Chapter V: Sorrow Never Comes Singly--Christ-Like Christianity

I don’t think there is a more truthful aphorism in our language than that which tells us that sorrows seldom come singly.

Fortune or fate had dealt so very hardly with honest Farmer Kilbuie last season, that he might reasonably have expected now some surcease of sorrow--a respite, if not indeed a flow of good luck. Alas! it was otherwise.

The turnips had been thinned and earthed up--they were already beginning to cover the drills--and the haymaking season was in full blow. It was hot sunshine now every day, with now and then a gentle breeze blowing from westward or south, a breeze that blew through the tossed and tumbled hay and made and “won” it.

There was still a good deal to cut down, however, and Sandie himself was walking behind the reaping-machine with the great horse Glancer dragging. This machine not only cut the hay, but tossed it into wreaths.

Sandie didn’t look particularly like a student or genius at present. He wore little save a blue checked shirt, his trousers, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, inside which was a cabbage leaf as a security against sunstroke.

The mowing went merrily on.

In another part of the field the servants, with Mr. M‘Crae himself, were busily and cheerfully engaged among the hay that had been cut down yesterday, and which was already dry enough to put into “cocks” or “coles.”

Sandie was just about half-way down a ridge, when he pulled up to wipe his wet perspiring brow. Just at that moment Glancer threw up his head and emitted a kind of pained and stifled cry. He reeled for a moment, then fell heavily on his side. _Coup de soleil_, or sunstroke, without a shadow of doubt.

Mr. M‘Crae and the servants saw the poor horse fall, and hurried at once to Sandie’s assistance. At first an attempt was made to raise the animal, but this was found impossible; the neck drooped, the legs were paralysed. M‘Crae had always been his own veterinary surgeon, and perhaps knew quite as much about the ailments of cattle and horses as did the drunken little smith and farrier who lived in the neighbouring village. So Glancer’s harness was unloosened, a bundle of soft dry hay was placed under his head, and a canvas shelter was erected to save him from the burning rays of the sun. His poor head, too, was kept constantly wet with the coldest of water, and now and then his tongue was pulled to one side, and a cooling draught administered.

Sandie and Jamie never left him all that day; Jeannie brought their dinner out to the field, and their supper also, and they ate it beside the dying Glancer.

Poor Tyro, the collie, seemed to know he was in the presence of death. He sat or lay, though not asleep, near to the horse till the end, often heaving deep sighs, for the farm nags were all special favourites of his.

Tyro really was a faithful and kind-hearted dog. I need not tell the reader he was wise, because he was a Scottish collie, and collies are the kings of the race canine. Yes, he was loving and gentle, and he was an excellent guard by night. Once upon a time he surprised a hawker-tramp robbing the fowl-house. Tyro did not fly at the man and bite him, as a less sensible dog would have done. No, he simply placed that fowl-house, with the itinerant hardware merchant inside, in a state of siege.

“If you dare to come out,” Tyro told him, “I will cut your throat, as certain as sunrise.”

So the unhappy man preferred capture to a cut throat; and when M‘Crae came round in the grey dawn, he found the tramp, and in due course he was landed in prison.

But in the interests of truth, I must state here that Tyro had one fault, and a very sad one it was. In company with another dog, a smooth-coated cross ’twixt a greyhound and collie, he used in the season to go hunting the turnip-fields for hares or rabbits. They worked very systematically, Spot going into the field to start the game and chase it towards the gate, where Tyro lay in wait to seize and kill it. In this way they sometimes laid dead as many as six or eight hares a night, bringing home one each in the grey of the morn, and hiding the others to be recovered by degrees.

Tyro had even been accused of sheep-killing, but the crime was brought home to another dog, and Tyro left without a stain on his character.

Just as the sun had dipped behind the wooded hills of the west, and gloaming shadows began to fill up the hollows, it was evident that great Glancer’s minutes were numbered. The fast glazing eye and the stertorous breathing told the watchers that. Soon after, he had a few fits of shivering, one last long sigh, and then he lay still--all was over.

Jamie Duncan had kept up till now, but when he heard that sigh, and knew the horse was dead, he lost all control over himself, and threw himself on the body in a paroxysm of grief and tears.

You must remember he was an illiterate ploughman, reader.

“O Glancer, Glancer!” he cried; “oh! my poor dead friend Glancer, will I never mair clean your harness, or lead you to the fields in the mornin’? O Glancer, my heart is br’akin’! my heart is br’akin’!”

And so he kept on for a time, until Sandie insisted on leading him homewards.

But Jamie wasn’t well for days.

The next death at Kilbuie occurred about two weeks after this, and affected Mrs. M‘Crae and her two children more than any one else. It was that of Crummie, a cow nearly fifteen years old, but yet in calf. She took what is called the “quarter-ill,” or mortification of one joint or limb, and quickly succumbed. There was a halo of romance about this wise old cow. Like the bovine in the old Scotch song called “Tak’ your auld cloak about you”--

“Crummie was a usefu’ coo,
And aft she wet the bairnie’s mou’.”

Ah! that was just where the sorrow came in. Long, long ago, when Sandie and Elsie were but toddling thingies, in the bright and early days of her husband’s love, when all was hope and happiness about the smiling farm, and sorrow seemed very far away indeed, that old-fashioned cow had given the milk for the bairnies’ porridge, and the cream for butter. During all these long years she had kept the same stall in the byre, and woe be to any other cow beast that thoughtlessly dared to enter it. The retribution was sharp and swift.

Hardly ever a day passed either that, before going to her stall, after having been out for water or away in the green fields, Crummie did not come to the back door and knock with her head, and Mrs. M‘Crae, or Jeannie latterly, would present her with a nice piece of oat-cake, after which she would gracefully retire, that is as gracefully as a cow can, walking backwards a considerable way, as if she had been in the presence of royalty.

But now Crummie was “nae mair,” as Jeannie phrased it, and the bairns and the mother were inconsolable.

In a week more the calf would have been born. As it was, its skin was utilised. There is a curious but rather beautiful superstition away in northern Aberdeenshire, namely, that the very large family or hall Bible should be covered with the skin of a calf that has never been born. So poor Crummie’s calf’s skin was used by M‘Crae to cover his great Brown’s Bible.

* * * * *

Now I must tell you that Kilbuie was very much respected and beloved by the neighbouring farmers. For Kilbuie was a farmer, and not an upstart. He had been among them all his life. His father, too, had farmed Kilbuie before him. Had M‘Crae been a shopkeeper or sailor turned farmer, they would have left him severely alone. They were clannish.

Well, one evening there was a secret meeting of these farmer folks in the little village school-house. It was a secret meeting, but they weren’t plotting to blow up the manse with dynamite, or set the old town-hall in a blaze. No, and the result of the secret meeting one day about a week after walked down the long loaning towards Kilbuie, in the shape of a fine sturdy young cart-horse, as like Glancer as possibly could be. He was, as may be guessed, a gift to the unfortunate M‘Crae from his kindly neighbours. To refuse would have been to offend. So what could he do but accept, to thank and bless them? The neighbours’ kindness did not end here. They had heard that Sandie M‘Crae meant to compete for a bursary, and, after taking his Master or Bachelor of Arts degree, study for the ministry. Well, it occurred to them that, one way or another, Kilbuie would be rather short handed for the ensuing harvest, that is, if Sandie was going to get anything like fair play, and be allowed to make preparations for the competition; so they determined to give Kilbuie a love-darg, not only for the harvest, but with the subsequent ploughing.

In case there may be some readers of mine in the far south who do not know what a love-darg means, I must explain. I have said already that the farmers of the North are clannish. Well, it often occurs that when, through misfortune, one of their number falls behind-hand, say in the ploughing, the neighbours all assemble in force with horses and ploughs, and in one day turn over every yard of his stubble or leas; or in the same way they may sow his oats in spring, or reap them for him in harvest-time.

Surely this is genuine and Christlike Christianity!

They did not, however, communicate their intention to the farmer himself, but to Sandie they did. Sandie’s eyes sparkled with joy.

“Hurrah!” he cried, “the bursary is as good as won. How can I thank you, gentlemen?”

“By no thankin’ us at a’,” returned Farmer Mon’ Blairie, the spokesman.

“Man!” he added, “we’re a’ as prood o’ ye, lad, as prood can be. We’d like to hae a minister reared frae among oursels, and we’ll hae you.”

“I hope so.”

“Weel, keep up a good heart. Ye can study a’ the hairst.”

“I’m going to do something else besides.”

“Weel?”

“Ye see, if I can manage to get just one month at the Grammar School of Aberdeen before the competition, it will ensure my success.”

“To be sure; weel?”

“Weel, by the merest chance yesterday I met Lord Hamilton at the minister’s manse. He was having lunch there. He was bemoaning the fact that when the grouse-shooting began on the Twelfth, he should not have a single keeper who thoroughly knew the hills. Then a happy thought occurred to me, and something made me speak.

“‘My lord,’ I said, smiling, ‘there isn’t a corrie nor a knowe, a height nor a howe, all over these hills that I haven’t known since my childhood; will you accept my services as your head-keeper? I’ll serve you well and faithfully till past the middle of September.’

“‘But you,’ cried his lordship, laughing, ‘the minister’s friend and a farmer’s son! I should never think of offering you a post so menial. Oh! no, boy; you must be joking.’

“‘But I’m not joking,’ I insisted.

“Then I told him all the truth, and all my ambition to win a bursary and to study for the ministry, and to do all and everything by my own exertions entirely.

“He smiled once more; then he stretched out his soft white hand and grasped mine.

“‘Sandie M‘Crae,’ he said, ‘I admire your pluck; you’re a Scotsman every inch. Yes, I accept your services. Be at the shooting-box the day before the Twelfth.’”

* * * * *

The Twelfth of August--that glorious day on Scottish hills--came round at last, and Sandie found himself starting off to the heather with Lord Hamilton and party long before sunrise. There was to be no battue shooting, none of that unfair driving so common in Yorkshire: each man walked behind his well-trained setter and retriever. This was real sport, and gave the birds a chance, as well as showing what kind of a shot each man was.

Sandie attended personally on Lord Hamilton, and gave such entire satisfaction that his lordship was loud in his praises at eventide, when he found his bag so large that two ordinary keepers were needed to carry it.

There was a great dinner-party that day in the shooting-box, and wine and wit sparkled bright and merrily; but Sandie, as soon as he had dined sumptuously in the kitchen with the other keepers, begged leave to retire, and sought the solitude of his little bedroom, where his books were, there to study as usual till far into the night.

He was up and ready for Lord Hamilton, however, some time before that gentleman appeared, and another excellent day on the hill succeeded.

Well, why need I say more about it? Each day was like another, and so the time flew on, only Sandie grew every day more brown and hard, till at the end of the six weeks he left Lord Hamilton’s service as happy as a king, with his lordship’s words of praise ringing in his head, and quite enough money jingling in his pocket to maintain him for a whole month and a week at the Grammar School.