Chapter IV (4)

"He dragged the book away from the old man, and began to study. There was so many complaints in it he was almost tempted to have something else instead of consumption, but he decided on that at last, an' he got a cough what worried the foc'sle all night long, an' the next day, when the skipper came down to see Dan, he could 'ardly 'ear hisself speak.

"That's a nasty cough you've got, my man,' ses he, looking at Harry.

"'Oh, it's nothing, sir,' ses Harry, careless like. 'I've 'ad it for months now off and on. I think it's perspiring so of a night does it.'

"'What?' ses the skipper. 'Do you perspire of a night?'

"'Dredful,' ses Harry. 'You could wring the clo'es out. I s'pose it's healthy for me, ain't it, sir?'

"'Undo your shirt,' ses the skipper, going over to him, an' sticking the trumpet agin him. 'Now take a deep breath. Don't cough.'

"'I can't help it, sir,' ses Harry, 'it will come. Seems to tear me to pieces.'

"'You get to bed at once,' says the skipper, taking away the trumpet, an' shaking his 'ed. 'It's a fortunate thing for you, my lad, you're in skilled hands. With care, I believe I can pull you round. How does that medicine suit you, Dan?'

"'Beautiful, sir,' says Dan. 'It's wonderful soothing. I slep' like a new-born babe arter it.'

"'I'll send you to get some more,' ses the skipper. 'You're not to get up, mind, either of you.'

"'All right, sir,' ses the two in very faint voices, an' the skipper went away arter telling us to be careful not to make a noise.

"We all thought it a fine joke at first, but the airs them two chaps give themselves was something sickening. Being in bed all day, they was naturally wakeful of a night, and they used to call across the foc'sle inquiring arter each other's healths, an' waking us other chaps up. An' they 'ud swop beef-tea an' jellies with each other, an' Dan 'ud try an' coax a little port wine out o' Harry, which he 'ad to make blood with, but Harry 'ud say he hadn't made enough that day, an' he'd drink to the better health of old Dan's prognotice, an' smack his lips until it drove us a'most crazy to 'ear him.

"After these chaps had been ill two days, the other fellers began to put their heads together, being maddened by the smell o' beef-tea an' the like, an' said they was going to be ill too, and both the invalids got into a fearful state of excitement.

"'You'll only spoil it for all of us,' ses Harry, 'and you don't know what to have without the book.'

"'It's all very well doing your work as well as our own,' ses one of the men. 'It's our turn now. It's time you two got well.'

"'Well?' ses Harry, 'well? Why, you silly iggernerant chaps, we shan't never get well; people with our complaints never do. You ought to know that.'

"'Well, I shall split,' ses one of them.

"'You do!' ses Harry, 'you do, an' I'll put a 'ed on you that all the port wine and jellies in the world wouldn't cure. 'Sides, don't you think the skipper knows what's the matter with us?'

"'Afore the other chaps could reply, the skipper hisself comes down, accompanied by the fust mate, with a look on his face which made Harry give the deepest and hollowest cough he'd ever done.

"'What they reely want,' ses the skipper, turning to the mate, 'is keerful nussing.'

"'I wish you'd let me nuss 'em,' ses the fust mate, 'only ten minutes--I'd put 'em both on their legs, an' running for their lives into the bargain, in ten minutes.'

"'Hold your tongue, sir,' ses the skipper; 'what you say is unfeeling, besides being an insult to me. Do you think I studied medicine all these years without knowing when a man's ill?'

"The fust mate growled something, and went on deck, and the skipper started examining of 'em again. He said they was wonderfully patient lying in bed so long, an' he had 'em wrapped up in bed clo'es and carried on deck, so as the pure air could have a go at 'em.

"We had to do the carrying, an' there they sat, breathing the pure air, and looking at the fust mate out of the corners of their eyes. If they wanted any thing from below, one of us had to go an' fetch it, an' by the time they was taken down to bed again, we all resolved to be took ill too.

"Only two of 'em did it though, for Harry, who was a powerful, ugly-tempered chap, swore he'd do all sorts o' dreadful things to us if we didn't keep well and hearty, an' all 'cept these two did. One of 'em, Mike Rafferty, laid up with a swelling on his ribs, which I knew myself he 'ad 'ad for fifteen years, and the other chap had paralysis. I never saw a man so reely happy as the skipper was. He was up an' down with his medicines and his instruments all day long, and used to make notes of the cases in a big pocketbook, and read 'em to the second mate at meal-times.

"The foc'sle had been turned into hospital about a week, an' I was on deck doing some odd job or the other, when the cook comes up to me pulling a face as long as a fiddle.

"'Nother invalid,' ses he; 'fust mate's gone stark, staring mad!'

"'Mad?' ses I.

"'Yes,' ses he. 'He's got a big basin in the galley, an' he's laughing like a hyener an' mixing bilge-water an' ink, an' paraffin an' butter an' soap an' all sorts o' things up together. The smell's enough to kill a man; I've had to come away.'

"Curious-like, I jest walked up to the galley an' puts my 'ed in, an' there was the mate as the cook said, smiling all over his face, and ladling some thick sticky stuff into a stone bottle.

"'How's the pore sufferers, sir?" ses he, stepping out of the galley jest as the skipper was going by.

"'They're very bad; but I hope for the best,' ses the skipper, looking at him hard. 'I'm glad to see you're turned a bit more feeling.'

"'Yes, sir,' ses the mate. 'I didn't think so at fust, but I can see now them chaps is all very ill. You'll s'cuse me saying it, but I don't quite approve of your treatment.'

"I thought the skipper would ha' bust.

"'My treatment?' ses he. 'My treatment? What do you know about it?'

"'You're treating 'em wrong, sir,' ses the mate. 'I have here' (patting the jar) 'a remedy which 'ud cure them all if you'd only let me try it.'

"'Pooh!' ses the skipper. 'One medicine cure all diseases! The old story. What is it? Where'd you get it from?' ses he.

"'I brought the ingredients aboard with me,' ses the mate. 'It's a wonderful medicine discovered by my grandmother, an' if I might only try it I'd thoroughly cure them pore chaps."

"'Rubbish!' ses the skipper.

"'Very well, sir,' ses the mate, shrugging his shoulders. 'O' course, if you won't let me you won't. Still, I tell you, if you'd let me try I'd cure 'em all in two days. That's a fair challenge.'

"Well, they talked, and talked, and talked, until at last the skipper give way and went down below with the mate, and told the chaps they was to take the new medicine for two days, jest to prove the mate was wrong.

"'Let pore old Dan try it first, sir,' ses Harry, starting up, an' sniffing as the mate took the cork out; 'he's been awful bad since you've been away.'

"'Harry's worse than I am, sir,' ses Dan; 'it's only his kind heart that makes him say that.'

"'It don't matter which is fust,' ses the mate, filling a tablespoon with it, 'there's plenty for all. Now, Harry.'

"'Take it,' ses the skipper.

"Harry took it, an' the fuss he made you'd ha' thought he was swallering a football. It stuck all round his mouth, and he carried on so dredful that the other invalids was half sick afore it came to them.

"By the time the other three 'ad 'ad theirs it was as good as a pantermine, an' the mate corked the bottle up, and went an' sat down on a locker while they tried to rinse their mouths out with the luxuries which had been given 'em.

"'How do you feel?' ses the skipper.

"'I'm dying,' ses Dan.

"'So'm I,' ses Harry; 'I b'leeve the mate's pisoned us.'

"The skipper looks over at the mate very stern an' shakes his 'ed slowly.

"'It's all right,' ses the mate. 'It's always like that the first dozen or so doses.'

"'Dozen or so doses!" ses old Dan, in a faraway voice.

"'It has to be taken every twenty minutes,' ses the mate, pulling out his pipe and lighting it; an' the four men groaned all together.

"'I can't allow it,' ses the skipper, 'I can't allow it. Men's lives mustn't be sacrificed for an experiment.'

"''Tain't a experiment,' ses the mate very indignant, 'it's an old family medicine.'

"'Well, they shan't have any more,' ses the skipper firmly.

"'Look here,' ses the mate. 'If I kill any one o' these men, I'll give you twenty pound. Honor bright, I will.'

"'Make it twenty-five,' ses the skipper, considering.

"'Very good,' ses the mate. 'Twenty-five; I can't say no fairer than that, can I? It's about time for another dose now.'

"He gave 'em another tablespoonful all round as the skipper left, an' the chaps what wasn't invalids nearly bust with joy. He wouldn't let 'em have anything to take the taste out, 'cos he said it didn't give the medicine a chance, an' he told us other chaps to remove the temptation, an' you bet we did.

"After the fifth dose, the invalids began to get desperate, an' when they heard they'd got to be woke up every twenty minutes through the night to take the stuff, they sort o' give up. Old Dan said he felt a gentle glow stealing over him and strengthening him, and Harry said that it felt like a healing balm to his lungs. All of 'em agreed it was a wonderful sort o' medicine, an' arter the sixth dose the man with paralysis dashed up on deck, and ran up the rigging like a cat. He sat there for hours spitting, an' swore he'd brain anybody who interrupted him, an' arter a little while Mike Rafferty went up and j'ined him, an' if the fust mate's ears didn't burn by reason of the things them two pore sufferers said about 'im, they ought to.

"They was all doing full work next day, an' though, o' course, the skipper saw how he'd been done, he didn't allude to it. Not in words, that is; but when a man tries to make four chaps do the work of eight, an' hits 'em when they don't, it's a easy job to see where the shoe pinches."

THE STICKIT MINISTER

By S. R. CROCKETT

THE RENUNCIATION OP ROBERT FRASER, FORMERLY STUDENT IN DIVINITY

The crows were wheeling behind the plough in scattering clusters, and plumping singly upon the soft, thick grubs which the ploughshare was turning out upon an unkindly world. It was a bask blowy day in the end of March, and there was a hint of storm in the air--a hint emphasised for those skilled in weather lore by the presence of half a dozen sea-gulls, white vagrants among the black coats, blown by the south wind up from the Solway--a snell, Scotch, but not unfriendly day altogether. Robert Fraser bent to the plough handles, and cast a keen and wary eye towards his guide posts on the ridge. His face was colourless, even when a dash of rain came swirling across from the crest of Ben Gairn, whose steep bulk heaved itself a blue haystack above the level horizon of the moorland. He was dressed like any other ploughman of the south uplands--rough homespun much the worse for wear, and leggings the colour of the red soil which he was reversing with the share of his plough. Yet there was that about Robert Fraser which marked him no common man. When he paused at the top of the ascent, and stood with his back against the horns of the plough, the countryman's legacy from Adam of the Mattock, he pushed back his weatherbeaten straw hat with a characteristic gesture, and showed a white forehead with blue veins channelling it--a damp, heavy lock of black hair clinging to it as in Severn's picture of John Keats on his deathbed. Robert Fraser saw a couple of black specks which moved smoothly and evenly along the top of the distant dyke of the highway. He stood still for a moment or two watching them. As they came nearer, they resolved themselves into a smart young man sitting in a well-equipped gig drawn by a showily-actioned hone, and driven by a man in livery. As they passed rapidly along the road the hand of the young man appeared in a careless wave of recognition over the stone dyke, and Robert Fraser lifted his slack reins in staid acknowledgment. It was more than a year since the brothers had looked each other so nearly in the eyes. They were Dr. Henry Fraser, the rising physician of Carn Edward, and his elder brother Robert, once Student of Divinity at Edinburgh College, whom three parishes knew as 'The Stickit Minister.'

When Robert Fraser stabled his horses that night and went into his supper, he was not surprised to find his friend, Saunders M'Quhirr of Drumquhat, sitting by the peat fire in the 'room.' Almost the only thing which distinguished the Stickit Minister from the other small farmers of the parish of Dullarg was the fact that he always sat in the evening by himself ben the hoose, and did not use the kitchen in common with his housekeeper and herd boy, save only at meal-times. Robert had taken to Saunders ever since--the back of his ambition broken--he had settled down to the farm, and he welcomed him with shy cordiality.

'You'll take a cup of tea, Saunders?' he asked.

'Thank ye, Robert, I wadna be waur o't,' returned his friend.

'I saw your brither the day,' said Saunders M'Quhirr, after the tea-cups had been cleared away, and the silent housekeeper had replaced the books upon the table. Saunders picked a couple of them up, and, having adjusted his glasses, he read the titles--Milton's Works, and a volume of a translation of Dorner's Person of Christ.

'I saw yer brither the day; he maun be gettin' a big practice!'

'Ay!' said Robert Fraser, very thoughtfully.

Saunders M'Quhirr glanced up quickly. It was, of course, natural that the unsuccessful elder brother should envy the prosperous younger, but he had thought that Robert Fraser was living on a different plane. It was one of the few things that the friends had never spoken of, though every one knew why Dr. Fraser did not visit his brother's little farm. 'He's gettin' in wi' the big fowk noo, an' thinks maybe that his brither wad do him nae credit.' That was the way the clash of the country-side explained the matter.

'I never told you how I came to leave the college, Saunders,' said the younger man, resting his brow on a hand that even the horn of the plough could not make other than diaphanous.

'No,' said Saunders quietly, with a tender gleam coming into the humorsome kindly eyes that lurked under their bushy tussocks of grey eyebrow. Saunders's humour lay near the Fountain of Tears.

'No,' continued Robert Fraser, 'I have not spoken of it to so many; but you've been a good frien' to me, Saunders, and I think you should hear it. I have not tried to set myself right with folks in the general, but I would like to let you see clearly before I go my ways to Him who seeth from the beginning.'

'Hear till him,' said Saunders; 'man, yer hoast is no' near as sair as it was i' the back-end. Ye'll be here lang efter me; but lang or short, weel do ye ken, Robert Fraser, that ye need not to pit yersel' richt wi' me. Hae I no' kenned ye sins ye war the sic o' twa scrubbers?'

'I thank you, Saunders,' said Robert, 'but I am well aware that I'm to die this year. No, no, not a word. It is the Lord's will! It's mair than seven year now since I first kenned that my days were to be few. It was the year my faither died, and left Harry and me by our lane.

'He left no siller to speak of, just plenty to lay him decently in the kirkyard among his forebears. I had been a year at the Divinity Hall then, and was going up to put in my discourses for the next session. I had been troubled with my breast for some time, and so called one day at the infirmary to get a word with Sir James. He was very busy when I went in, and never noticed me till the hoast took me. Then on a sudden he looked up from his papers, came quickly over to me, put his own white handkerchief to my mouth, and quietly said, "Come into my room, laddie!" Ay, he was a good man and a faithful, Sir James, if ever there was one. He told me that with care I might live five or six years, but it would need great care. Then a strange prickly coldness came over me, and I seemed to walk light-headed in an atmosphere suddenly rarefied. I think I know now how the mouse feels under the air-pump.'

'What's that?' queried Saunders.

'A cruel ploy not worth speaking of,' continued the Stickit Minister. 'Well, I found something in my throat when I tried to thank him. But I came my ways home to the Dullarg, and night and day I considered what was to be done, with so much to do and so little time to do it. It was clear that both Harry and me could not gang through the college on the little my faither had left. So late one night I saw my way clear to what I should do. Harry must go, I must stay. I must come home to the farm, and be my own "man"; then I could send Harry to the college to be a doctor, for he had no call to the ministry as once I thought I had. More than that, It was laid on me to tell Jessie London that Robert Fraser was no better than a machine set to go five year.

'Now all these things I did, Saunders, but there's no use telling you what they cost in the doing. They were right to do, and they were done. I do not repent any of them. I would do them all over again were they to do, but it's been bitterer than I thought.'

The Stickit Minister took his head off his hand and leaned wearily back in his chair.

'The story went over the country that I had failed in my examinations, and I never said that I had not. But there were some that knew better who might have contradicted the report if they had liked. I settled down to the farm, and I put Harry through the college, sending all but a bare living to him in Edinburgh. I worked the work of the farm, rain and shine, ever since, and have been for these six years the "stickit minister" that all the world kens the day. Whiles Harry did not think that he got enough. He was always writing for more, and not so very pleased when he did not get it. He was aye different to me, ye ken, Saunders, and he canna be judged by the same standard as you and me.'

'I ken,' said Saunders M'Quhirr, a spark of light lying in the quiet of his eyes.

'Well,' continued Robert Fraser, lightened by Saunders's apparent agreement, 'the time came when he was clear from the college, and wanted a practice. He had been ill-advised that he had not got his share of the farm, and he wanted it selled to share and share alike. Now I kenned, and you ken, Saunders, that it's no' worth much in one share let alone two. So I got the place quietly bonded, and bought him old Dr. Aitkin's practice in Cairn Edward with the money.

'I have tried to do my best for the lad, for it was laid on me to be my brother's keeper. He doesna come here much,' continued Robert, 'but I think he's not so ill against me as he was. Saunders, he waved his hand to me when he was gaun by the day!'

'That was kind of him,' said Saunders M'Quhirr.

'Ay, was it no',' said the Stickit Minister, eagerly, with a soft look in his eyes as he glanced up at his brother's portrait in cap and gown, which hung over the china dogs on the mantelpiece.

'I got my notice this morning that the bond is to be called up in November,' said Robert. 'So I'll be obliged to flit.'

Saunders M'Quhirr started to his feet in a moment. 'Never,' he said, with the spark of fire alive now in his eyes, 'never as lang as there's a beast on Drumquhat, or a poun' in Cairn Edward Bank'--bringing down his clenched fist upon the Milton on the table.

'No, Saunders, no,' said the Stickit Minister, very gently; 'I thank you kindly, but I'll be flitted before that!'

THE LAMMAS PREACHING

By S. R. CROCKETT

'And I further intimate,' said the minister, 'that I will preach this evening at Cauldshaws, and my text will be from the ninth chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes and the tenth verse, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'Save us,' said Janet MacTaggart, 'he's clean forgotten "if it be the Lord's wull." Maybe he'll be for gaun whether it's His wull or no'--he's a sair masterfu' man, the minister; but he comes frae the Machars,[*] an' kens little aboot the jealous God we hae amang the hills o' Gallowa'!'

[*] The Eastern Lowlands of Wigtonshire.

The minister continued, in the same high, level tone in which he did his preaching, 'There are a number of sluggards who lay the weight of their own laziness on the Almighty, saying, "I am a worm and no man--how should I strive with my Maker?" whenever they are at strife with their own sluggishness. There will be a word for all such this evening at the farmtown of Cauldshaws, presently occupied by Gilbert M'Kissock--public worship to begin at seven o'clock.'

The congregation of Barnessock kirk tumbled amicably over its own heels with eagerness to get into the kirkyaird in order to settle the momentous question, 'Wha's back was he on the day?'

Robert Kirk, Carsethorn, had a packet of peppermint lozenges in the crown of his 'lum' hat--deponed to by Elizabeth Douglas or Barr, in Barnbogrie, whose husband, Weelum Barr, put on the hat of the aforesaid Robert Kirk by mistake for his own, whereupon the peppermints fell to the floor and rolled under the pews in most unseemly fashion. Elizabeth Kirk is of opinion that this should be brought to the notice of Session, she herself always taking her peppermint while genteelly wiping her mouth with the corner of her handkerchief. Robert Kirk, on being put to the question, admits the fact, but says that it was his wife put them there to be near her hand.

The minister, however, ready with his word, brought him to shame by saying, 'O Robert, Robert, that was just what Adam said, "The woman Thou gavest me, she gave me to eat!"' The aforesaid Robert Kirk thinks that it is meddling with the original Hebrew to apply this to peppermints, and also says that Elizabeth Kirk is an impident besom, and furthermore that, as all the country well knows---- (Here the chronicler omits much matter actionable in the civil courts of the realm).

'Janet,' said the minister to his housekeeper, 'I am to preach to-night at Cauldshaws on the text, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'I ken,' said Janet, 'I saw it on yer desk. I pat it ablow the clock for fear the wun's o' heeven micht blaw it awa' like chaff, an' you couldna do wantin' it!'

'Janet MacTaggart,' said the minister, tartly, 'bring in the denner, and do not meddle with what does not concern you.'

Janet could not abide read sermons; her natural woman rose against them. She knew, as she had said, that God was a jealous God, and, with regard to the minister, she looked upon herself as His viceregent.

'He's young an' terrable ram-stam an' opeenionated--fu' o' buik-lear, but wi' little gracious experience. For a' that, the root o' the maitter's in 'im,' said Janet, not unhopefully.

'I'm gaun to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text's "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,"' said the minister to the precentor that afternoon, on the manse doorstep.

'The Lord's no' in a' his thochts. I'll gang wi' the lad mysel',' said the precentor.

Now, Galloway is so much out of the world that the Almighty has not there lifted His hand from reward and punishment, from guiding and restraining, as He has done in big towns where everything goes by machinery. Man may say that there is no God when he only sees a handbreadth of smoky heaven between the chimney-pots; but out on the fields of oats and bear, and up on the screes of the hillsides, where the mother granite sticks her bleaching ribs through the heather, men have reached great assurance on this and other matters.

The burns were running red with the mighty July rain when Douglas Maclellan started over the meadows and moors to preach his sermon at the farmtown of Cauldshaws. He had thanked the Lord that morning in his opening prayer for 'the bounteous rain wherewith He had seen meet to refresh His weary heritage.'

His congregation silently acquiesced, 'for what,' said they, 'could a man from the Machars be expected to ken about meadow hay?'

When the minister and the precentor got to the foot of the manse loaning, they came upon the parish ne'er-do-weel, Ebie Kirgan, who kept himself in employment by constantly scratching his head, trying to think of something to do, and whose clothes were constructed on the latest sanitary principles of ventilation. The ruins of Ebie's hat were usually tipped over one eye for enlarged facilities of scratching in the rear.

'If it's yer wull, minister, I'll come to hear ye the nicht. It's drawing to mair rain, I'm thinkin'!' said the Scarecrow.

'I hope the discourse may be profitable to you, Ebenezer, for, as I intimated this morning, I am to preach from the text, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'Ay, minister,' said Ebie, relieving his right hand, and tipping his hat over the other eye to give his left free play. So the three struck over the fields, making for the thorn tree at the corner, where Robert Kirk's dyke dipped into the standing water of the meadow.

'Do you think ye can manage it, Maister Maclellan?' said the precentor. 'Ye're wat half-way up the leg already.'

'An' there's sax feet o' black moss water in the Laneburn as sure as I'm a leevin' sowl,' added Ebie Kirgan.

'I'm to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might!"' said the minister, stubbornly glooming from under the eaves of his eyebrows as the swarthy men from the Machars are wont to do. His companions said no more. They came to Camelon Lane, where usually Robert Kirk had a leaping pole on either bank to assist the traveller across, but both poles had gone down the water in the morning to look for Robert's meadow hay.

'Tak' care, Maister Maclellan, ye'll be in deep water afore ye ken. O man, ye had far better turn!'

The precentor stood up to his knees in water on what had once been the bank, and wrung his hands. But the minister pushed steadily ahead into the turbid and sluggish water.

'I canna come, oh, I canna come, for I'm a man that has a family.'

'It's no' your work; stay where ye are,' cried the minister, without looking over his shoulder; 'but as for me, I'm intimated to preach this night at Cauldshaws, and my text----'

Here he stepped into a deep hole, and his text was suddenly shut within him by the gurgle of moss water in his throat. His arms rose above the surface like the black spars of a windmill. But Ebie Kirgan sculled himself swiftly out, swimming with his shoeless feet, and pushed the minister before him to the further bank--the water gushing out of rents in his clothes as easily as out of the gills of a fish.

The minister stood with unshaken confidence on the bank. He ran peat water like a spout in a thunder plump, and black rivulets of dye were trickling from under his hat down his brow and dripping from the end of his nose.

'Then you'll not come any farther?' he called cross to the precentor.

'I canna, oh, I canna; though I'm most awfu' wullin'. Kirsty wad never forgie me gin I was to droon.'

'Then I'll e'en have to raise the tune myself--though three times "Kilmarneck" is a pity,' said the minister, turning on his heel and striding away through the shallow sea, splashing the water as high as his head with a kind of headstrong glee which seemed to the precentor a direct defiance of Providence. Ebie Kirgan followed half a dozen steps behind. The support of the precentor's lay semi-equality taken from him, he began to regret that he had come, and silently and ruefully plunged along after the minister through the waterlogged meadows. They came in time to the foot of Robert Kirk's march dyke, and skirted it a hundred yards upward to avoid the deep pool in which the Laneburn waters were swirling. The minister climbed silently up the seven-foot dyke, pausing a second on the top to balance himself for his leap to the other side. As he did so Ebie Kirgan saw that the dyke was swaying to the fall, having been weakened by the rush of water on the farther side. He ran instantly at the minister, and gave him a push with both hands which caused Mr. Maclellan to alight on his feet clear of the falling stones. The dyke did not so much fall outward as settle down on its own ruins. Ebie fell on his face among the stones with the impetus of his own eagerness. He arose, however, quickly--only limping slightly from what he called a 'bit chack' on the leg between two stones.

'That was a merciful providence, Ebenezer,' said the minister, solemnly; 'I hope you are duly thankful!'

'Dod, I am that!' replied Ebie, scratching his head vigorously with his right hand and rubbing his leg with his left. 'Gin I hadna gi'en ye that dunch, ye micht hae preachen nane at Cauldshaws this nicht.'

They now crossed a fairly level clover field, dark and laid with wet. The scent of the clover rose to their nostrils with almost overpowering force. There was not a breath of air. The sky was blue and the sun shining. Only a sullen roar came over the hill, sounding in the silence like the rush of a train over a far-away viaduct.

'What is that?' queried the minister, stopping to listen.

Ebie took a brisk sidelong look at him.

'I'm some dootsome that'll be the Skyreburn coming doon aff o' Cairnsmuir!'

The minister tramped unconcernedly on. Ebie Kirgan stared at him.

'He canna ken what a "Skyreburn warnin'" is--he'll be thinkin' it's some bit Machars burn that the laddies set their whurlie mills in. But he'll turn richt eneuch when he sees Skyreburn roarin' reed in a Lammas flood, I'm thinkin'!'

They took their way over the shoulder of the hill in the beautiful evening, leaning eagerly forward to get the first glimpse of the cause of that deep and resonant roar. In a moment they saw below them a narrow rock-walled gully, ten or fifteen yards across, filled to the brim with rushing water. It was not black peat water like the Camelon Lane, but it ran red as keel, flecked now and then with a revolving white blur as one of the Cauldshaws sheep spun downward to the sea, with four black feet turned pitifully up to the blue sky.

Ebie looked at the minister. 'He'll turn noo if he's mortal,' he said. But the minister held on. He looked at the water up and down the roaring stream. On a hill above, the farmer of Cauldshaws, having driven all his remaining sheep together, sat down to watch. Seeing the minister, he stood up and excitedly waved him back. But Douglas Maclellan from the Machars never gave him a look, and his shouting was of less effect than if he had been crying to an untrained collie.

The minister looked long up the stream, and at a point where the rocks came very close together, and many stunted pines were growing, he saw one which, having stood on the immediate brink, had been so much undercut that it leaned over the gully like a fishing-rod. With a keen glance along its length, the minister, jamming his dripping soft felt hat on the back of his head, was setting foot on the perilous slope of the uneven red-brown trunk, when Ebie Kirgan caught him sharply by the arm.

'It's no' for me to speak to a minister at ordinar' times,' he stammered, gathering courage in his desperation; 'but, oh, man, it's fair murder to try to gang ower that water!'

The minister wrenched himself free, and sprang along the trunk with wonderful agility.

'I'm intimated to preach at Cauldshaws this night, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might!"' he shouted.

He made his way up and up the slope of the fir tree, which, having little grip of the rock, dipped and swayed under his tread. Ebie Kirgan fell on his knees and prayed aloud. He had not prayed since his stepmother boxed his ears for getting into bed without saying his prayers twenty years ago. This had set him against it. But he prayed now, and to infinitely more purpose than his minister had recently done. But when the climber had reached the branchy top, and was striving to get a few feet farther, in order to clear the surging linn before he made his spring, Ebie rose to his feet, leaving his prayer unfinished. He sent forth an almost animal shriek of terror. The tree roots cracked like breaking cables and slowly gave way, an avalanche of stones plumped into the whirl, and the top of the fir crashed downwards on the rocks of the opposite bank.

'Oh, man, call on the name of the Lord,' cried Ebie Kirgan, the ragged preacher, at the top of his voice.

Then he saw something detach itself from the tree as it rebounded, and for a moment rise and fall black against the sunset. Then Ebie the Outcast fell on his face like a dead man.

* * * * *

In the white coverleted 'room' of the farmtown of Cauldshaws, a white-faced lad lay with his eyes closed, and a wet cloth on his brow. A large-boned, red-cheeked, motherly woman stole to and fro with a foot as light as a fairy. The sleeper stirred and tried to lift an unavailing hand to his head. The mistress of Cauldshaws stole to his bedside as he opened his eyes. She laid a restraining hand on him as he strove to rise.

'Let me up,' said the minister, 'I must away, for I'm intimated to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'My bonny man,' said the goodwife, tenderly, 'you'll preach best on the broad o' yer back this mony a day, an' when ye rise your best text will be, "He sent from above, He took me, and drew me out of many waters!"'

AN UNDERGRADUATE'S AUNT

By F. ANSTEY

_Author of "Vice Versa," etc._

Frederick Flushington belonged to a small college, and in doing so conferred upon it one of the few distinctions it could boast--namely, that of possessing the very bashfulest man in the whole university. But his college did not treat him with any excess of adulation on that account, probably from a prudent fear of rubbing the bloom off his modesty; they allowed him to blush unseen--which was the condition in which he preferred to blush.

He felt himself oppressed by a paucity of ideas and a difficulty in knowing which way to look in the presence of his fellow-men, which made him never so happy as when he had fastened his outer door and secured himself from all possibility of intrusion; though it was almost an unnecessary precaution, for nobody ever thought of coming to see Flushington.

In appearance he was a man of middle height, with a long scraggy neck and a large head, which gave him the air of being much shorter than he really was; he had little, weak eyes, a nose and mouth of no particular shape, and very smooth hair of no definite color. He had a timid, deprecating air, which seemed due to the consciousness that he was an uninteresting anomaly, and he certainly was as impervious to the ordinary influence of his surroundings as any undergraduate well could be. He lived a colorless, aimless life in his little rooms under the roof, reading every morning from nine till two with a superstitiously mechanical regularity, though very often his books completely failed to convey any ideas whatever to his brain, which was not a particularly powerful organ.

If the afternoon was fine he generally sought out his one friend, who was a few degrees less shy than himself, and they took a monosyllabic walk together; or if it was wet, he read the papers at the Union, and in the evening after hall he studied "general literature" (a graceful term for novels) or laboriously spelt out a sonata upon his piano--a habit which did not increase his popularity.

Fortunately for Flushington, he had no gyp, or his life might have been made a positive burden to him, and with his bedmaker he was rather a favorite as "a gentleman what gave no trouble"--meaning that, when he observed his sherry unaccountably sinking, like the water in a lock when the sluices are up, Flushington was too delicate to refer to the phenomenon.

He was sitting one afternoon over his modest lunch of bread and butter, potted meat and lemonade, when all at once he heard a sound of unusual voices and a strange flutter of dresses coming up the winding stone staircase outside, and was instantly seized with a cold dread.

There was no particular reason for being alarmed, although there were certainly ladies mounting the steps. Probably they were friends of the man opposite, who was always having his people up; but still Flushington had that odd presentiment which nervous people have sometimes that something unpleasant is on its way to them, and he half rose from his chair to shut his outer oak.

It was too late; the dresses were rustling now in his very passage; there was a pause, a few faint, smothered laughs and little feminine coughs--then two taps at the door.

"Come in," cried Flushington, faintly; he wished he had been reading anything but the work by M. Zola, which was propped up in front of him. It is your mild man, who frequently has a taste for seeing the less reputable side of life in this second-hand way, and Flushington would toil manfully through the voluminous pages, hunting up every third word in the dictionary; with a sense of injury when, as was often the case, it was not to be found. Still, there was a sort of intellectual orgie about it which had strong fascinations for him, while he knew enough of the language to be aware when the incidents approached the improper, though he was not always able to see quite clearly in what this impropriety consisted.

The door opened, and his heart seemed to stop, and all the blood rushed violently to his head as a large lady came sweeping in, her face rippling with a broad smile of affection.

She horrified Flushington, who knew nobody with the least claim to smile at him so expansively as that; he drank lemonade to conceal his confusion.

"You know me, my dear Fred?" she said, easily. "Of course not--how should you? I'm--for goodness sake, my dear boy, don't look so terribly frightened! I'm your aunt--your aunt Amelia, come over from Australia!"

The shock was a severe one to Flushington, who had not even known he possessed such a relative; he could only say, "Oh?" which he felt even then was scarcely a warm greeting to give an aunt from the Antipodes.

"Oh, but," she added, cheerily, "that's not all; I've another surprise for you: the dear girls would insist on coming up, too, to see their grand college cousin; they're just outside. I'll call them in--shall I?"

In another second Flushington's small room was overrun by a horde of female relatives, while he looked on gasping.

They were pretty girls, too, many of them; but that was all the more dreadful to him: he did not mind the plainer ones half so much; a combination of beauty and intellect reduced him to a condition of absolute imbecility.

He was once caught and introduced to a charming young lady from Newnham, and all he could do was to back feebly into a corner and murmur "Thank you," repeatedly.

He was very little better than that then as his aunt singled out one girl after another. "We won't have any formal nonsense between cousins," she said; "you know them all by name already, I dare say. This is Milly; that's Jane; here's Flora, and Kitty, and Margaret; and that's my little Thomasina over there by the book-case."

Poor Flushington ducked blindly in the direction of each, and then to them all collectively: he had not presence of mind to offer them chairs or cake, or anything; and besides, there was not nearly enough of anything for all of them.

Meanwhile, his aunt had spread herself comfortably out in his armchair, and was untying her bonnet-strings and beaming at him until he was ready to expire with confusion. "I do think," she observed at last, "that when an old aunt all the way from Australia takes the trouble to come and see you like this, you might spare her just one kiss!"

Flushington dared not refuse; he tottered up and kissed her somewhere about the face, after which he did not know which way to look, he was so terribly afraid that he might have to go through the same ceremony with his cousins, which he simply could not have survived.

Happily for him, they did not appear to expect it and he balanced a chair on its hind legs and, resting one knee upon it, waited patiently for them to begin a conversation; he could not have uttered a single word.

The aunt came to his rescue: "You don't ask after your Uncle Samuel, who used to send you the beetles?" she said, reprovingly.

"No," said Flushington, who had forgotten Uncle Samuel and his beetles, too; "no, how is Uncle Samuel--quite well, I hope?"

"Only tolerably so, thank you, Fred; you see, he never got over his great loss."

"No," said Flushington desperately, "of course not; it was a--a large sum of money to lose at once."

"I was not referring to money," said she, with a slight touch of stoniness in her manner; "I was alluding to the death of your Cousin John."

Flushington had felt himself getting on rather well just before that, but this awkward mistake--for he could not recollect having heard of Cousin John before--threw him off his balance again; he collapsed into silence once more, inwardly resolving to be lured into no more questions concerning relatives.

His ignorance seemed to have aroused pathetic sentiments in his aunt. "I ought to have known," she said, shaking her head, "they'd soon forget us in the old country; here's my own sister's son, and he doesn't remember his cousin's death! Well, well, now we're here, we must see if we can't know one another a little better. Fred, you must take the girls and me everywhere and show us everything, like a good nephew, you know."

Flushington had a horrible mental vision of himself careering about all Cambridge, followed by a long procession of female relatives--a fearful possibility to so shy a man. "Shall you be here long?" he asked.

"Only a week or so; we're at the 'Bull,' very near you, you see; and I'm afraid you think us very bold beggars, Fred, but we're going to ask you to give us something to eat. I've set my heart, so have the girls (haven't you, dears?), on lunching once with a college student in his own room."

"There's nothing so extraordinary in it, I assure you," protested Flushington, "and--and I'm afraid there's very little for you to eat. The kitchen and buttery are closed" (he said this at a venture, as he felt absolutely unequal to facing the college cook and ordering lunch from that tremendous personage; he would rather order it from his own tutor, even). "But, if you don't mind potted ham, there's a little at the bottom of this tin, and there's some bread and an inch of butter, and marmalade, and a few biscuits. And there was some sherry this morning."

The girls all professed themselves very hungry and contented with anything; so they sat around the table, and poor Flushington served out meagre rations of all the provisions he could find, even to his figs and French plums; but there was not nearly enough to go round, and they lunched with evident disillusionment, thinking that the college luxury of which they had heard so much had been greatly exaggerated.

During luncheon the aunt began to study Flushington's features attentively. "There's a strong look of poor, dear Simon about him when he smiles," she said, looking at him through her gold double glasses. "There, did you catch it, girls? Just his mother's profile (turn your face a leetle more towards the window, so as to get the light on your nose). Don't you see the likeness to your aunt's portrait, girls?"

And Flushington had to sit still with all the girls' charming eyes fixed critically upon his crimson countenance; he longed to be able to slide down under the table and evade them, but of course he was obliged to remain above.

"He's got dear Caroline's nose!" the aunt went on triumphantly; and the cousins agreed that he certainly had Caroline's nose, which made Flushington feel vaguely that he ought at least to offer to return it.

Presently one of the girls whispered to her mother, who laughed indulgently. "What do you think this silly child wants me to ask you now, Fred?" she said. "She says she would so like to see what you look like with your college cap and gown on. Will you put them on, just to please her?"

So Flushington had to put them on and walk slowly up and down the room in them, feeling all the time what a dismal spectacle he was making of himself, while the girls were plainly disappointed, and remarked that somehow they had thought the academical costume more becoming.

Then began a hotly-maintained catechism upon his studies, his amusements, his friends and his mode of life generally, which he met with uneasy shiftings and short, timid answers that they did not appear to think altogether satisfactory.

Indeed, the aunt, who by this time felt the potted ham beginning to disagree with her, asked him, with something of severity in her tone, whether he went to church regularly; and he said that he didn't go to church, but was always regular at chapel.

On this she observed coldly that she was sorry to hear her nephew was a Dissenter; and Flushington was much too shy to attempt to explain the misunderstanding; he sat quiet and felt miserable, while there was another uncomfortable pause.

The cousins were whispering together and laughing over little private jokes, and he, after the manner of sensitive men, of course imagined they were laughing at him--and perhaps he was not very far wrong on this occasion. So he was growing hotter and hotter every second, inwardly cursing his whole race and wishing that his father had been a foundling--when there came another tap at the door.

"Why, that must be poor old Sophy!" said his aunt. "Fred, you remember old Sophy--no, you can't; you were only a baby when she came to live with us, but she'll remember you. She begged so hard to be taken, and so we told her she might come on here slowly after us."

And then an old person in a black bonnet came feebly in, and was considerably affected when she saw Flushington. "To think," she quavered, "to think as my dim old eyes should see the child I've nursed on my lap growed out into a college gentleman!" And she hugged Flushington and wept on his shoulder till he was almost cataleptic with confusion.

But as she grew calmer she became more critical; she confessed to a certain feeling of disappointment with Flushington; he had not filled out, she said, "so fine as he'd promised to fill out." And when she asked if he recollected how he wouldn't be washed unless they put his little wooden horse on the washstand, and what a business it was to make him swallow his castor-oil, it made Flushington feel like a fool.

This was quite bad enough, but at last the girls began to go round his rooms, exclaiming at everything, admiring his pipe and umbrella racks, his buffalo horns and his quaint wooden kettle-holder, until they happened to come upon his French novel; and, being unsophisticated colonial girls with a healthy ignorance of such literature, they wanted Flushington to tell them what it was all about.

His presence of mind had gone long before, and this demand threw him into a violent perspiration; he could not invent, and he was painfully racking his brains to find some portion of the tale which would bear repetition--when there was another knock at the door.

At this Flushington was perfectly dumb with horror; he prepared himself blankly for another aunt with a fresh relay of female cousins, or more old family servants who had washed him in his infancy, and he sat there cowering.

But when the door opened a tall, fair-haired, good-looking young fellow, who from his costume had evidently just come up from the tennis-court, came bursting in impulsively.

"Oh, I say!" he began, "have you heard--have you seen? Oh, beg pardon, didn't see, you know!" he added, as he noticed the extraordinary fact that Flushington had people up.

"Oh, let me introduce you," said Flushington, with a vague idea that this was the proper thing to do. "Mr. Lushington, Mrs.--no, I don't know her name--my aunt--my cousins."

The young man, who had just been about to retire, bowed and stared with a sudden surprise. "Do you know," he said slowly to the other, "I rather think that's my aunt!"

"I--I'm afraid not," whispered Flushington; "she seems quite sure she's mine."

"Well, I've got an aunt and cousins I've never seen before coming up to-day," said the new-comer, "and yours is uncommonly like the portrait of mine."

"If they belong to you, do take them away!" said Flushington feebly; "I don't think I can keep up much longer."

"What are you whispering about, Fred?" cried the aunt. "Is it something we are not to know?"

"He says he thinks there's been a mistake, and you're not my aunt," explained Flushington.

"Oh, does he?" she said, drawing herself up indignantly. "And what does he know about it? I didn't catch his name--who is he?"

"Fred Lushington," he said; "that's my name."

"And who are you, if he's Fred Lushington?" she inquired, turning upon the unfortunate owner of the rooms.

"I'm Frederick Flushington," he stammered; "I'm sorry--but I can't help it!"

"Then you're not my nephew at all, sir!" cried the aunt.

"Thank you very much," said Flushington gratefully.