Chapter XVI: My Father's Love Story (5)

Dr. Campbell was a queer, dusty, smoky old man who, when seen abroad, sat low in a kind of basket-phaeton--as it were, on the small of his back, and visited his patients in a kind of dreamy exaltation which many put down to drink. They were wrong. The doctor was something much harder to cure--an habitual opium-eater. Somehow Dr. Campbell had never taken the position in the Glenkells to which his abilities entitled him. He came from the North, and that was against him. More than that, he sent in his bills promptly, and saw that they were settled. Worst of all, he took no interest in imaginary diseases.

He openly laughed at calomel--which in the Glenkells was looked upon as a kind of blaspheming of the Trinity. But he was a duly certified graduate of Edinburgh like myself. His name was on the Medical List, and only his unfortunate habit and the dreamy idleness engendered by it kept him from making a very considerable name for himself in his profession. I found, for instance, after his death (he left his books, papers, and instruments to me) that he had actually anticipated in his vague theoretical way some of the most applauded discoveries of more recent times, and that he was well versed in all the foreign literature of such subjects as interested him.

But Dr. Ignatius Campbell with his great pipe, his low-crowned hat, his seedy black clothes with the fluff sticking here and there upon them, was not the man to impress the Glenkells. For in Galloway the minister may go about in fishing-boots, shooting-jacket, and deerstalker if he will--nobody thinks the worse of him for it. The lawyer may look as if he bought his clothes from a slopshop. The country gentleman may wear a suit of tweeds for ten years, till the leather gun-patch on the shoulder threatens to pervade the whole man, back and front. But the doctor, if he would be successful, must perforce dress strictly by rule. Sunday and Saturday he must go buttoned up in his well-fitting surtout. His hat must be glossy, no matter what the weather may be (for myself I always kept a spare one in the box of the gig), and the whole man upon entering a sick-room must bring with him the fragrance of clean linen, good clothes, and personal exactitude. And though naturally a little rebellious at first, I hereby subscribe to the Galloway view of the case.

Nance converted me.

"Is that a clean collar?--no, sir, you don't! Take it off this instant! I think this tie will suit you better. It is a dull day and something light becomes you. I have ironed your other hat. See that you put it on! Let me look at your cuffs. Mind that you turn down your trousers before you come in sight of the house. John" (this to my driver), "see that Dr. McQuhirr turns down his trousers and puts on his hat right side first. There is a dint at the back that I cannot quite get out!"

It is no wonder that I succeeded in Galloway, having such a--I mean being endowed with such professional talents!

I had not, however, been long in Glenkells before I found out that there was another medical adviser on the scene--a kind of Brownie who did Dr. Campbell's work while he slept or dreamed his life away over his pipe and his coloured diagrams, whose very name was never mentioned, to me at least--perhaps from some idea that as an orthodox professional man I might resent the Brownie's intrusion.

But matters came to a head one day when I found the bottle of medicine I had sent up from the Cairn Edward apothecary standing untouched on the mantelpiece, while another and wholly unlicensed phial stood at the bed-head with a glass beside it, in which lingered a few drops of something which I knew well that I had not prescribed.

"What is this?" I demanded. "Why have you not administered the medicine I sent you?"

The woman put her apron to her lips in some embarrassment.

"Oh, doctor--ye see the way o't was this," she said. "Jeems was ta'en that bad in the nicht that I had to caa' in--a neebour o' oors--an' he brocht this wi' him."

I lifted my hat.

"Good morning, Mrs. Landsborough," I said, with immense dignity; "I am sorry that I must retire from the case. It is impossible for me to go on if you disregard my instructions in that manner. No doubt Dr. Campbell----"

The good woman lifted up her hands in amazement and appeal. Even Jeems turned on his bed in quick alarm.

"'Deed, Dr. Ma Whurr!" she cried, "it wasna Dr. Cawmell ava. We wadna think on sic a thing----"

"Your faither's son will never gang oot o' a MacLandsborough's hoose in anger, surely?" said Jeems, making the final Galloway appeal to the clan spirit.

This was conjuring with a name I could not disavow, and strongly against my first intentions I continued to attend the case. Jeems got rapidly better, and my bottle diminished steadily day by day. But whether it went down Jeems's throat or mended the health of the back of the grate, it was better, perhaps, that I did not inquire too closely. On my way home I considered my own prescription, and recalled the ingredients which by taste and smell I discovered in the intruding bottle.

"I am not sure but what--well, it might have been better. I wonder who the man is?" This was as much as I could be brought to admit in those days, even to myself. The doctor, who in the first years of his practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is not fit to be trusted--not so much as with the administering of one Beecham's pill.

Yet I own the matter troubled me. I had a rival who--no, he did not understand more of the case than myself. But all the same, I wanted to find him out--in the interests of the Medical Register.

But the riddle was resolved one day about a week afterwards in a rather remarkable manner. I was proceeding up the long main street of the Clachan, looking for a house in which Dr. Campbell (with whom of late I had grown strangely intimate) had told me that he would be found at a certain hour.

As I went I noticed, what I had never seen before, a little house, white and clean without, the creepers clambering all over it. This agreed, so far, with the doctor's description. I turned aside and went up two or three carefully reddened steps. A brass knocker blinked in the evening sunshine. I lifted it and knocked.

"Is the doctor in?" I said to a tall gaunt woman who opened the door an inch or two. As it was I could only see a lenticular section of her person, so that in describing her I draw upon later impressions. She hesitated a second or two, and then, rather grudgingly as I thought, opened the door.

"Come in," she said.

With no more greeting than that she ushered me into a small room crowded with books and apparatus. The table held a curious microscope, evidently home-made in most of its fittings. Pieces of mechanism, the purpose of which I could not even guess, were strewn about the floor. Castings were gripped angle-wise in vices, and at the end of an ordinary carpenter's bench stood a small blacksmith's furnace, with bellows and anvil all complete. In the recess, half hidden by a screen, I could catch a glimpse of a lathe. There was no carpet on the floor.

The door opened and a small spare man stood before me, the deprecation of an offending dog in his beautiful brown eyes. He did not speak or offer to shake hands, but only stood shyly looking up at me. It was some time before I could find words. Nance often tells me that I need a push behind to enable me to take the lead in any conversation--except with herself, that is, and then I never get a chance.

"I beg your pardon, doctor," said I, "I was seeking my friend Campbell. I did not know you had settled amongst us, or I should have been to call on you before this."

I held out my hand cordially, for the man appealed to me somehow. But he did not seem to notice it.

"No, not 'doctor,'" he said, speaking in a quick agitated way. "Mister--Roger is my name."

"I beg your pardon, I am sure," I stammered; "in that case I do not know how to excuse my intrusion. I asked for the doctor, meaning Dr. Campbell, and your servant----"

"My mother, sir!"

There was pride as well as challenge in the brown eyes now, and I found myself liking the young man better than ever.

"I beg your pardon--Mrs. Roger showed me in by mistake, I fear."

"It was no mistake--I am sometimes called so in this place, though not by my own will; I have no right to the title!"

"Well," I said, as I looked round the room. "won't you shake hands with me? You don't know what a pleasure it is to meet a man of science, as it is evident you are, here in these forlorn uplands!"

"Will you pardon me a moment till I inform you exactly of my status?" he said, "and when you clearly understand, if you still wish to shake my hand--well, with all my heart."

He stood silent a moment, and then, suddenly recollecting himself, "Will you not sit down?" he said. "Pray forgive my discourtesy."

I sat down, displacing as I did so a box of tools which had been planted on the green rep of the easy-chair cover.

"You may well be astonished that I wish to speak to you, Dr. McQuhirr," he said, beginning restlessly to pace the room, mechanically avoiding the various obstacles on the floor as he did so; "but I have long wished to put myself right with a member of the profession, and now that chance has thrown us together, I feel that I must speak----"

"But there is Dr. Campbell--surely it cannot be that two men of such kindred tastes, in a small place like this, should not know each other!"

He flushed painfully, and turning to a stand near the window, played with the flywheel of a small model, turning it back and forward with his finger.

"Dr. Campbell is the victim of a most unfortunate prejudice," he murmured softly, and for a space said no more. It was so still in the room that through the quiet I could hear the tall eight-day clock ticking half-way up the stairs.

He resumed his narrative and his pacing to and fro at the same moment.

"I am," he went on, "at heart of your profession. I have attended all the classes and earned the encomiums of my professors in the hospitals. I stood fairly well in the earlier written examinations, but at my first oral I broke down completely--a kind of aphasia came over me. My brain reeled, a dreadful shuddering took hold of my soul, and I fell into a dead faint. For months they feared for my reason, and though ultimately I recovered and completed my course of study, I was never able to sit down at an examination-table again. After my father's death my mother settled here, and gradually it has come about that in any emergency I have been asked to visit and prescribe for a patient. I believe the poor people call me 'doctor' among themselves, but I have never either countenanced the title, or on any occasion failed to rebuke the user. Neither have I ever accepted fee or reward, whether for advice or medicine!"

I held out my hand.

"I care not a brass farthing about professional etiquette," said I; "it is my opinion that you are doing a noble work. And I know of one case, at least, where your diagnosis was better than mine!"

More I could not say. He flushed redly and took my hand, shaking it warmly. Then all at once he dropped the somewhat strained elevation of manner in which he had told his story, and began to speak with the innocent confidence and unreserve of a child. He was obviously much pleased at my inferred compliment.

"Ah!" he said, "I know what you mean. But then, you see, you did not know James MacLandsborough's life history. He was my father's gardener. I knew his record and the record of his father before him. It was nothing but an old complaint, for which I had treated him over and over again--working, that is, on the basis of a recent chill. In your place and with your data I should have done what you did. In fact, I admired your treatment greatly."

We talked a long while, so long, indeed, that I forgot all about Dr. Campbell, and it was dusk before I found myself at Mr. Roger's door saying "Good-night."

"If I might venture to say so," he stammered, holding my hand a moment in his quick nervous grasp, "I would advise you not to mention your visit here to your friend, Dr. Campbell."

"I am afraid I must," I replied; "I had an appointment with him which I have unfortunately forgotten in the interest of our talk!"

"Then I much fear that it is not 'Good-night' but 'Good-bye' between us!" he murmured sadly, and went within.

And even as he had prophesied so it was.

* * * * *

"Sir," said Dr. Campbell, "I shall be sorry to lose your society, but you must choose between that house and mine. I have special and family reasons why I cannot be intimate with any visitor to Mr.----ah, Roger!"

I had found the doctor lying on his couch, as was his custom, his curious Oriental tray beside him, and an acrid tang in the air; but at my first words about my visit he shook off his dreamy abstraction and sat up.

"To tell you the truth, Campbell," I said, as calmly as possible, for, of course, I could not allow any one (except Nance) to dictate to me, "I was singularly interested in the young man, and--he told his tale, as it seemed to me, quite frankly. If I am not to call upon him, I must ask you as to your reasons for a request so singular."

"It is not a request, McQuhirr," said the doctor, passing his hand across his brow as if to clear away moisture. "It is only a little information I give you for your guidance. If you wish to visit this young man--well, I am deeply grieved, but I cannot receive you here, or have any intercourse with you professionally."

"That is saying too much or too little," I replied; "you must tell me your reasons."

Then he hesitated, looking from side to side in a semi-dazed way.

"I would rather not--they are family reasons!" he stammered, as he spoke.

"There is such a thing as the seal of the profession," I reminded him.

"Well," he said at last, "I will tell you. That young man is my nephew, the son of my elder brother. His name is not Roger, but Roger Campbell. His mother was my poor brother's housekeeper. He married her some time after his first wife's death. This boy was their child, and, like a cuckoo in the nest, he tried from the first to oust his elder brother--the child of the dead woman. Indeed, but for my interference his mother and he would have done it between them; for my brother was latterly wholly in their hands.

"Finally this lad went to college, and coming here one summer after the breaking up of the classes he must needs fall in love with Ailie--my daughter, that is. What?--You never knew that I had a daughter! Ah, Alec, I was not always the man you see me--I too have had ambitions. But after--well, what use is there to speak of it? At any rate, young Roger Campbell fell in love with my Ailie, and she, I suppose, liked it well enough, but like a sensible girl gave him no immediate answer. Then after that came his half-brother, who was heir to the little property on Loch Aweside, and he too fell in love with Ailie. There was no girl like her in all the Glen of Kells; and as for him, he was a tall, handsome, fair lad, not crowled and misshapen like this one. Well, Ailie and he fell in love, and then Roger's mother moved heaven and earth to disinherit Archie. It was for this cause that I went up to Inchtaggart and watched my brother during the last weeks of his life. The woman fought like a wild cat for her son, but I and Archie watched in turns. It was I who found the will by which Archie inherited all. In three months Ailie and he were married. Roger Campbell failed in his examinations the same year, and the next mother and son came back here to her native village to live on their savings.

"The mere choice of this place showed their spite against me, but that is not the worst. Ever since that day they have devoted themselves to discrediting me in my profession. And you, who know these people, know to what an extent they have succeeded. My practice has shrunk to nothing--almost. Even the patients I have, when they do call me in, send secretly for my enemy before my feet are cold off the doorstep. Yet I have no redress, for I have never been able to bring a case of taking fees home to him. Ah! if only I could!"

Dr. Ignatius fell back exhausted, for towards the last he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the casements and set the prisms of the little old chandelier a-tingling.

"And that is why I say you must choose between us," he said. "Is it not enough? Have I asked too much?"

"It is enough for me," I said; "I will do as you wish!"

Now I did not see anything in his story very much against the young man; but, after all, the lad was nothing to me, and I had known Dr. Ignatius a long time.

So I asked him how it came that the young man was called Roger and not Campbell.

"Oh!" he said, "that is the one piece of decent feeling he has shown in the whole affair. He called himself Campbell Roger when he came here. You are the only person who knows that he is my nephew."

* * * * *

I was glad afterwards that I had made him the promise he asked for. I never saw him in life again. Dr. Ignatius Campbell died two days after, being found dead in bed with his tiny pipe clutched in his hand. I went up that same day, and in conjunction with Dr. John Thoburn Brown of Drumfern, found that our colleague had long suffered from an acute form of heart disease, and that it was wonderful how he had survived so long. The body was lying at the time in the room where he died. The maid-servant had gone to stay with relatives in the village, not being willing to remain all night in the house alone; for which, all things considered, I did not greatly blame her. I asked if there was anything I could do, but was informed that all arrangements for the funeral had been made. It was to be on the Friday, two days after.

I drove up the glen early that morning, and found a tall young man in the house, opening drawers and rummaging among papers. I understood at once that this was Mr. Archibald Campbell of Inchtaggart. I greeted him by that name, and he responded heartily enough.

"You are Dr. McQuhirr," he said; "my father-in-law often spoke about you and how kind you were to him. You know that he has left all his books, papers, and scientific apparatus to you?"

"I did not know," I said; "that is as unexpected as it is undeserved, and I hope you will act precisely as if such a bequest had not existed. You must take all that either you or your wife would care to possess."

"Oh!" he cried lightly, "Ailie could not come. She has been ill lately, and as for me, I would not touch one of the beastly things with a ten-foot pole. Come into the garden and have a smoke."

There Mr. Archibald Campbell told me that he had arranged for a sale of the doctor's house and all his effects as soon as possible.

"Better to have it over," he said, "so you had as well bring up a conveyance and cart off all the scientific rubbish you care about. I want all settled up and done with within the month."

He departed the night after the funeral, leaving the funeral expenses unpaid. He was a hasty, though well-meaning young man, and no doubt he forgot. When I came up on the Monday of the week following, I discovered that the account had been paid.

* * * * *

After I had made my selection of books and instruments, besides taking all the manuscripts (watched from room to room by the Drumfern lawyer's sharp eye), I strolled out, and my steps turned involuntarily towards the little house covered with creepers where I had seen the young man Roger. I felt that death had absolved me from my promise, and with a quick resolve I turned aside.

The same woman opened the door an inch or two. I lifted my hat and asked if her son was in. She held the door open for me without speaking a word and ushered me into the model-strewn little parlour. I cast my eyes about. On the table lay the discharged account for the funeral expenses of Dr. Ignatius Campbell!

In another moment the door opened and the young man came in, paler than before, and with the slight halt in his gait exaggerated.

"How do you do, Mr. Campbell?" I said quietly, holding out my hand.

He gave back a step, almost as if I had struck him. Then he smiled wanly. "Ah! he told you. I expected he would; and yet you have come?" He spoke slowly, the words coming in jerks.

I held out my hand and said heartily: "Of course I came."

I did not think it necessary to tell him anything about my agreement with Dr. Campbell. He, on his part, had quietly possessed himself of John Ewart's bill for the funeral expenses. We had a long talk, and I stayed so late that Nance had begun to get anxious about me before I arrived home. But not one word, either in justification of himself or of accusation against his uncle, did he utter, though he must have known well enough what his uncle had said of him.

Nor was it till a couple of months afterwards that Roger Campbell adverted again to the subject. I had been to the churchyard to look at the headstone which had been erected, as I knew, at his expense. He had asked me to write the inscription for it, and I had done so.

Coming home, he had to stop several times on the hill to take breath. When we got to the door he said: "I have but one thing to pray for now, Dr. McQuhirr, and that is that I may outlive my mother. Give me your best skill and help me to do that."

His prayer was answered. He lived just two days after his mother. And I was with him most of the time, while Nance stayed with my people at Drumquhat. It was a beautiful Sabbath evening, and the kirk folk were just coming home. Most who suffer from his particular form of phthisis imagine themselves to be getting better to the very last, but he knew too much to have any illusions. I had put the pillows behind him, and he was sitting up making kindly comment on the people as they passed by, Bible in hand. He stopped suddenly and looked at me.

"Doctor," he said, "what my uncle told you about me never made any difference to you?"

"No," I said, rather shamefacedly, "no difference at all!"

"No," he went on, meditatively, "no difference. Well, I want you to burn two documents for me, lest they fall into the wrong hands--as they might before these good folk go back kirkward again."

He directed me with his finger, at the same time handing me a key he wore upon his watch-chain.

"Even my poor mother up there," he said, pointing to the room above, "has never set eyes on what I am going to show you. It is weak of me; I ought not to do it, doctor, but I will not deny that it is some comfort to set myselt right with one human soul before I go."

I took out of a little drawer in a bureau a miniature, a bundle of letters, and a broadly folded legal-looking document.

I offered them to Roger, but he waved them away.

"I do not want to look upon them--they are here!" He touched his forehead. "And one of them is here!" He laid his hand on his heart with that freedom of gesture which often comes to the dying, especially to those who have repressed themselves all their lives.

I looked down at the miniature and saw the picture of a girl, very pretty, beautiful indeed, but with that width between the eyes which, in fair women, gives a double look.

"Ailie, my brother's wife!" he said, in answer to my glance. "These are her letters. Open them one by one and burn them."

I did as he bade me, throwing my eyes out of focus so that I might not read a word. But out of one fluttered a pressed flower. It was fixed on a card with a little lock of yellow hair arranged about it for a frame, fresh and crisp. And as I picked it up I could not help catching the prettily printed words:

"TO DARLING ROGER, FROM HIS OWN AILIE."

There was also a date.

"Let me look at that!" he said quickly. I gave it to him. He looked at the flower--a quick painful glance, but as he handed me back the card he laughed a little.

"It is a 'Forget-me-not,'" he said. Then in a musing tone he added: "_Well, Ailie, I never have!_"

So one by one the letters were burnt up, till only a black pile of ashes remained, in ludicrous contrast to the closely packed bundle I had taken from the drawer.

"Now burn the ribbon that kept them together, and look at the other paper."

I unfolded it. It was a will in holograph, the characters clear and strong, signed by Archibald Ruthven Campbell, of Inchtaggart, Argyleshire, devising all his estate and property to his son Roger, with only a bequest in money to his elder son!

I was dazed as I looked through it, and my lips framed a question. The young man smiled.

"My father's last will," he said, "dated a month before his death. She never knew it." (Again he indicated the upper room where his mother's body lay.) "_They_ never knew it." (He looked at the girl's picture as it smiled up from the table where I had laid it.) "My brother Archie succeeded on a will older by twenty years. But when I lost Ailie, I lost all. Why should she marry a failure? Besides, I truly believe that she loves my brother, at least as well as ever she loved me. It is her nature. That she is infinitely happier with him, I know."

"Then you were the heir all the time and never told it--not to any one!" I cried, getting up on my feet. He motioned me towards the grate again.

"Burn it," he said, "I have had a moment of weakness. It is over. I ought to have been consistent and not told even you. No, let the picture lie. I think it does me good. God bless you, Alec! Now, good-night; go home to your Nance."

* * * * *

He died the next forenoon while I was still on my rounds. And when I went in to look at him, the picture had disappeared. I questioned the old crone who had watched his last moments and afterwards prepared him for burial.

"He had something in his hand," she answered, "but I couldna steer it. His fingers grippit it like a smith's vice."

I looked, and there from between the clenched fingers of the dead right hand the eyes of Ailie Campbell smiled out at me--blue and false as her own Forget-me-not.

*LOWE'S SEAT*

Elspeth did not mean to go to Lowe's Seat. She had indeed no business there. For she was the minister's daughter, and at this time of the day ought to have been visiting the old wives in the white-washed "Clachan" on the other side of the river, showing them how to render their patchwork quilts less hideous, compassionating them on their sons' ungrateful silence (letters arrive so seldom from the "States"). Yet here was Elspeth Stuart under the waving boughs, seated upon the soft grassy turf, and employed in nothing more utilitarian than picking a gowan asunder petal by petal. It was the middle of an August afternoon, and as hot as it ever is in Scotland.

Why then had Elspeth gone to Lowe's Seat? It seemed a mystery. It was to the full as pleasant on the side of the river where dwelt her father, where complained her maiden aunt, and where after their kind racketed and stormed her roving vagabond bird-nesting brothers. On the Picts' Mound beside the kirk (an ancient Moothill, so they say, upon which justice of the rudest and readiest was of old dispensed) there were trees and green depths of shade. She might have stayed and read there--the "Antiquary" perhaps, or "Joseph Andrews," or her first favourite "Emma," all through the long sweet drowsing summer's afternoon. But somehow up at Lowe's Seat, the leaves of the wood laughed to a different tune and the Airds woods were dearer than all sweet Kenside.

So in spite of all Elspeth Stuart had crossed in her father's own skiff, which he used for his longer ministerial excursions "up the water," and her brothers Frank and Sandy for perch-fishing and laying their "ged" lines. There was indeed a certain puddock in a high state of decomposition in a locker which sadly troubled Elspeth as she bent to the oars. And now she was at Lowe's Seat.

It is strange to what the love of poetry will drive a girl. Elspeth tossed back the fair curls which a light wind persisted in flicking ticklingly over her brow. With a coquettish, blushful, half-indignant gesture she thrust them back with her hand, as if they ought to have known better than to intrude upon a purpose so serious as hers in coming to Lowe's Seat.

"Here was the place," she murmured to herself, explanatorily, "where the poor boy hid himself to write his poem--a hundred years ago! Was it really a hundred years ago?"

She looked about her, and the wind whispered and rustled and laughed a little down among the elms and the hazels, while out towards the river and on a level with her face the silver birches shook their plumes daintily as a pretty girl her wandering tresses, bending saucily toward the water as they did so. Then Elspeth said the first two verses of "Mary's Dream" over to herself. The poem was a favourite with her father, a hard stern man with a sentimental base, as is indeed very common in Scotland.

"The moon had climbed the highest hill
That rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree.

When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea,
There soft and low a voice was heard,
Saying, 'Mary, weep no more for me!'"

Elspeth was young and she was not critical. Lowe's simple and to the modern mind somewhat obvious verse, seemed to her to contain the essence of truth and feeling. But on the other hand she looked adorable as she said them. For, strangely enough, a woman's critical judgment is generally in inverse ratio to her personal attractions--though doubtless there are exceptions to the rule.

As has been said, she did not go to Lowe's Seat for any particular purpose. She said so to herself as many as ten times while she was crossing in the skiff, and at least as often when she was pulling herself up the steep braeface by the supple hazels and more stubborn young oaks.

So Elspeth Stuart continued to hum a vagrant tune, more than half of the bars wholly silent, and the rest sometimes loud and sometimes soft, as she glanced downwards out of her green garret high among the leaves.

More than once she grew restive and pattered impatiently with her fingers on her lap as if expecting some one who did not come. Only occasionally she looked down towards the river. Indeed, she permitted her eyes to rove in every direction except immediately beneath her, where through a mist of leaves she could see the Dee kissing murmuringly the rushes on its marge.

A pretty girl--yes, surely. More than that, one winsome with the wilful brightness which takes men more than beauty. And being withal only twenty years of her age, it may well be believed that Elspeth Stuart, the only daughter of the parish minister of Dullarg, did not move far without drawing the glances of men after her as a magnet attracts steel filings.

Yet a second marvel appeared beneath. There was a young man moving along by the water's edge and he did not look up. To all appearance Lowe's Seat might just as well not have existed for him, and its pretty occupant might have been reading Miss Austen under the pines of the Kirk Knowe on the opposite side of Dee Water.

Elspeth also appeared equally unconscious. Of course, how otherwise? She had plucked a spray of bracken and was peeling away the fronds, unravelling the tough fibres of the root and rubbing off the underleaf seeds, so that they showed red on her fingers like iron rust. Wondrous busy had our maid become all suddenly. But though she had not smiled when the youth came in sight, she pouted when he made as if he would pass by without seeing her. Which is a strange thing when you come to think of it, considering that she herself had apparently not observed him.

Suddenly, however, she sang out loudly, a strong ringing stave like a blackbird from the copse as the sun rises above the hills. Whereat the young man started as if he had been shot. Hitherto he had held a fishing-rod in his hand and seemed intent only on the stream. But at the sound of Elspeth's voice he whirled about, and catching a glimpse of bright apparel through the green leaves, he came straight up through the tangle with the rod in his hand. Even at that moment it did not escape Elspeth's eye that he held it awkwardly, like one little used to Galloway burn-sides. She meant to show him better by-and-by.

Having arrived, the surprise and mutual courtesies were simply overpowering. Elspeth had not dreamed--the merest impulse had led her--she had been reading Lowe's poem the night before. It was really the only completely sheltered place for miles, where one could muse in peace. He knew it was, did he not?

But we must introduce this young man. If he had possessed a card it would have said: "The Rev. Allan Syme, B.A."

He was the new minister of the Cameronian Kirk at Cairn Edward. He has just been "called," chiefly because the other two on the short leet had not been considered sufficiently "firm" in their views concerning an "Erastian Establishment," as at the Kirk on the Hill they called the Church of Scotland nationally provided for by the Revolution Settlement.

In his trial discourses, however, Mr. Syme had proved categorically that no good had ever come out of any state-supported Church, that the ministers of the present establishment were little better than priests of the Scarlet Woman who sitteth on the Seven Hills, and that all those who trusted in them were even as the moles and the bats, children of darkness and travellers on the smoothly macadamised highway to destruction.

Nevertheless, at that free stave of Elspeth's carol Allan Syme went up hill as fast as if he had never preached a sermon on the text, "And Elijah girded up his loins and ran before Ahab unto the entering in of Jezreel."

At half-past eleven by the clock the minister of the Cameronian Kirk sat down beside this daughter of an Erastian Establishment.

Have you heard the leaves of beech and birch laugh as they clash and rustle? That is how the wicked summer woods of Airds laughed that day about Lowe's Seat.

* * * * *

Half a mile down the river there is a ferry boat which at infrequent intervals pushes a flat duck's bill across Dee Water. It is wide enough to take a loaded cart of hay, and long enough to accommodate two young horses tail to tail and yet leave room for the statutory flourishing of heels.

Bess MacTaggart could take it across with any load upon it you pleased, pushing easily upon an iron lever. They use a wheel now, but it was much prettier in the old days when all for a penny you could watch Bess lift the toothed lever with a sharp movement of her shapely arm, wet and dripping from the chain, as it slowly dredged itself up from the river bed.

It was half-past four when, in reply to repeated hails, the boat left the Dullarg shore with a company of three men on board, and in addition the sort of person who is called a "single lady."

Two of the men stood together at one end of the ferry-boat, and after Bess had bidden one of them sharply to "get out of her road," she called him "Drows" to make it up, and asked him if he were going over to the lamb sale at Nether Airds.

"If it's the Lord's wull!" Drows replied, with solemnity.

Both he and his companion had commodious, clean-shaven "horse" faces, with an abundance of gray hair standing out in a straggling semi-circular aureole underneath the chin. Cameronian was stamped upon their faces with broad strong simplicity. The blue bonnet, already looking old-world among the universal "felts" common to most adult manhood--the deep serious eyes, as it were withdrawn under the penthouse of bushy brows, and looking upon all things (even lamb sales) as fleeting and transitory--the long upper lip and the mouth tightly compressed--these marked out John Allanson of Drows and Matthew Carment of Craigs as pillars of that Kirk which alone of all the fragments of Presbytery is senior to the Established Church of Scotland.

On the other side of the boat and somewhat apart stood Dr. Hector Stuart, gazing gloomily at the black water as it rippled and clappered under the broad lip of the ferry-boat. A proud man, a Highland gentleman of old family, was the minister of Dullarg. He kept his head erect, and for any notice he had taken of the Cameronian elders, they might just as well not have been on the boat at all. And in their turn the elders of the Cameronian Kirk compressed their lips more firmly and their eyes seemed deeper set in their heads when their glances fell on this pillar of Erastianism. For nowhere is the racial antipathy of north and south so strong as in Galloway. There, and there alone, the memory of the Highland Host has never died out, and every autumn when the hills glow red with heather from horizon to horizon verge, the story is told to Galloway childhood of how Lag and Clavers wasted the heritage of the Lord, and how from Ailsa to Solway all the west of Scotland is "flowered with the blood of the Martyrs."

The thin nervous woman kept close to the minister's elbow.

"I tell you I saw her cross the water, Hector," she was saying as Dr. Stuart looked ahead, scanning keenly the low sandy shores they were nearing.

"The boat is gone and she has not returned. It is a thing not proper for a young lady and a minister's daughter to be so long absent from home!"

"My daughter has been too well brought up to do aught that is improper!" said Dr. Stuart, with grave sententious dignity. "You need not pursue the subject, Mary!"

There was just enough likeness between them to stamp the pair as brother and sister. As the boat touched the edge of the sharply sloping shingle bank, the hinged gang-plank tilted itself up at a new angle. The passengers paid their pennies to Bess MacTaggart and stepped sedately on shore. The boat-house stands in a water-girt peninsula, the Ken being on one side broad and quiet, the Black Water on the other, sulky and turbulent. So that for half a mile there was but one road for this curiously assorted pair of pairs.

And as they approached them the woods of Airds laughed even more mockingly, with a ripple of tossing birch plumes like a woman when she is merry in the night and dares not laugh aloud. And the beeches responded with a dryish cackle that had something of irony in it. Listen and you will hear how it was the next time a beech-tree shakes out his leaves to dry the dew off them.

The two elders came to a quick turn of the road. There was a stile just beyond. A moment before a young man had overleaped it, and now he was holding up his hands encouragingly to a girl who smiled down upon him from above. It was a difficult stile. The dyke top was shaky. Two of the bottom steps; were missing altogether. All who have once been young know the kind of stile--verily, a place of infinite danger to the unwary.

So at least thought Elspeth Stuart, as for a long moment she stood daintying her skirts about her ankles on the perilous copestone, and drawing her breath a little short at the sight of the steep descent into the road.

The elders also stood still, and behind them the other pair came slowly up. And surely some wicked tricksome Puck laughed unseen among the beech leaves.

Elspeth Stuart had taken the young man's hand now. He was lifting her down. There--it was done. And--yes, you are right--something else happened--just what would have happened to you and me, twenty, thirty, or is it forty years ago?

Then with a clash and a rustle the beeches told the tale to the birches over all the wooded slopes of the hill of Airds.

* * * * *

"Elspeth!"

"Elspeth Stuart!"

"_Maister Syme!_"

The names came from four pairs of horrified lips as the parties to the above mentioned transaction fell swiftly asunder, with sudden stricken horror on their faces. The first cry came shrill and keen, and was accompanied by an out-throwing of feminine hands. The second fell sternly from the mouth of one who was at once a parent and a minister of the Establishment outraged in his tenderest feelings. But indubitably the elders had it. For one thing, they were two to one, and as they said for the second time with yet deeper gravity "_Maister Syme!_" it appeared at once that they, and only they, were able adequately to deal with the unprecedented situation. But the others did what they could.

Mistress Mary Stuart, the minister's maiden sister, flew forward with an eager cry, the "scraich" of a desperate hen when she is on the wrong side of the fence and sees the "daich" disappearing down a hundred hungry throats.

She clutched her niece by the arm.

"Come away this moment!" she cried, "do you know who this young man is?"

But Elspeth did not answer. She was looking at her father, Dr. Stuart, whose eyes were bent upon the young man. Very stern they were, the fierce sudden darkness of Celtic anger in them. But the young Cameronian minister knew that he had far worse to face than that, and met the frown of paternal severity with shame indeed mantling on his cheek and neck, but yet with a certain quiet of determination firming his heart within him.

"Sir," he said, "that of which you have been witness was no more than an accident--the fault of impulse and young blood. But I own I was carried away. I ask the young lady's pardon and yours. I should have spoken to you first, but now I will delay no longer. Sir, I love your daughter!"

Then came for the first time a slight smile upon the pale face of his fellow-culprit. She said in her heart, "Ah, Allan, if ye had spoken first to my father, feint a kiss would ye ever have gotten from Elspeth Stuart!"

But at the manful words of the young Cameronian the face of her father grew only the more stern, the two elders watching and biding their time by the roadside.

They knew that it would come before long.

At last after a long silence Dr. Stuart spoke.

"Sir," he said grimly, "I do not bandy words with a stranger upon the public highway. I myself have nothing to say to you. I forbid you ever again to speak to my daughter. Elspeth, follow me!"

And with no more than this he turned and stalked away. But his daughter also had the high Highland blood in her veins. She shook off with one large motion of her arm the stringy clutch of her aunt's fingers.

"Heed you not, Allan," she said, speaking very clearly, so that all might hear, "when ye want her, Elspeth Stuart will come the long road and the straight road to speak a word with you."

It was a bold avowal to make, and a moment before the girl had not meant to say anything of the kind. But they had taken the wrong way with her.

"Oh, unmaidenly--most unmaidenly!" cried her aunt, "come away--ye are mad this day, Elspeth Stuart--he has but a hunder a year of stipend, and may lose that ony day!"

But Elspeth did not answer. She was holding out her hand to Allan Syme. He bent quickly and kissed it. This young man had had a mother who taught him gracious ways, not at all in keeping with the staid manners of a son of the covenants.

* * * * *

"And now, sir," said John Allanson of Drows, turning grimly upon his minister, who stood watching Elspeth's girlish figure disappear round the curve of the green-edged track, "what have you to say to us?"

Then Allan Syme's pulses leaped quick and light, for he knew that of a surety the time of his visitation was at hand. Yet his heart did not fail within him. At the last it was glad and high. "For after all" (he smiled as he thought it), "after all--well, they cannot _take_ that from me."

"Sir," said Matthew Carment, in a louder tone, "heard ye the quastion that your ruling elder hath pitten till ye?"

"John and Matthew," said the young man, gently, "ye are my elders, and I will not answer you as I did Dr. Stuart."

"The priest of Midian!" said Matthew Carment.

"The forswearer of covenants!" said John Allanson.

"But I will speak with you as those who have been unto me as Aaron and Hur for the upholding of mine hands----"

"Say, rather," said John Allanson, sternly, "as Phineas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest who thrust through the Midianitish woman in sight of all the congregation of Israel, as they stood weeping before the door of the tabernacle!"

"So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel," quoted Matthew Carment, gravely, finishing his friend's sentence.

Allan Syme winced. The words had been his Sunday's text.

"I tell you, gentlemen," he said quickly, "since God gave Eve to Adam there has not been on earth a sweeter, truer maid than this. You have heard me declare my love for her. Well, I love her more than I dare trust my tongue to utter!"

"And how about your love for the Covenants? And for the Faithful Remnant of the persecuted Kirk of the Martyrs?" said Drows, with a certain dreary persistence that wore on Allan Syme like prolonged toothache.

Then Matthew Carment, who, though slower than the ruling elder, but was not less sure, gave in his contribution.

"'Like unto Eve,' said ye? A true word--verily, a most true word! For did not we with our own eyes see ye with her partake of the forbidden fruit? But there is a difference--_your_ eyes, young man, have not yet been opened!"

Allan Syme began to grow angry.

"I am a free agent," he said fiercely. "I am not a child under bonds. You are not my tutors and governors by any law, human or divine. Nor am I answerable to you whom I shall woo, or whom I shall wed!"

"Ye are answerable to God and the Kirk!" cried the two with one voice.

And to this Matthew Carment again added his say. The three were now walking slowly in the direction of the lamb sale.

"Sir, I mind how ye well described the so-called ministers of the establishment--'locusts on the face of our land,' these were your words, 'instruments of inefficiency, the plague spot upon the nation, the very scorn of Reformation, and a scandal to Religion!' Ye said well, minister; and the spawn of Belial is like unto Belial!"

Allan Syme was now angry exceedingly.

"God be my judge," he cried, "she whom I love is more Christian than the whole pack of you. Never has she spoken an ill word of any, ever since I have known her!"

"And wherefore should she?" said John Allanson of Drows, as dispassionately as a clerk reading an indictment. "Hath she not been clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day? Hath she not eaten of the fine flour and the honey and the oil? Hath she not been adorned with broidered work and shod with badger skin, and, even as her sisters Aholah and Aholibah of old, hath not power been given unto her to lead even the hearts of the elect captive?"

Then Allan Syme broke forth furiously.

"Your tongues are evil!" he said, "ye are not fit to take her name on your lips. She is to me as the mother of our Lord--yes, as Mary, the wife of Joseph, the carpenter!"

"And indeed I never thocht sae muckle o' that yin either," said Matthew of Craigs, "the Papishes make ower great a to-do about her for my liking!"

"Matthew Carment and John Allanson, I bid you hearken to me," cried the young minister.

"Aye, Allan Syme, we will hearken!" they answered, fronting him eye to eye.

"God judge between you and me," he said. "He hath said that for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Now, I know well that if ye like, you two can take from me my kirk and all my living. But I have spoken, and I will adhere. I have promised, and I will keep. Take this my parting message. Do your duty as it is revealed to you. I will go forth freely and willingly. Naked I came among you--naked will I go. The hearts of my people are dearer to me than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from my kirk, send me forth of my manse--cast me upon the world as a man disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature upon earth."

And with these words he turned on his heel and strode straight uphill away from them in the direction of his distant home.

The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At last the two turned and looked at each other.

"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in debate.

There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by nature and slower by habit.

"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.

Drows broke a twig elaborately from the hedge and chewed the ends.