Fenwick Minor was home from school, and went about like a dog worshipping his big brother. This is all about Fenwick Minor.

But Greenbrae parish and its humble, poor simpletons of folk did not content Fenwick Major long. He went back to Edinburgh, as he told his father, to read during the summer session; and when we came up again in November, Fenwick Major was going it harder than ever.

[Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson look at each other. They know all about that.

CHIRNSIDE (continues). Then he gave up attending class much, only turning up for examinations. He had fits of grinding like fire at home. Again he would chuck the whole thing, and lounge all day and most of the night about shops in the shady lanes back of the Register. So we knew that Fenwick Major was burning his fingers. Then he cut classes and grinds altogether, and when I met him next, blest if he didn't cut me. That wasn't much, of course, and maybe showed his good taste. But it was only a year since we chummed—and I knew his people, you know.

Fact was, we felt somebody ought to speak to Fenwick—so all the fellows said. But of course, when it came to the point, they pitched on me, and stuck at me till they made me promise.

So I met him and said to him: "Now, look here, Fenwick, this is playing it pretty low down on the old man at home and your mother. Better let up on this drinking and cutting round loose. It's skittles anyway, and will come to no good!" Just as I would say to you fellows.

I think Fenwick Major was first of all a bit staggered at my speaking to him. Later he came to himself, and told me where to go for a meddling young hypocrite.

"Who are you to come preaching to me, any way?" he said.

And I admitted that I was nobody. But I told him all the same that he had better listen to what I said.

"You are playing the fool, and you'll come an awful cropper," I went on. "Not that it matters so much for you, but you've got a father and a mother to think about."

What Fenwick Major said then about his father and mother I am not going to tell you. He had maybe half a dozen "wets" on board, so we won't count him responsible.

But after that Fenwick Major never looked the way I was on. He drank more than ever, till you could see the shakes on him from the other side of the street. And there was the damp, bleached look about his face that you see in some wards up at the Infirmary.

[Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. Their heads are bent eagerly towards Chirnside.

But I heard from other fellows that he still tried to work. He would come out of a bad turn. Then he would doctor himself, Turkish-bath himself, diet himself, and go at his books. But, as I am alive, fellows, he had got himself into such a state that what he learned the night before, he had forgotten the next morning. Ay, even the book he had been reading and the subject he was cramming. Talk about no hell, fellows! Don't you believe 'em. I know four knocking about Edinburgh this very moment.

But right at the close of the session we heard that the end had come. So, at least, we thought. Fenwick Major had married a barmaid or something like that. "What a fool!" said some. I was only thankful that I had not to tell his mother.

But his mother was told, and his father came to Edinburgh to find Fenwick Major. He did not find the prodigal son, who was said to have gone to London. At any rate, his father went home, and in a fortnight there was a funeral—two in a month. Mother went first, then the old man. I went down to both, and cursed Fenwick Major and his barmaid with all the curses I knew. And I was a second-year medical at the time.

I never thought to hear more of him. Did not want to. He was lost. He had married a barmaid, and I knew where his father and mother lay under the sod. And my own old mater kept flowers on the two graves summer and winter.

One night I was working here late—green tea, towel round my head—oral next morning. There was a knock at the door. The landlady was in bed, so I went. There was a laddie there, bare-legged and with a voice like a rip-saw.

"If ye please, there's a man wants awfu' to see ye at Grant's Land at the back o' the Pleasance."

I took my stick and went out into the night. It was just coming light, and the gas-jets began to look foolish. I stumbled up to the door, and the boy showed me in. It was a poor place—of the poorest. The stair was simply filthy.

But the room into which I was shown was clean, and there on a bed, with the gas and the dawn from the east making a queer light on his face, sat Fenwick Major.

He held out his hand.

"How are you, Chirnside? Kind of you to come. This is the little wife!" was what he said, but I can tell you he looked a lot more.

At the word a girl in black stole silently out of the shadow, in which I had not noticed her.

She had a white, drawn face, and she watched Fenwick Major as a mother watches a sick child that is going to be taken from her up at the hospital.

"I wanted to see you, old chap, before I went—you know. It's a long way to go, and there's no use in hanging back even if I could. But the little wife says she knows the road, and that I won't find it dark. She can't read much, the little wife—education neglected and all that. Precious lot I made of mine, medals and all! But she's a trump. She made a man of me. Worked for me, nursed me. Yes, you did, Sis, and I shall say it. It won't hurt me to say it. Nothing will hurt me now, Sis."

"James, do not excite yourself!" said the little wife just then.

I had forgotten his name was James. He was only Fenwick Major to me.

"Now, little wife," he said, "let me tell Chirnside how I've been a bad fellow, but the Little 'Un pulled me through. It was the best day's work I ever did when I married Sis!"

"James!" she said again, warningly.

"Look here, Chirnside," Fenwick went on, "the Little 'Un can't read; but, do you know, she sleeps with my old mother's Bible under her pillow. I can't read either, though you would hardly know it. I lost my sight the year I married (my own fault, of course), and I've been no better than a block ever since. I want you to read me a bit out of the old Book."

"Why didn't you send for a minister, Fenwick?" I said. "He could talk to you better than I can."

"Don't want anybody to speak to me. Little 'Un has done all that. But I want you to read. And, see here, Chirnside, I was a brute beast to you once—quarrelled with you years ago—"

"Don't think of that, Fenwick Major!" I said. "That's all right!"

"Well, I won't," he said; "for what's the use? But Little 'Un said, 'Don't let the sun go down upon your wrath.' 'And no more I will, Little 'Un,' says I. So I sent a boy after you, old man."

Now, you fellows, don't laugh; but there and then I read three or four chapters of the Bible—out of Fenwick's mother's Bible—the one she handed in at the carriage window that morning he and I set off for college. I actually did and this is the Bible.

[Bentley and Tad Anderson do not laugh.

When I had finished, I said—"Fenwick, I'm awfully sorry, but fact is—I can't pray."

"Never mind about that, old man!" said he; "Little 'Un can pray!"

And Little 'Un did pray; and I tell you what, fellows, I never heard any such prayer. That little girl was a brick.

Then Fenwick Major put out fingers like pipe-staples, and said—

"Old man, you'll give Little 'Un a hand—after—you know."

I don't know that I said anything. Then he spoke again, and very slowly—

"It's all right, old boy. Sun hasn't gone down on our wrath, has it?"

And even as he smiled and held a hand of both of us, the sun went down.

Little brick, wasn't she? Good little soul as ever was! Three cheers for the little wife, I say. What are you fellows snuffling at there? Why can't you cheer?



II

MAC'S ENTERIC FEVER

Merry are the months when the years go slow, Shining on ahead of us, like lamps in a row: Lamps in a row in a briskly moving town. Merry are the moments ere the night shuts down.

"Halleval and Haskeval."

In those days we took great care of our health. It was about the only thing we had to take care of. So we went to lodge on the topmost floor of a tall Edinburgh land, with only some indifferent slates and the midnight tomcats between us and the stars. The garret story in such a house is, medically speaking, much the healthiest. We have always had strong views about this matter, and we did not let any considerations of expense prevent us taking care of our health.

Also, it is a common mistake to over-eat. Therefore, we students had porridge twice a day, with a herring in between, except when we were saving up for a book. Then we did without the herring. It was a fine diet, wholesome if sparse, and kept us brave and hungry. Hungry dogs hunt best, except retrievers.

In this manner we lived for many years with an excellent lady, who never interfered with our ploys unless we broke a poker or a leaf of the table at least. Then she came in and told us what she thought of us for ten eloquent minutes. After that we went out for a walk, and the landlady gathered up the fragments that remained.

It was a lively place when Mac and I lodged together. Mac was a painter, but he had not yet decided which Academy he would be president of—so that in the meantime Sir Frederick Langton and Sir Simeon Stormcloud could sleep in their beds with some ease of mind.

Our room up near the sky was festooned with dim photographs of immense family tombstones—a perfect graveyard of them, which proved that the relations of Mrs. Christison, our worthy landlady, would have some trouble in getting to bed in anything like time if by chance they should be caught wandering abroad at cock-crow. Mixed with these there were ghastly libels on the human form divine, which Mac had brought home from the students' atelier—ladies and gentlemen who appeared to find it somewhat cold, and had therefore thoughtfully provided themselves with a tight-fitting coat of white-wash. Mac said this was the way that flesh-colour was painted under direct illumination. Well, it might have been. We did not set up for judges. But to an inexperienced eye they looked a great deal more like deceased white-washed persons who had been dug up after some weeks' decent burial. We observed that they appeared to be mildewed in patches, but Mac explained that these were the muscles. This also was possible; but, all the same, we had never seen any ladies or gentlemen who carried their muscles outside, so to speak. Mac said he did this sort of thing because he was applying for admission to the Academy Life Class. We all hoped he would get in, for we had had quite enough of dead people, especially when they were white-washed and resurrected, besides given to wearing their muscles outside.

Mac used, in addition to this provocation, to play jokes on us, because Almond and I were harmless and quiet. Almond was studying engineering because he was going to be a wholesale manufacturer of wheelbarrows. I was an arts student who wrote literary and political articles in the office of a moribund newspaper all night, and wakened in time to go along the street to dine in a theological college.

So Mac used to play off his wicked jokes upon Almond and myself for the reasons stated. He bored a hole through the wall at the head of our bed, and awoke us untimeously in the frosty mornings by squirting mysterious streams of water upon us. He said he had promised Almond's mother to see that he took a bath every morning, and he was going to do it. He anticipated us at our tins of sardines, and when we re-opened them we found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We bore these things meekly on the whole, for that was our nature—at least mine.

Occasionally the worm turned, and then a good many articles of furniture were overset; and the Misses Hope, who resided beneath us, knocked up through the ceiling with the tongs, whereupon the landlady and her daughter came in armed with the poker and a long-handled broom to promote peace.

But after the affair of the squirt Almond and I took counsel, and Almond said (for Professor Jeeming Flenkin had discovered on the back of a careful drawing of an engine wheel a caricature of himself pointing with index-finger and saying, "Very smutty!") that he would stand this sort of thing no longer.

So we resolved to work a sell on Mac which he would not forget to his dying day. To effect this we took our landlady and our landlady's daughter into the plot, and the matter was practically complete when Mac came home. We heard him whistling up the stairs. The engineer was drawing a cherub in Indian ink. The arts student was reading a text-book of geology. The landlady and her daughter were busy about their work in their own quarters. All was peace.

The key clicked in the lock, and then the whistle stopped as Mac entered.

The landlady met him at the door. She gazed anxiously and maternally at his face. She seemed surprised also, and a trifle agitated.

"Dear me, Maister Mac, what's the maitter? Ye're no' lookin' weel."

Mac was a little surprised, but not alarmed.

"There is nothing the matter, Mrs. Christison," said he lightly.

"Eh, Teena, come here," she cried to her daughter.

Teena came hurriedly at her mother's call. But as she looked upon Mac the fashion of her countenance changed.

"Are you not well?" she said, peering anxiously into the pupils of Mac's eyes.

Such attentions are flattering, and Mac, being a squire of dames, was desirous of making the most of it.

"Well, I was not feeling quite up to the mark, but I daresay it'll pass off," he said diplomatically.

"You must not be working so hard. You will kill yourself one of these days."

For which we hope and trust she may be forgiven, though it is a good deal to hope.

"Where do you feel it most, Mr. Mac?" then inquired Teena tenderly.

Mac is of opinion that, if anywhere, he feels it worst in his head, but his chest is also paining him a little.

"Gang richt awa' in, my laddie," says the landlady, "an' lie doon and rest ye on the sofa, an' I'll be ben the noo wi' something till ye!"

Mac comes in with a slightly scared and conscious expression on his face. Almond and I look up from our work as he enters, though, as it were, only in a casual manner. But what we see arrests our attention, and Almond's jaw drops as he looks from Mac to me, and back again to Mac.

"Good gracious, what's wrang wi' ye, man?" he gasps, in his native tongue.

I get up hastily and go over to the patient. I take him by the arm, pull him sharply to the window and turn him round—an action which he resents.

"I wish to goodness you fellows would not make asses of yourselves," he says, as he flings himself down on the sofa.

Almond and I look at one another as if this fretfulness were one of the worst signs, and we had quite expected it. We say nothing for a little as we sit down to work; but uneasily, as if we have something on our minds. Presently I rise, and, going into the bedroom, motion to Almond as I go. This action is not lost on Mac. I did not mean that it should be. We shut the door and whisper together. Mac comes and shakes the door, which is locked on the inside.

"Come out of that, you fellows," he cries, "and don't be gibbering idiots!"

But for all that he is palpably nervous and uneasy.

"Go away and lie down, like a good fellow," I say soothingly; "it'll be all right—all right."

But Mac is not soothed in the least. Then we whisper some more, and rustle the leaves of a large Quain which lies on the mantelpiece, a legacy from some former medical lodger. After a respectable time we come out without looking at Mac, who peers at us steadily from the sofa. I go directly to the Scotsman of the day, and run my finger down the serried columns till I come to the paragraph which gives the mortality for the week. Almond looks over my shoulder the while, and I make a score with my finger-nail under the words "enteric fever." We are sure that Mac does not know what enteric fever is. No more do we, but that does not matter.

We withdraw solemnly one by one, as if we were a procession, with a muttered excuse to Mac that we are going out to see a man. Almond sympathetically and silently brings a dressing-gown to cover his feet. He angrily kicks it across the floor.

"I say, you fellows—" he begins, as we go out.

But we take no heed. The case is too serious. Then we go into the kitchen and discuss it with the landlady.

We do this with solemn pauses, indicative of deep thought. We go back into the sitting-room. Mac has been to look at the paper where my nail scored it. We knew he would, and he is now lying on the sofa rather pale. He even groans a little. The symptoms work handsomely. It is small wonder we are alarmed.

We ring for the landlady, and she comes in hastily and with anxiety depicted on her countenance. She asks him where he feels it worst. Teena runs for Quain, and, being the least suspect of the party, she reads, in a low, hushed tone, an account of the symptoms of enteric fever (previously inserted in manuscript) which would considerably astonish Dr. Quain and the able specialist who contributed the real account of that disease to the volume.

It seems that for the disease specified, castor-oil and a mustard blister, the latter applied very warm between the shoulders, are the appropriate and certain cures. There is nothing that Mac dislikes so much as castor-oil. He would rather die than take it—so he says. But a valuable life, which might be spent in the service of the highest art, must not be permitted to be thus thrown away. So we get the castor-oil in a spoon, and with Teena coaxing and Almond acting on the well-known principle of twenty years' resolute government—down she goes.

Instantly Mac feels a little better, for he can groan easier than before. That is a good sign. The great thing now is to keep up the temperature and induce perspiration. The mustard approaches. The landlady cries from the kitchen to know if he is ready. Teena retires to get more blankets. The patient is put to bed, and in a little the mustard plaster is being applied in the place indicated by Quain. We tell one another what a mercy it is that we have all the requisites in the house. (There is no mustard in the plaster, really—only a few pepper-corns and a little sand scraped from the geological hammer.) But we say aloud that we hope Mac can bear it for twenty minutes, and we speculate on whether it will bring all the skin with it when it comes off.

This is too much, and the groaning recommences. The blankets are applied, and in a trice there is no lack of perspiration. But within three minutes Mac shouts that the abominable plaster is burning right down through him. It is all pure mustard, he says. We must have put a live coal in by mistake. We tell him it will be all right—in twenty minutes. It is no use; he is far past advice, and in his insanity he would tear it off and so endanger the success of the treatment. But this cannot be permitted. So Almond sits on the plaster to keep it in its place, while I time the twenty minutes with a stop-watch.

At the end of this period of crisis the patient is pronounced past the worst. But, being in a state of collapse, it becomes necessary to rouse him with a strong stimulant. So, having sent the ladies to a place of safety, we take off the plaster tenderly, and kindly show Mac the oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that there was never anything the matter with him at all. We express a hope that he will find that the castor-oil has done him good. A little castor-oil is an excellent thing at any time. And we also advise him, the next time he feels inclined to work off a sell on us or play any more of his pranks, to have a qualified medical man on the premises. Quain is evidently not good enough. He makes mistakes. We show him the passage.

Then we advise him to put on his clothes, and not make a fool of himself by staying in bed in the middle of the day.

Whereupon, somewhat hurriedly, we retreat to our bedrooms; and, locking the doors, sit down to observe with interest the bolts bending and the hinges manfully resisting, while Mac with a poker in either hand flings himself wildly against them. He says he wants to see us, but we reply that we are engaged.



III

THE COLLEGING OF SIMEON GLEG

Forth from the place of furrows To the Town of the Many Towers; Full many a lad from the ploughtail Has gone to strive with the hours,

Leaving the ancient wisdom Of tilth and pasturage, For the empty honour of striving, And the emptier name of sage.

"Shadows."

Without blared all the trumpets of the storm. The wind howled and the rain blattered on the manse windows. It was in the upland parish of Blawrinnie, and the minister was preparing his Sabbath's sermon. The study lamp was lit and the window curtains were drawn. Robert Ford Buchanan was the minister of Blawrinnie. He was a young man who had only been placed a year or two, and he had a great idea of the importance of his weekly sermons to the Blawrinnie folk. He also spoke of "My People" in an assured manner when he came up to the Assembly in May:

"I am thinking of giving my people a series of lectures on the Old Testament, embodying the results of—"

"Hout na, laddie," said good Roger Drumly, who got a D.D. for marrying a professor's sister (and deserved a V.C.), "ye had better stick to the Shorter's Quastions an' preach nae whigmaleeries i' the pairish o' Blawrinnie. Tak' my word for it, they dinna gie a last year's nest-egg for a' the results of creeticism. I was yince helper there mysel', ye maun mind, an' I ken Blawrinnie."

There is no manner of doubt that Dr. Drumly was right. Since he married the professor's sister, he did not speak much himself, except in his sermons, which were inordinately long; but he was a man very much respected, for, as one of his elders said, "Gin he does little guid in the pairish, he is a quate, ceevil man, an' does just as little ill." And this, after all, is chiefly what is expected of a settled and official minister with a manse and glebe in that part of the country. Too much zeal is not thought to become him. It is well enough in a mere U.P.

But the Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan had not so settled on his lees as to accept such a negative view of his duties. He must try to help his people singly and individually, and this he certainly did to the best of his ability. For he neither spent all his time running after Dissenters, as the manner of some is; nor yet did he occupy all his pastoral visits with conversations on the iniquity of Disestablishment, as is others' use and wont. He went in a better way about the matter, in order to prove himself a worthy minister of the parish, taking such a vital interest in all that appertained to it, that no man could take his bishopric from him.

Among other things, he had a Bible-class for the young, in which the hope of the parish of Blawrinnie was instructed as to the number of hands that had had the making of the different prophecies, and upon the allusions to primitive customs in the book of Genesis (which the minister called a "historical synopsis"). There were three lassies attending the class, and three young men who came to walk home with the lassies. Unfortunately, two of the young men wanted to walk home with the same young lass, so that the minister's Bible-class could not always be said to make for peace. As, indeed, the Reverend Doctor Drumly foretold when the thing was started. He had met the professor's sister first at a Bible-class, and was sore upon the subject.

But it was the minister's Bible-class that procured Mr. Ford Buchanan the honour of a visit that night of storm and stress. First of all there was an unwonted stir in the kitchen, audible even in the minister's study, where he stood on one leg, with a foot on a chair, consulting authorities. (He was an unmarried man.)

Elizabeth Milligan, better known as "the minister's Betsy," came and rapped on the door in an undecided way. It was a very interesting authority the minister was consulting, so he only said "Thank you, Elizabeth!" in an absent-minded way and went on reading, rubbing his moustache the while with the unoccupied hand in a way which, had he known it, kept it perpetually thin.

But Betty continued to knock, and finally put her head within the study door.

"It's no' yer parritch yet," she said. "It's but an hour since ye took yer tea. But, if ye please, minister, wad ye be so kind as open the door? There's somebody ringing the front-door bell, an' it's jammed wi' the rain forbye, an' nae wise body gangs and comes that gait ony way, binna yersel'."

"Certainly, certainly, Elizabeth; I will open the door immediately!" said the minister, laying down his book and marking the place with last week's list of psalms and intimations.

Mr. Buchanan went to the seldom-used front door, turned the key, and threw open the portal to see who the visitor might be who rang the manse bell at eight o'clock on such a night. Betsy hung about the outskirts of the hall in a fever of anticipation and alarm. It might be a highwayman—or even a wild U.P. There was no saying.

But when the minister pulled the door wide open, he looked out and saw nothing. Only blackness and tossing leaves were in front of him.

"Who's there?" he cried, peremptorily, in his pulpit voice—which he used when "my people" stood convicted of some exhibition of extreme callousness to impression.

But only the darkness fronted him and the swirl of wind slapped the wet ivy-leaves against the porch.

Then apparently from among his feet a little piping voice replied—

"If ye please, minister, I want to learn Greek and Laitin, an' to gang to the college."

The minister staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other world—that is, of course, the world of spirits and churchyard ghosts.

But gradually there grew upon him a general impression of a little figure, broad and squat, standing bareheaded and with cap in hand on his threshold. The minister came to himself, and his habits of hospitality asserted themselves.

"You want to learn Greek and Latin," he said, accustomed to extraordinary requests. "Come in and tell me all about it."

The little, broad figure stepped within the doorway.

"I'm a' wat wi' the rain," again quoth the elfish voice, more genially, "an' I'm no' fit to gang into a gentleman's hoose."

"Come into the dining-room," said the minister kindly.

"'Deed, an' ye'll no," interposed Betsy, who had been coming nearer. "Ye'se juist gang into the study, an' I'll lay doon a bass for ye to stand an' dreep on. Where come ye frae, laddie?"

"I am Tammas Gleg's laddie. My faither disna ken that I hae come to see the minister," said the boy.

"The loon's no' wise!" muttered Betsy. "Could the back door no' hae served ye?—Bringing fowk away through the hoose traikin' to open the front door to you on sic a nicht! Man, ye are a peetifu' object!"

The object addressed looked about him. He was making a circle of wetness on the floor. He was taken imperatively by the coat-sleeve.

"Ye canna gang into the study like that. There wad be nae dryin' the floor. Come into the kitchen, laddie," said Betsy. "Gang yer ways ben, minister, to your ain gate-end, an' the loon'll be wi' ye the noo."

So Betsy, who was accustomed to her own way in the manse of Blawrinnie, drove Tammas Gleg's laddie before her into the kitchen, and the minister went into the study with a kind of junior apostolic meekness. Then he meditatively settled his hard circular collar, which he wore in the interests of Life and Work, but privately hated with a deadly hatred, as his particular form of penance.

It was no very long season that he had to wait, and before he had done more than again lift up his interesting "authority," the door of the study was pushed open and Betsy cried in, "Here he's!" lest there might be any trouble in the identification. And not without some reason. For, strange as was the figure which had stepped into the minister's lobby out of the storm, the vision which now met his eyes was infinitely stranger.

A thick-set body little over four and a half feet high, exceedingly thick and stout, was surmounted with one of the most curious heads the minister had ever seen. He saw a round apple face, eyes of extraordinary brightness, a thin-lipped mouth which seemed to meander half-way round the head as if uncertain where to stop. Betsy had arrayed this "object" in a pink bed-gown of her own, a pair of the minister's trousers turned up nearly to the knee in a roll the thickness of a man's wrist, and one of the minister's new-fangled M.B. waistcoats, through the armholes of which two very long arms escaped, clad as far as the elbows in the sleeves of the pink bed-gown.

Happily the minister was wholly destitute of a sense of humour (and therefore clearly marked for promotion in the Church); and the privation stood him in good stead now. It only struck him as a little irregular to be sitting in the study with a person so attired. But he thought to himself—"After all, he may be one of My People."

"And what can I do for you?" he said kindly, when the Object was seated opposite to him on the very edge of a large arm-chair, the pink arms laid like weapons of warfare upon his knees, and the broad hands warming themselves in a curious unattached manner at the fire.

"Ye see, sir," began the Object, "I am Seemion Gleg, an' I am ettlin' to be a minister."

The Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan started. He came of a Levitical family, and over his head there were a series of portraits of very dignified gentlemen in extensive white neckerchiefs, his forebears and predecessors in honourable office—a knee-breeched, lace-ruffled moderator among them.

It was as if a Prince of the Blood had listened to some rudely democratic speech from a waif of the causeway.

"A minister!" he exclaimed. Then, as a thought flashed across him—"Oh, a Dissenting preacher!" he continued.

This would explain matters.

"Na, na," said Simeon Gleg; "nae Dissenter ava'. I'm for the Kirk itsel'—the Auld Kirk or naething. That was the way my mither brocht me up. An' I want to learn Greek an' Laitin. I hae plenty o' spare time, an' my maister gies me a' the forenichts. I can learn at the peat fire after the ither men are gane to their beds."

"Your master!" said the minister. "Do you mean your teacher?"

"Na, na," said Simeon Gleg; "I mean Maister Golder o' the Glaisters. I serve there as plooman!"

"You!" exclaimed the minister, aghast. "How old may you be?"

"I'm gaun in my nineteenth year," said Simeon. "I'm no' big for my age, I ken; but I can throw ony man that I get grups on, and haud ony beast whatsomever. I can ploo wi' the best an' maw—Weel, I'm no' gaun to brag, but ye can ask Maister Golder—that is an elder o' your ain, an' comes at least twa Sabbaths afore every Communion to hear ye."

"But why do ye want to learn Greek and Latin?" queried the minister.

"Weel, ye see, sir," said Simeon Gleg, leaning forward to poke the manse fire with the toe of his stocking—the minister watching with interest to see if he could do it without burning the wool—"I hae saved twunty pounds, and I thocht o' layin' it oot on the improvement o' my mind. It's a heap o' money, I ken; but, then, my mind needs a feck o' impruvement—if ye but kenned hoo ignorant I am, ye wadna wonder. Ay, ay"—taking, as it were, a survey of the whole ground—"my mind will stand a deal o' impruvement. It's gey rough, whinny grund, and has never been turned owre. But I was thinkin' Enbra wad gie it a rare bit lift. What do ye think o' the professors there? I was hearin' some o' them wasna thocht muckle o'!"

The minister moved a little uneasily in his chair, and settled his circular collar.

"Well," he said, "they are able men—most of them."

He was a cautious minister.

"Dod, an' I'm gled to hear ye sayin' that. It's a relief to my mind," said Simeon Gleg. "I dinna want to fling my twunty pound into the mill-dam."

"But I understood you to say," went on the minister, "that you intended to enter the ministry of the Kirk."

"Ou ay, that's nae dout my ettlin'. But that's a lang gate to gang, an' in the meantime my object in gaun to the college is juist the cultivation o' my mind."

The wondrous apple-faced ploughboy in the red-sleeved bed-gown looked thoughtfully at the palms of his horny hands as he reeled off this sentence. But he had more to say.

"I think Greek and Laitin wull be the best way. Twunty pounds' worth—seven for fees an' the rest for providin'. But my mither says she'll gie me a braxy ham or twa, an' a crock o' butter."

"But what do you know?" asked the minister. "Have you begun the languages?"

Simeon Gleg wrestled a moment with the M.B. waistcoat, and from the inside of it he extricated two books.

"This," he said, "is Melvin's Laitin Exercises, an' I hae the Rudiments at hame. I hae been through them twice. An' this is the Academy Greek Rudiments. O man—I mean, O minister"—he broke out earnestly, "gin ye wad juist gie the letters a bit rin owre. I dinna ken hoo to mak' them soond!"

The minister ran over the Greek letters.

The eyes of Simeon Gleg were upturned in heartfelt thankfulness. His long arms danced convulsively upon his knees. He shot out his red-knotted fingers till they cracked with delight.

"Man, man, an' that's the soond o' them! It's awsome queer! But, O, it's bonny, bonny! There's nocht like the Greek and the Laitin!"

Now, there were many more brilliant ministers in Scotland than the minister of Blawrinnie, but none kindlier; and in a few minutes he had offered to give Simeon Gleg two nights a week in the dead languages. Simeon quivered with the mighty words of thankfulness that rose to his Adam's apple, but which would not come further. He took the minister's hand.

"Oh, sir," he said, "I canna thank ye! I haena words fittin'! Gin I had the Greek and Laitin, I wad ken what to say till ye—"

"Never mind, Simeon; do not say a word. I understand all about it," replied the minister warmly.

Simeon still lingered undecided. He was now standing in the M.B. waistcoat and the pink bed-gown. The sleeves were more obtrusive than ever. The minister was reminded of his official duties. He said tentatively—

"Ah—would you—perhaps you would like me to give you a word of advice, or—ah—perhaps to engage in prayer?"

These were things usually expected in Blawrinnie.

"Na, na!" cried Simeon eagerly. "No' that! But, O minister, ye micht gie thae letters anither skelp owre—aboot Alfy, Betaw, Gaumaw!"

The minister took the Greek Rudiments again without a smile, and read the alphabet slowly and with unction, as if it were his first chapter on the Sabbath morning—and a full kirk.

Simeon Gleg stood by, looking up and clasping his hands in ecstasy.

"O Lord," he said, "help me keep mind o' it! It's just like the kingdom o' heaven! Greek an' Laitin's the thing! There's nae mistak', Greek and Laitin's the thing!"

Then on the doorstep he turned, after Betsy had reclad him in his dry clothes and lent him the minister's third best umbrella.

This was Simeon Gleg's good-bye to the minister—

"Twunty pound is a dreadfu' heap o' siller; but, O minister, my mind 'ill stand an awfu' sicht o' impruvement! It'll no' be a penny owre muckle!"



IV

KIT KENNEDY, NE'ER-DO-WELL

"Now I wonder," with a flicker Of the Old Ford in his eyes As he watched the snow come thicker, "Are the angels warm and rosy When the snow-storms fill the skies, As in summer when the sun Makes their cloud-beds warm and cosy? And I wonder if they're sleeping Through this bitter winter weather Or aloft their watches keeping, As the shepherds told of them, Hosts and hosts of them together, Singing o'er the lowly stable, In that little Bethlehem!"

"Ford Bereton."

"Kit Kennedy, ye are a lazy ne'er-do-weel—lyin' snorin' there in your bed on the back o' five o'clock. Think shame o' yoursel'!"

And Kit did.

He was informed on an average ten times a day that he was lazy, a skulker, a burden on the world, and especially on the household of his mother's cousin, Mistress MacWalter of Loch Spellanderie. So, being an easy-minded boy, and moderately cheerful, he accepted the fact, and shaped his life accordingly.

"Get up this instant, ye scoondrel!" came again the sharp voice. It was speaking from under three ply of blankets, in the ceiled room beneath. That is why it seemed a trifle more muffled than usual. It even sounded kindly, but Kit Kennedy was not deceived. He knew better than that.

"Gin ye dinna be stirrin', I'll be up to ye wi' a stick!" cried Mistress MacWalter.

It was a greyish, glimmering twilight when Kit Kennedy awoke. It seemed such a short time since he went to bed, that he thought that surely his aunt was calling him up the night before. Kit was not surprised. She had married his uncle, and was capable of anything.

The moon, getting old, and yawning in the middle as if tired of being out so late, set a crumbly horn past the edge of his little skylight. Her straggling, pallid rays fell on something white on Kit's bed. He put out his hand, and it went into a cold wreath of snow up to the wrist.

"Ouch!" said Kit Kennedy.

"I'm comin' to ye," repeated his aunt, "ye lazy, pampered guid-for-naething! Dinna think I canna hear ye grumblin' and speakin' ill words there!"

Yet all he had said was "Ouch!"—in the circumstances, a somewhat natural remark.

Kit took the corner of the scanty coverlet and, with a well-accustomed arm-sweep, sent the whole swirl of snow over the end of his bed, getting across the side at the same time himself. He did not complain. All he said, as he blew upon his hands and slapped them against his sides, was—

"Michty, it'll be cauld at the turnip-pits this mornin'!"

It had been snowing in the night since Kit lay down, and the snow had sifted in through the open tiles of the farmhouse of Loch Spellanderie. That was nothing. It often did that. But sometimes it rained, and that was worse. Yet Kit Kennedy did not much mind even that. He had a cunning arrangement in old umbrellas and corn-sacks that could beat the rain any day. Snow, in his own words, he did not give a "buckie"[5] for.

[Footnote 5: The fruit of the dog-rose is, when large and red, locally called a "buckie."]

Then there was a stirring on the floor, a creaking of the ancient joists. It was Kit putting on his clothes. He always knew where each article lay—dark or shine, it made no matter to him. He had not an embarrassment of apparel. He had a suit for wearing, and his "other clothes." These latter were, however, now too small for him, and so he could not go to the kirk at Duntochar. But his aunt had laid them aside for her son Rob, a growing lad. She was a thoughtful, provident woman.

"Be gettin' doon the stair, my man, and look slippy," cried his aunt, as a parting shot, "and see carefully to the kye. It'll be as weel for ye."

Kit had on his trousers by this time. His waistcoat followed. But before he put on his coat he knelt down to say his prayer. He had promised his mother to say it then. If he put on his coat he was apt to forget, in his haste to get out-of-doors where the beasts were friendly. So between his waistcoat and his coat he prayed. The angels were up at the time, and they heard, and went and told the Father who hears prayer. They said that in a garret at a hill-farm a boy was praying with his knees in a snow-drift—a boy without father or mother.

"Ye lazy guid-for-naething! Gin ye are no' doon the stairs in three meenits, no' a drap o' porridge or a sup o' milk shall ye get the day!"

So Kit got on his feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself. So that is the way he had to finish his prayers—on his feet, shuffling and dancing a break-down. The angels saw, and smiled. But they took it to the Father, just the same as if Kit Kennedy had been in church. All save one, who dropped something that might have been a pearl and might have been a tear. Then he also went within the inner court, and told that which he had seen.

But to Kit there was nothing to grumble about. He was pleased, if any one was. His clogs did not let in the snow. His coat was rough, but warm. If any one was well off, and knew it, it was Kit Kennedy.

So he came down-stairs, if stairs they could be called that were but the rounds of a ladder. His aunt heard him.

"Keep awa' frae the kitchen, ye thievin' loon! There's nocht there for ye—takin' the bairns' meat afore they're up!"

But Kit was not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well. Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion. He was taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of "farles" which swung from the black, smoked beam in the corner. Kit had cause to remember the occasion. Ever since, she had cast it up to him. She was a master at casting up, as her husband knew. But Kit was used to it, and he did not care. A thick stick was all that he cared for, and that only for three minutes; but he minded when Mistress MacWalter abused his mother, who was dead.

Kit Kennedy made for the front door, direct from the foot of the ladder. His aunt raised herself on one elbow in bed, to assure herself that he did not go into the kitchen. She heard the click of the bolt shot back, and the stir of the dogs as Tweed and Tyke rose from the fireside to follow him. There was still a little red gleaming between the bars, and Kit would have liked to go in and warm his toes on the hearthstone. But he knew that his aunt was listening. He was going thirteen, and big for his age, so he wasted no pity on himself, but opened the door and went out. Self-pity is bad at any time. It is fatal at thirteen.

At the door one of the dogs stopped, sniffed the keen frosty air, turned quietly, and went back to the hearthstone. That was Tweed. But Tyke was out rolling in the snow when Kit Kennedy shut the door.

Then his aunt went to sleep. She knew that Kit Kennedy did his work, and that there would be no cause to complain. But she meant to complain all the same. He was a lazy, deceitful hound, an encumbrance, and an interloper among her bairns.

Kit slapped his long arms against his sides. He stood beneath his aunt's window, and crowed so like a cock that Mistress Mac Walter jumped out of her bed.

"Save us!" she said. "What's that beast doin' there at this time in the mornin'?"

She got out of bed to look; but she could see nothing, certainly not Kit. But Kit saw her, as she stood shivering at the window in her night-gear. Kit hoped that her legs were cold. This was his revenge. He was a revengeful boy.

As for himself, he was as warm as toast. The stars tingled above with frost. The moon lay over on her back and yawned still more ungracefully. She seemed more tired than ever.

Kit had an idea. He stopped and cried up at her—

"Get up, ye lazy guid-for-naething! I'll come wi' a stick to ye!"

But the moon did not come down. On the contrary, she made no sign. Kit laughed. He had to stop in the snow to do it. The imitation of his aunt pleased him. He fancied himself climbing up a rung-ladder to the moon, with a broomstick in his hand. He would start that old moon, if he fell down and broke his neck. Kit was hungry now. It was a long time since supper. Porridge is, no doubt, good feeding; but it vanishes away like the morning cloud, and leaves behind it only an aching void. Kit felt the void, but he could not help it. Instead, however, of dwelling upon it, his mind was full of queer thoughts and funny imaginings. It is a strange thing that the thought of rattling on the ribs of a lazy, sleepy moon with a besom-shank pleased him as much as a plate of porridge and as much milk as he could sup to it. But that was the fact.

Kit went next into the stable to get a lantern. The horses were moving about restlessly, but Kit had nothing to do with them. He went in only to get a lantern. It was on the great wooden corn-crib in the corner. Kit lighted it, and pulled down his cap over his ears.

Then he crossed over to the cattle-sheds. The snow was crisp under foot. His feet went through the light drift which had fallen during the night, and crackled frostily upon the older and harder crust. At the barn, Kit paused to put fresh straw in his iron-shod clogs. Fresh straw every morning in the bottom of one's clogs is a great luxury. It keeps the feet warm. Who can afford a new sole of fleecy wool every morning to his shoe? Kit could, for straw is cheap, and even his aunt did not grudge a handful. Not that it would have mattered if she had.

The cattle rattled their chains in a friendly and companionable way as he crossed the yard, Tyke following a little more sedately than before. Kit's first morning job was to fodder the cattle. He went to the hay-mow and carried a great armful of fodder, filling the manger before the bullocks, and giving each a friendly pat as he went by. Great Jock, the bull in the pen by himself in the corner, pushed a moist nose over the bars, and dribbled upon Kit with slobbering affection. Kit put down his head and pretended to run at him, whereat Jock, whom nobody else dared go near, beamed upon him with the solemn affection of "bestial"—his great eyes shining in the light of the lamp with unlovely but genuine affection.

Then came the cows' turn. Kit Kennedy took a milking-pail, which he would have called a luggie, set his knee to Crummie, his favourite, who was munching her fodder, and soon had a warm draught. He pledged her in her own milk, wishing her good health and many happy returns. Then, for his aunt's sake, he carefully wiped the luggie dry, and set it where he had found it. He had got his breakfast—no mean or poor one.

But he did not doubt that he was, as his aunt had said, "a lazy, deceitful, thieving hound."

Kit Kennedy came out of the byre, and trudged away out over the field at the back of the barn, to the sheep in the park. He heard one of them cough as a human being does behind his hand. The lantern threw dancing reflections on the snow. Tyke grovelled and rolled in the light drift, barking loudly. He bit at his own tail. Kit set down the lantern, and fell upon him for a tussle. The two of them had rolled one another into a snowdrift in exactly ten seconds, from which they rose glowing with heat—the heat of young things when the blood runs fast. Tyke, being excited, scoured away wildly, and circled the park at a hand-gallop before his return. But Kit only lifted the lantern and made for the turnip-pits.

The turnip-cutter stood there, with great square mouth black against the sky. That mouth must be filled. Kit went to the end of the barrow-like mound of the turnip-pit. It was covered with snow, so that it hardly showed above the level of the field. Kit threw back the coverings of old sacks and straw which kept the turnips from the frost. There lay the great green-and-yellow globes full of sap. The snow fell upon them from the top of the pit. The frost grasped them without. It was a chilly job to handle them, but Kit did not hesitate a moment.

He filled his arms with them, and went to the turnip-cutter. Soon the crunch, crunch of the knives was to be heard as Kit drove round the handle, and afterwards the frosty sound of the square finger-lengths of cut turnip falling into the basket. The sheep had gathered about him, silently for the most part. Tyke sat still and dignified now, guarding the lantern, which the sheep were inclined to butt over. Kit heard the animals knocking against the empty troughs with their hard little trotters, and snuffing about them with their nostrils.

He lifted the heavy basket, heaved it against his breast, and made his way down the long line of troughs. The sheep crowded about him, shoving and elbowing each other like so many human beings, callously and selfishly. His first basket did not go far, as he shovelled it in great handfuls into the troughs, and Kit came back for another. It was tiring work, and the day was dawning grey when he had finished. Then he made the circuit of the field, to assure himself that all was right, and that there were no stragglers lying frozen in corners, or turned avel[6] in the lirks of the knowes.

[Footnote 6: A sheep turns avel when it so settles itself upon its back in a hollow of the hill that it cannot rise.]

Then he went back to the onstead. The moon had gone down, and the farm-buildings loomed very cold and bleak out of the frost-fog.

Mistress MacWalter was on foot. She had slept nearly two hours, being half-an-hour too long, after wearying herself with raising Kit; and, furthermore, she had risen with a very bad temper. But this was no uncommon occurrence.

She was in the byre with a lantern of her own. She was talking to herself, and "flyting on" the patient cows, who now stood chewing the cuds of their breakfast. She slapped them apart with her stool, applied savagely to their flanks. She even lifted her foot to them, which affronts a self-respecting cow as much as a human being.

In this spirit she greeted Kit when he appeared.

"Where hae ye been, ye careless deevil, ye? A guid mind hae I to gie ye my milking-stool owre yer crown, ye senseless, menseless blastie! What ill-contriving tricks hae ye been at, that ye haena gotten the kye milkit?"

"I hae been feeding the sheep at the pits, aunt," said Kit Kennedy.

"Dinna tell me," cried his aunt; "ye hae been wasting your time at some o' your ploys. What do ye think that John MacWalter, silly man, feeds ye for? He has plenty o' weans o' his ain to provide for withoot meddling wi' the like o' you—careless, useless, fushionless blagyaird that ye are."

Mistress Mac Walter had sat down on her stool to the milking by this time. But her temper was such that she was milking unkindly, and Crummie felt it. Also she had not forgotten, in her slow-moving bovine way, that she had been kicked. So in her turn she lifted her foot and let drive, punctuating a gigantic semi-colon with her cloven hoof just on that part of the person of Mistress MacWalter where it was fitted to take most effect.

Mistress MacWalter found herself on her back, with the milk running all over her. She picked herself up, helped by Kit, who had come to her assistance.

Her words were few, but not at all well ordered. She went to the byre door to get the driving-stick to lay on Crummie. Kit stopped her.

"If you do that, aunt, ye'll pit a' the kye to that o't that they'll no' let doon a drap o' milk this morning—an' the morn's kirning-day."

Mistress Mac Walter knew that the boy was right; but she could only turn, not subdue, her anger. So she turned it on Kit Kennedy, for there was no one else there.

"Ye meddlin' curse," she cried, "it was a' your blame!"

She had the shank of the byre besom in her hand as she spoke. With this she struck at the boy, who ducked his head and hollowed his back in a manner which showed great practice and dexterity. The blow fell obliquely on his coat, making a resounding noise, but doing no great harm.

Then Mistress MacWalter picked up her stool and sat down to another cow. Kit drew in to Crummie, and the twain comforted one another. Kit bore no malice, but he hoped that his aunt would not keep back his porridge. That was what he feared. No other word of good or bad said the Mistress of Loch Spellanderie by the Water of Ken. Kit carried the two great reaming cans of fresh milk into the milkhouse; and as he went out empty-handed, Mistress Mac Walter waited for him, and with a hand both hard and heavy fetched him a ringing blow on the side of the head, which made his teeth clack together and his eyes water.

"Tak' that, ye gangrel loon!" she said.

Kit Kennedy went into the barn with fell purpose in his heart. He set up on end a bag of chaff, which was laid aside to fill a bed. He squared up to it in a deadly way, dancing lightly on his feet, his hands revolving in a most knowing manner.

His left hand shot out, and the sack of chaff went over in the corner.

"Stand up, Mistress MacWalter," said Kit, "an' we'll see wha's the better man."

It was evidently Kit who was the better man, for the sack subsided repeatedly and flaccidly on the hard-beaten earthen floor. So Kit mauled Mistress MacWalter exceeding shamefully, and obtained so many victories over that lady that he quite pleased himself, and in time gat him into such a glow that he forgot all about the tingling on his ear which had so suddenly begun at the milkhouse door.

"After all, she keeps me!" said Kit Kennedy cheerily.

There was an angel up aloft who went into the inner court at that moment and told that Kit Kennedy had forgiven his enemies. He said nothing about the sack. So Kit Kennedy began the day with a clean slate and a ringing ear.

He went to the kitchen door to go in and get his breakfast.

"Gae'way wi' ye! Hoo daur ye come to my door after what yer wark has been this mornin'?" cried Mistress MacWalter as soon as she heard him. "Aff to the schule wi' ye! Ye get neither bite nor sup in my hoose the day."

The three MacWalter children were sitting at the table taking their porridge and milk with horn spoons. The ham was skirling and frizzling in the pan. It gave out a good smell, but that did not cost Kit Kennedy a thought. He knew that that was not for the like of him. He would as soon have thought of wearing a white linen shirt or having the lairdship of a barony, as of getting ham to his breakfast. But after his morning's work, he had a sore heart enough to miss his porridge.

But he knew that it was no use to argue with Mistress MacWalter. So he went outside and walked up and down in the snow. He heard the clatter of dishes as the children, Rob, Jock, and Meysie MacWalter, finished their eating, and Meysie set their bowls one within the other and carried them into the back-kitchen to be ready for the washing. Meysie was nearly ten, and was Kit's very good friend. Jock and Rob, on the other hand, ran races who should have most tales to tell of his misdoings at home, and also at the village school.

"Kit Kennedy, ye scoondrel, come in this meenit an' get the dishes washen afore yer uncle tak's the 'Buik,'"[7] cried Mistress MacWalter, who was a religious woman, and came forward regularly at the half-yearly communion in the kirk of Duntochar. She did not so much grudge Kit his meal of meat, but she had her own theories of punishment. So she called Kit in to wash the dishes from which he had never eaten. Meysie stood beside them, and dried for him, and her little heart was sore. There was something in the bottom of some of them, and this Kit ate quickly and furtively—Meysie keeping a watch that her mother was not coming. The day was now fairly broken, but the sun had not yet risen.

[Footnote 7: Has family worship.]

"Tak' the pot oot an' clean it. Gie the scrapins' to the dogs!" ordered Mistress MacWalter.

Kit obeyed. Tyke and Tweed followed with their tails over their backs. The white wastes glimmered in the grey of the morning. It was rosy where the sun was going to rise behind the great ridge of Ben Arrow, which looked, smoothly covered with snow as it was, exactly like a gigantic turnip-pit. At the back of the milkhouse Kit set down the pot, and with a horn spoon which he took from his pocket he shared the scraping of the pot equally into three parts, dividing it mathematically by lines drawn up from the bottom. It was a good big pot, and there was a good deal of scrapings, which was lucky for both Tweed and Tyke, as well as good for Kit Kennedy.

Now, this is the way that Kit Kennedy—that kinless loon, without father or mother—won his breakfast.

He had hardly finished and licked his spoon, the dogs sitting on their haunches and watching every rise and fall of the horn, when a well-known voice shrilled through the air—

"Kit Kennedy, ye lazy, ungrateful hound, come ben to the "Buik." Ye are no better than the beasts that perish, regairdless baith o' God and man!"

So Kit Kennedy cheerfully went in to prayers and thanksgiving, thinking himself not ill off. He had had his breakfast.

And Tweed and Tyke, the beasts that perish, put their noses into the porridge-pot to see if Kit Kennedy had left anything. There was not so much as a single grain of meal.



THE BACK O' BEYONT

I

O nest, leaf-hidden, Dryad's green alcove, Half-islanded by hill-brook's seaward rush, My lovers still bower, where none may come but I! Where in clear morning prime and high noon hush With only some old poet's book I lie! Sometimes a lonely dove Calleth her mate, or droning honey thieves Weigh down the bluebell's nodding campanule; And ever singeth through the twilight cool Low voice of water and the stir of leaves.

II

Perfect are August's golden afternoons! All the rough way across the fells, a peal Of joy-bells ring, not heard by alien ear. The jealous brake and close-shut beech conceal The sweet bower's queen and mine, albeit I hear Hummed scraps of dear old tunes, I push the boughs aside, and lo, I look Upon a sight to make one more than wise,— A true maid's heart, shining from tender eyes, Rich with love's lore, unlearnt in any book.

"Memory Harvest."

"An' what brings the lang-leggit speldron howkin' an' scrauchlin' owre the Clints o' Drumore an' the Dungeon o' Buchan?" This was a question which none of Roy Campbell's audience felt able to answer. But each grasped his rusty Queen's-arm musket and bell-mouthed horse-pistol with a new determination. The stranger, whoever he might be, was manifestly unsafe. Roy Campbell had kept the intruder under observation for some time through the weather-beaten ship's prospect-glass which he had stayed cumbrously on the edge of a rock. The man was poking about among rocks and debris at the foot of one of the cliffs in which the granite hills break westward towards the Atlantic.

Roy Campbell, the watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring as their stock-in-trade.

It was in the palmy days of the traffic with the Isle of Man, when that tight little island supplied the best French brandy for the drouthy lairds of half Scotland, also lace for the "keps" and stomachers of their dames, not to speak of the Sabbath silks of the farmer's goodwife, wherein she brawly showed that she had as proper a respect for herself in the house of God as my lady herself.

Solway shore was a lively place in those days, and it was worth something to be in the swim of the traffic; ay, or even to have a snug farmhouse, with perhaps a hidden cellar or two, on the main trade-routes to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Much of the stuff was run by the "Rerrick Nighthawks," gallant lads who looked upon the danger of the business as a token of high spirit, and considered that the revenue laws of the land were simply made to be broken—an opinion in which they were upheld generally by the people of the whole countryside, not excepting even those of the austere and Covenanting sort.

How Roy Campbell had found his way among the Westland Whigs is too long a story to be told—some little trouble connected with the days of the '45, he said. More likely something about a lass. Suffice it that he had drawn himself into hold in a lonely squatter shieling deep among the fastnesses of the Clints o' Drumore. He had built the house with his own hands. It was commonly known to the few who ventured that way as "The Back o' Beyont." In the hills behind the hut, which itself lay high on the brae-face, were many caves, each with its wattling of woven wicker, over which the heather had been sodded, so that in summer and autumn it grew as vigorously as upon the solid hill-side. Here Roy Campbell, late of Glen Dochart, flourished exceedingly, in spite of all the Kennedys of the South.

So it was that from the Clints o' Drumore and from among the scattered boulder-shelters around it, Roy and his men had been watching this intrusive stranger. Suddenly Roy gave a cry, and the prospect-glass shook in his hand. A little after there came the far-away sound of a gun.

"Somebody has let a shot intil him," said Roy, dancing with excitement, "but it has no' been a verra good shot, for he's sittin' on a stane an' rubbin' the croon o' his hat. Have I no telled you till I'm tired tellin' you, that there was no' be no shootin' till there was no fear o' missin'? It is not good to have to shoot; but it iss a verra great deal waur to shoot an' miss. If that's Gavin Stevenson, the muckle nowt, I declare I'll brek his ramshackle blunderbuss owre his thick heid."

Taming for an instant his fury, the old man kept his eye on the distant point of interest, and the others fixed their eyes on him. Suddenly he leapt to his feet, uttering what, by the sound, were very strong words indeed, for they were in the Gaelic, a language in which it is good and mouth-filling to read the imprecatory psalms. When at last his feelings subsided to the point when his English returned to him, he said—

"May I, Roy Campbell, be boiled in my ain still-kettle, distilled through my ain worm, an' drucken by a set o' reckless loons, if that's no my ain Flora that's speakin' till the man himsel'!"

The old man himself seemed much calmed either by the outbreak or by the discovery he had made; but on several of the younger men among his followers the news seemed to have an opposite effect.

* * * * *

At the same moment, high on the hill-side above them, a young woman was talking to a young man. She had walked towards him holding a bell-mouthed musket in her hands. As she approached, the youth rose to his feet with a puzzled expression on his face. But there was no fear in it, only doubt and surprise, slowly fading into admiration. He put his forefinger and the one next it through the hole in his hat, and said calmly, since the young woman seemed to expect him to begin the conversation—

"Did you do this?"

"I took the gun from the man who did. The accident will not happen again!"

It seemed inadequate as an explanation, but there was something in the girl's manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete satisfaction. Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and set her chin upon her hand. It was a round and rather prominent chin, and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that he had never seen a chin quite like it. Or perhaps, on second thoughts, was it that dimple at the side of the mouth, in which an arch mockery seemed to be lurking, which struck him more? He resolved to think this out. It seemed now more important than the little matter of the hole in the hat.

"You had better go away," said the young girl suddenly.

"And why?" asked the young man.

"Because my father does not like strangers!" she said.

Again the explanation appeared inadequate, but again the youth was satisfied, finding reason enough for the dislike, mayhap, either in the dimple on the prominent chin, or in the hole by which he twirled his hat.

"Do you come from England?" he asked, referring to her accent.

The girl rose from her seat as she answered—

"Oh, no, I come from the 'Back o' Beyont'! What is your name?"

"My name," said the young man stolidly, "is Hugh Kennedy; and I am coming soon to the 'Back o' Beyont,' father or no father!"

* * * * *

It was a dark night in August, brightening with the uncertain light of a waning moon, which had just risen. High up on a mountain-side a man was hastening along, running with all his might whenever he reached a dozen yards of fairly level ground, desperately clinging at other times with fingers and knees and feet to the niches in the bare slates which formed the slippery roofing of the mountain-side. As he paused for a long moment, the moon turned a scarred and weird face towards him, one-half of it apparently eaten away. Panting, he resumed his course, and the pebbles that he started rattled noisily down the mountain-side. But as he drew near the top of the ridge up which he had been climbing, he became more cautious. He raced no more wildly, and took care that he loosened no more boulders to go trundling and thundering down into the valley. Here he crawled carefully among the bare granite slabs which lay in hideous confusion—the weather-blanched bones of the mountain, each casting an ebony shadow on its neighbour. He looked over the ridge into the gulf through which the streams sped westward towards the Atlantic. A deep glen lay beneath him—over it on the other side a wilderness of rugged screes and sheer precipices. Opposite, to the east, rose the solemn array of the Range of Kells, deep indigo-blue under the gibbous moon. There were the ridges of towering Millfore, the shadowy form of Millyea, to the north, the mountain of the eagle, Ben Yelleray, with his sides gashed and scarred. But the young man's eyes instinctively sought the opener space between the precipices, whence the face of the loch glimmered like steel on which one has breathed, in the scanty moonbeams. Hugh Kennedy had come as he said to seek the Back o' Beyont, and, by his familiarity and readiness, he sought it not for the first time.

Surmounting the ridge, he wormed his way along the sky-line with caution, till, getting his back into a perpendicular cleft down the side of the mountain, he cautiously descended, making no halt until he paused in the shadow of the precipice at the foot of the perilous stairway. A plain surface of benty turf lay before him, bright in the moonlight, dangerous to cross, upon which a few sheep came and went. A little burn from the crevice of the rocks, through which he had descended, cut the green surface irregularly. Into this the daring searcher for hidden treasure descended, and prone on his face pushed his way along, hardly a pennon of heather or a spray of red sorrel swaying with his stealthy passage.

At the end of the grassy level the little burn fell suddenly with a ringing sound into a basin of pure white granite—a drinking-cup with a yard-wide edge of daintiest silver sand. The young man made his way hastily across the water to a little bower beneath the western bank, overhung with birch and fern, half islanded by the swift rush of the mountain streamlet. Here a tiny circle of stones lay on the sand. Hugh Kennedy stooped to examine their position with the most scrupulous care. Five black at intervals, and a white one to the north with a bit of ribbon under it.

"That means," he said, "that the whole crew are out, and they are expecting a cargo from the south. The white stone to the north and the bit ribbon—Flora is waiting, then, at the Seggy Goats."

He strained his eyes forward, but they could see nothing. Far away to the south he heard voices, and a gun cracked. "I'm well off the ridge," he muttered; "they could have marked me down like a foumart as I ran. They'll be fetching a cargo up from the Brig o' Cree," he added, "and it'll be all Snug at the 'Back o' Beyont' before the morning." He listened again, and laughed low to himself, the pleased laugh a lover laughs when things are speeding well with him.

"Maybe," said he, "Roy Campbell may miss something from the 'Back o' Beyont' the morrow's morn, that a score of casks of Isle of Man brandy will not make up for."

So saying, he took his way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath, brushing through the "gall"[8] bushes, splashing through the shallow pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel, not six inches from where the young man lay, a gun was discharged, evidently by the sudden jerk upon the earth, and the air was rent above him by a perfect tornado of vigorous Gaelic—a good language, as has been said, for preaching or swearing.

[Footnote 8: The bog-myrtle is locally called "gall" bushes. It is the most characteristic and delightful of Galloway scents.]

"That's Roy himsel'!" said the young man. "It's a strange chance when a Kennedy comes near to getting his brains knocked out on his own land by the heel of an outlaw Highlander."

Once on the hillside again, he kept an even way over the boulders and stones which cumbered it, with less care than hitherto, as though to protest against the previous indignity of his position. But, Kennedy though he might be, it had been fitter if he had remembered that he was on the No Man's Land of the Dungeon of Buchan, for here, about this time, was a perfect Adullam cave of all the broken and outlaw men south of the Highland border. A challenge came from the hill-side—"Wha's there?" Kennedy dropped like a stone, and a shot rang out, followed immediately by the "scat" of a bullet against the rock behind which he lay concealed.

A tramp of heavy Galloway brogans was heard, and a half-hearted kicking about among the heather bushes, and at last a voice saying discontentedly—

"Gin Roy disna keep Kennedy's liftit beasts in the hollow whaur they should be, he needna blame me gin some o' them gets a shot intil their hurdies."

"My beasts!" said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, "mine for a groat!" He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more caution to that northern gateway he had called the Seggy Goats.

There he turned to the right up a little burnside which led into a lirk in the hill, such as would on the border have been called a "hope." As he came well within the dusky-walled basin of the hill-side, some one tall and white glided out to meet him; but at this moment the moon discreetly withdrew herself behind a cloud, mindful, it may be, of her own youth and of Endymion's greeting on the Latmian steep. So the chronicler, willing though he be, is yet unable to say how these two met. He only knows that when the pale light flooded back upon the hillside and cast its reflection into the dim depths of the hope, they were evidently well agreed. "It is true what I told you," he is saying to her, "that my name is Hugh Kennedy, but I did not tell you that I am Kennedy of Bargany, and yours till death!"

"Then," said the girl, "it is fitter that I should return to the 'Back of Beyont' till such time as you and your men come back to burn the thatch about our ears."

The young man smiled and said—"No, Flora, you and I have another road to travel this night. Over there by the halse o' the pass, there stand tethered two good horses that will take us before the morning to the Manse of Balmaclellan, where my cousin, the minister, is waiting, and his mother is expecting you. Come with me, and you shall be Lady of Bargany before morning." He stooped again to take her hand.

"My certes, but ye made braw and sure of me with your horses," she said. "I have a great mind not to stir a foot."

But the young man laughed, being still well pleased, and giving no heed to her protestations.

* * * * *

So there was a wedding in the early morning at the Manse of the Kells, and a young bride was brought home to Bargany. As for old Roy Campbell, he was made the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, which was an old Cassilis distinction—and a post that exactly suited his Highland blood. Time and again, however, had his son to intercede with him not to be too severe with those smugglers and gangrel bodies who had come to look upon the fastnesses of the Forest as their own.

"Have ye no fellow-feeling, Roy, for old sake's sake?" Kennedy would ask.

"Feeling? havers!" growled Roy impolitely, for Roy was spoiled. "I'm a chief's man noo, and I'll harbour nae gangrel loons on the lands o' Kennedy."

So the old cateran would depart humming the Galloway rhyme—

"Frae Wigtown to the Toon o' Ayr, Portpatrick to the Cruives o' Cree; Nae man need hope to bide safe there, Unless he court wi' Kennedy."

"Body o' MacCallum More," chuckled the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, "but it was Kennedy that cam' coortin' to the 'Back o' Beyont' that time, whatever, I'm thinkin'!"



VI

NORTH TO THE ARCTIC

At home 'tis sunny September, Though here 'tis a waste of snows, So bleak that I scarce remember How the scythe through the cornland goes.

With an aching heart I wander Through the cold and curved wreaths, And dream that I see meander Brown burns amid purple heaths:

That I hear the stags on the mountains Bray loud in the early morn, And that scarlet gleams by the fountains The red-berried wild-rose thorn.

"It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at the Yakut Yoort."

It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area bell and the last edition of the Pall Mall being cried blatantly athwart the street.

But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had talked much—usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia, and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled down together as two men will sometimes do, who work together and are drawn by a sympathy of unlikeness which neither can explain. Both of us worked on an evening paper of pronounced views upon moral questions and a fine feeling for a good advertising connection.

We had been sitting dreamily in the late twilight of a gloomy November day. Work was over, and we were free till Monday morning should call us back again to the Strand. We sat silent a long while, till Constantine broke out unexpectedly with the words which startled me.

I looked up with a curiosity which I tried to make neither too apparent nor yet too lukewarm.

"You were speaking of the time you spent in Siberia?" I said, as though we had often discussed it.

"Yes; did I ever tell you how I got away?"

Constantine took out his handkerchief and flicked a speck of dust from his clothes. He was an exception to the rule that revolutionaries care nothing about their persons—Russian ones especially. He said that it was because his mother was an English-woman, and England is a country where they manufacture soap for the world.

"Yes," he continued thoughtfully, "the Free Command was purgatory, but the Yoort was Hell!" Then he paused a moment, and added, "I was in the Yoort." He went on—

"There were three of us in the cage which boated us along the rivers. Chained and manacled we were, so that our limbs grew numb and dead under the weight of the iron. All Kazan University men, I as good as an Englishman. The others, Leof and Big Peter, had been students in my class. They looked up to me, for it was from me that they had learned to read Herbert Spencer. They had taught themselves to plot against the White Czar. Yet I had been expatriated because it could not be supposed that I could teach them Spencer without Anarchy."

Constantine paused and smiled at the stupidity of his former rulers.

"Well," he continued, "the two who had plotted to blow up his Majesty were sent to the Free Command. They could come and go largely at their own pleasure—in fact, could do most things except visit their old teacher, who for showing them how to read Spencer was isolated in the Yakut Yoort.' Not that the Yakuts meant to be unkind. They were a weak and cowardly set—cruel only to those who could not possibly harm them. They had the responsibility of my keeping. They were paid for looking after me, therefore it was to their interest to keep me alive. But the less this cost them, the greater gainers were they. They knew also that if, by accident, they starved the donkey for the lack of the last straw, a paternal Government would not make the least trouble.

"At first I was not allowed to go out of their dirty tents or still filthier winter turf-caves, than which the Augean stables were a cleaner place of abode. Within the tent the savages stripped themselves naked. The reek of all abominations mingled with the smoke of seal-oil and burning blubber, and the temperature even on the coldest day climbed steadily away up above a hundred. Sometimes I thought it must be the smell that sent it up. The natives had apparently learned their vices from the Russians and their habits of personal cleanliness from monkeys. For long I was never allowed to leave the Yoort for any purpose, even for a moment, without a couple of savages coming after me with long fish-spears.

"But for all that, much is possible, even in Siberia, to a man who has a little money. By-and-by my hosts began to understand that when the inspector visited us to see me in the flesh, there was money enclosed in the letters (previously carefully edited by the Government official), money which could be exchanged at Bulun Store for raw leaf-tobacco. After this discovery, things went much better. I was allowed a little tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle, with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but with skins and a couple of lamps I did not do so badly.

"One day I had a letter stealthily conveyed to me from Big Peter, to say that he and Leof were resolved on escaping. They had a boat, he said, concealed about eight miles up the Lena under some willows on a stagnant backwater. They intended to try for the north as soon as the water opened, and hoped then to go towards the west and Wrangell Island, where they felt pretty sure of being picked up by American sealers by the month of August or September.

"This letter stirred all my soul. I did not believe rightly in their chance. It is seldom, I knew, that whalers come that way, or enter far through the Straits of Behring. Still, undoubtedly, a few did so every year. It was worth risking, any way, for any kind of action was better than that ghastly wearing out of body and fatty degeneration of soul. One or two more letters passed, stimulated by the tobacco-money, and the day of rendezvous was fixed.

"Leof and Big Peter were to make their own way down the river, hiding by day and travelling by night. I was to go straight across country and meet them at the tail of the sixth island above Bulun. So, very quietly, I made my preparations, and laid in a store of frozen meat and fish, together with a fish-spear, which I cached due south of my Yoort, never by any chance allowing myself to take a walk towards the north, the direction in which I would finally endeavour to escape. It was very lonely, for I had no one to consult, and no friend to whom to intrust any part of my arrangements. But the suspicion of the Yakuts was now very considerably allayed, for, said they, he is now well fed. A dog in good condition does not go far from home to hunt. He will therefore stay. They knew something about dogs, for they tried their hunting condition by running a finger up and down the spine sharply. If that member was not cut, the dog was in good condition.

"At last, in the dusk of a night in early summer, when the mosquitos were biting with all their first fury and it was still broad day at ten o'clock, I started, walking easily and conspicuously to the south, sitting down occasionally to smoke as though enjoying the night air before turning in, lest any of my hosts should chance to be awake. Once out of sight of the Yoort, I went quickly to my cache of provisions, and, shouldering the whole, I turned my face towards the river and the Northern Ocean.

"I had not gone far when I struck the track which led along the riverside in the direction of Bulun. There, to my intense horror, I saw a man sitting still in a Siberian cart within a few hundred yards, apparently waiting for me to descend. I gave myself up for lost, but, nevertheless, made my way down to him. He was a young man with an uncertain face and weak, shifty eyes.

"'Halloo!' I cried, in order to have the first word, 'what will you take to drive me to Maidy, where I wish to fish?'

"'I cannot drive you to Maidy,' he returned, 'for I am carrying provisions to my father, who has the shop in Bulun; but for two roubles I will give you a lift to Wiledote, where you can cross the river to Maidy in a boat.'

"It was none so evil a chance after all which took me in his way. He was a useless fellow enough, and intolerably conceited. He was for ever asking if I could do this and that, and jeering at me for my incapacity when I disclaimed my ability.

"'You cannot kill a wild goose at thirty paces when it is coming towards you—plaff—so fast! You could not shoot as I. Last week I killed thirty ducks with one discharge of my gun.'

"At this point he drove into a ditch, and we were both spilled out on the tundra, an unpleasant thing in summer when the peaty ground is one vast sponge. At Maidy we met this young man's father. Here I found that it was a good thing for me that I had been isolated at the Yoort, for had I been in the Free Command I should certainly have been spotted. The wily old merchant knew every prisoner in the Command; but as I had always obtained all my supplies indirectly through Big Peter, my name and appearance were alike unknown to him. He approached me, however, with caution and circumspection, and asked for a drink of vodka for the ride which his son had given me.

"'Why should I give thee a drink of vodka?' I asked, lest I should seem suspiciously ready to be friendly.

"'Because my son drove you thirteen versts and more.'

"'But I paid your son for all he has done—two roubles, according to bargain. Why should I buy thee vodka? Thou art better without vodka. Vodka will make thee drunk, and thou shalt be brought before the ispravnik.'

"The dirty old rascal drew himself up.

"'I, even I, am ispravnik, and the horses were mine and the tarantass also.'

"'But thy son drove badly and upset us in the ditch.'

"'Then,' whispered the old scoundrel, coming close up with a look of indescribable cunning on his face, 'give my son no vodka—give me all the vodka.'

"Being glad on any terms to get clear of the precious couple, I gave them both money for their vodka, and set off along the backwaters towards the place described by Leof and Big Peter. I found them there before me, and we lost no time in embarking. I found that they had the boat well provendered and equipped. Indeed, the sight of their luxuries tempted us all to excess; but I reminded them that we were still in a country of game, and that we must save all our supplies till we were out in the ocean. The Lena was swollen by the melting snows, and the boat made slow progress, especially as we had to follow the least frequented arms of the vast delta. We found, however, plenty of fish—specially salmon, which were in great quantities wherever, in the blind alleys of the backwaters, we put down the fish-spear. We were not the only animals who rejoiced in the free and open life of the delta archipelago. Often we saw bears swimming far ahead, but none of them came near our boat.

"One night when the others were sleeping I strayed away over the marshy tundra, plunging through the hundred yards of black mud and moss where the willow-grouse and the little stint were feeding. I came upon a nest or two of the latter, and paused to suck some of the eggs, one of the birds meanwhile coming quite close, putting its head quaintly to the side as though to watch where its property was going, with a view to future recovery. A little farther along I got on the real tundra, and wandered on in the full light of a midnight sun, which coloured all the flat surface of the marshy moorland a deep crimson, and laid deep shadows of purple mist in the great hollow of the Lena river.

"In a little I sat down, and, putting up the collar of my coat—for the air was beginning to bite sharply—I meditated on the chances of our life. It did not seem that we had much more than one chance in a hundred, yet the hundredth chance was indubitably worth the risk—better than inaction, and better than the suicide which would inevitably come with the weakening brain, after another winter such as that we had just passed through.

"Meditating so, I heard a noise behind me, and, turning, found myself almost face to face with a great she-bear, with two cubs of the year running gambolling about her. I had not even so much as a fish-spear with me. With my heart leaping like the piston-rod of an engine, I sat as still as though I had been a pillar of ice carved out of the hummock. The cubs were within twenty paces, and the mother would have passed by but for the roystering youngsters. They came galloping awkwardly up, and nosed all over me, rubbing themselves against my clothes with just such a purring noise as a cat might make. There was no harm in them, but their whining caused the old bear to halt, then abruptly to turn round and come slowly toward me.

"As I sat motionless I saw that she stood on the ground beside me, her nose quite on a level with my face. She came and smelled me over as if uncertain. Then she took a walk all round me. One of the cubs put his long thin snout into the pocket of my fur coat, and nuzzled delightedly among the crumbs. His mother gave him a cuff with her paw which knocked him sprawling three or four paces.

"Having finished her own survey, the bear-mother called away her offspring. The young bear which had first taken the liberty of search, waited till his mother was a few steps off, and then came slyly round and sunk his nose deep in the corresponding pocket on the other side. It was a false move and showed bad judgment. A fish-hook attached itself sharply to his nostril, and he withdrew his head with a howl of pain. The mother turned with an impatient grunt, and I gave myself up for lost. She came back at a great stretching gallop, to where the cub was lying on the snow pawing at his nose. His mother, having turned him over two or three times as if he were a bag of wool, and finding nothing wrong, concluded that he had been stung by a gadfly, or that he was making a fuss about nothing, paying no attention to me whatever. Having finished her inspection, she cuffed him well for his pains, as a troublesome youngster, and disappeared over the tundra. I sat there for the matter of an hour, not daring to move lest the lady-bruin might return. Then fearfully and cautiously I found my way back to the boat and my companions.