And Jaikie promised. He shut the gate to keep out the hens. He crept

across the pebbles, and they hurt more than ever. He hung up the tin

dipper again on its peg, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Jiminy

was breathing as quietly and equally as a lazy red-spotted trout in the

shadow of the bank in the afternoon. Jaikie crept into his bed and fell

asleep without a prayer or a thought.

He did not awake till quite late in the day, when Jiminy came to tell

him that somebody had been watering the flowers in their Corner of

Shadows during the night.

"_I_ think it must have been the angels," said Jiminy, before Jaikie had

time to tell him how it all happened. "My father he thinks so too."

The latter statement was, of course, wholly unauthorised.

Jaikie sat up and put his foot to the floor. All the pain had gone away

out of it. He told Jiminy, who had an explanation for everything. _He_

knew how the foot had got better and how the flowers were watered.

"'Course it must have been the angels, little baby angels that can't fly

yet--only crawl. I did hear them scuffling about the floor last night."

And this, of course, explained everything.

BOOK FIFTH

TALES OF THE KIRK

I

THE MINISTER-EMERITUS

_Ho, let the viol's pleasing swifter grow--

Let Music's madness fascinate the will,

And all Youth's pulses with the ardour thrill!

Hast thou, Old Time, e'er seen so brave a show?_

_Did not the dotard smile as he said "No"?

Pshaw! hang the grey-beard--let him prate his fill;

Men are but dolts who talk of Good and Ill.

These grapes of ours are wondrous sour, I trow!_

_They sneer because we live for other things,

And think they know The Good. I tell the fools

We have the pleasure--We! Our master flings

Full-measured bliss to all the folk he rules_,

_Nor asks he aught for quit-rent, fee, or tithe--

Ho, Bald-head, wherefore sharpenest thy scythe?_

In the winter season the Clint of Drumore is the forlornest spot in

God's universe--twelve miles from anywhere, the roads barred with

snowdrift, the great stone dykes which climb the sides of apparently

inaccessible mountains sleeked fore and aft with curving banks of white.

In the howe of the hill, just where it bends away towards the valley of

the Cree, stood a cottage buried up to its eyes in the snow. Originally

a low thatch house, it had somewhat incongruously added on half a story,

a couple of storm-windows, and a roof of purple Parton slates. There

were one or two small office-houses about it devoted to a cow, a

Galloway shelty, and a dozen hens. This snowy morning, from the door of

the hen-house the lord of these dusky paramours occasionally jerked his

head out, to see if anything hopeful had turned up. But mostly he sat

forlornly enough, waiting with his comb drooping limply to one side and

a foot drawn stiffly up under his feathers.

Within the cottage there was little more comfort. It consisted, as

usual, of a "but" and a "ben," with a little room to the back, in which

there were a bed, a chair, and a glass broken at the corner nailed to

the wall. In this room a man was kneeling in front of the chair. He was

clad in rusty black, with a great white handkerchief about his throat.

He prayed long and voicelessly. At last he rose, and, standing stiffly

erect, slipped a small yellow photograph which he had been holding in

his hand into a worn leather case.

A man of once stalwart frame, now bowed and broken, he walked habitually

with the knuckles of one hand in the small of his back, as if he feared

that his frail framework might give way at that point; silvery hair

straggling about his temples, faded blue eyes, kindly and clouded under

white shocks of eyebrow--such was the Reverend Fergus Symington, now for

some years minister-emeritus. Once he had been pastor of the little hill

congregation of the Bridge of Cairn, where he had faithfully served a

scanty flock for thirty years. When he resigned he knew that it was but

little that his people could do for him. They were sorry to part with

him, and willingly enough accepted the terms which the Presbytery

pressed on them, in order to be at liberty to call the man of their

choice, a young student from a neighbouring glen, whose powers of fluent

speech were thought remarkable in that part of the country. So Mr.

Symington left Bridge of Cairn passing rich on thirty pounds a year, and

retired with his deaf old housekeeper to the Clints of Drumore. Yet

forty years before, the Reverend Fergus Symington was counted the

luckiest young minister in the Stewartry; and many were the jokes made

in public-house parlours and in private houses about his mercenary

motives. He had married money. He had been wedded with much rejoicing to

the rich daughter of a Liverpool merchant, who had made a fortune not

too tenderly in the West Indian trade. Sophia Sugg was ten years the

senior of her husband, and her temper was uncertain, but Fergus

Symington honestly loved her. She had a tender and a kindly hearty and

he had met her in the houses of the poor near her father's

shooting-lodge in circumstances which did her honour. So he loved her,

and told her of it as simply as though she had been a penniless lass

from one of the small farms that made up the staple of his congregation.

They were married, and it is obvious what the countryside would say,

specially as there were many eyes that had looked not scornfully at the

handsome young minister.

"This, all this was in the golden time,

Long ago."

The mistress of the little white manse on the Cairn Water lived not

unhappily with her husband for four years, and was then laid with her

own people in the monstrous new family vault where her father lay in

state. She left two children behind her--a boy of two and an infant girl

of a few weeks.

The children had a nurse, Meysie Dickson, a girl who was already a woman

in staidness and steadfastness at fifteen. She had been in a kind of

half-hearted way engaged to be married to Weelum Lammitter, the grieve

at Newlands; but when the two bairns were left on her hand, she told

Weelum that he had better take Kirst Laurie, which Weelum Lammitter

promptly did. There was a furnished house attached to the grieveship,

and he could not let it stand empty any longer. Still, he would have

preferred Meysie, other things being equal. He even said so to Kirst

Laurie, especially when he was taking his tea--for Kirst was no baker.

So for twenty years the household moved on its quiet, ordered way in the

manse by the Water of Cairn. Then the boy, entering into the inheritance

devised to him by his mother's marriage-settlement, took the portion of

goods that pertained to him, and went his way into a far country, and

did there according to the manner of his kind. Meysie had been to some

extent to blame for this, as had also his father. The minister himself,

absorbed in his books and in his sermons, had only given occasional

notice to the eager, ill-balanced boy who was growing up in his home. He

had given him, indeed, his due hours of teaching till he went away to

school, but he had known nothing of his recreations and amusements.

Meysie, who was by no means dumb though she was undoubtedly deaf, kept

dinning in his ears that he must take his place with the highest in the

land, by which she meant the young Laird of Cairnie and the Mitchels of

Mitchelfleld. Some of these young fellows were exceedingly ready to show

Clement Symington how to squander his ducats, and when he took the road

to London he went away a pigeon ready for the plucking. The waters

closed over his head, and so far as his father was concerned there was

an end of him.

Elspeth Symington, the baby girl, turned out a child of another type.

Strong, masculine, resolute, with some of the determination of the old

slave-driving grandfather in her, she had from an early age been under

the care of a sister of her mother's. And with her she had learned many

things, chiefly that sad lesson--to despise her father. It had never

struck Mr. Symington in the way of complaint that he had no art or part

in his wife's fortune, so that he was not disappointed when he found

himself stranded in the little cottage by the Clints of Drumore with

thirty pounds a year. He was lonely, it was true, but his books stood

between him and unhappiness. Also Meysie, deaf and cross, grumbled and

crooned loyally about his doors.

This wintry morning there was no fire in the room which was called by

the minister the "study"--but by Meysie, more exactly and descriptively,

"ben the hoose." The minister had written on Meysie's slate the night

before that, as the peats were running done and no one could say how

long the storm might continue, no fire was to be put in the study the

next day.

So after Mr. Symington had eaten his porridge, taking it with a little

milk from their one cow--Meysie standing by the while to "see that he

suppit them"--he made an incursion or two down the house to the "room"

for some books that he needed. Then Meysie bustled about her work and

cleaned up with prodigious birr and clatter, being utterly unable to

hear the noise she made. The minister soon became absorbed in his book,

and a light of contentment shone in his face. Occasionally his hand

stole to his pocket. Meysie, whose eyes never wandered far from him,

knew that he was feeling for the leather case in which he kept the

photographs of his boy and girl. He liked to know that it was safe.

Elspeth had recently sent him a new portrait of herself in evening

dress, with diamonds in her hair. It came from London in a large

envelope with the florid monogram of Lady Smythe, the widow of the

ex-Lord Mayor, upon it. The minister considered it the last triumph of

art, and often took it out of his pocket to look at when he thought

Meysie was not looking. She always was, however. She had little else to

do. Nevertheless, Meysie knew, for all that, the worn yellow "card" of

the lost son who never wrote or sent him anything, to be the dearest to

him.

While the minister sat pondering over his book, Meysie went to the back

door, and stood there a moment vaguely gazing out on the snow. As she

did so, a figure came slouching round the corner of the byre. Meysie

quickly shut the door behind her, and turned the key. Any visitor was a

strange surprise in winter at the Clints of Drumore. But this figure she

knew at the first glance. It was the Prodigal Son come home--the boy

whom she had reared from the time that she took his sister from his

dying mother's arms. Some deadly fear constrained her to lock the door

behind her. For the lad's looks were terribly altered. There was a

sullen, callous dourness where bright self-will had once had its

dwelling. His clothing had once been fashionable, but it was now torn at

the buttonholes and frayed at the cuffs.

"Clement Symington, what brings ye to the Clints o' Drumore?" asked the

old woman, going forward and taking hold of the skirts of his surtout,

her face blanched like the blue shadows on the winter snow.

"Why, Mother Hubbard--" he broke out.

But Meysie stopped him, holding up her hand and pointing to her slate,

which hung by a "tang" round her neck.

"Ha!" he murmured, "this is awkward--old woman gone deaf."

So he took the pencil and wrote--

"_Very hard up. Want some cash from the old man_," just as if he had

been writing a telegram.

With her spectacles poised on the end of her nose, Meysie read the

message. Her face took a hue greyer and duller than ever.

She looked at the lad she had once loved so well, and his shifty eye

could not meet hers. He looked away over the moor, put his hands into

his pockets, and whistled a music-hall catch, which sounded strangely in

that white solitude.

"Weel do you ken that your faither has no sillar!" said Meysie. "You had

a' the sillar, and what ye hae done with it only you an' your Maker ken.

But ye shallna come into this hoose to annoy yer faither. Gang to the

barn, and wait till I bring you what I can get."

The young man grumblingly assented, and within that chilly enclosure he

stood swearing under his breath and kicking his heels.

"A pretty poor sort of prodigal's return this," he said, remembering the

parable he used to learn to say to his father on Sunday afternoons; "not

so much as a blessed fatted calf--only a half-starved cow and a deaf old

woman. I wonder what she'll bring a fellow."

In a little while Meysie came cautiously out of the back door with a

bowl of broth under her apron. The minister had not stirred, deep in his

folio Owen. The young man ate the thick soup with a horn spoon from

Meysie's pocket. Then he stood looking at her a moment before he took

the dangling pencil again and wrote on the slate--

"_Soup's good, but it's money I must have_!"

Meysie bent her head towards him.

"Ye shallna gang in to break yer faither's heart, Clement; but I hae

brocht ye a' I hae, gin ye'll promise to gang awa' where ye cam' frae.

Your faither kens nocht aboot your last ploy, or that a son o' his has

been in London gaol."

"And who told you?" broke in the youth furiously.

The old woman could not, of course, hear him, but she understood

perfectly for all that.

"Your ain sister Elspeth telled me!" she answered.

"Curse her!" said the young man, succinctly and unfraternally. But he

took the pencil and wrote--"_I promise to go away and not to disturb my

father_."

Meysie took a lean green silk purse from her pocket and emptied out of

it a five-pound note, three dirty one-pound notes, and seven silver

shillings. Clement Symington took them and counted them over without a

blush.

"You're none such a bad sort," he said.

"Now, mind your promise, Clement!" returned his old nurse.

He made his way at a dog's-trot down the half-snowed-up track that led

towards the Ferry Town of the Cree; and though Meysie went to the stile

of the orchard to watch, he ran out of sight without even turning his

head. When the old woman went in, the minister was still deep in his

book. He had never once looked up.

The short day faded into the long night. Icy gusts drove down from the

heights of Craig Ronald, and the wind moaned mysteriously over the

ridges which separated the valley of the Cree Water from the remote

fastnesses of Loch Grannoch. The minister gathered his scanty family at

the "buik," and his prayer was full of a fine reverence and feeling

pity. He was pleading in the midst of a wilderness of silence, for the

deaf woman heard not a word.

Yet it will do us no harm to hearken to the prayer of yearning and

wrestling.

"O my God, who wast the God of my forefathers, keep Thou my two bairns.

They are gone from under my roof, but they are under Thine. Through the

storm and the darkness be Thou about them. Let Thy light be in their

hearts. Though here we meet no more, may we meet an unbroken family

around Thy heavenly hearth. And have mercy on us who here await Thy

hand, on this good ministering woman, and on me, alas! Thine unworthy

servant, for I am but a sinful man, O Lord!"

Then Meysie made down her box-bed in the kitchen, and the minister

retired to his own little chamber. He took his leather case out of his

breast-pocket, and clasped it in his hand as he began his own protracted

private devotions. He knelt on a place where his knees had long since

worn a hole in the waxcloth. So, kneeling on the bare stone, he prayed

long, even till the candle flickered itself out, smelling rankly in the

room.

At the deepest time of the night, while the snow winds were raging about

the half-buried cot, the dark figure of a young man opened the

never-locked door and stepped quickly into the small lobby in which the

minister's hat and worn overcoat were hanging. He paused to listen

before he came into the kitchen, but nothing was to be heard except the

steady breathing of the deaf woman. He came in and stepped across the

floor. The red glow from the peats on the hearth revealed the figure of

Clement Symington. He shook the snow from his coat and blew on his

fingers. Then he went to the door of his father's room and listened.

Hearing no sound, he slowly opened it. His father had fallen asleep on

his knees, with his forehead on his open Bible. The red glow of the

dying peat-fire lighted the little room. "I wonder where he keeps his

cash," he murmured to himself; "the sooner it's over the better." His

eye caught something like a purse in his father's hand. As he took it,

something broad and light fell out. He held it up to the moonbeam which

came through the narrow upper panes. It was his own portrait taken in

the suit which his father had bought him to go to college in. He had

found the old man's wealth. A strangeness in his father's attitude

caught his eye. With a sudden, quick return of boyish affection he laid

his hand on the bowed shoulder, forgetting for the moment his evil

purpose and all else. The attenuated figure swayed and would have fallen

to the side, had Clement Symington not caught it and laid his father

tenderly on the bed. Then he stood upright and cried aloud in agony with

that most terrible of griefs--the repentance that comes too late. But

none heard him. The deaf woman slept on. And the dead gave no answer,

being also for ever deaf and dumb.

II

A MINISTER'S DAY

_On either side the great and still ice sea

Are compassing snow mountains near and far;

While, dominant, Schreckhorn and Finsteraar

Hold their grim peaks aloft defiantly_.

_Blind with excess of light and glory, we,

Above whose heads in hottest mid-day glare

The Schreckhorn and his sons arise in air,

Sink in the weary snowfields to the knee_;

_Then, resting after peril pass'd in haste,

We saw, from our rock-shelter'd vantage ledge,

In the white fervent heat sole shadowy spot_,

_Familiar eyes that smiled amid the waste--

Lo! in the sparsed snow at the glacier edge,

The small blue flower they call Forget-me-not_!

The sun was glinting slantwise over the undulating uplands to the east.

Ben Gairn was blushing a rosy purple, purer and fainter than the

flamboyant hues of sunset, when the Reverend Richard Cameron looked out

of his bedroom window in the little whitewashed manse of Cairn Edward.

His own favourite blackbird had awakened him, and he lay for a long

while listening to its mellow fluting, till his conscience reproached

him for lying so long a-bed on such a morning.

Richard Cameron was by nature an early riser, a gift to thank God for.

Many a Sabbath morning he had seen the sun rise from the ivy-grown

arbour in the secluded garden behind the old whitewashed kirk. It was

his habit to rise early, and, with the notes of his sermon in hand, to

memorise, or "mandate," them, as it was called. So that on Sabbath, when

the hill-folk gathered calm and slow, there might be no hesitation, and

he might be able to pray the Cameronian supplication, "And bring the

truth premeditated to ready recollection"--a prayer which no mere

"reader" of a discourse would ever dare to utter.

But this was not a morning for "mandating" with the minister. It was the

day of his pastoral visitation, and it behoved one who had a

congregation scattered over a radius of more than twenty miles to be up

and doing. The minister went down into the little study to take his

spare breakfast of porridge and milk. Then, having called his

housekeeper in for prayers--which included, even to that sparse

auditory, the exposition of the chapter read--he took his staff in hand,

and, crossing the main street, took the road for the western hills, on

which a considerable portion of his flock pastured.

As he went he whistled, whenever he found himself at a sufficient

distance from the scattered houses which lined the roads. He was

everywhere respectfully greeted, with an instinctive solemnity of a

godly sort--a solemnity without fear. Men looked at him as he swung

along, with right Scottish respect for his character and work. They knew

him to be at once a man among men and a man of God.

The women stood and looked longer after him. There was nothing so

striking to be seen in Galloway as that clear-cut, clean-shaven Greek

face set on the square shoulders; for Galloway is a country of tall,

stoop-shouldered men--a country also at that time of shaven upper lips

and bristling beards, the most unpicturesque tonsure, barring the

mutton-chop whisker, which has yet been discovered. The women,

therefore, old and young, looked after him with a warmth about their

hearts and a kindly moisture in their eyes. They felt that he was much

too handsome to be going about unprotected.

Notwithstanding that the minister had a greeting in the bygoing for all,

his limbs were of such excellent reach, and moved so fast over the

ground, that his pace was rather over than under four miles an hour.

Passing the thirteen chimneys of the "Lang Raw," he crossed Dee bridge

and bent his way to the right along the wide spaces of the sluggish

river. The old fortress of the Douglases, the castle of Thrieve, loomed

up behind him through the wavering heat of the morning. Above him was

the hill of Knockcannon, from which Mons Meg fired her fatal shots. The

young minister stood looking back and revolving the strange changes of

the past. He saw how the way of the humble was exalted, and the lofty

brought down from their seats.

"Some put their trust in horses, and some in chariots," said the

minister, "but we will trust in the Lord."

He spake half aloud.

"As ye war sayin', sir, we wull trust the Lord--Himsel' wull be oor

strength and stay."

The minister turned. It was a middle-aged man who spoke--David M'Kie,

the familiar good spirit of the village of Whunnyliggate, and indeed of

the whole parish. Wherever sickness was, there David was to be found.

"I was thinking," said the minister sententiously, "that it is not the

high and lofty ones who sit most securely on their seats. The Lord is on

the side of the quiet folk who wait."

"Ay, minister," said David M'Kie tentatively.

It was worth while coming five miles out of a man's road to hear the

minister's words. There was not a man who would have a word to say,

except himself, in the smiddy of Whunnyliggate that night--not even the

autocratic smith.

"Yes, David, it was grand, no doubt, to hear Clavers clattering down the

Lawnmarket and turning the West Port like a whirlwind, with all his

pennons fluttering; but it was the Westland Levies, with their pikes and

their Bibles, that won the day at Dunkeld in the hinder-end. The king

and his men were a bonnie sicht, with their lace collars and their

floating love-locks; but the drab-coats beat him out of the field,

because the Lord was on their side, at Naseby and Marston Moor."

The two men were now on the final rise of the hillside. The whole valley

of the Dee lay beneath them, rich with trees and pasture-lands, waving

crops and the mansions of the great. The minister shaded his eyes with

his hand, and looked beneath the sun. He pointed with his finger to

Thrieve, whose tall keep glimmered up from its island amid the mists of

the river.

"There is the castle where the proud once dwelt and looked to dwell for

ever, having no fear of God or man. The hanging-stone is there that

never wanted its tassel, the courtyard where was the ready block, the

dungeon for the captive, the banquet-hall and the earl's chamber. They

are all there, yet only the owl and the bat dwell in them for ever."

"There is a boy that makes poetry aboot the like o' that," said David

M'Kie, who loved to astonish the minister.

"And who, pray, is the boy who makes poetry? I would like to see him."

"'Deed, minister, gin ye're gaun up to Drumquhat the day, as I jalouse

ye are, ye may see him. They ca' him Walter Carmichael. He's some sib to

the mistress, I'm thinkin'."

"Yes, I have seen him in church, but I never had speech with the lad,"

said the minister.

"Na, I can weel believe that. The boy's no' partial-like to

ministers--ye'll excuse me for sayin'--ever since he fell oot wi' the

minister's loon, and staned him aff the Drumquhat grund. Saunders lickit

him for that, an' so he tak's the road if ever a minister looks near.

But gin ye come on him afore he can make the Hanging Shaw, ye may get

speech o' him, and be the means o' doing him a heap o' guid."

At this point their ways parted. The minister held on up the valley of

the Ken, curving over the moorland towards the farm of Drumquhat. He

went more leisurely now that he had broken the back of his morning's

walk. The larks sprang upward from his feet, and their songs were the

expression of an innocent gladness like that which filled his own heart.

He climbed the high stone dykes as they came in his way, sometimes

crossing his legs and sitting a while on the top with a sort of boyish

freedom in his heart as though he too were off for a holiday--a feeling

born in part of the breezy uplands and the wide spaces of the sky. On

his right hand was the dark mass of the Hanging Shaw, where it began to

feather down to the Black Water, which rushed along in the shadow to

meet the broad and equable waters of the Ken.

As the minister came to one of these dykes, treading softly on a

noiseless cushion of heather and moss, he put his foot on a projecting

stone and vaulted over with one hand lightly laid on the top stone. He

alighted with a sudden bound of the heart, for he had nearly leapt on

the top of a boy, who lay prone on his face, deeply studying a book. The

boy sprang up, startled by the minister's unexpected entrance into his

wide world of air, empty of all but the muirfowls' cries.

For a few moments they remained staring at each other--tall,

well-attired minister and rough-coated herdboy.

"You are diligent," at last said the minister, looking out of his dark

eyes into the blue wondering orbs which met his so squarely and

honestly. "What is that you are reading?"

"Shakespeare, sir," said the boy, not without some fear in telling the

minister that he was reading the works of the man who was known among

many of the Cameronians as "nocht but the greatest of the play-actors."

But the minister was placable and interested. He recognised the face as

that of the boy who came to church on various occasions; but with whom

he had found it so difficult to come to speech.

"How many plays of Shakespeare have you read?" queried the minister

again.

"Them a'--mony a time," said the boy. The minister marvelled still more.

"But ye'll no' tell my gran'mither?" said the boy beseechingly, putting

the minister upon his honour.

Mr. Cameron hesitated for a moment, and then said--

"I will not tell your grandmother unless you are doing something worse

than reading Shakespeare, my boy. You are from Drumquhat, I think," he

continued. "What are you doing here?"

The boy blushed, and hung his head.

"Cutting thistles," he said.

The minister laughed and looked about. On one hand there was a mown

swathe of thistles, on the other they still grew luxuriantly all down

the slope to the burnside.

"I suppose you are cutting down the thistles in Shakespeare? There are a

good many of them," he said; "but is that what your master keeps you

for?"

The boy looked up quickly at this imputation on his honesty.

"I'm on piecework," he said, with a kind of defiance in his tone.

"On piecework?" asked the minister, perplexed; "how is that?"

"Weel, sir, it's this way, ye see. Gran'faither used to pay me a penny

an hour for cuttin' the thistles. He did that till he said I was the

slowest worker ever he had, an' that by the time that I was done wi' ae

side o' the field, the ither was ready to begin owre again. I said that

I was quite willin' to begin again, but he said that to sit doon wi' a

book and cut as far roon' ye as the hook could reach, was no' the kind

o' wark that he had been accustomed to on the farm o' Drumquhat. So he

took me off working by time and put me on piecework. I dinna get as

muckle siller, but I like it juist as weel. So I can work and read time

aboot."

"But how do you know how the time goes?" asked the minister, for watches

were not at that date to be found in the pockets of herdboys on the

Galloway hills.

The boy pointed to a peeled willow-wand which was stuck in the ground,

with a rough circle drawn round it.

"I made that sun-dial. Rab Affleck showed me," he said simply, without

any of the pride of genius.

"And are ye sure that the working hour is always the same length as the

reading time?" asked the minister.

Walter looked up with a bright twinkle in his eye.

"Whiles when I'm workin' at the thistles, she may get a bit kick

forrit," he said.

The minister laughed a low, mellow laugh. Then he quoted a text, as was

customary with him:

"'And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten

degrees in the dial of Ahaz.'"

The minister and Walter sat for a long time in the heat of the noonday

regarding one another with undisguised interest. They were in the midst

of a plain of moorland, over which a haze of heat hung like a

diaphanous veil. Over the edge there appeared, like a plain of blue

mist, the strath, with the whitewashed farmhouses glimmering up like

patches of snow on a March hillside. The minister came down from the

dyke and sat beside the boy on the heather clumps.

"You are a herd, you tell me. Well, so am I--I am a shepherd of men,

though unworthy of such a charge," he added.

Walter looked for further light.

"Did you ever hear," continued Mr. Cameron, looking away over the

valley, "of One who went about, almost barefoot like you, over rocky

roads and up and down hillsides?"

"Ye needna tell me--I ken His name," said Walter reverently.

"Well," continued the minister, "would you not like to be a herd like

Him, and look after men and not sheep?"

"Sheep need to be lookit after as weel," said Walter.

"But sheep have no souls to be saved!" said Richard Cameron.

"Dowgs hae!" asserted Walter stoutly.

"What makes you say so?" said the minister indulgently. He was out for a

holiday.

"Because, if my dowg Royal hasna a soul, there's a heap o' fowk gangs to

the kirk withoot!"

"What does Royal do that makes you think that he has a soul?" asked the

minister.

"Weel, for ae thing, he gangs to the kirk every Sabbath, and lies in the

passage, an' he'll no as muckle as snack at a flee that lichts on his

nose--a thing he's verra fond o' on a week day. An' if it's no' yersel'

that's preachin', my gran'faither says that he'll rise an' gang oot till

the sermon's by."

The minister felt keenly the implied compliment.

"And mair nor that, he disna haud wi' repeating tunes," said Walter,

who, though a boy, knew the name of every tune in the psalmody--for that

was one of the books which could with safety be looked at under the

bookboard when the minister was laying down his "fifthly," and when some

one had put leaden clogs on the hands of the little yellow-faced clock

in the front of the gallery--a clock which in the pauses of the sermon

could be heard ticking distinctly, with a staidness and devotion to the

matter in hand which were quite Cameronian.

"Repeating tunes!" said the minister, with a certain painful

recollection of a storm in his session on the Thursday after the

precentor had set up "Artaxerxes" in front of him and sung it as a solo

without a single member of the congregation daring to join.

"Ay," said Walter, "Royal disna hand wi' repeats. He yowls like fun. But

'Kilmarnock' and 'Martyrs' fit him fine. He thumps the passage boards

wi' his tail near as loud's ye do the Bible yersel'. Mair than that,

Royal gangs for the kye every nicht himsel'. A' that ye hae to say is

juist 'Kye, Royal--gae fetch them!' an' he's aff like a shot."

"How does he open the gates?" queried the minister.

"He lifts the bars wi' his nose, but he canna sneck them ahint him when

he comes back."

"And you think that he has a soul?" said the minister, to draw the boy

out.

"What think ye yersel', sir?" said Walter, who at bottom was a true

Scot, and could always answer one question by asking another.

"Well," answered the minister, making a great concession, "the Bible

tells us nothing of the future of the beasts that perish--"

"Who knoweth," said Walter, "the soul of the beast, whether it goeth

upward or whether it goeth downward to the ground?"

The minister took his way over the moor, crossing the wide peat-hags and

the deep trenches from which the neighbouring farmers of bygone

generations had cut the peat for their winter fires. He went with a long

swinging step very light and swift, springing from _tussock_ to

_tussock_ of dried brown bent in the marshy places.

At the great barn-door he came upon Saunders M'Quhirr, master of the

farm of Drumquhat, whose welcome to his minister it was worth coming a

hundred miles to receive.

"Come awa', Maister Cameron, and the mistress will get you a drink o'

milk, an' ye'll hae a bite o' denner wi' us gin ye can bide half an

hour!"

The minister went in and surprised the goodwife in the midst of the

clean and comely mysteries of the dairy. From her, likewise, he received

the warmest of welcomes. The relation of minister and people in

Galloway, specially among the poorer congregations who have to work hard

to support their minister, is a very beautiful one. He is their superior

in every respect, their oracle, their model, their favourite subject of

conversation; yet also in a special measure he is their property.

Saunders and Mary M'Quhirr would as soon have contradicted the

Confession of Faith as questioned any opinion of the minister's when he

spoke on his own subjects.

On rotation of crops, and specially on "nowt" beasts, his opinion was

"no worth a preen." It would not have been becoming in him to have a

good judgment on these secularities.

The family and dependants were all gathered together in the wide, cool

kitchen of Drumquhat, for it was the time for the minister's

catechising. Saunders sat with his wife beside him. The three

sons--Alec, James, and Rob--sat on straight-backed chairs; Walter near

by, his hand on his grandmother's lap.

Question and answer from the Shorter Catechism passed from lip to lip

like a well-played game in which no one let the ball drop. It would have

been thought as shameful if the minister had not acquitted himself at

"speerin"' the questions deftly and instantaneously as for one of those

who were answering to fail in their replies. When Rob momentarily

mislaid the "Reasons Annexed" to the second commandment, and his very

soul reeled in the sudden terror that they had gone from him for ever,

his father looked at him as one who should say, "Woe is me that I have

been the responsible means of bringing a fool into the world!" Even his

mother looked at him wistfully, in a way that was like cold water

running down his back, while Mr. Cameron said kindly, "Take your time,

Robert!"

However, Rob recovered himself gallantly, and reeled off the Reasons

Annexed with vigour. Then he promised, under his breath, a sound

thrashing to his model brother, James, who, having known the Catechism

perfectly from his youth up, had yet refused to give a leading hint to

his brother in his extremity. Walter had his answers as ready as any of

them.

Walter had, on one occasion, begun to attend a Sabbath school at the

village, which was started by the enthusiastic assistant of the parish

minister, whose church lay some miles over the moor. Walter had not

asked any permission of his seniors at the farm, but wandered off by

himself to be present at the strange ceremonies of the opening. There

the Drumquhat training made him easily first of those who repeated

psalms and said their Catechism. A distinguished career seemed to be

opening out before him, but a sad event happened which abruptly closed

the new-fangled Sunday school. The minister of the parish heard what

his young "helper" had been doing over in Whunnyliggate, and he appeared

in person on the following Sabbath when the exercises were in full

swing. He opened the door, and stood silently regarding, the stick

_dithering_ in both hands with a kind of senile fury.

The "helper" came forward with a bashful confidence, expecting that he

would receive commendation for his great diligence. But he was the most

surprised "helper" in six counties when the minister struck at him

suddenly with his stick, and abruptly ordered him out of the school and

out of his employment.

"I did not bring ye frae Edinburgh to gang sneaking aboot my pairish

sugarin' the bairns an' flairdyin' the auld wives. Get Oot o' my sicht,

an' never let your shadow darken this pairish again, ye sneevlin'

scoondrel!"

Then he turned the children out to the green, letting some of the

laggards feel his stick as they passed. Thus was closed the first

Sabbath-school that was ever held in the village of Whunnyliggate. The

too-enthusiastic "helper" passed away like a dream, and the few folk who

journeyed every Sabbath from Whunnyliggate to the parish kirk by the

side of the Dee Water received the ordinances officially at noon each

Lord's Day, by being exhorted to "begin the public worship of God in

this parish" in the voice which a drill-sergeant uses when he exhorts an

awkward squad. Walter did not bring this event before the authorities at

Drumquhat. He knew that the blow of the minister's oaken staff was a

judgment on him for having had anything to do with an Erastian

Establishment.

After the catechising, the minister prayed. He prayed for the venerable

heads of the household, that they might have wisdom and discretion. He

prayed that in the younger members the fear of the Lord might overcome

the lust of the eye and the pride of life--for the sojourners, that the

God of journeying Israel might be a pillar of fire by night and of cloud

by day before them, and that their pilgrimage way might be plain. He

prayed for the young child, that he might be a Timothy in the

Scriptures, a Samuel in obedience, and that in the future, if so it were

the will of the Most High, he might be both witness and evangelist of

the Gospel.

III

THE MINISTER'S LOON

_Saw ye ae flour in a fair garden,

Where the lilac blossom blooms cheerily;

"Fairest and rarest ever was seen,"

Sing the merle and laverock merrily_.

_Watered o' dew i' the earliest morn,

Lilac blossom blooms cheerily;

Bield aboot wi' a sweet hawthorn,

Where the merle and lark sing merrily_.

_Wha shall pu' this flour o' the flours?

Lilac blossom blooms cheerily;

Wha hae for aye to grace their booers,

Where the merle and lark sing merrily_?

This is the note that came for me this morning. It was the herd of

Hanging Shaws that brought it. He had been down at the smiddy getting

the horses shod; and Mr. Marchbanks, the minister, handed it to him

himself as he was passing the manse on his way home. The herd said that

it was "bound to be something pressing, or the minister wadna hae been

so soon oot o' his bed." So he waited till I had opened it to hear what

it was about, for the wife of Hanging Shaws would be sure to be asking.

I read it to him, but he did not seem to be much the wiser. Here is the

letter, written in an ill, crabbed hand-of-write, like all ministers'

writings:--

"_Nether Dullarg_.

"DEAR MR. M'QUHIRR,--_I made strict inquiry subsequent to my return

from your hospitable dwelling last evening regarding the slight

accident which happened to my son, Archibald, whilst I was engaged

in suitable converse with your like-minded partner. I am of opinion

that there is no necessity for proceeding to extreme measures in

the case of your son, Alexander--as in my first natural

indignation, I urged somewhat strongly upon your good wife. It may

not ultimately be for the worse, that the lads were allowed to

settle their own differences without the intervention of their

parents. I may say, in conclusion, that the application of a

portion of uncooked beef to the protuberance has considerably

reduced the swelling upon my son's nose during the night. I intend

(D.V.) to resume the visitation of my congregation on Thursday

next, unaccompanied either by my own son or yours.--Believe me,

dear sir, to remain your most obedient servant_,

_July 3rd_.

"JOHN MARCHBANKS."

Now, Mr. Marchbanks is not my own minister, but there is not a better

respected man in the countryside, nor one whom I would less allow any

one belonging to me to make light of. So it behoved me to make inquiry.

Of the letter itself I could make neither head nor tail; but two things

were clear--that that loon of a boy, my son Alec, was in it, and also

that his mother was "accessory after the fact," as the Kirkcudbright

lawyers say. In the latter case it was necessary to act with

circumspection. In the other case I should probably have acted instantly

with a suitable hazel rod.

I went into the house. "Where's Alec?" I asked, maybe a kenning sharper

than ordinary.

"What may ye be wantin' wi' Alec?" said my wife, with a sting in her

accent which showed that she was deep in the ploy, whatever it had been.

It now came to my mind that I had not seen Alec since the day before,

when I sent him out to play with the minister's son, till Maister

Marchbanks had peace to give us his crack before I went out to the hill

sheep.

So I mentioned to Mrs. M'Quhirr that I had a letter from the minister

about the boy. "Let us hear it," says she. So I read the letter word for

word.

"What does he mean by a' that screed?" she asked. "It's like a bit o' a

sermon."

Now, my wife takes the general good out of a sermon, but she does not

always trouble to translate pulpit language into plain talk.

"He means that there's six o' yin an' half a dizzen o' the ither," I

explained, to smooth her down.

"Na, they're no' that," said Mrs. M'Quhirr; "my laddie may be steerin',

I'm no' denyin'; but he's no' to be named in the same day as that

misleered hound, the minister's loon!"

It was evidently more than ever necessary to proceed with

circumspection.

"At any rate, let us hear what the laddie has to say for himsel'. Where

is he?" I said.

"He's in the barn," said his mother shortly.

To the barn I went. It is an old building with two doors, one very

large, of which the upper half opens inwards; and the other gives a

cheery look into the orchard when the sugar-plums are ripening. One end

was empty, waiting for the harvest, now just changing into yellow, and

the other had been filled with meadow hay only the week before.

"Alec!" I cried, as I came to the door.

There was an answer like the squeaking of a rat among the hay, and I

thought, "Bless me, the boy's smothered!" But then again I minded that

in his times of distress, after a fight or when he had been in some ploy

for which he dared not face his father, Alec had made himself a cave

among the hay or corn in the end of the barn. Like all Lowland barns,

ours has got a row of three-cornered unglazed windows, called "wickets."

Through one of these I have more than once seen Alec vanish when hard

pressed by his mother, and have been amused even under the sober face of

parental discipline. For, once through, no one could follow the boy.

There was no one about the farm slender enough to scramble after. I had

not the smallest doubt that the scapegrace was now lying snugly in his

hole, impregnable behind the great hay-mow, provisioned with a few farls

of cake from his mother, and with his well-beloved _Robinson Crusoe_ for

sole companion of the solitary hours.

I went round to the opening and peered in, but could see nothing.

"Alec," says I, "come oot this moment!"

"Nae lickin', then, faither?" says a voice out of the wicket.

"No, if ye come oot an' tell the truth like a man."

So I took him ben to the "room" to be more solemn-like, and bade him

tell the whole story from the start. This he did fairly on the whole, I

am bound to confess, with sundry questions and reminders here and there

from his mother and me.

"Weel, mither, the way o' it was this. We had only a half-day yesterday

at the schule," he began, "for the maister was gaun to a funeral; an'

when I cam' oot at denner-time I saw Airchie Marchbanks, an' he said

that his faither was gaun up the lochside veesitin', that he was gaun,

too, an' if I likit I could hing on ahint. So I hid my buiks aneath a

stane--"

"Ye destructionfu' vagabond, I'll get yer faither to gie ye a guid--"

"But, mither, it was a big braid stane. They're better there than

cadgin' them hame an' maybe lossin' them. An' my faither promised that

there was to be nae lickin' if I telt the truth."

"Weel, never mind the buiks," said I, for this had nothing to do with

the minister's letter. "Gae on wi' your story."

"The minister startit aboot twa o'clock wi' the auld meer in the shafts,

Airchie on the front seat aside his faither, an' me sittin' on the step

ahint."

"Did the minister ken ye war there?" asked his mother.

"Nae fears!" said Alexander M'Quhirr the younger, unabashed. It is a

constant wonder to his mother whom he takes after. But it is no great

wonder to me. It had been indeed a greater wonderment to me that Alec

should so readily promise to accompany the minister; for whenever either

a policeman or a minister is seen within miles of Drumquhat, my lad

takes the shortest cut for the fastnesses of Drumquhat Bank, there to

lie like one of his hunted forebears of the persecution, till the clear

buttons or the black coat have been carefully watched off the premises.

"The first place where the minister gaed," continued my son, "was the

clauchan o' Milnthird. He was gaun to see Leezie Scott, her that has

been ill sae lang. He gaed in there an' bade a gey while, wi' Airchie

haudin' ae side o' the horse's heid an' me the ither--no' that auld Jess

wad hae run away if ye had tied a kettle to her tail--"

"Be mair circumspect in yer talk," said his mother; "mind it's a

minister's horse!"

"Weel, onyway, I could see through the wundy, an' the lassie was haudin'

the minister's haun', an' him speakin' an' lookin' up at somebody that I

didna see, but maybe the lassie did, for she lay back in her bed awfu'

thankfu'-like. But her mither never thankit the minister ava', juist

turned her back an' grat into her peenie. Mr. Marchbanks cam' oot; but I

saw nae mair, for I had to turn an' rin, or he wad hae seen me, an'

maybe askit me to hae a ride!"

"An' what for wad ye no' be prood to ride wi' the godly man?" asked my

wife.

"He micht ask me my quaistions, an' though I've been lickit thirteen

times for Effectual Callin', I canna get mair nor half through wi't.

['Yer faither's wi' ye there, laddie,' said I, under my breath.] Gin Mr.

Marchbanks wad aye look like what he did when he cam oot o' Leezie

Scott's, I wadna rin for the heather when he comes. Then he had a bit

crack in twa-three o' the hooses wi' the auld wives that wasna at the

wark, though he has nae mair members in the clauchan, them bein' a' Auld

Kirkers. But Mr. Marchbanks didna mind that, but ca'ed on them a', an'

pat up a prayer standin' wi' his staff in his hand and wi' his hair owre

his shoother."

"Hoo div ye ken?" I asked, curious to know how the boy had sketched the

minister so exactly.

"I juist keekit ben, for I likit to see't."

"The assurance o' the loon!" cried his mither, but not ill-pleased. (O

these mothers!)

"Then we cam' to the auld mill, an' the minister gaed in to see blin'

Maggie Affleck, an' when he cam' oot I'm sure as daith that he left

something that jingled on the kitchen table. On the doorstep he says,

wi' a bricht face on him, 'Marget, it's me that needs to thank you, for

I get a lesson frae ye every time that I come here.' Though hoo blind

Mag Affleck can learn a minister wi' lang white hair, is mair nor me or

Airchie Marchbanks could mak' oot. Sae we gaed on, an' the minister gied

every ragged bairn that was on the road that day a ride, till the auld

machine was as thrang as it could stick, like a merry-go-roon' at the

fair. Only, he made them a' get oot at the hills an' walk up, as he did

himsel'. 'Deed, he walkit near a' the road, an' pu'ed the auld meer

efter him insteed o' her drawin' him. 'I wish my faither wad lend me the

whup!' Airchie said, an' he tried to thig it awa' frae his faither. But

the minister was mair gleg than ye wad think, and Airchie got the whup,

but it was roon the legs, an' it garred him loup and squeal!"

My wife nodded grim approval.

"When we got to Drumquhat," continued Alec, "it was gey far on in the

efternune, an' the minister an' my mither lowsed the powny an' stabled

it afore gaun ben. Then me an' Airchie were sent oot to play, as my

mither kens. We got on fine a while, till Airchie broke my peerie an'

pooched the string. Then he staned the cats that cam' rinnin' to beg for

milk an' cheese--cats that never war clodded afore. He wadna be said

'no' to, though I threepit I wad tell his faither. Then at the

hinner-en' he got into my big blue coach, and wadna get oot. I didna

mind that muckle, for I hadna been in 't mysel' for six months. But he

made faces at me through the hole in the back, an' that I couldna pit up

wi'--nae boy could. For it was my ain coach, minister's son or no'

minister's son. Weel, I had the cross-bow and arrow that Geordie Grier

made me--the yin that shoots the lumps o' hard wud. So I let fire at

Airchie, just when he was makin' an awfu' face, and the billet took him

fair atween the een. Into the hoose he ran to his faither, _ba-haain_'

wi' a' his micht; an' oot cam' the minister, as angry as ye like, wi' my

mither ahint him like to greet."

'"Deed, I was that!" said Mrs. M'Quhirr.

"'What for did ye hit my son's nose wi' a billet of wood through the

hole in your blue coach?' the minister asked me.

"'Because your son's nose was _at_ the hole in my blue coach!' says I,

as plain as if he hadna been a minister, I was that mad. For it was my

coach, an' a bonny-like thing gin a boy couldna shoot at a hole in his

ain blue coach! Noo, faither, mind there was to be nae lickin' gin I

telt ye the truth!"

There was no licking--which, if you know my wife, you will find no

difficulty in believing.

IV

THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN "INEFFICIENT"

_White as early roses, girt by daffodillies,

Gleam the feet of maidens moving rhythmically,

Roses of the mountains, flowers of the valley,

Hill rose and plain rose and white vale lilies_.

_Dewy in the meadow lands, clover blossoms mellow

Lift their heads of red and white to the bride's adorning;

Sweetly in the sky-realms all the summer morning,

Joyeth the skylark and calleth his fellow_.

_In the well-known precincts, lo the wilding treasure

Glows for marriage merriment in my sweetheart's gardens,

Welcoming her joy-day, tenderest of wardens--

Heart's pride and love's life and all eyes' pleasure_.

_Bride among the bridesmaids, lily clad in whiteness,

She cometh to the twining none may twain in sunder;

While to marriage merriment wakes the organ's thunder,

And the Lord doth give us all His heavenly brightness_.

_Then like early roses, girt by daffodillies,

Goes the troop of maidens, moving rhythmically,

Roses of the mountains, flowers of the valley,

Hill rose and plain rose and white vale lilies_.

PART I

There is no doubt that any committee on ministerial inefficiency would

have made short work of the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner, minister of the

Townend Kirk in Cairn Edward--that is, if it had been able to

distinguish the work he did from the work that he got the credit for.

Some people have the gift, fortunate or otherwise, of obtaining credit

for the work of others, and transferring to the shoulders of their

neighbours the responsibility of their blunders.

Yet, on the whole, the Townend minister had not been fairly dealt with,

for, if ever man was the product of environment, that man was the

minister of the "Laigh" or Townend Kirk. Now, Ebenezer Skinner was a

model subject for a latter-day biography, for he was born of poor but

honest parents, who resolved that their little Ebenezer should one day

"wag his head in a pulpit," if it cost them all that they possessed.

The early days of the future minister were therefore passed in the

acquisition of the Latin rudiments, a task which he performed to the

satisfaction of the dominie who taught him. He became letter-perfect in

repetition of all the rules, and pridefully glib in reeling off the

examples given in the text. He was the joy of the memory-lesson hour,

and the master's satisfaction was only damped when this prodigy of

accurate knowledge applied himself to the transference of a few lines of

English into a dead language. The result was not inspiring, but by

perseverance Ebenezer came even to this task without the premonition of

more egregious failure than was the custom among pupils of country

schools in his day.

Ebenezer went up to Edinburgh one windy October morning, and for the

first time in his life saw a university and a tramcar. The latter

astonished him very much; but in the afternoon he showed four new comers

the way to the secretary's office in the big cavern to the left of the

entrance of the former, wide-throated like the portal of Hades.

He took a lodging in Simon Square, because some one told him that

Carlyle had lodged there when he came up to college. Ebenezer was a lad

of ambition. His first session was as bare of interest and soul as a

barn without the roof. He alternated like a pendulum between Simon

Square and the Greek and Latin class-rooms. He even took the noted

Professor Lauchland seriously, whereupon the latter promptly made a

Greek pun upon his name, by which he was called in the class whenever

the students could remember it. There was great work done in that

class-room--in the manufacture of paper darts. Ebenezer took no part in

such frivolities, but laboured at the acquisition of such Greek as a

future student of theology would most require. And he succeeded so well

that, on leaving, the Professor complimented him in the following terms,

which were thought at the time to be handsome: "Ye don't know much

Greek, but ye know more than most of your kind--that is, ye can find a

Greek word in the dictionary." It was evident from this that Ebenezer

was a favourite pupil, but some said that it was because Lauchland was

pleased with the pun he made on the name Skinner. There are always

envious persons about to explain away success.

Socially, Ebenezer confined himself to the winding stairs of the

University, and the bleak South-side streets and closes, through which

blew wafts of perfume that were not of Arcady. Once he went out to

supper, but suffered so much from being asked to carve a chicken that he

resolved never to go again. He talked chiefly to the youth next to him

on Bench Seventeen, who had come from another rural village, and who

lived in a garret exactly like his own in Nicolson Square.

Sometimes the two of them walked through the streets to the General Post

Office and back again on Saturday nights to post their letters home, and

talked all the while of their landladies and of the number of marks each

had got on Friday in the Latin version. Thus they improved their minds

and received the benefits of a college education.

At the end of the session Ebenezer went back directly to his village on

the very day the classes closed and he could get no more for his money;

where, on the strength of a year at the college, he posed as the learned

man of the neighbourhood. He did not study much at home but what he did

was done with abundant pomp and circumstance. His mother used to take in

awed visitors to the "room," cautioning them that they must not disturb

any of Ebenezer's "Greek and Laitin" books, lest in this way the career

of her darling might be instantly blighted. Privately she used to go in

by herself and pore over the unknown wonders of Ebenezer's Greek prose

versions, with an admiration which the class-assistant in Edinburgh had

never been able to feel for them.

Such was the career of Ebenezer Skinner for four years. He oscillated

between the dinginess and dulness of the capital as he knew it, and the

well-accustomed rurality of his home. For him the historic associations

of Edinburgh were as good as naught. He and Sandy Kerr (Bench Seventeen)

heard the bugles blaring at ten o'clock from the Castle on windy

Saturday nights, as they walked up the Bridges, and never stirred a

pulse! They never went into Holyrood, because some one told Ebenezer

that there was a shilling to pay. He did not know what a quiet place it

was to walk and read in on wet Saturdays, when there is nothing whatever

to pay. He read no books, confining himself to his class-books and the

local paper, which his mother laboriously addressed and sent to him

weekly. Occasionally he began to read a volume which one of his more

literary companions had acquired on the recommendation of one of the

professors, but he rarely got beyond the first twenty pages.

Yet there never was a more conscientious fellow than Ebenezer Skinner,

Student in Divinity. He studied all that he was told to study. He read

every book that by the regulations he was compelled to read. But he read

nothing besides. He found that he could not hold his own in the

give-and-take of his fellow-students' conversation. Therefore more and

more he withdrew himself from them, crystallising into his narrow early

conventions. His college learning acted like an unventilated mackintosh,

keeping all the unwholesome, morbid personality within, and shutting out

the free ozone and healthy buffeting of the outer world. Many

college-bred men enter life with their minds carefully mackintoshed.

Generally they go into the Church.

But he found his way through his course somehow. It was of him that

Kelland, kindliest and most liberal of professors, said when the

co-examiner hinted darkly of "spinning": "Poor fellow! We'll let him

through. He's done his best." Then, after a pause, and in the most

dulcet accents of a valetudinarian cherub, "It's true, his best is not

very good!"

But Ebenezer escaped from the logic class-room as a roof escapes from a

summer shower, and gladly found himself on the more proper soil of the

philosophy of morals. Here he did indeed learn something, for the

professor's system was exactly suited to such as he. In consequence, his

notebooks were a marvel. But he did not shine so brightly in the oral

examinations, for he feared, with reason, the laughter of his fellows.

In English literature he took down all the dates. But he did not attend

the class on Fridays for fear he should be asked to read, so he never

heard Masson declaim,

"Ah, freedom is a noble thing!"

which some of his contemporaries consider the most valuable part of

their university training.

After Ebenezer Skinner went to the Divinity Hall, he brought the same

excellent qualities of perseverance to bear upon the work there. When

the memorable census was taken of a certain exegetical class, requesting

that each student should truthfully, and upon his solemn oath, make

record of his occupation at the moment when the paper reached him, he

alone, an academic Abdiel,

"Among the faithless, faithful only he,"

was able truthfully to report--_Name_, "Ebenezer Skinner"; _Occupation

at this Moment_, "Trying to attend to the lecture." His wicked

companions--who had returned themselves variously as "Reading the

_Scotsman_," "Writing a love-letter," "Watching a fight between a spider

and a bluebottle, spider weakening"--saw at once that the future of a

man who did not know any better than to listen to a discourse on

Hermeneutics was entirely hopeless. So henceforth they spoke of him

openly and currently as "Poor Skinner!"

Yet when the long-looked-for end of the divinity course came, and the

graduating class burst asunder, scattering seed over the land like an

over-ripe carpel in the September sun, Ebenezer Skinner was one of the

first to take root. He preached in a "vacancy" by chance, supplying for

a man who had been taken suddenly ill. He read a discourse which he had

written on the strictest academical lines for his college professor, and

in the composition of which he had been considerably assisted by a

volume of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons which he had brought home from Thin's

wondrous shop on the Bridges, where many theological works await the

crack of doom. The congregation to which he preached was in the stage of

recoil from the roaring demagogy of a late minister, and all too

promptly elected this modest young man.

But when the young man moved from Simon Square into the Townend manse,

and began to preach twice a Sunday to the clear-headed business men and

the sore-hearted women of many cares who filled the kirk, his ignorance

of all but these theological books, as well as an innocence of the

motives and difficulties of men and women (which would have been

childlike had it not been childish), predoomed him to failure. His

ignorance of modern literature was so appalling that the youngest member

of his Bible-class smiled when he mentioned Tennyson. These and other

qualities went far to make the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner the ministerial

"inefficient" that he undoubtedly was.

But in time he became vaguely conscious that there was something wrong,

yet for the life of him he could not think what it was. He knew that he

had done every task that was ever set him. He had trodden faithfully the

appointed path. He was not without some ability. And yet, though he did

his best, he was sadly aware that he was not successful. Being a modest

fellow, he hoped to improve, and went the right way about it. He knew

that somehow it must be his own fault. He did not count himself a

"Product," and he never blamed the Mill.

PART II

[_Reported by Saunders M'Quhirr of Drumquhat_.]

SKINNER--HALDANE.--On the 25th instant, at the Manse of Kirkmichael, by

the Rev. Alexander Haldane, father of the bride, the Rev. Ebenezer

Skinner, minister of Townend Church, Cairn Edward, to Elizabeth

Catherine Haldane.--_Scotsman_, June 27th.

This was the beginning of it, as some foresaw that it would be. I cut it

out of the _Scotsman_ to keep, and my wife has pasted it at the top of

my paper. But none of us knew it for certain, though there was Robbie

Scott, John Scott's son, that is herd at the Drochills in the head-end

of the parish of Kirkmichael--he wrote home to his father in a letter

that I saw myself: "I hear you're to get our minister's dochter down by

you; she may be trusted to keep you brisk about Cairn Edward."

But we thought that this was just the lad's nonsense, for he was aye at

it. However, we had news of that before she had been a month in the

place. Mr. Skinner used to preach on the Sabbaths leaning over the

pulpit with his nose kittlin' the paper, and near the whole of the

congregation watching the green leaves of the trees waving at the

windows. But, certes, after he brought the mistress home he just

preached once in that fashion. The very next Sabbath morning he stood

straight up in the pulpit and pulled at his cuffs as if he was peeling

for a "fecht"--and so he was. He spoke that day as he had never spoken

since he came to the kirk. And all the while, as my wife said, "The

mistress sat as quate as a wee broon moose in the minister's seat by the

side wall. She never took her een aff him, an' ye never saw sic a change

on ony man."

"She'll do!" said I to my wife as we came out. We were biding for a day

or so with my cousin, that is the grocer in Cairn Edward, as I telled

you once before. The Sabbath morning following there was no precentor in

the desk, and the folk were all sitting wondering what was coming next,

for everybody kenned that "Cracky" Carlisle, the post, had given up his

precentorship because the list of tunes had come down from the manse to

him on the Wednesday, instead of his being allowed to choose what he

liked out of the dozen or so that he could sing. "Cracky" Carlisle got

his name by upholding the theory that a crack in the high notes sets off

a voice wonderfully. He had a fine one himself.

"I'll no' sing what ony woman bids me," said the post, putting the

saddle on the right horse at once.

"But hoo do ye ken it was her?" he was asked that night in Dally's

smiddy, when the Laigh End folk gathered in to have their crack.

"Ken?" said Cracky; "brawly do I ken that he wad never hae had the

presumption himsel'. Na, he kenned better!"

"It was a verra speerited thing to do, at ony rate, to gie up your

precentorship," said Fergusson, whose wife kept the wash-house on the

Isle, and who lived on his wife's makings.

"Verra," said the post drily, "seein' that I haena a wife to keep me!"

There was a vacancy on the seat next the door, which the shoemaker

filled. But, with all this talk, there was a considerable expectation

that the minister would go himself to Cracky at the last moment and

beseech him to sing for them. The minister, however, did not arrive, and

so Cracky did not go to church at all that day.

Within the Laigh Kirk there was a silence as the Reverend Ebenezer

Skinner, without a tremor in his voice, gave out that they would sing to

the praise of God the second Paraphrase to the tune "St. Paul's." The

congregation stood up--a new invention of the last minister's, over

which also Cracky had nearly resigned, because it took away from his

dignity as precentor and having therefore the sole right to stand during

the service of song. The desk was still empty. The minister gave one

quick look to the manse seat, and there arose from the dusky corner by

the wall such a volume of sweet and solemn sound that the first two

lines were sung out before a soul had thought of joining. But as the

voice from the manse seat took a new start into the mighty swing of "St.

Paul's," one by one the voices which had been singing that best-loved of

Scottish tunes at home in "taking the Buik," joined in, till by the end

of the verse the very walls were tingling with the joyful noise. There

was something ran through the Laigh Kirk that day to which it had long

been strange. "It's the gate o' heeven," said old Peter Thomson, the

millwright, who had voted for Ebenezer Skinner for minister, and had

regretted it ever since. He was glad of his vote now that the minister

had got married.

Then followed the prayer, which seemed new also; and Ebenezer Skinner's

prayers had for some time been well known to the congregation of the

Laigh Kirk. The worst of all prayer-mills is the threadbare liturgy

which a lazy or an unspiritual man cobbles up for himself. But there

seemed a new spirit in Ebenezer's utterances, and there was a thankful

feeling in the kirk of the Townend that day. As they "skailed," some of

the young folk went as far as to say that they hoped that desk would

never be filled. But this expression of opinion was discouraged, for it

was felt to border on irreverence.

Cracky Carlisle was accidentally at his door when Gib Dally passed on

his way home. Cracky had an unspoken question in his eye; but Gib did

not respond, for the singing had drawn a kind of spell over him too. So

Cracky had to speak plain out before Gib would answer.

"Wha sang the day?" he asked anxiously, hoping that there had been some

sore mishap, and that the minister, or even Mrs. Skinner herself, might

come humbly chapping at his door to fleech with him to return. And he

hardened himself even in the moment of imagination.

"We a' sang," said Gib cruelly.

"But wha led?" said the ex-precentor.

"Oh, we had no great miss of you, Cracky," said Gib, who remembered the

airs that the post had many a time given himself, and did not incline to

let him off easily in the day of his humiliation. "It was the

minister's wife that led."

The post lifted his hands, palm outwards, with a gesture of despair.

"Ay, I was jalousing it wad be her," said he sadly, as he turned into

his house. He felt that his occupation and craft were gone, and first

and last that the new mistress of the manse was the rock on which he had

split.

Mrs. Ebenezer Skinner soon made the acquaintance of the Cairn Edward

folk. She was a quick and dainty little person.

"Man, Gib, but she's a feat bit craitur!" said the shoemaker, watching

her with satisfaction from the smiddy door, and rubbing his grimy hands

on his apron as if he had been suddenly called upon to shake hands with

her.

"Your son was nane so far wrang," he said to John Scott, the herd, who

came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

"Na," said John; "oor Rob's heid is screwed the richt way on his

shoothers!"

Now, in her rambles the minister's wife met one and another of the young

folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time

to come up to the manse for a cup of tea. Then there was singing in the

evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of

the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two

nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the

congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it

had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with

sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not

even their parents knew what was coming. But at the first hymn the

reason was very obvious. The singing was grand.

"It'll be what they call a 'koyer,' nae doot!" said the shoemaker, who

tolerated it solely because he admired the minister's wife and she had

shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is

said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor's desk had departed

and all the glory of it. But nobody knows for certain, for the

minister's wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she

had a long talk with him. At first Cracky said that he must go home, for

he had to be at his work. But, being a minister's daughter, Mrs. Skinner

saw by his "blacks" that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and

promptly marched him to the manse to tea. Cracky gives out the books in

the choir now, and sings bass, again well pleased with himself. The

Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was

recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver

tea-set by the congregation. He has just been elected Clerk of

Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as

she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her father was

Clerk, to the great advantage of the Kirk of Scotland in these parts.

[My wife, Mary M'Quhirr, wishes me to add to all whom it may concern,

"Go thou and do likewise."]

V

JOHN

_Shall we, then, make our harvest of the sea

And garner memories, which we surely deem

May light these hearts of ours on darksome days,

When loneliness hath power, and no kind beam

Lightens about our feet the perilous ways?

For of Eternity

This present hour is all we call our own,

And Memory's edge is dull'd, even as it brings

The sunny swathes of unforgotten springs,

And sweeps them to our feet like grass long mown_.

Fergus Morrison was in his old town for a few days. He was staying with

the aunt who had brought him up, schooled him, marshalled him to the

Burgher Kirk like a decent Renfrewshire callant, and finally had sent

him off to Glasgow to get colleged. Colleged he was in due course, and

had long been placed in an influential church in the city. On the

afternoon of the Saturday he was dreamily soliloquising after the plain

midday meal to which his aunt adhered.

Old things had been passing before him during these last days, and the

coming of the smart church-officer for the psalms and hymns for the

morrow awoke in the Reverend Fergus Morrison a desire to know about

"John," the wonderful beadle of old times, to whose enlarged duties his

late spruce visitor had succeeded. He smiled fitfully as he brooded

over old things and old times; and when his aunt came in from washing up

the dinner dishes, he asked concerning "John." He was surprised to find

that, though frail, bent double with rheumatism, and nearly blind, he

was still alive; and living, too, as of yore, in the same old cottage

with its gable-end to the street. The Glasgow minister took his staff

and went out to visit him. As he passed down the street he noted every

change with a start, marvelling chiefly at the lowness of the houses and

the shrunken dimensions of the Town Hall, once to him the noblest

building on earth.

When he got to John's cottage the bairns were playing at ball against

the end of it, just as they had done thirty years ago. One little urchin

was making a squeaking noise with a wet finger on the window-pane,

inside which were displayed a few crossed pipes and fly-blown

sweatmeats. As the city minister stood looking about him, a bent yet

awe-inspiring form came hirpling to the door, leaning heavily on a

staff. Making out by the noise the whereabouts of the small boy, the old

man turned suddenly to him with a great roar like a bull, before the

blast of which the boy disappeared, blown away as chaff is blown before

the tempest. The minister's first impulse was likewise to turn and flee.

Thirty added years had not changed the old instinct, for when John

roared at any of the town boys, conscious innocence did not keep any of

them still. They ran first, and inquired from a distance whom he was

after. For John's justice was not evenhanded. His voice was ever for

open war, and everything that wore tattered trousers and a bonnet was

his natural enemy.

So the minister nearly turned and ran, as many a time he had done in the

years that were past. However, instead he went indoors with the old man,

and, having recalled himself to John's clear ecclesiastical memory, the

interview proceeded somewhat as follows, the calm flow of the

minister's accustomed speech gradually kindling as he went, into the

rush of the old Doric of his boyhood.

"Ay, John, I'm glad you remember me; but I have better cause to remember

you, for you once nearly knocked out my brains with a rake when I was

crawling through the manse beech-hedge to get at the minister's rasps.

Oh, yes, you did, John! You hated small boys, you know. And specially,

John, you hated me. Nor can I help thinking that, after all, taking a

conjunct and dispassionate view of your circumstances, as we say in the

Presbytery, your warmth of feeling was entirely unwarranted. 'Thae

loons--they're the plague o' my life!' you were wont to remark, after

you had vainly engaged in the pleasure of the chase, having surprised us

in some specially outrageous ploy.

"Once only, John, did you bring your stout ash 'rung' into close

proximity to the squirming body that now sits by your fireside. You have

forgotten it, I doubt not, John, among the hosts of other similar

applications. But the circumstance dwells longer in the mind of your

junior, by reason of the fact that for many days he took an interest in

the place where he sat down. He even thought of writing to the parochial

authorities to ask why they did not cushion the benches of the parish

school.

"You have no manner of doot, you say, John, that I was richly deserving

of it? There you are right, and in the expression I trace some of the

old John who used to keep us so strictly in our places. You're still in

the old house, I rejoice to see, John, and you are likely to be. What!

the laird has given it to you for your life, and ten pound a year? And

the minister gives you free firing, and with the bit you've laid by

you'll juik the puirhoose yet? Why, man, that's good hearing! You are a

rich man in these bad times! Na, na, John, us Halmyre lads wad never

see you gang there, had your 'rung' been twice as heavy.

"Do ye mind o' that day ye telled the maister on us? There was Joe

Craig, that was lost somewhere in the China seas; Sandy Young, that's

something in Glasgow; Tam Simpson, that died in the horrors o' drink;

and me--and ye got us a' a big licking. It was a frosty morning, and ye

waylaid the maister on his way to the school, and the tawse were nippier

than ordinar' that mornin'. No, John, it wasna me that was the

ringleader. It was Joe Craig, for ye had clooted his lugs the night

before for knockin' on your window wi' a pane o' glass, and then letting

it jingle in a thousand pieces on the causeway. Ye chased him doon the

street and through the lang vennel, and got him in Payne's field. Ye

brocht him back by the cuff o' the neck, an' got a polisman to come to

see the damage. An' when ye got to the window there wasna a hole in't,

nor a bit o' gless to be seen, for Sandy Young had sooped it a' up when

ye were awa' after Joe Craig.

"Then the polisman said, 'If I war you, John, I wadna gang sae muckle to

the Cross Keys--yer heid's no as strong as it was, an' the minister's

sure to hear o't!' This was mair than mortal could stan', so ye telled

the polisman yer opinion o' him and his forebears, and attended to Joe

Craig's lugs, baith at the same time.

"Ye dinna mind, do ye, John, what we did that nicht? No? Weel, then, we

fetched ye the water that ye were aye compleenin' that ye had naebody to

carry for ye. Twa cans fu' we carried--an' we proppit them baith against

your door wi' a bit brick ahint them. Ay, just that very door there.

Then we gied a great 'rammer' on the panels, an' ye cam' geyan fast to

catch us. But as ye opened the door, baith the cans fell into the hoose,

an' ye could hae catched bairdies an' young puddocks on the

hearthstane. Weel, ye got me in the coachbuilder's entry, an' I've no'

forgotten the bit circumstance, gin ye have.

"Ill-wull? Na, John, the verra best of guid-wull, for ye made better

boys o' us for the verra fear o' yer stick. As ye say, the ministers are

no' what they used to be when you and me were sae pack. A minister was a

graun' man then, wi' a presence, an' a necktie that took a guid

half-yard o' seeventeen-hunner linen. I'm a minister mysel', ye ken,

John, but I'm weel aware I'm an unco declension. Ye wad like to hear me

preach? Noo, that's rale kind o' ye, John. But ye'll be snuggest at your

ain fireside, an' I'll come in, an' we'll e'en hae a draw o' the pipe

atween sermons. Na, I dinna wunner that ye canna thole to think on the

new kirk-officer, mairchin' in afore the minister, an 's gouns an' a'

sic capers. They wadna hae gotten you to do the like.

"Ye mind, John, hoo ye heartened me up when I was feared to speak for

the first time in the auld pulpit? 'Keep yer heid up,' ye said, 'an'

speak to the gallery. Never heed the folk on the floor. Dinna be feared;

in a time or twa ye'll be nae mair nervish than mysel'. Weel do I mind

when I first took up the buiks, I could hardly open the door for

shakin', but noo I'm naewise discomposed wi' the hale service.'

"Ay, it is queer to come back to the auld place efter sae mony year in

Glesca. You've never been in Glesca, John? No; I'll uphaud that there's

no' yer match amang a' the beadles o' that toun--no' in yer best days,

when ye handed up yer snuff-box to Maister M'Sneesh o' Balmawhapple in

the collectin' ladle, when ye saw that he was sore pitten til't for a

snuff. Or when ye said to Jamieson o' Penpoint, wee crowl o' a body--

"'I hae pitten in the fitstool an' drappit the bookboard, to gie ye

every advantage. So see an' mak' the best o't.'

"Ay, John, ye war a man! Ye never said that last, ye say, John? They

lee'd on ye, did they? Weel, I dootna that there was mony a thing pitten

doon to ye that was behadden to the makkar. But they never could mak' ye

onything but oor ain kindly, thrawn, obstinate auld John, wi' a hand

like a bacon ham and a heart like a bairn's. Guid-day to ye, John.

There's something on the mantelpiece to pit in the tea-caddy. I'll look

in the morn, an' we'll hae oor smoke."

VI

EUROCLYDON OF THE RED HEAD

_There's a leaf in the book of the damask rose

That glows with a tender red;

From the bud, through the bloom, to the dust it goes,

Into rose dust fragrant and dead_.

_And this word is inscribed on the petals fine

Of that velvety purple page--

"Be true to thy youth while yet it is thine

Ere it sink in the mist of age_,

"_Ere the bursting bud be grown

To a rose nigh overblown,

And the wind of the autumn eves

Comes blowing and scattering all

The damask drift of the dead rose leaves

Under the orchard wall_.

"_Like late-blown roses the joy-days flit,

And soon will the east winds blow;

So the love years now must be lived and writ

In red on a page of snow_.

"_And here the rune of the rose I rede,

'Tis the heart of the rose and me--

O youth, O maid, in your hour of need,

Be true to the sacred three--

Be true to the love that is love indeed,

To thyself, and thy God, these three!_

"_Ere the bursting bud is grown

To a rose nigh overblown,

And the wind of the autumn eves

Comes blowing and scattering all

The damask drift of the dead rose leaves

Under the orchard wall_."

Euroclydon of the Red Head was the other name of the Reverend Sylvanus

Septimus Cobb during his student days--nothing more piratical than that.

Sylvanus obtained the most valuable part of his training in the

Canadian backwoods. During his student days he combined the theory of

theology with the practice of "logging," in proportions which were

mutually beneficial, and which greatly aided his success as a minister

on his return to the old country. Sylvanus Cobb studied in Edinburgh,

lodging with his brother in the story next the sky at the corner of

Simon Square, supported by red herrings, oatmeal, and the reminiscence

that Carlyle had done the same within eyeshot of his front window fifty

years before.

"And look at him now!" said Sylvanus Cobb pertinently.

Sylvanus had attained the cognomen of Euroclydon of the Red Head in that

breezy collegiate republic whose only order is the Prussian "For Merit."

He was always in a hurry, and his red head, with its fiery, untamed

shock of bristle, usually shot into the class-room a yard or so before

his broad shoulders. At least, this was the general impression produced.

Also, he always brought with him a draught of caller air, like one

coming into a close and fire-warmed room out of the still and

frost-bound night.

But Edinburgh, its bare "lands" and barren class-rooms, in time waxed

wearisome to Sylvanus. He grew to loathe the drone of the classes, the

snuffy prelections of professors long settled on the lees of their

intellects, who still moused about among the dusty speculations which

had done duty for thought when their lectures were new, thirty years

ago. "A West Indian nigger," said Sylvanus quaintly, "ain't in it with a

genuine lazy Scotch professor. Wish I had him out to lumber with me on

the Ottawa! He'd have to hump himself or git! I'd learn him to keep

hag-hagging at trees that had been dead stumps for half a century!"

At this time of life we generally spent a part of each evening in going

round to inform our next neighbours that we had just discovered the

solution of the problem of the universe. True, we had been round at the

same friend's the week before with two equally infallible discoveries.

Most unfortunately, however, on Sunday we had gone to hear the Great

Grim Man of St. Christopher's preach in his own church, and he had

pitilessly knocked the bottom out of both of these. Sometimes our

friends called with their own latest solutions; and then there was such

a pother of discussion, and so great a noise, that the old lady beneath

foolishly knocked up a telephonic message to stop--foolishly, for that

was business much more in our line than in hers. With one mind we

thundered back a responsive request to that respectable householder to

go to Jericho for her health, an it liked her. Our landlady, being

long-suffering and humorously appreciative of the follies of academic

youth (O rare paragon of landladies!), wondered meekly why she was sent

to Coventry by every one of her neighbours on the stair during the

winter months; and why during the summer they asked her to tea and

inquired with unaffected interest if she was quite sure that that part

of the town agreed with her health, and if she thought of stopping over

this Whitsunday term.

When Sylvanus Cobb came up our stairs it was as though a bag of coals on

the back of an intoxicated carter had tumbled against our door.

"That's yon red-headed lunatic, I'll be bound; open the door to him

yersel'!" cried the landlady, remembering one occasion when Euroclydon

had entered with such fervour as almost to pancake her bodily between

wall and door.

Sylvanus came in as usual with a militant rush, which caused us to lift

the kitchen poker so as to be ready to poke the fire or for any other

emergency.

"I'll stop no more in this hole!" shouted Euroclydon of the Red Head,

"smothered with easter haar on the streets and auld wife's blethers

inby. I'm off to Canada to drive the axe on the banks of the Ottawa. And

ye can bide here till your brains turn to mud--and they'll not have far

to turn either!"

"Go home to your bed, Euroclydon--you'll feel better in the morning!" we

advised with a calmness born of having been through this experience as

many as ten times before. But, as it chanced, Sylvanus was in earnest

this time, and we heard of him next in Canada, logging during the week

and preaching on Sundays, both with equal acceptance.

One night Sylvanus had a "tough" in his audience--an ill-bred ruffian

who scoffed when he gave out his text, called "Three cheers for

Ingersoll!" when he was half through with his discourse, and interjected

imitations of the fife and big drum at the end of each paragraph. It may

be said on his behalf that he had just come to camp, had never seen

Sylvanus bring down a six-foot pine, and knew not that he was named

Euroclydon--or why.

The ruddy crest of the speaker gradually bristled till it stood on end

like the comb of Chanticleer. He paused and looked loweringly at the

interrupter under his shaggy brows, pulling his under lip into his mouth

in a moment of grim resolve.

"I'll attend to you at the close of this divine service!" said

Euroclydon.

And he did, while his latest convert held his coat.

"An almighty convincing exhorter!" said Abram Sugg from Maine, when

Sylvanus had put the Ingersollian to bed in his own bunk, and was

feeding him on potted turkey.

On the hillsides, with their roots deep in the crevices of the rocks,

grew the pines. One by one they fell all through that winter. The

strokes of the men's axes rang clear in the frosty air as chisel rings

on steel. Whenever Sylvanus Cobb came out of the door of the warm

log-hut where the men slept, the cold air met him like a wall. He walked

light-headed in the moistureless chill of the rare sub-Arctic air. He

heard the thunder of the logs down the _chute_. The crash of a falling

giant far away made him turn his head. It was a life to lead, and he

rubbed his hands as he thought of Edinburgh class-rooms.

Soon he became boss of the gang, and could contract for men of his own.

There was larger life in the land of resin and pine-logs. No tune in all

broad Scotland was so merry as the whirr of the sawmill, when the little

flashing ribbon of light runs before the swift-cutting edge of the saw.

It made Sylvanus remember the pale sunshine his feet used to make on the

tan-coloured sands of North Berwick, when he walked two summers before

with May Chisholm, when it was low-water at the spring-tides. But most

of all he loved the mills, where he saw huge logs lifted out of the

water, slid along the runners, and made to fall apart in clean-cut

fragrant planks in a few seconds of time.

"That tree took some hundreds of years to grow, but the buzz-saw turns

her into plain deal-boards before you can wink. All flesh is grass,"

soliloquised the logger preacher.

A winter in a lumber camp is a time when a man can put in loads of

thinking. Dried fish and boiled tea do not atrophy a man's brain.

Loggers do not say much except on Sundays, when they wash their shirts.

Even then it was Sylvanus who did most of the talking.

Sometimes during the week a comrade would trudge alongside of him as he

went out in the uncomfortable morning.

"That was the frozen truth you gave us on Sunday, I guess!" said one who

answered placably to the name of Bob Ridley--or, indeed, to any other

name if he thought it was meant for him. "I've swore off, parson, and I

wrote that afternoon to my old mother."

Such were the preacher's triumphs.

Thus Sylvanus Cobb learned his lesson in the College of the Silences, to

the accompaniment of the hard clang of the logs roaring down the

mountain-side, or the sweeter and more continuous ring of his men's

axes. At night he walked about a long time, silent under the

thick-spangled roofing of stars. For in that land the black midnight sky

is not thin-sprinkled with glistening pointlets as at home, but wears a

very cloth of gold. The frost shrewdly nipped his ears, and he heard the

musical sound of the water running somewhere under the ice. A poor hare

ran to his feet, pursued by a fox which drew off at sight of him,

showing an ugly flash of white teeth.

But all the while, among his quietness of thought, and even in the hours

when he went indoors to read to the men as they sat on their rugs with

their feet to the fire, he thought oftenest of the walks on the North

Berwick sands, and of the important fact that May Chisholm had to stop

three times to push a rebellious wisp of ringlets under her hat-brim.

Strange are the workings of the heart of a man, and there is generally a

woman somewhere who pulls the strings.

Euroclydon laid his axe-handle on the leaves of his Hebrew Bible to keep

them from turning in the brisk airs which the late Canadian spring

brought into the long log-hut, loosening the moss in its crevices. The

scent of seaweed on a far-away beach came to him, and a longing to go

back possessed him. He queried within himself if it were possible that

he could ever settle down to the common quiet of a Scottish parish, and

decided that, under certain conditions, the quiet might be far from

commonplace. So he threw his bundle over his shoulder, when the camp

broke up in the beginning of May, and took the first steamer home.

His first visit was to North Berwick, and there on the sands between the

East Terrace and the island promontory which looks towards the Bass,

where the salt water lies in the pools and the sea-pinks grow between

them, he found May Chisholm walking with a young man. Sylvanus Cobb

looked the young man over. He had a pretty moustache but a weak mouth.

"I can best that fellow, if I have a red head!" said Sylvanus, with some

of the old Euroclydon fervour.

And he did. Whether it was the red head, of which each individual hair

stood up automatically, the clear blue eyes, which were the first thing

and sometimes the only thing that most women saw in his face, or the

shoulders squared with the axe, that did it, May Chisholm only knows.

You can ask her, if you like. But most likely it was his plain,

determined way of asking for what he wanted--an excellent thing with

women. But, any way, it is a fact that, before eighteen months had gone

by, Sylvanus Cobb was settled in the western midlands of Scotland, with

the wife whose tangles of hair were only a trifle less distracting than

they used to be between the East Cliff and Tantallon. And this is a true

tale.

VII

THE CAIRN EDWARD KIRK MILITANT

_Out of the clinging valley mists I stray

Into the summer midnight clear and still,

And which the brighter is no man may say--

Whether the gold beyond the western hill_

_Where late the sun went down, or the faint tinge

Of lucent green, like sea wave's inner curve

Just ere it breaks, that gleams behind the fringe

Of eastern coast. So which doth most preserve_

_My wistful soul in hope and steadfastness

I know not--all that golden-memoried past

So sudden wonderful, when new life ran_

_First in my veins; or that clear hope, no less

Orient within me, for whose sake I cast

All meaner ends into these ground mists wan_.

"We've gotten a new kind o' minister the noo at Cairn Edward," said my

cousin, Andrew M'Quhirr, to me last Monday. I was down at the Mart, and

had done some little business on the Hill. My cousin is a draper in the

High Street. He could be a draper nowhere else in Cairn Edward, indeed;

for nobody buys anything but in the High Street.

"Look, Saunders, there he is, gaun up the far side o' the causeway."

I looked out and saw a long-legged man in grey clothes going very fast,

but no minister. I said to my cousin that the minister had surely gone

into the "Blue Bell," which was not well becoming in a minister.

"Man, Saunders, where's yer een?--you that pretends to read Tammas

Carlyle. D' ye think that the black coat mak's a minister? I micht hae a

minister in the window gin it did!" said he, glancing at the

disjaskit-looking wood figure he had bought at a sale of bankrupt stock

in Glasgow, with "THIS STYLE OF SUIT, £2, 10s." printed on the breast of

it. The lay figure was a new thing in Cairn Edward, and hardly counted

to be in keeping with the respect for the second commandment which a

deacon in the Kirk of the Martyrs ought to cultivate. The laddies used

to send greenhorns into the shop for a "penny peep o' Deacon M'Quhirr's

idol!" But I always maintained that, whatever command the image might

break, it certainly did not break the second; for it was like nothing in

the heavens above nor in the earth beneath, nor (so far as I kenned) in

the waters under the earth. But my cousin said--

"Maybes no'; but it cost me three pound, and in my shop it'll stand till

it has payed itsel'!" Which gives it a long lifetime in the little

shop-window in the High Street.

This was my first sight of Angus Stark, the new minister of Martyrs'

Kirk in Cairn Edward.

"He carries things wi' a high hand," said Andrew M'Quhirr, my cousin.

"That's the man ye need at the Martyrs' Kirk," said I; "ye've been

spoiled owre lang wi' unstable Reubens that could in nowise excel."

"Weel, we're fixed noo, rarely. I may say that I mentioned his wearin'

knickerbockers to him when he first cam', thinkin' that as a young man

he micht no' ken the prejudices o' the pairish."

"And what said he, Andrew?" I asked. "Was he pitten aboot?"

"Wha? Him! Na, no' a hair. He juist said, in his heartsome, joky way,

'I'm no' in the habit o' consulting my congregation how I shall dress

myself; but if you, Mr. M'Quhirr, will supply me with a black broadcloth

suit free of charge, I'll see aboot wearin' it!' says he. So I said nae

mair.

"But did you hear what Jess Loan, the scaffie's wife, said to him when

he gaed in to bapteeze her bairn when he wasna in his blacks? She

hummered a while, an' then she says, 'Maister Stark, I ken ye're an

ordeened man, for I was there whan a' the ministers pat their han's on

yer heid, an' you hunkerin' on the cushion--but I hae my feelin's!"

"'Your feelings, Mrs. Loan?' says the minister, thinking it was some

interestin' case o' personal experience he was to hear.

"'Ay,' says Jess; 'if it was only as muckle as a white tie I wadna mind,

but even a scaffie's wean wad be the better o' that muckle!'

"So Maister Stark said never a word, but he gaed his ways hame, pat on

his blacks, brocht his goun an' bands aneath his airm, and there never

was sic a christenin' in Cairn Edward as Jess Loan's bairn gat!"

"How does he draw wi' his fowk, Andra?" I asked, for the "Martyrs" were

far from being used to work of this kind.

"Oh, verra weel," said the draper; "but he stoppit Tammas Affleck and

John Peartree frae prayin' twenty meenits a-piece at the prayer-meetin'.

'The publican's prayer didna last twa ticks o' the clock, an' you're not

likely to better that even in twenty meenits!' says he. It was thocht

that they wad leave, but weel do they ken that nae ither kirk wad elect

them elders, an' they're baith fell fond o' airin' their waistcoats at

the plate.

"Some o' them was sore against him ridin' on a bicycle, till John

Peartree's grandson coupit oot o' the cart on the day o' the

Sabbath-schule trip, an' the minister had the doctor up in seventeen

minutes by the clock. There was a great cry in the pairish because he

rade doon on 't to assist Maister Forbes at the Pits wi' his communion

ae Sabbath nicht. But, says the minister, when some o' the Session took

it on them to tairge him for it, 'Gin I had driven, eyther man or beast

wad hae lost their Sabbath rest. I tired nocht but my own legs,' says

he. 'It helps me to get to the hoose of God, just like your Sunday

boots. Come barefit to the kirk, and I'll consider the maitter again.'"

"That minister preaches the feck o' his best sermons _oot_ o' the

pulpit," said I, as I bade Andrew good-day and went back into the High

Street, from which the folk were beginning to scatter. The farmers were

yoking their gigs and mounting into them in varying degrees and angles

of sobriety. So I took my way to the King's Arms, and got my beast into

the shafts. Half a mile up the Dullarg road, who should I fall in with

but "Drucken" Bourtree, the quarryman. He was walking as steady as the

Cairn Edward policeman when the inspector is in the town. I took him up.

"Bourtree," says I, "I am prood to see ye."

"'Deed, Drumquhat, an' I'm prood to see mysel'. For thirty year I was

drunk every Monday nicht, and that often atweenwhiles that it fair bate

me to tell when ae spree feenished and the next began! But it's three

month since I've seen the thick end o' a tumbler. It's fac' as death!"

"And what began a' this, Bourtree?" said I.

"Juist a fecht wi' M'Kelvie, the sweep, that ca's himsel' a _pugilist_!"

"A fecht made ye a sober man, Bourtree!--hoo in the creation was that?"

"It was this way, Drumquhat. M'Kelvie, a rank Tipperairy Micky, wi' a

nose on him like a danger-signal"--here Bourtree glanced down at his

own, which had hardly yet had time to bleach--"me an' M'Kelvie had been

drinkin' verra britherly in the Blue Bell till M'Kelvie got fechtin'

drunk, an' misca'ed me for a hungry Gallowa' Scot, an' nae doot I gaed

into the particulars o' his ain birth an' yeddication. In twa or three

minutes we had oor coats aff and were fechtin' wi' the bluid rinnin' on

to the verra street.

"The fowk made a ring, but nane dared bid us to stop. Some cried, 'Fetch

the polis!' But little we cared for that, for we kenned brawly that the

polisman had gane awa' to Whunnyliggate to summon auld John Grey for

pasturing his coo on the roadside, as soon as ever he heard that

M'Kelvie an' me war drinkin' in the toon. Oh, he's a fine polisman! He's

aye great for peace. Weel, I was thinkin' that the next time I got in my

left, it wad settle M'Kelvie. An' what M'Kelvie was thinkin' I do not

ken, for M'Kelvie is nocht but an Irishman. But oot o' the grund there

raise a great muckle man in grey claes, and took fechtin' M'Kelvie an'

me by the cuff o' the neck, and dauded oor heids thegither till we saw a

guano-bagfu' o' stars.

"'Noo, wull ye shake hands or come to the lock-up?' says he.

"We thocht he maun be the chief o' a' the chief constables, an' we didna

want to gang to nae lock-ups, so we just shook haun's freendly-like.

Then he sent a' them that was lookin' on awa' wi' a flee in their lugs.

"'Forty men,' says he, 'an' feared to stop twa men fechtin'--cowards or

brutes, eyther o' the twa!' says he.

"There was a bailie amang them he spoke to, so we thocht he was bound to

be a prince o' the bluid, at the least. This is what I thocht, but I

canna tell what M'Kelvie thocht, for he was but an Irishman. So it does

not matter what M'Kelvie thocht.

"But the big man in grey says, 'Noo, lads, I've done ye a good turn. You

come and hear me preach the morn in the kirk at the fit o' the hill.' 'A

minister!' cried M'Kelvie an' me. A wastril whalp could hae dung us owre

with its tail. We war that surprised like."

So that is the way "Drucken" Bourtree became a God-fearing quarryman.

And as for M'Kelvie, he got three months for assaulting and battering

the policeman that very night; but then, M'Kelvie was only an Irishman!

EPILOGUE

IN PRAISE OF GALLOWAY

_New lands, strange faces, all the summer days

My weary feet have trod, mine eyes have seen;

Among the snows all winter have I been,

Rare Alpine air, and white untrodden ways_.

_From the great Valais mountain peaks my gaze

Hath seen the cross on Monte Viso plain,

Seen blue Maggiore grey with driving rain,

And white cathedral spires like flames of praise_.

_Yet now the spring is here, who doth not sigh

For showery morns, and grey skies sudden bright,

And a dear land a-dream with shifting light!

Or in what clear-skied realm doth ever lie_,

_Such glory as of gorse on Scottish braes,

Or the white hawthorn of these English Mays?_

_Night in the Galloway Woods_.

Through the darkness comes the melancholy hoot of the barn owl, while

nearer some bird is singing very softly--either a blackcap or a

sedge-warbler. The curlew is saying good-night to the lapwing on the

hill. By the edge of the growing corn is heard, iterative and wearisome,

the "crake," "crake" of the corn-crake.

We wait a little in the shade of the wood, but there are no other sounds

or sights to speak to us till we hear the clang of some migratory wild

birds going down to the marshes by Loch Moan. Many birds have a night

cry quite distinct from their day note. The wood-pigeon has a peculiarly

contented chuckle upon his branch, as though he were saying, "This here

is jolly comfortable! This just suits _me_!" For the wood-pigeon is a

vulgar and slangy bird, and therefore no true Scot, for all that the

poets have said about him. He is however a great fighter, exceedingly

pugnacious with his kind. Listen and you will hear even at night

"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,"

or rather among the firs, for above all trees the wood-pigeon loves the

spruce. But you will find out, if you go nearer, that much of the mystic

moaning which sounds so poetic at a distance, consists of squabblings

and disputings about vested rights.

"You're shoving me!" says one angry pigeon.

"That is a lie. This is my branch at any rate, and you've no business

here. Get off!" replies his neighbour, as quarrelsome to the full as he.

_Birds at Night_.

A dozen or two of starlings sit on the roof of an out-house--now an

unconsidered and uninteresting bird to many, yet fifty years ago Sir

Walter Scott rode twenty miles to see a nest of them. They are pretty

bird enough in the daytime, but they are more interesting at night. Now

they have their dress coats off and their buttons loosened. They sit and

gossip among each other like a clique of jolly students. And if one gets

a little sleepy and nods, the others will joggle him off the branch, and

then twitter with congratulatory laughter at his tumble. Let us get

beneath them quietly. We can see them now, black against the brightening

eastern sky. See that fellow give his neighbour a push with his beak,

and hear the assaulted one scream out just like Mr. Thomas Sawyer in

Sunday-school, whose special chum stuck a pin into him for the pleasure

of hearing him say "Ouch!"

As the twilight brightens the scuffling will increase, until before the

sun rises there will be a battle-royal, and then the combatants will set

to preening their ruffled feathers, disordered by the tumults and alarms

of the wakeful night.

The bats begin to seek their holes and corners about an hour before the

dawn, if the night has been clear and favourable. The moths are gone

home even before this, so that there is little chance of seeing by

daylight the wonderfully beautiful undervests of peacock blue and straw

colour which they wear beneath their plain hodden-grey overcoats.

_The Coming of the Dawn_.

It is now close on the dawning, and the cocks have been saying so from

many farm-houses for half an hour--tiny, fairy cock-crows, clear and

shrill from far away, like pixies blowing their horns of departure, "All

aboard for Elfland!" lest the hateful revealing sun should light upon

their revels. Nearer, hoarse and raucous Chanticleer (of Shanghai

evidently, from the chronic cold which sends his voice deep down into

his spurs)--thunders an earth-shaking bass. 'Tis time for night hawks to

be in bed, for the keepers will be astir in a little, and it looks

suspicious to be seen leaving the pheasant coverts at four in the

morning. The hands of the watch point to the hour, and as though waiting

for the word, the whole rookery rises in a black mass and drifts

westward across the tree-tops.

_Flood Tide of Night_.

In these long midsummer nights the twilight lingers till within an hour

or two of dawn. When the green cool abyss of fathomless sky melts into

pale slate-grey in the west, and the high tide of darkness pauses

before it begins to ebb, then is the watershed of day and night. The

real noon of night is quite an hour and a half after the witching hour,

just as the depth of winter is really a month after the shortest day.

Indeed, at this time of the year, it is much too bright at twelve for

even so sleepy a place as a churchyard to yawn. And if any ghost peeped

out, 'twould only be to duck under again, all a-tremble lest, the

underground horologes being out of gear, a poor shade had somehow

overslept cockcrow and missed his accustomed airing.

_Way for the Sun_.

By two o'clock, however, there is a distinct brightening in the east,

and pale, streaky cirrus cloudlets gather to bar the sun's way. Broad,

equal-blowing airs begin to draw to and fro through the woods. There is

an earthy scent of wet leaves, sharpened with an unmistakable aromatic

whiff of garlic, which has been trodden upon and rises to reproach us

for our carelessness. Listen! Let us stand beneath this low-branched

elder.

"We cannot see what flowers are at our feet,"

but that there is violet in abundance we have the testimony of a sense

which the darkness does not affect, the same which informed us of the

presence of the garlic. Over the hedge the sheep are cropping the clover

with short, sharp bites--one, two, three, four, five bites--then three

or four shiftings of the short black legs, and again "crop, crop." So

the woolly backs are bent all the night, the soft ears not erected as by

day, but laid back against the shoulders. Sheep sleep little. They lie

down suddenly, as though they were settled for the night; but in a

little there is an unsteady pitch fore and aft, and the animal is again

at the work of munching, steadily and apparently mechanically. I have

often half believed that sheep can eat and walk and sleep all at the

same time. A bivouac of sheep without lambs in the summer is very like

an Arab encampment, and calls up nights in the desert, when, at whatever

hour the traveller might look abroad, there were always some of the

Arabs awake, stirring the embers of the camp fire, smoking,

story-telling, or simply moving restlessly about among the animals. As

we stand under the elder-bushes we can look down among the sheep, for

they have not the wild animal's sense of smell, or else the presence of

man disturbs them not. One of the flock gives an almost human cough, as

if protesting against the dampness of the night.

_The Early Bird_.

Swish! Something soft, silent, and white comes across the hedge almost

in our eyes, and settles in that oak without a sound. It is a barn-owl.

After him a wood-pigeon, the whistling swoop of whose wings you can hear

half a mile. The owl is just going to bed. The pigeon is only just

astir. He is going to have the first turn at Farmer Macmillan's green

corn, which is now getting nicely sweet and milky. The owl has still an

open-mouthed family in the cleft of the oak, and it is only by a strict

attention to business that he can support his offspring. He has been

carrying field mice and dor-beetles to them all night; and he has just

paused for a moment to take a snack for himself, the first he has had

since the gloaming.

But the dawn is coming now very swiftly. The first blackbird is pulling

at the early worm on the green slope of the woodside, for all the world

like a sailor at a rope. The early worm wishes he had never been advised

to rise so soon in order to get the dew on the grass. He resolves that

if any reasonable proportion of him gets off this time, he will speak

his mind to the patriarch of his tribe who is always so full of advice

how to get "healthy, wealthy, and wise." 'Tis a good tug-of-war. The

worm has his tail tangled up with the centre of the earth. The blackbird

has not a very good hold. He slackens a moment to get a better, but it

is too late. He ought to have made the best of what purchase he had.

Like a coiled spring returning to its set, the worm, released, vanishes

into its hole; and the yellow bill flies up into the branches of a thorn

with an angry chuckle, which says as plainly as a boy who has chased an

enemy to the fortress of home, "Wait till I catch you out again!"

Nature is freshest with the dew of her beauty-sleep upon her. The copses

are astir, and the rooks on the tops of the tall trees have begun the

work of the day. They rise to a great height, and drift with the light

wind towards their feeding-grounds by the river. Over the hedge flashes

a snipe, rising like a brown bomb-shell from between our feet, and

sending the heart into the mouth. The heron, which we have seen far off,

standing in the shallows, apparently meditating on the vanity of earthly

affairs, slowly and laboriously takes to flight. He cannot rise for the

matter of a stone's-throw, and the heavy flaps of his labouring wings

resound in the still morning. There is no warier bird than the heron

when he gets a fair field. Sometimes it is possible to come upon him by

chance, and then his terror and instant affright cause him to lose his

head, and he blunders helplessly hither and thither, as often into the

jaws of danger as out of it.

Did you see that flash of blue? It was the patch of blue sky on a jay's

wing. They call it a "jay piet" hereabouts. But the keepers kill off

every one for the sake of a pheasant's egg or two. An old and

experienced gamekeeper is the worst of hanging judges. To be tried by

him is to be condemned. As Mr. Lockwood Kipling says: "He looks at

nature along the barrel of a gun Which is false perspective."

_Full Chorus_.

In the opener glades of the woods the wild hyacinths lie in the hollows,

in wreaths and festoons of smoke as blue as peat-reek. As we walk

through them the dew in their bells swishes pleasantly about our ankles,

and even those we have trodden upon rise up after we have passed, so

thick do they grow and so full are they of the strength of the morning.

Now it is full chorus. Every instrument of the bird orchestra is taking

its part. The flute of the blackbird is mellow with much pecking of

winter-ripened apples. He winds his song artlessly along, like a _prima

donna_ singing to amuse herself when no one is by. Suddenly a rival with

shining black coat and noble orange bill appears, and starts an

opposition song on the top of the next larch. Instantly the easy

nonchalance of song is overpowered in the torrent of iterated melody.

The throats are strained to the uttermost, and the singers throw their

whole souls into the music. A thrush turns up to see what is the matter,

and, after a little pause for a scornful consideration of the folly of

the black coats, he cleaves the modulated harmony of their emulation

with the silver trumpet of his song. The ringing notes rise triumphant,

a clarion among the flutes.

_The Butcher's Boy of the Woods_.

The concert continues, and waxes more and more frenzied. Sudden as a

bolt from heaven a wild duck and his mate crash past through the leaves,

like quick rifle shots cutting through brushwood. They end their sharp,

breathless rush in the water of the river pool with a loud "Splash!

splash!" Before the songsters have time to resume their interrupted

rivalry a missel thrush, the strident whistling butcher's boy of the

wood, appears round the corner, and, just like that blue-aproned youth,

he proceeds to cuff and abuse all the smaller fry, saying, "Yah! get

along! Who's your hatter? Does your mother know you're out?" and other

expressions of the rude, bullying youth of the streets. The missel

thrush is a born bully. It is not for nothing that he is called the

Storm Cock. It is more than suspected that he sucks eggs, and even

murder in the first degree--ornithologic infanticide--has been laid to

his charge. The smaller birds, at least, do not think him clear of this

latter count, for he has not appeared many minutes before he is beset by

a clamorous train of irate blue-tits, who go into an azure fume of

minute rage; sparrows also chase him, as vulgarly insolent as himself,

and robin redbreasts, persistent and perkily pertinacious, like spoiled

children allowed to wear their Sunday clothes on week-days.

_The Dust of Battle_.

So great is the dust of battle that it attracts a pair of hen harriers,

the pride of the instructed laird, and the special hatred of his head

keeper. Saunders Tod would shoot them if he thought that the laird would

not find out, and come down on him for doing it. He hates the "Blue

Gled" with a deep and enduring hatred, and also the brown female, which

he calls the "Ringtail." The Blue and the Brown, so unlike each other

that no ordinary person would take them for relatives, come sailing

swiftly with barely an undulation among the musical congregation. The

blackbird, wariest of birds--he on the top of the larch--has hardly time

to dart into the dark coverts of the underbrush, and the remainder of

the crew to disperse, before the Blue and the Brown sail among them

like Moorish pirates out from Salee. A sparrow is caught, but in

Galloway, at least, 'tis apparently little matter though a sparrow fall.

The harriers would have more victims but for the quick, warning cry of

the male bird, who catches sight of us standing behind the shining grey

trunk of the beech. The rovers instantly vanish, apparently gliding down

a sunbeam into the rising morning mist which begins to fill the valley.

_Comes the Day_.

Now we may turn our way homeward, for we shall see nothing further worth

our waiting for this morning. Every bird is now on the alert. It is a

remarkable fact that though the pleasure-cries of birds, their

sweethearting and mating calls, seem only to be intelligible to birds of

the same race, yet each bird takes warning with equal quickness from the

danger-cry of every other. Here is, at least, an avian "Volapuk," a

universal language understanded by the freemasonry of mutual

self-preservation.

While we stood quiet behind the beech, or beneath the elder, nature

spoke with a thousand voices. But now when we tramp homewards with

policeman resonance there is hardly a bird except the street-boy sparrow

to be seen. The blackbird has gone on ahead and made it his business,

with sharp "Keck! keck!" to alarm every bird in the woods. We shall see

no more this morning.

Listen, though, before we go. Between six and seven in the morning the

corn-crake actually interrupts the ceaseless iteration of his "Crake!

crake!" to partake of a little light refreshment. He does not now say

"Crake! crake!" as he has been doing all the night--indeed, for the last

three months--but instead he says for about half an hour "Crake!" then

pauses while you might count a score, and again remarks "Crake!" In the

interval between the first "Crake!" and the second a snail has left this

cold earth for another and a warmer place.

Now at last there is a silence after the morning burst of melody. The

blackcap has fallen silent among the reeds. The dew is rising from the

grass in a general dispersed gossamer haze of mist. It is no longer

morning; it is day.

BALLAD OF MINE OWN COUNTRY[11]

[Footnote 11: _Rhymes à la Mode_ (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.)]

Let them boast of Arabia, oppressed

By the odour of myrrh on the breeze;

In the isles of the East and the West

That are sweet with the cinnamon trees:

Let the sandal-wood perfume the seas,

Give the roses to Rhodes and to Crete,

We are more than content, if you please,

With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

Though Dan Virgil enjoyed himself best

With the scent of the limes, when the bees

Hummed low round the doves in their nest,

While the vintagers lay at their ease;

Had he sung in our Northern degrees,

He'd have sought a securer retreat,

He'd have dwelt, where the heart of us flees,

With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

O the broom has a chivalrous crest,

And the daffodil's fair on the leas,

And the soul of the Southron might rest,

And be perfectly happy with these;

But we that were nursed on the knees

Of the hills of the North, we would fleet

Where our hearts might their longing appease

With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

ENVOY.

Ah! Constance, the land of our quest,

It is far from the sounds of the street,

Where the Kingdom of Galloway's blest

With the smell of bog-myrtle and peat!

ANDREW LANG.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh

University Press.