CHAPTER III
I am as yet only on the threshold of my stay in Thornhill, and I am beginning my long vacation as I intend to end it. Dr Balfour's orders were short and to the point; and, in bidding a temporary farewell to professional work and preparing for a long holiday, I know I am following his instructions and furthering my own interests and future well-being. Time was when this enforced inaction would have been irksome indeed. I have always been alert mentally and physically; but since my accident I have been incapable of any prolonged mental effort, and I have welcomed the languor of this quiet retreat, which has possessed me and claimed me as its own. Betty's ministrations I feel I stand in need of; and Nathan's company, unresponsive and grudging though it be, is all I desire. Betty has no patience with useless, idling folks, for she is herself a bustler, and she talks contemptuously of the hangers-on who daily and nightly support our village corners. Once she told me they were troubled with a complaint called the 'guyfaul.' I had never heard the queer word before, and asked its meaning. 'An inclination for meat, but nane for wark,' she promptly replied; and as I lie abed these beautiful sunny forenoons I wonder if Betty considers that I also am afflicted with the 'guyfaul.'
Correspondence of an official character is tabooed; but a day or two ago I received a long newsy letter from my partner, Murray Monteith, not one line of which had any reference to business. This morning I had a further communication, almost equally free from 'shop;' but in a footnote he remarks as follows: 'We had a call yesterday from our client the Hon. Mrs Stuart, and in course of conversation she informed me that she had leased a house in the vicinity of Thornhill, and that her niece, the late General Stuart's daughter, was staying with her over the autumn. I was strongly tempted to tell her you were at present resident in that village, but refrained, knowing it would be unwise of you in the present circumstances to occupy yourself with her affairs. Our inability to find a will or to trace the record of the General's marriage troubles her very much.'
This postscript set me a-thinking, and I lay long pondering obscure points in a case which had worried and perplexed every one concerned. Not only was the good name of the Stuart family involved; but, in the absence of proof, the General's daughter must be—well, nameless, and the estate must pass to another branch of the family.
So absorbed was I in my train of reflection that I failed to note Betty's entrance with my breakfast-tray. A short cough and the clatter of china recalled my wandering thoughts, and I began a rather disjointed apology. Holding up my firm's letter with the familiar light-blue envelope, I laughingly said, 'Blame this, Betty, and forgive my inattention.'
'Hoots, ay,' said Betty, 'it's a' richt; but ye maunna pucker your broo an' worry your brain. Deil tak' thae lang blue letters, onywey! Nane o' them that ever I got spelt weel to me; an' when Milligan the postman handed this yin in this mornin', an' when I thocht o' taxes an' sic fash, I was sairly tempted to back the fire wi' it. Imphm! that's so, noo. Eh! by the by, the doctor's Mary looked in on the bygaun, an' she tells me Dr Grierson will likely be doon to see ye the day. He has had a letter frae a Dr Balfour o' Edinbro, tellin' him a' aboot ye, an' askin' him to keep his eye on ye. Imphm! Ay, an', Maister Weelum, ye didna tell me that ye lay a week in the infirmary insensible.'
'No, Betty,' I said, 'I dare say I didn't; but—well, the fact is I didn't wish to worry you with details or'–
'Ay, an' naether did ye tell me it was to save your wee dog's life ye gaed back into the burnin' hoose,' she said in the same inquisitive tone. I stirred my coffee vigorously, but said nothing. 'An' is it the case that the stair fell in when ye were on the middle o't, an' that the wee dog was foun' deid in your airms?'
'That is so, Betty,' I said sadly.
Betty was silent for a minute, and she fumbled aimlessly with the corner of her apron. 'Lovan,' she said at length, 'it has been a mair terrible affair than I had ony thocht o'. The heid an' the spine are kittle to get hurt, but it's a guid's blessin' ye werena burnt beyond recognition. Efter siccan an experience it's a wonder ye didna relieve your mind to me regairdin' it lang ere noo. Naebody in this world wad ha'e been mair interested or sympathetic. What wey did ye no'?'
Her concern and loving interest were unmistakable; but from the tone of her questionings I opined she was smarting under the sense of a slight, real or imagined, and I hastened to reassure her. 'My dear Betty,' I said, 'believe me I had no motive in withholding such news other than that of saving your feelings. At one time I was minded to tell you all about it; but when you met me at Elvanfoot I noted at a glance the pained, surprised look on your face, and I at once decided not to say more than was absolutely necessary. Besides, Betty, everything happened so quickly that I can scarcely remember the details.' In a few words I described what had taken place. 'And now, Betty,' I concluded, 'let us change the subject. Even now the recollection of my experience is like a nightmare, and I would rather not speak of it.'
'Imphm!' said Betty abstractedly; 'that I daur say is no' to be wondered at. I'm sorry if my curiosity has been the means o' bringin' it a' back again; but, oh man, Maister Weelum, it gaed sair against the grain to hear o' a' this frae fremit lips. The doctor's Mary has a' the particulars at her tongue-tap, an' she gaed through it this mornin' like A B C. I could see she was under the impression that I kenned a' aboot it, an' I didna seek to disabuse her mind on that, but juist said, "Imphm! that is so, Mary—what ye say is true;" and she left my doorstep thinkin' I was farer ben in your confidences than I am. But that's a' richt, Maister Weelum. I respect your motives, an' I understaun exactly hoo ye were placed. But, oh, my boy! in ocht that may in the future distress ye dinna leave Betty oot, an' dinna forget that her he'rt is big eneuch to haud your sorrows as weel as her ain. Wheesht! Is that the ooter door openin'? It is; an', dod, that's Dr Grierson's cheepin' buits on the lobby flaer, an' me no' snodit yet. He's an awfu' dingle-doozie in the mornin', is the doctor.'
Moistening the tips of her fingers on her lip and keeking into my little oval looking-glass, she deftly arranged a stray lock of gray-black hair under the neatly goffered border of her white morning-mutch.' Juist a word wi' ye, Maister Weelum, before I gang doon. Are ye quite agreeable that Dr Grierson should veesit ye? He's an auld freen o' your Edinbro doctor, an' that's hoo he cam' to be written to, so the doctor's Mary tells me.'
'Oh, I'm quite agreeable, Betty—delighted, indeed,' I replied.
'Eh—ay—imphm! An' ye've nae feelin' on that point?'
'Most assuredly not,' I said. 'But why do you ask?'
She tiptoed across the floor and half-closed the door.
'That's him rappin' wi' his stick on the kitchen flaer,' she said in a whisper. 'An' tell me this; did the mistress—your mother, I mean—ever say ocht to ye aboot the doctor an'—an' ony o' her ain folks?'
'Not that I remember of'
'Ay, aweel, that's a' richt. When he comes up, dinna refer to my speirin' ye this;' and she hurriedly left me and went downstairs.
Thornhill has never been without its Gideon Gray. Had Dr John Brown been acquainted with its record in this particular respect he could have added to that remarkable chapter of his Horœ Subsecivœ the names of not a few medical benefactors, the memory of whose services is yet fragrant in our midst. Scattered here and there in many a quiet country kirkyard are the graves of heroes of science who in their day ungrudgingly gave of their very best, faithfully ministering to the wants of the poor and needy without thought of fee or reward; men of ability, intellect, tact, and courage of heart, whose life-work lay in the sequestered bypaths, and whose names were unknown outside the glen they called their home. Of such was Dr Grierson; and as he stood by my bedside the thought momentarily flashed through my mind, would that he had been limned by Scott or by the creator of Rab and Ailie!
A little over medium height; wiry, spare, and alert; broad shoulders slightly stooped; long dark hair streaked with gray, without a parting, brushed straight back from his forehead and hanging in clustering locks above his stock; his face serious almost, yet not void of humour, and lit up by kindly, blue, thoughtful eyes; a presence cheering and reassuring, and a bearing which bespoke the scholar and the gentleman. His clothes were of rough gray homespun, badly fitted and carelessly worn. A thin shepherd-tartan plaid, arranged herdwise, hung from his shoulder, and he held in his hand a round soft hat, gray-green from exposure to summer sun and winter rains. Such was the man who stood by my bedside—a Gideon Gray indeed—strong of purpose, keenly observant; shy, yet not suspicious; revelling in his power of doing good; inured to cold and privation; buoyant and hopeful in the face of difficulties; daily in close and loving communion with all nature around him; and girt about with truthfulness and integrity as with a cloak. Though I had never before been in his presence, I hailed him within my heart as a true and honoured friend.
He shook hands without saying good-morning, and seated himself on a chair at the foot of my bed. Betty, who had preceded him upstairs, and announced him, walked across the room, took up a position at the gable window, and feigned an interest in our grocer neighbour's back-yard. He looked at me pointedly and earnestly, the while stroking his long straggling beard, and then, half-turning his head toward Betty, he said with a low, little laugh, and with a pronounced yet euphonious 'burr,' 'Our young friend, Betty, is more of a Kennedy than a Russell.'
'Ay, doctor, that he is,' said Betty, without taking her eyes from the window. 'He aye took efter his mither's folk. When he was a bairn o' three he was the very spit o' his aunt Marget. Not that I ha'e ony recollection o' her, but that's what I mind the mistress used to say.'
'He's like her yet,' the doctor promptly added.—'And in saying so I can pay no higher compliment to you, my young man.'
'I've heard it said, doctor, that ye kenned the Kennedys aince on a time,' said Betty, and she changed the position of a pot of musk on the window-sill.
He looked quickly and questioningly at Betty; but she was busying herself with the flowers, the while humming, timmer-tuned as usual, the opening lines of 'The Farmer's Boy.'
Then he looked from her to me, slowly and deliberately crossed his legs, and, putting his long, thin hands lengthwise on his knee, he said, more to himself than to Betty, 'Yes, yes, I, as you say, once knew them well.'
'Ye wad ken Miss Marget, then?' asked Betty after a pause.
To me Betty's questioning was an enigma; but I wasn't slow to notice it was distinctly disconcerting to the doctor, who quickly changed his position and sat with his back to the light.
'Miss Marget and I were very, very dear friends,' he said, 'very dear friends, a long, long time ago;' and he abstractedly traced with the tip of his finger an irregular circle round the brim of his old soft hat.
Betty with a flick of her apron removed imaginary dust from the window-sill, and then, coming up to the doctor, she laid her hand on the back of his chair. 'In that case, then, doctor,' she earnestly said, 'for her sake, for Miss Marget's sake, ye'll do your best for her nephew, for it breaks my he'rt to see him lyin' there amaist as helpless as a bairn.' And she hurriedly left the room, and I don't know for certain, but I think she was crying.
The doctor rose, quietly closed the door, and resumed his seat.
'Betty has undoubtedly your welfare at heart, Mr Russell,' he said. 'Unconsciously, or maybe consciously, she has awakened many memories of the long ago—memories of times and people that are with me now only in dreams. Ay, ay;' and he passed his hand slowly adown his face. 'But this is not getting on with my work,' he said, after a pause.
Putting his hand in his coat pocket, he brought out, not a handkerchief, as he had intended or as I expected, but a rather sickly-looking hart's-tongue fern, the root of which was carefully wrapped in a piece of newspaper and tied with a bootlace.
'Well, well!' he said reproachfully, turning it over in his hand, 'that is indeed stupid of me. I ought to have planted this immediately on my arrival this morning; but fortunately I was careful to take sufficient soil with it, and maybe it is not yet too late.'
'Have you been from home, doctor?' I asked.
'Oh, only for twelve hours,' he said, returning the plant to his pocket. 'I was on the point of going to bed last night, when the Benthead shepherd called me out to attend his wife. He was driving an old nag I knew well, a Mitchelslacks pensioner—willing enough, you may be sure, or he wouldn't have been owned by a Harkness, but long past his best; so, in order to be as soon as possible beside my patient, I quickly saddled my own mare, and was trotting down the Gashouse Brae when the kirk clock was striking eleven. I passed the old nag near Laught; but unfortunately at Camplemill Daisy cast a shoe; so, rather than trouble the smith at such an untimely hour, I put her into his stable, the door of which was unlocked, waited the upcoming of the shepherd, and drove the rest of the journey with him in his spring-cart. After sitting for an hour or two at a smoky peat fire, reading by the aid of a guttering tallow-candle a back-number of the Agricultural Gazette, I was called to work, and very soon added another arrow—the tenth—to the shepherd's quiver. When everything was "a' bye," as we say locally, Benthead kindly offered to drive me down to the mill; but, as the early morning was so delightfully fine, and nature outside so pleading and inviting, I took to the moor on "Shanks' naigie." Ah, the delight of that moorland walk! the exhilarating air of the uplands! Why, man, it was like quaffing wine, and the cobwebs—warp and woof of the sleepless hours—were charmed away as if by magic. The sun was just peeping over the crest of Bellybucht, and his rays were lying lovingly athwart the budding heather and the silver mist-wreathed bents. Bracken and juniper, blaeberry and crowberry; dewdrops here, dewdrops there, sparkling and shimmering; tiny springs of crystal water oozing out from whinstone chinks, gurgling and trickling down pebbled ruts, seen awhile, then unseen, lost in spongy moss and tangled seggs. Overhead the morning song of the gladsome lark; to my right the wheep of the snipe and the quack of a startled duck; to my left the yittering of the curlew and the chirrup of the flitting, restless cheeper; and over all the spirit of the wild which isolates and draws within her mantle-folds all those who cuddle close to Nature's breast. Ah, what a morning! what a scene! Hat in hand I walked, with my head bared to the throbbing air and the glorious sunshine. "Surely, surely," I said to myself, "it is good for me to be here;" and with a sense of thankfulness in my heart, and turning my face to the shadowy Lowthers, I sang with the Psalmist, "I to the hills will lift mine eyes."
'I struck the Crichope about six o'clock; wandered leisurely down the linn; pulled this hart's-tongue fern, and a few more which I must have lost; picked up this fossil—part of a frog, I think—which will make a welcome addition to my collection.' He hesitated for a moment, with half-closed eyes and his chin resting on his folded stock. Then he suddenly looked toward me and asked, 'Have you ever walked down Crichope alone?'
'No, not alone,' I replied.
'Then Crichope has never spoken to you. You have never heard its message. To me, this morning, it was the mouthpiece of the Creator—the great Architect; for I was alone. With those who love and admire His handiwork He is ever in communion, and He speaks in the rustle of the leaf, the tinkle of the stream, the whisper of the grass, and the echo of the linn. But you must be alone, humble, reverent, stripped to the pelt, as it were, of everything sordid, boastful, and vainglorious; and then that old ravine will be a sanctuary where in its solitude you will find solace, comfort in its caverns, food for reflection in its story and traditions.'
Again he paused, and I lay with eager eyes fixed on his animated face. Betty's cat, with arched back and long tail, brushed slowly past his knee. With an ingratiating 'Pussy, puss,' he stroked her fur.
'About half-past seven,' he continued, 'I reached the smithy, had a cup of tea with Smith Martin and his wife, got Daisy's shoe made siccar, and was mounting for home, when news was brought from Dresserland that a farm-worker had fallen from his cart and broken his leg. Off Daisy and I trotted up the brae. But, tut! tut! why should I waste my precious time, and weary and fatigue you to boot, by detailing all my morning round?'
'Oh, doctor, don't stop!' I pleaded. 'I know and love that whole countryside, and a talk with you is like a walk in the open. Indeed, my limbs twitched as you strode along, and I felt as if I were keeping step with you.'
'Ay, your limbs twitched, did they? That's a good sign.'
'A sign of my appreciation of your love of nature and poetry of language, doctor?' I asked.
'No, no; something far more important than appreciation. But this is not business. I know you will be anxious to learn in how far Dr Balfour and I agree, so let me have a look at that damaged spine of yours.'
Betty tells me that she's 'feart the doctor's a careless, godless man, for he never enters a kirk door.' I could have told her that he had attended church that morning, and that he had had communion with God and a glimpse of heaven which would have been an unknown experience and an unfamiliar sight to many who occupy a church pew every Sunday; but Betty wouldn't have understood—nay, wouldn't have believed me—and I was silent.
His visit has cheered and encouraged me, and his conversation has made me proud of his acquaintance. He is to call on me again in a few days; and meanwhile I have to take more exercise; so with the aid of a friendly hazel I shall have a daily 'daunder' and an opportunity of renewing my acquaintance with Douglas the barber in his wee back-room, John Sterling the shoemaker at his souter's stool, and Deacon Webster at his tool-laden bench.
CHAPTER IV
Tom Jardine the grocer—Betty's next-door neighbour—will be thirty-four years old on the 23rd of January next. He is to a day exactly four years my senior. I remember it was when his mother and Betty were putting out clothes together in the back-green that I, a boy of five, heard for the first time that we had a birthday in common.
To me the fact vested Tom with a special interest. I looked upon him in more than a mere neighbourly spirit. Though we were rarely associated in our boys' games, we often casually met about the doors or had disjointed conversations through the garden hedge; and on these occasions the desire was always strong within me to talk of our birthday, and to ask if he wasn't wearying for the 23rd to come round. And when that auspicious date was ushered in, and my birthday-cake, in all its white-iced glory, was ceremoniously placed before me at table, I used to wonder if Tom had one also, and if he, like me, had the honour of cutting and distributing it.
On looking back, I cannot remember when the Jardines were not our neighbours. Long ago Robert Jardine, Tom's father, was a tenant of ours, and twice a year, at the Martinmas and Whitsunday terms, he called upon us; and when the rent had been paid and sundry repairs and alterations agreed upon, he and my father drank a glass of wine together. It had, however, long been the height of Robert's ambition to be the owner of his own roof-tree. Times then being good, he soon saved the amount necessary to effect a purchase; and after many calls and conferences, terms were ultimately arranged to the satisfaction of both vender and buyer.
Tom was the youngest of a large family, the other members of which had all emigrated; and when Robert Jardine died—his wife had predeceased him by a few years—there was no one else to look after affairs. Tom at once gave up a responsible position in a wholesale grocery establishment in Glasgow, came south with a wife and three young children, and took over what I now understand every Thornhill villager believed to be a dying, if not an altogether dead, concern.
All these changes had taken place in my absence during these past fourteen years; but it was nevertheless pleasing to me to know from Betty, shortly after my return, that as neighbours the family was still represented, the more so as the representative in question was none other than my old friend Tom.
In describing my attic room I omitted to say that it has a little, round, gable window through which, from my fireside chair, I can look down upon the Jardines' back-yard. Long ago I used to sit here and watch old Robert grooming his horse, cleaning his harness, and packing his long-bodied spring-cart with bags of flour or meal, and grocery parcels of tea and sugar, for distribution on his long cadger rounds.
During the past few weeks my interest has often been centred on his son similarly employed. Tom sings and whistles cheery tunes as he works, and his iron-shod clogs make a merry clatter on the stone-paved court. His wife and the two eldest children—blue-eyed, curly-haired bairns they are—give him willing help, and, standing in his cart or on a chair placed beside the wheel, he cheerily receives and checks off in a weather-beaten note-book the various articles for his country clients.
Like Nathan, Tom is no lie-abed in the morning. Of necessity he must be up betimes, for his journeys are often long and his days are always too short. When Betty is preparing the early breakfast I hear Tom's ringing footstep outside, the taming of the key in the stable-door lock, and the anticipating whinny of the gray mare. Then a horse-pail is filled from the tap at the stable-door; a minute later it is returned empty and deposited outside; the lid of the corn-bin, which has been poised on its creaky hinges, descends with a bang, and I know that his faithful dappled friend has her nose buried in countless piles of sweet-smelling corn.
Betty is not an inquisitive woman, nor does she interest herself in a meddling way in her neighbours' concerns; yet her big, kindly heart and her never-failing sympathetic nature invite many confidences, and she is therefore more fully versed in what I might call the inward life of those around her than many of a more zealously prying and newsvending disposition.
We were talking one day about the Jardines of a past generation, and our conversation naturally turned to Tom. I commended him for his industry, for his sobriety, and for the undivided attention he gave to his business, and finished up by asking if he was a successful man. Betty made no reply; but she shook her head doubtfully, from which I argued that it was not all sunshine and whistling and singing with our young grocer neighbour; and as she showed no desire to continue the conversation, I allowed the matter to drop.
After tea, however, she reverted to the subject, and reopened our chat by asking if it was usual in business for a son to take over his dead father's debts.
In my short professional career I remembered one such case, in which I was interested, but only one, and I told her of it. I didn't go into details, but gave her the bald outstanding points; and after I had finished she said, 'Ay, and that's the only case ye ever heard o'?'
'Yes, that is so, Betty,' I replied.
She was standing at the round gable window, vacantly looking down into our neighbour's back-yard. Then I saw her eyebrows begin to pucker, and I knew there was something on her mind.
'Maister Weelum,' she said at length, 'I've nae concern in the ongauns o' the folks aboot me, an' I never talk aboot them. But ye asked me regairdin' Tom Jardine, an' I'm no' betrayin' ony confidences when I tell ye that young Tom took ower his dead faither's debts, so that will be twae cases ye ken o'.'
'Tom Jardine!' I said with surprise. 'Surely Robert Jardine wasn't in debt when he died?'
'That he was, Maister Weelum—the mair's the pity. Ye see, for a lang time—I micht say for at least five years afore he died—he wasna able to gang his roons; in fact, he was barely able to stand ahint the coonter. Younger an' mair active competitors took up the same gr'und; an' what wi' failin' trade, increasin' competition, an' cuttin' prices, there wasna a livin' in it. Then his wife had a lang, lingerin' illness, an' when she slippit away he kind o' lost he'rt. I was often wae for him, puir man, an' I did a' I could for him in my ain sma' wey. Except to yin or twae he keepit a smilin' face, though, aye wrote cheerily to Tom, an' gaed to kirk an' market as lang as he was able wi' his heid in the air; but, losh me! when his time cam' it was nae surprise to me an' yin or twae mair that the whole affair—shop, hoose, an' business—didna show much mair than ten shillin's in the pound. Tom—him that's doon there noo—was in a guid wey o' doin' in Glesca, an' nothing wad ser' him but he bood come hame an' tak' things in haun. He was strongly advised to have nothing to do wi' it, an' to let the creditors handle what was left as best it was likely to pay them. But Tom said, "No." All he asked frae the creditors was time an' secrecy as far as was possible as to how things stood, an' frae the Almighty health an' strength, an', given these, he promised to clear his dead faither's name an' see every yin get his ain. That's three years ago past the May term, an', honour an' praise to the puir laddie, he's nearly succeeded. But it has been a terrible struggle for him; an' had it no' been for his determination, his sobriety, his pride in his faither's guid name, an' abune a' the help o' a lovin' wife wha's a perfect mother in Israel, he wad ha'e gi'en it up lang or noo as an impossible, thankless job. Nathan and me lent his faither sixty pounds. We had nae writin' to speak o', only his signed name. I showed the paper to Tom shortly efter he had settled doon here, an' instead o' questionin' it he thanked us for our kindness an promised to pay it back in the same proportion as the ithers. Up to noo we've got back thirty pounds. I was in his shop the ither day, an' he said he thocht he wad be able to gi'e's anither ten pounds at the November term. What think ye o' that noo, Maister Weelum?'
'I think your neighbour is a splendid fellow, Betty, and I would like to shake hands with him. Have you the paper beside you on which his father's name appears for sixty pounds?'
'Ay, that I have,' said Betty. She went downstairs, and returned a minute later with a sheet of notepaper.
I glanced at the unstamped promise, and smiled. 'Betty,' I said seriously, 'are you aware this is not worth the paper it is written on?'
'Ay, perfectly,' she said with unconcern.
'How did you find that out?' I inquired.
'Oh, when I showed it to Tom Jardine he used exactly the same words as you did; but, said he, "My faither signed that. I have every confidence in you an' Nathan. My faither an' mither thought the world o' ye, an' wi' my assurance that ye'll be paid back, I tender you my best thanks for your kindness in time o' need."'
Betty folded up her worthless document and put it in the breast of her gown. 'An honest man like Tom Jardine makes up for a lot o' worthless yins, Maister Weelum,' she said as she lifted her tea-tray; and I looked through the wee round window to Tom's back-yard with an increased appreciation of the coatless and hatless grocer, who was sitting down on an empty soap-box with a long needle and a roset-end, mending his old gray mare's collar.
It has rained continuously for three days, and according to Nathan something has gone very far wrong, as St Swithin's Day from early morn to dewy eve was cloudless and fair, and accordingly we had every right to anticipate forty days of dry, fine weather.
Harvest is early with us this year. The corn, which was waving green when Betty and I drove south from Elvanfoot, is already studding the fields in regular rows of yellow stooks, and but for this break in the weather it would even now be on its way to the stackyard in groaning, creaking carts. The Newton pippins on the apple-tree at the foot of the garden are showing a bright red cheek, and the phloxes and gladioli in the plot at the kitchen window are crowned with a mass of bloom so rich and luxuriant that every one of Betty's cooking utensils reflects their colourings and appears to be blushing rosy-red. During these past three days I have missed Tom's cheery song, and I am beginning to wonder if the gloomy weather has chilled his lightsome heart and silenced the chords of his tuneful throat.
Time was when I loved to be abroad on a rainy day, whether as an unprotected boy fishing away up Capel Linn and Cample Cleugh, with the rain dribbling down the neckband of my shirt and oozing through the lace-holes of my boots, or as a man with waterproof and hazel staff, breasting the scarred side of Caerketton or the grassy slopes of Allermuir, with the pelting, pitiless raindrops blinding my eyes and stinging my cheek, and the vivid fire of heaven lighting up Halkerside and momentarily showing the short zigzag course of that 'nameless trickle' whose rippling music the Wizard of Swanston loved.
How I enjoyed these Pentland rambles, alone in the rain and the soughing winds! Underfoot, the dank, sodden grass and the broken fern; overhead, the sombre sky, the scurrying clouds, and the drifting mist; on every side the grassy mounds of the Dunty Knowes, with their shivering birks tossing to windward, and a rain-soaked hogg beneath every sheltering crag. Alone, yet not alone; for a Presence was with me, guiding me on, showing me through the gathering gloom the sun-bathed crown of Allermuir, bringing to my ear from out the rage of the storm the wail of the curlew, and summoning to my side the plaided shepherd 'Honest John' and his gray, rough-coated collie Swag.