My first intimation that the burns were in flood came from Waster
Lunny, close on the strike of ten o'clock. This was some minutes
before they had any rain in Thrums. I was in the school-house, now
piecing together the puzzle Lord Rintoul had left with me, and anon
starting upright as McKenzie's hand seemed to tighten on my arm.
Waster Lunny had been whistling to me (with his fingers in his mouth)
for some time before I heard him and hurried out. I was surprised and
pleased, knowing no better, to be met on the threshold by a whisk of
rain.
The night was not then so dark but that when I reached the Quharity I
could see the farmer take shape on the other side of it. He wanted me
to exult with him, I thought, in the end of the drought, and I shouted
that I would fling him the stilts.
"It's yoursel' that wants them," he answered excitedly, "if you're
fleid to be left alone in the school-house the nicht. Do you hear me,
dominie? There has been frichtsome rain among the hills, and the Bog
burn is coming down like a sea. It has carried awa the miller's brig,
and the steading o' Muckle Pirley is standing three feet in water."
"You're dreaming, man," I roared back, but beside his news he held my
doubts of no account.
"The Retery's in flood," he went on, "and running wild through Hazel
Wood; T'nowdunnie's tattie field's out o' sicht, and at the Kirkton
they're fleid they've lost twa kye."
"There has been no rain here," I stammered, incredulously.
"It's coming now," he replied. "And listen: the story's out that the
Backbone has fallen into the loch. You had better cross, dominie, and
thole out the nicht wi' us."
The Backbone was a piece of mountain-side overhanging a loch among the
hills, and legend said that it would one day fall forward and squirt
all the water into the glen. Something of the kind had happened, but I
did not believe it then; with little wit I pointed to the shallow
Quharity.
"It may come down at any minute," the farmer answered, "and syne, mind
you, you'll be five miles frae Waster Lunny, for there'll be no
crossing but by the Brig o' March. If you winna come, I maun awa back.
I mauna bide langer on the wrang side o' the Moss ditch, though it has
been as dry this month back as a rabbit's roady. But if you--" His
voice changed. "God's sake, man," he cried, "you're ower late. Look at
that! Dinna look--run, run!"
If I had not run before he bade me, I might never have run again on
earth. I had seen a great shadowy yellow river come riding down the
Quharity. I sprang from it for my life; and when next I looked behind,
it was upon a turbulent loch, the further bank lost in darkness. I was
about to shout to Waster Lunny, when a monster rose in the torrent
between me and the spot where he had stood. It frightened me to
silence until it fell, when I knew it was but a tree that had been
flung on end by the flood. For a time there was no answer to my cries,
and I thought the farmer had been swept away. Then I heard his
whistle, and back I ran recklessly through the thickening darkness to
the school-house. When I saw the tree rise, I had been on ground
hardly wet as yet with the rain; but by the time Waster Lunny sent
that reassuring whistle to me I was ankle-deep in water, and the rain
was coming down like hail. I saw no lightning.
For the rest of the night I was only out once, when I succeeded in
reaching the hen-house and brought all my fowls safely to the kitchen,
except a hen which would not rise off her young. Between us we had the
kitchen floor, a pool of water; and the rain had put out my fires
already, as effectually as if it had been an overturned broth-pot.
That I never took off my clothes that night I need not say, though of
what was happening in the glen I could only guess. A flutter against
my window now and again, when the rain had abated, told me of another
bird that had flown there to die; and with Waster Lunny, I kept up
communication by waving a light, to which he replied in a similar
manner. Before morning, however, he ceased to answer my signals, and I
feared some catastrophe had occurred at the farm. As it turned out,
the family was fighting with the flood for the year's shearing of
wool, half of which eventually went down the waters, with the
wool-shed on top of it.
The school-house stands too high to fear any flood, but there were
moments when I thought the rain would master it. Not only the windows
and the roof were rattling then, but all the walls, and I was like one
in a great drum. When the rain was doing its utmost, I heard no other
sound; but when the lull came, there was the wash of a heavy river, or
a crack as of artillery that told of landslips, or the plaintive cry
of the peesweep as it rose in the air, trying to entice the waters
away from its nest.
It was a dreary scene that met my gaze at break of day. Already the
Quharity had risen six feet, and in many parts of the glen it was two
hundred yards wide. Waster Lunny's cornfield looked like a bog grown
over with rushes, and what had been his turnips had become a lake with
small islands in it. No dike stood whole except one that the farmer,
unaided, had built in a straight line from the road to the top of
Mount Bare, and my own, the further end of which dipped in water. Of
the plot of firs planted fifty years earlier to help on Waster Lunny's
crops, only a triangle had withstood the night.
Even with the aid of my field-glass I could not estimate the damage on
more distant farms, for the rain, though now thin and soft, as it
continued for six days, was still heavy and of a brown color. After
breakfast--which was interrupted by my bantam cock's twice spilling my
milk--I saw Waster Lunny and his son, Matthew, running towards the
shepherd's house with ropes in their hands. The house, I thought, must
be in the midst beyond; and then I sickened, knowing all at once that
it should be on this side of the mist. When I had nerve to look again,
I saw that though the roof had fallen in, the shepherd was astride one
of the walls, from which he was dragged presently through the water by
the help of the ropes. I remember noticing that he returned to his
house with the rope still about him, and concluded that he had gone
back to save some of his furniture. I was wrong, however. There was
too much to be done at the farm to allow this, but Waster Lunny had
consented to Duncan's forcing his way back to the shieling to stop the
clock. To both men it seemed horrible to let a clock go on ticking in
a deserted house.
Having seen this rescue accomplished, I was letting my glass roam in
the opposite direction, when one of its shakes brought into view
something on my own side of the river. I looked at it long, and saw it
move slightly. Was it a human being? No, it was a dog. No, it was a
dog and something else. I hurried out to see more clearly, and after a
first glance the glass shook so in my hands that I had to rest it on
the dike. For a full minute, I daresay, did I look through the glass
without blinking, and then I needed to look no more. That black patch
was, indeed, Gavin.
He lay quite near the school-house, but I had to make a circuit of
half a mile to reach him. It was pitiful to see the dog doing its best
to come to me, and falling every few steps. The poor brute was
discolored almost beyond recognition; and when at last it reached me,
it lay down at my feet and licked them. I stepped over it and ran on
recklessly to Gavin. At first I thought he was dead. If tears rolled
down my cheeks, they were not for him.
I was no strong man even in those days, but I carried him to the
school-house, the dog crawling after us. Gavin I put upon my bed, and
I lay down beside him, holding him close to me, that some of the heat
of my body might be taken in by his. When he was able to look at me,
however, it was not with understanding, and in vain did my anxiety
press him with questions. Only now and again would some word in my
speech strike upon his brain and produce at least an echo. To "Did you
meet Lord Rintoul's dogcart?" he sat up, saying quickly:
"Listen, the dogcart!"
"Egyptian" was not that forenoon among the words he knew, and I did
not think of mentioning "hill." At "rain" he shivered; but "Spittal"
was what told me most.
"He has taken her back," he replied at once, from which I learned that
Gavin now knew as much of Babbie as I did.
I made him as comfortable as possible, and despairing of learning
anything from him in his present state, I let him sleep. Then I went
out into the rain, very anxious, and dreading what he might have to
tell me when he woke. I waded and jumped my way as near to the farm as
I dared go, and Waster Lunny, seeing me, came to the water's edge. At
this part the breadth of the flood was not forty yards, yet for a
time our voices could no more cross its roar than one may send a
snowball through a stone wall. I know not whether the river then
quieted for a space, or if it was only that the ears grow used to dins
as the eyes distinguish the objects in a room that is at first black
to them; but after a little we were able to shout our remarks across,
much as boys fling pebbles, many to fall into the water, but one
occasionally to reach the other side. Waster Lunny would have talked
of the flood, but I had not come here for that.
"How were you home so early from the prayer-meeting last night?" I
bawled.
"No meeting ... I came straucht hame ... but terrible stories ... Mr.
Dishart," was all I caught after Waster Lunny had flung his words
across a dozen times.
I could not decide whether it would be wise to tell him that Gavin was
in the school-house, and while I hesitated he continued to shout:
"Some woman ... the Session ... Lang Tammas ... God forbid ... maun
back to the farm ... byre running like a mill-dam."
He signed to me that he must be off, but my signals delayed him, and
after much trouble he got my question, "Any news about Lord Rintoul?"
My curiosity about the earl must have surprised him, but he answered:
"Marriage is to be the day ... cannon."