Chapter XIV: An Error in Judgment (8)

"Bide a little while," said he, "and you shall have plenty for root and flower, for branch and vine-stem."

There were not many more loving little boys than Jaikie in all the world; and with all his work and his helping and talking, he had quite forgotten about the pain in his foot.

Now, if I were telling a story--making it up, that is--it is just the time for something to happen,--for a great trumpet to blow to tell the world what a brave fellow this friend of the flowers was; or at least for some great person, perhaps the minister himself, to come and find him there alone in the night. Then he might be carried home with great rejoicing.

But nothing of the kind happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. Jaikie began to creep back again in the quiet, colourless night; but before he had quite gone away the honeysuckle said--

"Remember to come back to-morrow and water us, and we will get ready such fine full cups of honey for you to suck."

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.