Chapter XIV: An Error in Judgment (4)

So the Old Tory sat with his blunderbuss across his knees, and comforted the men on the roof with reminiscences of the snoring powers of his spouse Meg. But, in spite of the entertaining nature of the conversation, Jamie Wardhaugh and the others were more than usually silent. They sat in a row with their chins upon their knees and the ridiculous yellow favours streaming from their broad blue bonnets.

The morning came slowly. Gib Martin, the tailor, came to his door at ten minutes to six to look out. He had hastily drawn on his trousers, and he came out to spit and see what kind of morning it was; then he was going back to bed again. But he wished to tell the minister that he had been up before five that morning; and, as he was an elder, he did not want to tell a whole lie.

Gib glanced casually at the sky, looked west to the little turret on the kirk to see the clock, and was about to turn in again, when something black against the reddening eastern sky caught his eye.

"Preserve us a', what's yon on Davit Armitt's riggin'?" he cried.

And so surprised was Gib Martin, that he came all the way down the street in three spangs, and that on his stocking-feet, though he was a married man.

But he did not see the Old Tory sitting by the side of the pig-sty--a thing he had cause to be sorry for.

"Save us, Jamie, what are ye doin' sittin' on Davit Armitt's hoose-riggin'? Gin the doited auld Tory brute catches ye--"

"A fine mornin' to ye, tailor," said the Old Tory from the side of the dyke.

The tailor faced about with a sudden pallor.

The muzzle of Mons Meg was set fair upon him, and he felt for the first time in his life that he could not have threaded a needle had his life depended on it.

"Climb up there aside the other four," commanded David Armitt.

"I'm on my stockin'-feet, Davit!" said the tailor.

"It's brave an' dry for the stockin'-feet up on the riggin'," said the Old Tory. "Up wi' ye, lad; ye couldna do better."

And the tailor was beside the others before he knew it, a strand of the bright yellow streaming from the button-hole of his shirt. So one after another the inhabitants of Dullarg came out to wonder, and mounted to wear the badge of slavery; until, when the chariot of the Tory candidate dashed in at twenty minutes to seven on its way to the county town, the rigging of David Armitt's house was crowded with men all decorated with his yellow colours. Never had such a sight been seen in the Radical and Chartist village of Dullarg.

Then the Old Tory leaped to his feet as the horses went prancing by.

"Gie a cheer, boys!" he cried; and as the muzzle of Mons Meg swept down the file, a strange wavering cry arose, that was half a gowl of anger and half a broken-backed cheer.

Then "Bang!" went Mons Meg, and David Armitt took down the street at full speed with sixteen angry men jumping at his tail. But, by good luck, he got upon the back of the Laird's coach, and was borne rapidly out of their sight down the dusty road that led to the county town.

It was the Old Tory's Waterloo. He did not venture back till the time of the bee-killing. Then he came without fear, for he knew he was the only man who could take off the honey from the village hives to the satisfaction of the parish.

The Old Tory kept the secret of his Toryism to the last.

Only the minister caught it as he lay a-dying. He was not penitent, but he wanted to explain matters.

"It's no as they a' think, minister," he said, speaking with difficulty. "I cared nocht aboot it, ae way or the ither. I'm sure I aye wantit to be a douce man like the lave. But Meg was sair, sair to leeve wi'. She fair drave me till't. D'ye think the like o' that wull be ta'en into account, as it were--up yonder?"

The minister assured him that it would, and the Old Tory died in peace.

V

THE GREAT RIGHT-OF-WAY CASE

_The Vandal and the Visigoth come here,
The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes,
Unblest, behold not where the glory lies;
The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer_

_Degrades the wholesome earth--these all come near
To gaze upon the wonder of the hills,
And drink the limpid clearness of the rills.
Yet each returns to what he holds most dear_,

_To change the script and grind the mammon mills
Unpurified; for what men hither bring,
That take they hence, and Nature doth appear_

_As one that spends herself for sodden wills,
Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling,
And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear._

Glen Conquhar was a summer resort. Its hillsides had never been barred by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies strolling book in hand, a cock-shy to the children passing on their way to school. The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields, where the grasshopper for ever "burred," and the haymakers stopped with elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by. The Marquis had never enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes. His shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north, was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of September and October. The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses. Then the underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones whisper the information, "That's the Marquis!" For it is the next thing in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.

The hotel of Glen Conquhar was far from the haunts of men. Its quiet was never disturbed by the noise of roysterers. It was the summer home of a number of quiet people from the south--fishing men chiefly, who loved to hear the water rushing about their legs on the edges of the deep salmon-pools of the Conquhar Water. There was Cole, Radical M.P., impulsive and warm-hearted, a London lawyer who had declined, doubtless to his own monetary loss, to put his sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago--fellows tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November, when nothing but the weathered birch-leaves spun down the flooded glen of the Conquhar. Old Royle regarded the best fishing in the water as his birthright, and every rival as an intruder. He showed this too, for there was no bashfulness about Old Royle. Young men who had just begun to fish consulted him as to where they should begin on the morrow. Old Royle was of opinion that there was not a single fish within at least five miles of the hotel. Indeed, he thought of "taking a trap" in the morning to a certain pool six miles up the water, where he had seen a round half-dozen of beauties only the night before. The young men departed, strapped and gaitered, at cock-crow on the morrow. They fished all day, and caught nothing save and except numerous dead branches in the narrow swirls of the linn. But they lost, in addition to their tempers, the tops of a rod or two caught in the close birch tangles, many casts of flies, and a fly-book which one of them had dropped out of his breast-pocket while in act to disentangle his hook from the underlip of a caving bank. His fly-book and he had descended into the rushing Conquhar together. He clambered out fifty yards below; and as for the fly-book, it was given by a mother-salmon to her young barbarians to play with in the deepest pool between Glendona and Loch Alsh.

When these young men returned, jolly Mr. Forbes, of landlords the most excellent, received them with a merry twinkle in his eye. In the lobby, Old Royle was weighing his "take." He had caught two beautiful fish--one in the pool called "Black Duncan," and the other half a mile farther up. He had had the water to himself all day. These young men passed in to dinner with thoughts too deep for words.

Suddenly the quiet politics of the glen were stirred by the posting of a threatening notice, which appeared on the right across the bridge at the end of the path, along which from time immemorial the ladies of the hotel had been in the habit of straying in pairs, communing of feminine mysteries; or mooning singly with books and water-colour blocks, during the absence of the nominal heads of their houses, who were engaged in casting the fly far up the glen.

Once or twice a surly keeper peremptorily turned back the innocent and law-abiding sex, but always when unaccompanied by the more persistent male. So there was wrath at the _table-d'hôte_. There was indignation in the houses of summer residence scattered up and down the strath. It was the new tenant of the Lodge of Glen Conquhar, or rather his wife, who had done this thing. For the first season for many years the shooting and fishing on the north side of the Conquhar had been let by the Marquis of Rannoch. From the minister's glebe for ten miles up the water these rights extended. They had been leased to the scion of a Black Country family, noble in the second generation by virtue of the paternal tubs and vats. The master was a shy man, dwelling in gaiters and great boots, only to be met with far on the hills, and then passing placidly on with quiet down-looking eyes. Contrariwise, the lady was much in evidence. Her noble proportions and determined eye made the boldest quail. The M.P. thanked Heaven three times a day that he was not her husband. She managed the house and the shooting as well. Among other things, she had resolved that no more should mere hotel-visitors walk to within sight of her windows, and that the path which led up the north side of the glen must be shut up for ever and ever. She procured a painted board from a cunning artificer in the neighbouring town of Portmore, which announced (quite illegally) the pains and penalties which would overtake those who ventured to set foot on the forbidden roadway.

There were enthusiastic mass meetings, tempered with tea and cake, on the lawn. Ladies said impressive things of their ill-treatment; and their several protectors, and even others without any direct and obvious claim, felt indignation upon their several accounts. The correct theory of trespass was announced by a high authority, and the famous prescription of the great judge, Lord Mouthmore, was stated. It ran as follows:--

"When called to account for trespass, make use of the following formula if you wish the law to have no hold over you: 'I claim no right-of-way, and I offer sixpence in lieu of damages,' at the same time offering the money composition to the enemy."

This was thought to be an admirable solution, and all the ladies present resolved to carry sixpences in their pockets when next they went a-walking. One lady so mistrusted her memory that she set down the prescription privately as follows: "I claim no sixpence, and I offer damages in lieu of right-of-way!"

"It is always well to be exact," she said; "memory is so treacherous."

But this short and easy method with those who take their stand on coercion and illegality was scouted by the Radical M.P. He pointed out with the same lucidity and precision with which he would have stated a case to a leading counsel, the facts (first) that the right-of-way was not only claimed, but existed; (second) that the threatening notice was inoperative; (third) that an action lay against any person who attempted to deforce the passage of any individual; (fourth) that the road in question was the only way to kirk and market for a very considerable part of the strath, that therefore the right-of-way was inalienable; and (fifth) that the right could be proved back to the beginning of the century, and, indeed, that it had never been disputed till the advent of Mrs. Nokes. The case was complete. It had only to go before any court in the land to be won with costs against the extruder. The only question was, "Who would bell the cat?" Several ladies of yielding dispositions, who went fully intending to beard the lion, turned meekly back at the word of the velveteen Jack-in-office. For such is the conservative basis of woman, that she cannot believe that the wrong can by any possibility be on the side of the man in possession. If you want to observe the only exception to this attitude, undertake to pilot even the most upright of women through the custom-house.

The situation became acute owing to the indignant feelings of the visitors, now reinforced by the dwellers in the various houses of private entertainment. Indignation meetings increased and abounded. A grand demonstration along the path and under the windows of the lodge was arranged for Sunday after morning church--several clergymen agreeing to take part, on the well-known principle of the better day the better deed. What might have happened no one can say. An action for assault and battery would have been the English way; a selection of slugs and tenpenny nails over the hedge might possibly have been the Irish way; but what actually happened in this law-abiding strath was quite different.

In this parish of Glen Conquhar there was a minister, as there is a minister in every parish in broad Scotland. He was very happy. He had a cow or two of his own on the glebe, and part of it he let to the master of the hotel.

The Reverend Donald Grant of Glen Conquhar was an old man now, but, though a little bowed, he was still strong and hearty, and well able for his meal of meat. He lived high up on the hill, whose heathery sides looked down upon the kirk and riverside glebe. His simplicity of heart and excellence of character endeared him to his parish, as indeed was afterwards inscribed upon enduring marble on the tablet which was placed under the list of benefactions in the little kirk of the strath.

The minister did not often come down from his Mount of the Wide Prospects; and when he did, it was for some definite purpose, which being performed, he straightway returned to his hill-nest.

He had heard nothing of the great Glen Conquhar right-of-way case, when one fine morning he made his way down to the hamlet to see one of his scanty flock, whose church attendance had not been all that could be desired. As he went down the hill he passed within a few feet of the newly painted trespass notice-board; but it was not till his return, with slow steps, a little weary with the uphill road and the heat of the day, that his eyes rested on the glaring white notice. Still more slowly and deliberately he got his glasses out of their shagreen case, mounted their massive silver rims on his nose, and slowly read the legend which intimated that "_Trespassers on this Private Road will be Prosecuted with the utmost Rigour of the Law_."

Having got to the large BY ORDER at the end, he calmly dismounted the benignant silver spectacles, returned them to the shagreen case, and so to the tail-pocket of his black coat. Then, still more benignantly, he sought about among the roots of the trees till he found the stout branch of a fir broken off in some spring gale, but still tough and able-bodied. With an energy which could hardly have been expected from one of his hoar hairs, the minister climbed part way up the pole, and dealt the obnoxious board such hearty thwacks, first on one side and then on the other, that in a trice it came tumbling down.

As he was picking it up and tucking it beneath his arm, the gamekeeper on the watch in some hidden sentry-box among the leaves came hurrying down.

"Oh, Mr. Grant, Mr. Grant!" he exclaimed in horror, "what are you doing with that board?"--his professional indignation grievously at war with his racial respect for the clerical office.

"'Deed, Dugald, I'm just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my arm. It will make not that ill firewood, and it has no business whatever to be cockin' up there on the corner of my glebe."

The end of the Great Glen Conquhar Right-of-Way Case.

VI

DOMINIE GRIER

_A grey, grey world and a grey belief,
True as iron and grey as grief;
Worse worlds there are, worse faiths, in truth,
Than the grey, grey world and the grey belief_.

"_The Grey Land_."

What want ye so late with Dominie Grier? To tell you the tale of my going on foot to the town of Edinburgh that I might preserve pure the doctrine and precept of the parish of Rowantree? Ay, to tell of it I am ready, and with right goodwill. Never a day do I sit under godly Mr. Campbell but I think on my errand, and the sore stroke that the deil and Bauldy Todd gat that day when I first won speech with the Lady Lochwinnoch.

It was langsyne in the black Moderate days, and the Socinians were great in the land. 'Deed ay, it was weary work in these times; let me learn the bairns what I liked in the school, it was never in me to please the Presbytery. But whiles I outmarched them when they came to examine; as, indeed, to the knowledge and admiration of all the parish, I did in the matter of Effectual Calling. It was Maister Calmsough of Clauchaneasy that was putting the question, and rendering the meaning into his own sense as he went along. But he chanced upon James Todd of Todston, a well-learned boy; and, if I may say so, a favourite of mine, with whom I had been at great pains that he should grow up in the faith and wholesome discipline. Thereto I had fed him upon precious Thomas Boston of Ettrick and the works of godly Mr. Erskine, desiring with great desire that one day he might, by my learning and the blessing of Almighty God, even come to wag his head in a pulpit--a thing which, because of the sins of a hot youth, it had never been in my power, though much in my heart, to do.

But concerning the examination. Mr. Calmsough was insisting upon the general mercy of God--which, to my thinking, is at the best a dangerous doctrine, and one that a judicious preacher had best keep his thumb upon. At last he asked Jamie Todd what he thought of the matter; for he was an easy examiner, and would put a question a yard long to be answered with "Yes" and "No"--a fool way of examining, which to me was clear proof of his incapacity.

But James Todd was well learned and withstood him, so that Mr. Calmsough grew angry and roared like a bull. I could only sit quiet in my desk, for upon that day it was not within my right to open my mouth in my own school, since it was in the hands of the Presbytery. So I sat still, resting my confidence upon the Lord and the ready answers of James Todd. And I was not deceived. For though he was but a laddie, the root of the matter was in him, and not a Socinian among them could move him from my teaching concerning Justification and Election.

"Ye may explain it away as ye like, sir," said James Todd, "but me and the Dominie and the Bible has anither way o't!"

"Is it thus that you train your elder scholars to speak to their spiritual advisers, Dominie Grier?" asked Mr. Calmsough, turning on me.

"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," said I meekly, for pride in James Todd was just boiling within me, and yet I would not let them see it.

I desired them to depart from the school of Rowantree, thinking that any of my first class in the Bible could have answered them even as did James Todd. I was in the fear of my life that they should light upon mine own son Tam, for he knew no more than how to bait a line and guddle trout; but nevertheless he has done wonderfully well at the pack among the ignorant English, and is, (I deny it not to him) the staff of my declining years. But Tam, though as great a dulbert as there is betwixt Saterness and the Corse o' Slakes, sat up looking so gleg that they passed him by and continued to wrestle with James Todd, who only hung his head and looked stupid, yet had in him, for all that, a very dungeon of lear.

Now, it came to pass, less than three weeks after the examination of my bit school at the Rowantree, that our own minister, Mr. Wakerife, took a chill after heating himself at the hay, and died. He was a canny body, and sound on the doctrine, but without unction or the fervour of the Spirit blowing upon him in the pulpit. Still, he was sound, and in a minister that is aye the main thing.

Now, so great was the regardlessness of the parish, that the honest man was not cold in his coffin before two-three of the farmers with whom the members of the Presbytery were wont to stay when they came to examine, laid their heads together that they might make the parish of Rowantree even as Corseglass, and Deadthraws, and other Valleys of Dry Bones about us.

"There shall be no more fanatics in Rowantree!" said they.

And they had half a gallon over the head of it, which, being John Grieve's best, they might have partaken of in a better cause.

Now, the worst of them was Bauldy Todd of Todston, the father of my James. It was a great thing, as I have often been told, to hear James and his father at it. James was a quiet and loutish loon so long as he was let alone, and he went about his duties pondering and revolving mighty things in his mind. But when you chanced to start him on the fundamentals, then the Lord give you skill of your weapon, for it was no slight or unskilled dialectician who did you the honour to cross swords with you.

But Bauldy Todd, being a hot, contentious man, could not let his son alone. In the stable and out in the hayfield he was ever on his back, though Jamie was never the lad to cross him or to begin an argument. But his father would rage and try to shout him down--a vain thing with Jamie. For the lad, being well learned in the Scriptures, had the more time to bethink himself while the "goldering" of his father was heard as far as the high Crownrigs. And even as Bauldy paused for breath, James would slip a text under his father's guard, which let the wind out of him like a bladder that is transfixed on a thorn-bush. Then there remained nothing for Bauldy but to run at Jamie to lay on him with a staff--an argument which, taking to his heels, Jamie as easily avoided.

It was my own Jamie who brought me word of the ill-contrived ploy that was in the wind. He told me that his father and Mickle Andrew of Ingliston and the rest of that clan were for starting to see the Lady Lochwinnoch, the patron of the parish, to make interest on behalf of Mr. Calmsough's nephew, as cold and lifeless a moral preacher as was ever put out of the Edinburgh College, which is saying no little, as all will admit.

They were to start, well mounted on their market horses, the next morning at break of day, to ride all the way to Edinburgh. In a moment I saw what I was called upon to do. I left Jamie Todd with a big stick to keep the school in my place, while, with some farles of cake bread in my pocket, I took alone my way to Edinburgh. Ten hours' start I had; and though it be a far cry to the town of Edinburgh and a rough road, still I thought that I should be hardly bestead if I could not walk it in two days. For my heart was sore to think of the want of sound doctrine that was about to fall upon the parish of Rowantree. Indeed, I saw not the end of it, for there was no saying what lengths such a minister and his like-minded elders might not run to. They might even remove me from some of my offices and emoluments. And then who would train the Jamie Todds to give a reason of the faith that was in them before minister and elder?

So all that night I walked on sore-hearted. It was hardly dark, for the season of the year was midsummer, and by the morning I had gone thirty miles. But when I came on the hard "made" road again, I hasted yet more, for I knew that by the hour of eight Bauldy and his farmers would be in the saddle. And I heard as it were the hoofs of the horses ringing behind me--the horses of the enemies of sound doctrine; for the Accuser of the Brethren sees to it that his messengers are well mounted. Yet though I was footsore, and had but a farle of oatcake in my pocket, I went not a warfare on my own charges.

For by the way I encountered a carrier in the first spring-cart that ever I had seen. It was before the day of the taxes. And, seeing the staff in my hand and the splashing of the moor and the peatlands on my knee-breeches, he very obligingly gave me a lift, which took me far on my journey. When he loosed his horse to take up his quarters at an inn for the night I thanked him very cordially for his courtesy, and so fared on my way without pause or rest for sleep. I had in my mind all the time the man I was to propose to the Lady Lochwinnoch.

I had not reached the city when I heard behind me the trampling of horses and the loud voices of men. Louder than all I heard Bauldy Todd's roar. It was as much as I could do to make a spring for the stone-dyke at the side of the road, to drag myself over it, and lie snug till their cavalcade had passed. I could hear them railing upon me as they went by.

"I'll learn him to put notions into my laddie's head!" cried Todd of Todston.

"We'll empty the auld carle's meal-ark, I'se warrant!" said Mickle Andrew.

"Faith, lads, we'll get a decent drinking, caird-playin' minister in young Calmsough--yin that's no' feared o' a guid braid oath!" cried Chryston of Commonel.

And I was trembling in all my limbs lest they should see me. So before I dared rise I heard the clatter of their horses' feet down the road. My heart failed me, for I thought that in an hour they would be in Edinburgh town and have audience of my lady, and so prefer their request before me.

Yet I was not to be daunted, and went limping onward as best I might. Nor had I gone far when, in a beautiful hollow, by the lintels of an inn that had for a sign a burn-trout over the door, I came upon their horses.

"Warm be your wames and dry your thrapples!" quoth I to myself; "an', gin the brew be nappy and the company guid at the Fisher's Tryst, we'll bring back the gospel yet to the holms of the Rowantree, or I am sair mista'en!"

So when I got to my lady's house, speering at every watchman, it was still mirk night. But in the shadow of an archway I sat me down to wait, leaning my breast against the sharp end of my staff lest sleep should overcome me. The hope of recommending the godly man, Mr. Campbell, to my lady kept me from feeling hungered. Yet I was fain in time to set about turning my pockets inside out. In them I searched for crumblings of my cakes, and found a good many, so that I was not that ill off.

As soon as it was day, and I saw that the servants of the house began to stir, I went over and knocked soundly upon the great brass knocker. A man with a cropped black poll and powder sifted among it, came and ordered me away. I asked when my lady would be up.

"Not before ten of the clock," said he.

Now, I knew that this would never do for me, because the farmer bodies would certainly arrive before that, drunk or sober. So I told Crophead that he had better go and tell his mistress that there was one come post-haste all the way from the parish of Rowantree, where her property lay, and that the messenger must instantly speak with her.

But Crophead swore at me, and churlishly bade me begone at that hour of the morning. But since he would have slammed the door on me, I set my staff in the crevice and hoised it open again. Ay, and would have made my oak rung acquaint with the side of his ill-favoured head, too, had not a woman's voice cried down the stair to know the reason of the disturbance.

"It is a great nowt from the country, and he will not go away," said Crophead.

Then I stepped forward into the hall, sending him that withstood me over on his back against the wall. Speaking high and clear as I do to my first class, I said--

"I am Dominie Grier, parish schoolmaster of the parish of Rowantree, madam, and I have come post-haste from that place to speak to her ladyship."

Then I heard a further commotion, as of one shifting furniture, and another voice that spoke rapidly from an inner chamber.

In a little while there came one down the stair and called me to follow. So forthwith I was shown into a room where a lady in a flowered dressing-gown was sitting up in bed eating some fine kind of porridge and cream out of a silver platter.

"Dominie Grier!" said the lady pleasantly, affecting the vulgar dialect, "what has brocht ye so far from home? Have the bairns barred ye oot o' the schule?"

"Na, my lady," I replied, with my best bow; "I come to you in mickle fear lest the grace of God be barred out of the poor parish of Rowantree."

So I opened out to her the whole state of the case; and though at first she seemed to be amused rather than edified, she gave me her promise that young William Campbell, who was presently assistant to the great Dr. Shirmers, of St. John's in the city, should get the kirk of Rowantree. He was not a drop's blood to me, though him and my wife were far-out friends, so that it was not as if I had been asking anything for myself. Yet I thanked her ladyship warmly for her promise in the name of all the godly in the parish of Rowantree, and warned her at the same time of the regardless clan that were seeking to abuse her good-nature. But I need not have troubled, for I was but at the door and Crophead sulkily showing me out, when whom should I meet fair in the teeth but Bauldy Todd and all his fighting tail!

Never were men more taken aback. They stopped dead where they were, when they saw me; and Bauldy, who had one hand in the air, having been laying down the law, as was usual with him, kept it there stiff as if he had been frozen where he stood.

Now I never let on that I saw any of them, but went by them with my briskest town step and my head in the air, whistling like a lintie--

"The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!"

"Deil burn me," cried Bauldy Todd, "but the Dominie has done us!"

"'Deed, he was like to do that ony gate," said Mickie Andrew. "We may as weel gang hame, lads. I ken the Dominie. His tongue wad wile the bird aff the tree. We hae come the day after the fair, boys."

But as for me, I never turned a hair; only keeped my nose in the straight of my face, and went by them down the street as though I had been the strength of a regiment marching with pipers, whistling all the time at my refrain--

"The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!"

VII

THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER

_Hard is it, O my friends, to gather up
A whole life's goodness into narrow space--
A life made Heaven-meet by patient grace,
And handling oft the sacramental cup_

_Of sorrow, drinking all the bitter drains.
Her life she kept most sacred from the world;
Though, Martha-wise, much cumber'd and imperill'd
With service, Mary-like she brought her pains_,

_And laid them and herself low at the feet,
The travel-weary, deep-scarr'd feet, of Him
The incarnate Good, who oft in Galilee_

_Had borne Himself the burden and the heat--
Ah! couldst thou bear, thy tender eyes were dim
With humble tears to think this meant for thee!_

A certain man had two daughters. The man was a minister in Galloway--a Cameronian minister in a hill parish in the latest years of last century; consequently he had no living to divide to them. Of the two daughters, one was wise and the other was foolish. So he loved the foolish with all his heart. Also he loved the wise daughter; but her heart was hard because that her sister was preferred before her. The man's name was Eli M'Diarmid, and his daughters' names were Sophia and Elsie. He had been long in the little kirk of Cauldshields. To the manse he had brought his young wife, and from its cheerless four walls he had walked behind her hearse one day nigh twenty years ago. The daughters had been reared here; but, even as enmity had arisen on the tilled slips of garden outside Eden, so there had always been strife between the daughters of the lonely manse--on the one side rebellion and the resentment of restraint, on the other tale-bearing and ferret-eyed spying.

This continued till Elsie M'Diarmid was a well-grown and a comely lass, while her sister Sophia was already sharpening and souring towards the thirties. One day there was a terrible talk in the parish. Elsie, the minister's younger daughter, had run off to Glasgow, and there got married to Alec Saunderson, the dominie's ne'er-do-well son. So to Glasgow the minister went, and came back in three weeks with an extra stoop to his shoulders. But with such a still and patient silence on his face, that no man and (what is more wonderful) no woman durst ask him any further questions. After that, Elsie was no more named in the manse; but the report of her beauty and her waywardness was much in the parish mouth. A year afterwards her sister went from the manse in all the odour of propriety, to be the mistress of one of the large farms of a neighbouring glen. Then the minister gathered himself more than ever close in to his lonely hearth, with only Euphemia Kerr, his wise old housekeeper, once his children's nurse. He went less frequently abroad, and looked more patiently than ever out of his absent grey eyes on the "herds" and small sheep-farmers who made up the bulk of his scanty flock.

The Cameronian kirk of Cauldshields was a survival of the time when the uplands of Galloway were the very home and hive of the "Westlan'" Whigs--of the men who marched to Rullion Green to be slaughtered, sent Claverhouse scurrying to Glasgow from Drumclog, and abjured all earthly monarchs at the cross of Sanquhar.

But now the small farms were already being turned into large, the sheep were dispossessing the plough, and the principle of "led" farms was depopulating the countryside. That is, instead of sonsy farmers' wives and their husbands (the order is not accidental) marshalling their hosts into the family pews on Sabbath, many of the farms were held by wealthy farmers who lived in an entirely different part of the country. These gave up the farmhouse, with its feudality of cothouses, to a taciturn bachelor shepherd or two, who squatted promiscuously in the once voluble kitchen.

The morning of the first Sabbath of February dawned bitterly over the scattered clachan of Cauldshields. It had been snowing since four o'clock on Saturday night, and during those hours no dog had put its nose outside the door. At seven in the morning, had any one been able to see across the street for the driving snow, he would have seen David Grier look out for a moment in his trousers and shirt, take one comprehensive glance, and vanish within. That glance had settled David's church attendance for the day. He was an "Auld Kirk," and a very regular hearer, having been thirty years in the service of the laird; but in the moment that he looked out into the dim white chaos of whirling snow, David had settled it that there would be no carriage down from the "Big House" that day. "The drifts will be sax fit in the howes o' the muir-road," he said, as he settled himself to sleep till midday, with a solid consciousness that he had that day done all that the most exacting could require of him. As his thoughts composed themselves to a continuation of his doze, while remaining deliciously conscious of the wild turmoil outside, David Grier remembered the wayfarer who had got a lift in his cart to Cauldshields the night before. "It was weel for the bit bairn that I fell in wi' her at the Cross Roads," said he, as he stirred his wife in the ribs with his elbow, to tell her it was time to get up and make the fire.

* * * * *

In the manse of Cauldshields the Reverend Eli M'Diarmid's housekeeper was getting him ready for church.

"There'll no' be mony fowk at the kirk the day, gin there be ony ava'; but that's nae raison that ye shouldna gang oot snod," she said, as she brushed him faitly down. "Ye mind hoo Miss Elsie used to say that ye wad gang oot a verra ragman gin she didna look efter ye!" The minister turned his back, and the housekeeper continued, like the wise woman of Tekoa, "Eh, but she was a heartsome bairn, Miss Elsie; an' a bonny--nane like till her in a' the pairish!"

"Oh, woman, can ye not hold your tongue?" said the minister, knocking his hands angrily together.

"Haud my tongue or no haud my tongue, ye're no' gaun withoot yer sermon an' yer plaid, minister," said his helper. So with that she brought the first from the study table and placed it in the leather case which held his bands, and reached the plaid from its nail in the hall. It was not for nothing that she had watched the genesis and growth of that sermon which she placed in the case. Some folk declare that she suggested the text. Nor is this so wholly impossible as it looks, for Cauldshields' housekeeper was a very wise woman indeed.

It was but a step to the kirk door from the manse, but it took the minister nearly twenty minutes to overcome the drifts and get the key turned in the lock--for in these hard times it was no uncommon thing for the minister to be also the doorkeeper of the tabernacle. Then he took hold of the bell-rope, and high above him the notes swung out into the air; for though the storm had now settled, vast drifts remained to tell of the blast of the night. But the gale had engineered well, and as the minister looked over the half mile that separated the kirk from the nearest house of the clachan he knew that not a soul would be able to come to the kirk that day. Yet it never occurred to him to put off the service of the sanctuary. He was quite willing to preach to Euphemia Kerr alone, even so precious a discourse as he carried in his band-case that day.

The minister was his own precentor, as, according to the law and regulation of the kirks of Scotland, he always is in the last resort, however he may choose to delegate his authority. He gave out from his swallow's nest the Twenty-third Psalm, and led it off himself in a powerful and expressive voice, which sounded strangely in the empty church. The tune was taken up from the manse pew, in the dusk under the little gallery, by a quavering, uncertain pipe--as dry and unsympathetic as, contrariwise, the singer was warm-hearted and full of the very sap of human kindness. The minister was so absorbed in his own full-hearted praise that he was scarce conscious that he was almost alone in the chill emptiness of the church. Indeed, a strange feeling stole upon him, that he heard his wife's voice singing the solemn gladness of the last verse along with him, as they had sung it together near forty years ago when she had first come to the hill kirk of Cauldshields.

"Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me:
And in God's house for evermore
My dwelling-place shall be."

Then the prayer echoed along the walls, bare like a barn before the harvest. Nevertheless, I doubt not that it went straight to the throne of God as the minister pleaded for the weary and the heavy-laden, the fatherless and the oppressed, for the little children and those on whom the Lord has special pity--"for to Thee, O Lord, more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord." And the minister seemed to hear somewhere a sound of silent weeping, like that which he had hearkened to in the night long ago, when his wife sorrowed by his side and wept in the darkness for the loss of their only man-bairn.

The minister gave out his text. There was silence within, and without the empty church only the whistling sough of the snowdrift. "And when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him."

There was a moment's pause, and a strange, unwonted sound came from the manse seat under the dark of the gallery. It was the creak of the housekeeper opening the door of the pew. The minister paused yet a moment in his discourse, his dim eyes vaguely expectant. But what he saw, stilled for ever the unspoken opening of his sermon. A girlish figure came up the aisle, and was almost at the foot of the pulpit-steps before the minister could move. And she carried something tenderly in her arms, as a bairn is carried when it is brought forward for the baptizing.

"My father!" she said.

Nobody knows how the minister got out of the pulpit except Euphemia Kerr, and it is small use asking her; but it is currently reported that it was in such fashion as never minister got out of pulpit before. And, at the door of the manse seat stood Euphemia, the wise woman of Tekoa, her tears falling _pat-pat_ like raindrops on the narrow book-board; but with a smile on her face, as who would say, "Now, Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace," when she saw the minister fall on the neck of his well-beloved daughter and kiss her, having compassion on her.

But this is what Sophia M'Diarmid that was, said when she heard of the home-coming of her sister Elsie.

"It was like her brazen face to come back when she had shut every other door. My father never made ony sic wark wi' me that bade wi' him respectable a' my days; but hear ye to me, Mistress Colville, I will never darken their doorstep till the day of my death." So she would not go in.

BOOK THIRD

HISTORIES

I

FENWICK MAJOR'S LITTLE 'UN

_A short to-day,
And no to-morrow:
A winsome wife,
And a mickle sorrow--
Then done was the May
Of my love and my life_.

"Secrets."

[_Edinburgh student lodgings of usual type_. ROGER CHIRNSIDE, M.A.; _with many books about him, seated at table_. JO BENTLEY _and_ "TAD" ANDERSON _squabbling by the fireplace_.]

_Loquitur_ ROGER CHIRNSIDE.

Look here, you fellows, if you can't be quiet, I'll kick you out of this! How on earth is a fellow to get up "headaches" for his final, if you keep making such a mischief of a row? By giving me a fine one for a sample, do you say? I'll take less of your sauce, Master Tad, or you'll get shown out of here mighty quick. Now, not another word out of the heads of you!

[_Chirnside attacks his books again, murmuring intermittently as the others subside for the time_.

CHIRNSIDE. Migraine--artery--decussate--wonder what this other fool says (_rustling leaves_). They all contradict one another, and old Rutherland will never believe you when you tell him so.

[_A new quarrel arises at the upper end of the room between Jo Bentley and Tad_.

CHIRNSIDE (_starting to his feet_). Lay down that book, Bentley! Do you hear? I know Tad is a fool, and needs his calf's head broken. But do it with another book--Calderhead's _Mind and Matter_, or _T. and T._--anything but that. Take the poker or anything! But lay down that book. Do you hear me, Bentley?

[_The book is laid down_.

CHIRNSIDE (_continuing_). What am I in such a funk about? No, it's not because it is a Bible, though a Bible never makes a good missile. I always keep an _Oliver and Boyd_ on purpose--one of the old leather-backed kind that never wears out, even when half the leaves are ripped out for pipe-lights.

[_Tad Anderson asks a question_.

Why am I so stung up about that book? Tell you fellows? Well, I don't mind knocking off a bit and giving you the yarn. That Bible belonged to Fenwick Major. Never heard of Fenwick Major! What blessed ignorant chickens you must be! Where were you brought up?

[_Chirnside slowly lights his pipe before speaking again_.

Well--I entered with Fenwick Major when I came up as a first year's man in Arts. I was green as grass, or as you fellows last year. Not that you know much yet, by the way.

Now, drop that _Medical Ju_, Bentley! Hand me the _Lancet_. It makes good pipe-lights--about all it's good for. Oh--Fenwick Major? Well (_puff-puff-puff_), he came up to college with me. Third-class carriage--our several _maters_ at the door weeping--you know the kind of thing. Fenwick's governor prowling about in the background with a tenner in an envelope to stick in through the window. His mother with a new Bible and his name on the first leaf. I had no governor and no blooming tenner. Only my old _mater_ told me to spend my bursary as carefully as I could, and not to disgrace my father's memory. Then something took me, and I wanted to go over to the other side of the compartment and look out at the window. Good old lady, mine, as ever they make them. Ever felt that way, fellows?

[_Chirnside's pipe goes out. Jo Bentley and Tad shift their legs uneasily and cross them the other way_.

So we came up. Fenwick Major's name stands next to mine on the University books. You know the style. Get your money all ready. Make out your papers--What is your place of birth? Have you had the small-pox? If so, how often and where? And shove the whole biling across the counter to the fellow with the red head and the uncertain temper. You've been there?

[_Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. They had been there_.

Well, you fellows, Fenwick Major and I got through our first session together. We were lonely, of course, and we chummed some. First go off, we lodged together. But Fenwick had hordes of chips and I had only my bursary, and none too much of that. Fenwick wanted a first floor. I preferred the attic, and thought a sitting-room unnecessary. So we parted. Fenwick Major used to drop in after that, and show me his new suits and the latest thing in sticks--nobby things, with a silver band round them and his name. Then he got a terrier, and learned to be knowing as to bars. I envied, but luckily had no money. Besides, that's all skittles any way, and you've to pay for it sweetly through the nose in the long-run. Now mind me, you fellows!

[_Bentley and Tad mind Chirnside_.

Oh, certainly, I'll get on with my apple-cart and tell you about the book.

Well, the short and the long of it is that Fenwick Major began to go to the dogs, the way you and I have seen a many go. Oh, it's a gay road--room inside, and a penny all the way. But there's always the devil to pay at the far end. I'm not preaching, fellows; only, you take my word for it and keep clear.

Yet, in spite of the dogs, there was no mistake but Fenwick Major could work. His father was a parson--white hair on his shoulders, venerable old boy, all that sort of thing. Had coached Fenwick till he was full as a sheep-tick. So he got two medals that session, and the fellows--his own set--gave him a supper--whisky-toddy, and we'll not go home till morning--that style! But most of them wouldn't even go home when it was morning. They went down to the Royal and tried to break in with sticks--young fools! The bobbies scooped them by couples and ran them in. They were all in court the next day. Most of the fellows gave their right enough names, but they agreed to lie about Fenwick's for his father's sake and his medals. Most of them were colonial medicals anyway. It didn't matter a toss-up to them. So Fenwick went home all right with his two medals. His father met him at the station, proud as Punch. His mother took possession of the medals; and when she thought that Fenwick Major was out of the way, she took them all round the parish in her black reticule basket, velvet cases and all, and showed them to the goodwives.

Fenwick Minor was home from school, and went about like a dog worshipping his big brother. This is all about Fenwick Minor.

But Greenbrae parish and its humble, poor simpletons of folk did not content Fenwick Major long. He went back to Edinburgh, as he told his father, to read during the summer session; and when we came up again in November, Fenwick Major was going it harder than ever.

[_Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson look at each other. They know all about that_.

CHIRNSIDE (_continues_). Then he gave up attending class much, only turning up for examinations. He had fits of grinding like fire at home. Again he would chuck the whole thing, and lounge all day and most of the night about shops in the shady lanes back of the Register. So we knew that Fenwick Major was burning his fingers. Then he cut classes and grinds altogether, and when I met him next, blest if he didn't cut me. That wasn't much, of course, and maybe showed his good taste. But it was only a year since we chummed--and I knew his people, you know.

Fact was, we felt somebody ought to speak to Fenwick--so all the fellows said. But of course, when it came to the point, they pitched on me, and stuck at me till they made me promise.