuman, an’ no tramp!”
“Ye sudna luik sae like ane than,” said Jean coolly. “But come yer wa’s
in, an’ I s’ say naething sae lang as ye behave.”
The woman followed her, took the seat pointed out to her by the fire,
and sullenly ate, without a word of thanks, the cakes and milk handed
her, but seemed to grow better tempered as she ate, though her black
eyes glowed at the food with something of disgust and more of contempt:
she would rather have had a gill of whisky than all the milk on the
Mains. On the other side of the fire sat Janet, knitting away busily,
with a look of ease and leisure. She said nothing, but now and then
cast a kindly glance out of her grey eyes at the woman: there was an
air of the lost sheep about the stranger, which, in whomsoever she
might see it, always drew her affection. “She maun be ane o’ them
the Maister cam to ca’,” she said to herself. But she was careful to
suggest no approach, for she knew the sheep that has left the flock has
grown wild, and is more suspicious and easily startled than one in the
midst of its brethren.
With the first of the light, some of the men on the farm had set out
to look for Gibbie, well knowing it would be a hard matter to touch
Glashgar. About nine they returned, having found it impossible. One of
them, caught in a current and swept into a hole, had barely escaped
with his life. But they were unanimous that the dummie was better off
in any cave on Glashgar than he would be in the best bed-room at the
Mains, if things went on as they threatened.
Robert had kept on going to the barn, and back again to the kitchen,
all the morning, consumed with anxiety about the son of his old age;
but the barn began to be flooded, and he had to limit his prayer-walk
to the space between the door of the house and the chair where Janet
sat--knitting busily, and praying with countenance untroubled, amidst
the rush of the seaward torrents, the mad howling and screeching of the
wind, and the lowing of the imprisoned cattle.
“O Lord,” she said in her great trusting heart, “gien my bonnie man be
droonin’ i’ the watter, or deein’ o’ caul’ on the hill-side, haud ’s
han’. Binna far frae him, O Lord; dinna lat him be fleyt.”
To Janet, what we call life and death were comparatively small matters,
but she was very tender over suffering and fear. She did not pray half
so much for Gibbie’s life as for the presence with him of him who is
at the deathbed of every sparrow. She went on waiting, and refused to
be troubled. True, she was not his bodily mother, but she loved him
far better than the mother who, in such a dread for her child, would
have been mad with terror. The difference was, that Janet loved up as
well as down, loved down so widely, so intensely, _because_ the Lord
of life, who gives his own to us, was more to her than any child can
be to any mother, and she knew he could not forsake her Gibbie, and
that his presence was more and better than life. She was unnatural, was
she?--inhuman?--Yes, if there be no such heart and source of humanity
as she believed in; if there be, then such calmness and courage and
content as hers are the mere human and natural condition to be hungered
after by every aspiring soul. Not until such condition is mine shall I
be able to regard life as a godlike gift, except in the hope that it
is drawing nigh. Let him who understands, understand better; let him
not say the good is less than perfect, or excuse his supineness and
spiritual sloth by saying to himself that a man can go too far in his
search after the divine, can sell too much of what he has to buy the
field of the treasure. Either there is no Christ of God, or my all is
his.
Robert seemed at length to have ceased his caged wandering. For a
quarter of an hour he had been sitting with his face buried in his
hands. Janet rose, went softly to him, and said in a whisper:
“Is Gibbie waur aff, Robert, i’ this watter upo’ Glashgar, nor the
dissiples i’ the boat upo’ yon loch o’ Galilee, an’ the Maister no come
to them? Robert, my ain man! dinna gar the Maister say to you, _O ye o’
little faith! Wharfor did ye doobt?_ Tak hert, man; the Maister wadna
hae his men be cooards.”
“Ye’re richt, Janet; ye’re aye richt,” answered Robert, and rose.
She followed him into the passage.
“Whaur are ye gauin’, Robert?” she said.
“I wuss I cud tell ye,” he answered. “I’m jist hungerin’ to be my lane.
I wuss I had never left Glashgar. There’s aye room there. Or gien I cud
win oot amo’ the rigs! There’s nane o’ _them_ left, but there’s the
rucks--they’re no soomin’ yet! I want to gang to the Lord, but I maunna
weet Willie Mackay’s claes.”
“It’s a sair peety,” said Janet, “’at the men fowk disna learn to weyve
stockins, or dee something or ither wi’ their han’s. Mony’s the time
my stockin’ ’s been ’maist as guid ’s a cloaset to me, though I cudna
jist gang intil ’t. But what maitters ’t! A prayer i’ the hert ’s sure
to fin’ the ro’d oot. The hert’s the last place ’at can haud ane in. A
prayin’ hert has nae reef (_roof_) till ’t.”
She turned and left him. Comforted by her words, he followed her back
into the kitchen, and sat down beside her.
“Gibbie ’ill be here mayhap whan least ye luik for him,” said Janet.
Neither of them caught the wild eager gleam that lighted the face
of the strange woman at those last words of Janet. She looked up at
her with the sharpest of glances, but the same instant compelled her
countenance to resume its former expression of fierce indifference, and
under that became watchful of everything said and done.
Still the rain fell and the wind blew; the torrents came tearing down
from the hills, and shot madly into the rivers; the rivers ran into the
valleys, and deepened the lakes that filled them. On every side of the
Mains, from the foot of Glashgar to Gormdhu, all was one yellow and
red sea, with roaring currents and vortices numberless. It burrowed
holes, it opened long-deserted channels and water-courses; here it
deposited inches of rich mould, there yards of sand and gravel; here
it was carrying away fertile ground, leaving behind only bare rock or
shingle where the corn had been waving; there it was scooping out the
bed of a new lake. Many a thick soft lawn, of loveliest grass, dotted
with fragrant shrubs and rare trees, vanished, and nothing was there
when the waters subsided but a stony waste, or a gravelly precipice.
Woods and copses were undermined, and trees and soil together swept
into the wash: sometimes the very place was hardly there to say it
knew its children no more. Houses were torn to pieces, and their
contents, as from broken boxes, sent wandering on the brown waste,
through the grey air, to the discoloured sea, whose saltness for a long
way out had vanished with its hue. Haymows were buried to the very
top in sand; others went sailing bodily down the mighty stream--some
of them followed or surrounded, like big ducks, by a great brood
of ricks for their ducklings. Huge trees went past as if shot down
an Alpine slide, cottages, and bridges of stone, giving way before
them. Wooden mills, thatched roofs, great mill-wheels, went dipping
and swaying and hobbling down. From the upper windows of the Mains,
looking towards the chief current, they saw a drift of everything
belonging to farms and dwelling-houses that would float. Chairs and
tables, chests, carts, saddles, chests of drawers, tubs of linen, beds
and blankets, workbenches, harrows, girnels, planes, cheeses, churns,
spinning-wheels, cradles, iron pots, wheel-barrows--all these and many
other things hurried past as they gazed. Everybody was looking, and for
a time all had been silent.
“Lord save us!” cried Mr. Duff, with a great start, and ran for his
telescope.
A four-post bed came rocking down the river, now shooting straight for
a short distance, now slowly wheeling, now shivering, struck by some
swifter thing, now whirling giddily round in some vortex. The soaked
curtains were flacking and flying in the great wind--and--yes, the
telescope revealed it!--there was a figure in it! dead or alive the
farmer could not tell, but it lay still!--A cry burst from them all;
but on swept the strange boat, bound for the world beyond the flood,
and none could stay its course.
The water was now in the stable and cow-houses and barn. A few minutes
more and it would be creeping into the kitchen. The Daur and its
tributary the Lorrie were about to merge their last difference on the
floor of Jean’s parlour. Worst of all, a rapid current had set in
across the farther end of the stable, which no one had as yet observed.
Jean bustled about her work as usual, nor, although it was so much
augmented, would accept help from any of her guests until it came to
preparing dinner, when she allowed Janet and the foreman’s wife to lend
her a hand. “The tramp-wife” she would not permit to touch plate or
spoon, knife or potato. The woman rose in anger at her exclusion, and
leaving the house waded to the barn. There she went up the ladder to
the loft where she had slept, and threw herself on her straw-bed.
As there was no doing any work, Donal was out with two of the men,
wading here and there where the water was not too deep, enjoying the
wonder of the strange looks and curious conjunctions of things. None of
them felt much of dismay at the havoc around them: beyond their chests
with their Sunday clothes and at most two clean shirts, neither of the
men had anything to lose worth mentioning; and for Donal, he would
gladly have given even his books for such a _ploy_.
“There’s ae thing, mither,” he said, entering the kitchen, covered with
mud, a rabbit in one hand and a large salmon in the other, “we’re no
like to sterve, wi’ sawmon i’ the hedges, an’ mappies i’ the trees!”
His master questioned him with no little incredulity. It was easy to
believe in salmon anywhere, but rabbits in trees!
“I catched it i’ the brainches o’ a lairick (_larch_),” Donal answered,
“easy eneuch, for it cudna rin far, an’ was mair fleyt at the watter
nor at me; but for the sawmon, haith I was ower an’ ower wi’ hit i’ the
watter, efter I gruppit it, er I cud ca’ ’t my ain.”
Before the flood subsided, not a few rabbits were caught in trees,
mostly spruce-firs and larches. For salmon, they were taken
everywhere--among grass, corn, and potatoes, in bushes, and hedges, and
cottages. One was caught on a lawn with an umbrella; one was reported
to have been found in a press-bed; another, coiled round in a pot
hanging from the crook--ready to be boiled, only that he was alive and
undressed.
Donal was still being cross-questioned by his master when the strange
woman re-entered. Lying upon her straw, she had seen, through the
fanlight over the stable door, the swiftness of the current there
passing, and understood the danger.
“I doobt,” she said, addressing no one in particular, “the ga’le o’ the
stable winna stan’ abune anither half-hoor.”
“It maun fa’ than,” said the farmer, taking a pinch of snuff in
hopeless serenity, and turning away.
“Hoots!” said the woman, “dinna speyk that gait, sir. It’s no
wice-like. Tak a dram, an’ tak hert, an’ dinna fling the calf efter the
coo. Whaur’s yer boatle, sir?”
John paid no heed to her suggestion, but Jean took it up.
“The boatle’s whaur ye s’ no lay han’ upo’ ’t,” she said.
“Weel, gien ye hae nae mercy upo’ yer whusky, ye sud hae some upo’ yer
horse-beasts, ony gait,” said the woman indignantly.
“What mean ye by that?” returned Jean, with hard voice, and eye of
blame.
“Ye micht at the leest gie the puir things a chance,” the woman
rejoined.
“Hoo wad ye dee that?” said Jean. “Gien ye lowsed them they wad but tak
to the watter wi’ fear, an’ droon the seener.”
“Na, na, Jean,” interposed the farmer, “they wad tak care o’ themsel’s
to the last, an’ aye haud to the dryest, jist as ye wad yersel’.”
“Allooin’,” said the stranger, replying to Jean, yet speaking rather as
if to herself, while she thought about something else, “I wad raither
droon soomin’ nor tied by the heid.--But what’s the guid o’ doctrine
whaur there’s onything to be dune?--Ye hae whaur to put them.--What
kin’ ’s the fleers (_floors_) up the stair, sir?” she asked abruptly,
turning full on her host, with a flash in her deep-set black eyes.
“Ow, guid dale fleers--what ither?” answered the farmer. “--It’s the
wa’s, wuman, no the fleers we hae to be concernt aboot i’ this wather.”
“Gien the j’ists be strang, an’ weel set intil the wa’s, what for sudna
ye tak the horse up the stair intil yer bedrooms? It’ll be a’ to the
guid o’ the wa’s, for the weicht o’ the beasts ’ll be upo’ them to haud
them doon, an’ the haill hoose again’ the watter. An’ gien I was you,
I wad pit the best o’ the kye an’ the nowt intil the parlour an’ the
kitchen here. I’m thinkin’ we’ll lowse them a’ else; for the byre wa’s
’ll gang afore the hoose.”
Mr. Duff broke into a strange laughter.
“Wad ye no tak up the carpets first, wuman?” he said.
“I wad,” she answered; “that gangs ohn speirt--_gien there was time_;
but I tell ye there’s nane; an’ ye’ll buy twa or three carpets for the
price o’ ae horse.”
“Haith! the wuman’s i’ the richt,” he cried, suddenly waking up to the
sense of the proposal, and shot from the house.
All the women, Jean making no exception to any help now, rushed to
carry the beds and blankets to the garret.
Just as Mr. Duff entered the stable from the nearer end, the opposite
gable fell out with a great splash, letting in the wide level vision of
turbidly raging waters, fading into the obscurity of the wind-driven
rain. While he stared aghast, a great tree struck the wall like a
battering-ram, so that the stable shook. The horses, which had been
for some time moving uneasily, were now quite scared. There was not a
moment to be lost. Duff shouted for his men; one or two came running;
and in less than a minute more those in the house heard the iron-shod
feet splashing and stamping through the water, as, one after another,
the horses were brought across the yard to the door of the house. Mr.
Duff led by the halter his favourite Snowball, who was a good deal
excited, plunging and rearing so that it was all he could do to hold
him. He had ordered the men to take the others first, thinking he would
follow more quietly. But the moment Snowball heard the first thundering
of hoofs on the stair, he went out of his senses with terror, broke
from his master, and went plunging back to the stable. Duff darted
after him, but was only in time to see him rush from the further end
into the swift current, where he was at once out of his depth, and
was instantly caught and hurried, rolling over and over, from his
master’s sight. He ran back into the house, and up to the highest
window. From that he caught sight of him a long way down, swimming.
Once or twice he saw him turned heels over head--only to get his neck
up again presently, and swim as well as before. But alas! it was in
the direction of the Daur, which would soon, his master did not doubt,
sweep his carcase into the North Sea. With troubled heart he strained
his sight after him as long as he could distinguish his lessening head,
but it got amongst some wreck, and unable to tell any more whether he
saw it or not, he returned to his men with his eyes full of tears.