Table of Contents
Cold blows the drift on the hill,
Sere is the heather,
High goes the wind and shrill,
Mirk is the weather.
Stout be the front I show,
Come what the gods send!
Plaided and girt I go
Forth to the world’s end.
My brain is the stithy of years,
My heart the red gold
Which the gods with sharp anguish and tears
Have wrought from of old.
In the shining first dawn o’ the world
I was old as the sky,—
The morning dew on the field
Is no younger than I.
I am the magician of life,
The hero of runes;
The sorrows of eld and old strife
Ring clear in my tunes.
The sea lends her minstrel voice,
The storm-cloud its grey;
And ladies have wept at my notes,
Fair ladies and gay.
My home is the rim of the mist,
The ring of the spray,
The hart has his corrie, the hawk has her nest,
But I—the Lost Way.
Come twilight or morning, come winter or spring,
Come leisure, come war,
I tarry not, I, but my burden I sing
Beyond and afar.
I sing of lost hopes and old kings,
And the maids of the past.
Ye shiver adread at my strings,
But ye hear them at last.
I sing of vain quests and the grave,—
Fools tremble, afraid.
I sing of hot life, and the brave
Go forth, undismayed.
I sleep by the well-head of joy
And the fountain of pain.
Man lives, loves, and fights, and then is not,—
I only remain.
Ye mock me and hold me to scorn,—
I seek not your grace.
Ye gird me with terror—forlorn,
I laugh in your face.
—April 1, 1898.
Or he, who in the wilderness, where no man travels and few may live, dwelled in all good reason and kindness. —Chronicle of S. Jean de Remy.
The exact tale of my misadventure on that September day I can scarcely now remember. One thing I have clear in my mind—the weather. For it was in that curious time of year when autumn’s caprices reach their height either in the loveliest of skies or a resolute storm. Now it was the latter, and for two days the clear tints of the season had been drowned in monotonous grey. The mighty hill-streams came down like fields in breadth, and when the wind ceased for a time, the roar of many waters was heard in the land. Ragged leaves blocked the path, heather and bracken were sodden as the meadow turf, and the mountain backs were now shrouded to their bases in mist, and now looming ominous and near in a pause of the shifting wrack.
In the third day of the weather I was tempted by the Evil One and went a- fishing. The attempt was futile, and I knew it, for the streams were boiling like a caldron, and no man may take fish in such a water. Nevertheless, the blustering air and the infinite distance of shadowy hill-top took hold on me so that I could not choose but face the storm. And, once outside, the north wind slashed and buffeted me till my breath was almost gone; and when I came to the river’s edge, I looked down on an acre of churning foam and mountainous wave.
Now, the way of the place is this. The Gled comes down from flat desolate moorlands to the narrower glen, which in turn opens upon the great river of the country-side. On the left it is bounded by gentle slopes of brown heather, which sink after some score of miles into the fields of a plain; but to the right there lies a tract of fierce country, rugged and scarred with torrents; while at the back of all rise the pathless hills which cradle the Callowa and the Aller. It is a land wild on the fairest summer noon, but in the autumn storms it is black as a pit and impregnable as a fortress.
As ill-fortune would have it, I raised a good fish in my first pool, ran it, and lost it in a tangle of driftwood. What with the excitement and the stinging air my blood grew high, I laughed in the face of the heavens, and wrestled in the gale’s teeth for four miles upstream. It was the purest madness, for my casting-line was blown out of the water at almost every gust, and never another fish looked near me. But the keenness abode with me, and so it happened that about mid-day I stood at the foot of the glen whence the Cauldshaw Burn pours its troubled waters to the Gled.
Something in the quiet strength of the great brown flood attracted me against my better judgment. I persuaded myself that in this narrower vale there must be some measure of shelter, and that in its silent pools there were chances of fish. So, with a fine sense of the adventurous, I turned to the right and struck up by the green meadow-lands and the lipping water. Before me was a bank of mist, but even as I looked it opened, and a line of monstrous blue shoulders, ribbed and serrated with a thousand gullies, frowned on my path. The sight put new energy into my limbs. These were the hills which loomed far to the distant lowlands, which few ever climbed, and at whose back lay a land almost unknown to man. I named them to myself with the names which had always been like music to my ear—Craigcreich, the Yirnie, the two Muneraws, and the awful precipice of the Dreichil. With zest I fell to my fishing, and came in a little to the place where the vale ceased and the gorge began.
Here for the first time my efforts prospered, and I had one, two, and three out of the inky pots, which the spate had ringed and dappled with foam. Then, from some unknown cause, the wind fell, and there succeeded the silence which comes from a soaked and dripping world. I fished on and on, but the stillness oppressed me, and the straight craigs, tipped with heather and black with ooze, struck me with something like awe.
Then, ere I knew, I had come to the edge of the gorge, and was out on the peat- moss which gives the Cauldshaw its birth. Once more there came a clearing in the mist, and hill-faces looked out a little nearer, a little more awful. Just beyond that moss lay their foot, and over that barrier of heath and crag lay a new land which I had not yet seen, and scarcely heard of. Suddenly my whole purpose changed. Storm or no storm, I would climb the ridge and look down on the other side. At the top of the Little Muneraw there rose two streams—one, the Callowa, which flowed to the haughlands and meadows of the low country; the other, the Aller, which fought its way to the very centre of the black deserts, and issued some fifty miles distant on another seaboard. I would reach the top, haply see the sight I had often longed for, and then take my weary way down the Callowa home.
So, putting up my rod and strapping tight my creel, I set my face to the knuckle of these mountains which loomed beyond the bog. How I crossed that treacherous land I can scarcely tell, for the rain had left great lagoons which covered shifting sand and clinging mud. Twice I was bogged to my knees, but by dint of many flying leaps from heather to heather, and many lowly scrambles over loose peat, I came to the hard ground whence the slope began. Here I rested, panting, marvelling greatly at my foolhardiness and folly. When honest men were dwelling in comfort at home, I in my fool’s heart chose to be playing cantrips among mosses and scaurs and pathless rocks. I was already soaked and half tired, so in no great bodily ease I set myself to the ascent.
In two hours I had toiled to the front shoulder of the Muneraw, and sat looking down on a pit of mist whence three black lochs gleamed faint and shadowy. The place was hushed save for the croak of ravens and the rare scream of a hawk. Curlews and plovers were left far below; the place was too wild for rushes or bracken; and nothing met the eye but stunted heather, grey lichen- clad boulders, and dark craigs streaked with the fall of streams. I loosened a stone and sent it hurling to the loch below, and in a trice the air was thick with echoes of splash and rush and splinter.
Then once more I set my face to the steep and scrambled upward. And now there came to trouble me that very accident which I most feared; for the wind brought the accursed mist down on me like a plaid, and I struggled through utter blindness. The thickness of mirk is bad enough, but the thickness of white, illimitable ether is worse a thousandfold, for it closes the eye and mazes the wits. I kept as straight as might be for what I knew was the head of the hill, and now upon great banks of rotten granite, now upon almost sheer craigs, I made my track. In maybe an hour the steeps ceased, and I lay and panted on a flat bed of shingle, while the clammy mist drenched me to the bone.
Now for the first time I began to repent of my journey, and took grace to regret my madcap ploy. For the full perils of the place began to dawn upon me. I was here, in this dismal weather, a score of miles from any village, and nigh half as many from the nearest human habitation. A sprain or a broken limb would mean death, and at any moment I might step over a cliff-face into eternity. My one course of safety lay in finding the Callowa springs, and following the trickle to the glens. The way was long, but it was safe, and sooner or later I must come to a dwelling-house.
I knew well that the Callowa rose on the south side of the Muneraw, and the Aller somewhere on the north. But I had lost all sense of direction, I had no compass, and had it not been for the wind, I should have been without guidance. But I remembered that it had blown clear from the north on all my way up the Gled, and now, as I felt its sting on my cheek, I turned with it to what I guessed to be the south. With some satisfaction I began to descend, now sliding for yards, now falling suddenly in a rocky pool, whence a trickle issued among a chaos of stones. Once I came to a high fall, which must have been wonderful indeed had the water been of any size, but was now no more than a silver thread on a great grey face. Sometimes I found myself in ravines where the huge sides seemed to mock the tiny brawling water. A lurking fear began to grow upon me. Hitherto I had found no loch, though I had gone for miles. Now, though I had never been at Callowa head, I had seen it afar off, and knew that the Back Loch o’ the Muneraw lay near the source. But now the glen was opening, peat and heather were taking the place of stone, and yet I had seen no gleam of water.
I sat down to consider, and even as I looked the mist drew back again. And this was what I saw. Brown bog lay flat down a valley, with a stream in its midst making leaden pools. Now there are bogs and bogs, and some are harmless enough; but there was that in the look of this which I could not like. Some two miles down the stream turned, and a ridge of dark and craggy hills fronted the eye. Their edges were jagged, and their inky face was seamed and crossed with a thousand little cataracts. And beneath their shadow lay the cruel moss, with flows and lochs scattered over it like a map on a child’s slate.
To my wonder, in the very lee of the hill I saw what seemed to be a cottage. There was a stunted tree, a piece of stone wall, and a plain glimpse of a grey gable-end. Then I knew whither I had come. The wind had changed. I had followed north for south, and struck the Aller instead of the Callowa. I could not return over that fierce hill and those interminable moorland miles. There was naught to be done save to make for the stones, which might be a dwelling. If the place was ruined, I would even sleep the night in its shelter, and strive to return in the morning. If it was still dwelled in, there was hope of supper and bed. I had always heard of the Aller as the wildest of all waters, flowing, for most of its course, in a mossland untenanted of man. Something of curiosity took me, in spite of my weariness, to meet with a dweller in this desert. And always as I looked at the black hills I shuddered, for I had heard men tell of the Caldron, where no sheep ever strayed, and in whose sheer-falling waters no fish could live.
I have rarely felt a more awful eeriness than in crossing that monstrous bog. I struck far from the stream, for the Aller, which had begun as a torrent, had sunk into links of unfathomable moss-holes. The darkening was coming on, the grim hills stood out more stark and cruel, and the smell of water clung to my nostrils like the odour of salt to a half-drowned man. Forthwith I fell into the most violent ill-temper with myself and my surroundings. At last there was like to be an end of my aimless wanderings, and unless I got through the moss by nightfall, I should never see the morning. The thought nerved me to frantic endeavour. I was dog-tired and soaked to the marrow, but I plunged and struggled from tussock to tussock and through long black reaches of peat. Anything green or white I shunned, for I had lived too long in wildernesses to be ignorant that in the ugly black and brown lay my safety.
By-and-bye the dusk came, and a light was kindled in the cottage, at which sign of habitation I greatly rejoiced. It gave me new heart, and when I came to a more level place I ran as well as my wearied legs would suffer me. Then for my discomfiture I fell into a great bed of peat, and came out exceeding dirty. Still the flare grew nearer, and at last, about seven o’clock, just at the thickening of darkness, I reached a stone wall and a house-end.
At the sound of my feet the door was thrown open, and a string of collies rushed out to devour me. At their tail came the master of the place, a man bent and thin, with a beard ragged and torn with all weathers, and a great scarred face roughly brown with the hill air and the reek of peat.
“Can I stay”—I began, but my words were drowned in his loud tone of welcome.
“How in the warld did ye get here, man? Come in, come in; ye’ll be fair perished.”
He caught me by the arm and dragged me into the single room which formed his dwelling. Half-a-dozen hens, escaping from the hutch which was their abode, sat modestly in corners, and from a neighbouring shed came the lowing of a cow. The place was so filled with blue fine smoke that my eyes were dazed, and it was not till I sat in a chair by a glowing fire of peats that I could discern the outlines of the roof. The rafters were black and finely polished as old oak, and the floor was flagged with the grey stones of the moor. A stretch of sacking did duty for a rug, and there the tangle of dogs stretched itself to sleep. The furnishing was of the rudest, for it was brought on horseback over barren hills, and such a portage needs the stoutest of timber. But who can tell of the infinite complexity of the odour which filled the air, the pungency of peat, varied with a whiff of the snell night without and the comfortable fragrance of food?
Meat he set before me, scones and oaten-cakes, and tea brewed as strong as spirits. He had not seen loaf-bread, he told me, since the spring, when a shepherd from the Back o’ the Caldron came over about some sheep, and had a loaf-end for his dinner. Then, when I was something recovered, I sat again in the fireside chair, and over pipes of the strongest black we held high converse.
“Wife!” he said, when I asked him if he dwelt alone; “na, na, nae woman-body for me. I bide mysel’, and bake my bakings, and shoo my breeks when they need it. A wife wad be a puir convanience in this pairt o’ the warld. I come in at nicht, and I dae as I like, and I gang oot in the mornings, and there’s naebody to care for. I can milk the coo mysel’, and feed the hens, and there’s little else that a man need dae.”
I asked him if he came often to the lowlands.
“Is’t like,” said he, “when there’s twenty mile o’ thick heather and shairp rock atween you and a level road? I naether gang there, nor do the folk there fash me here. I havena been at the kirk for ten ‘ear, no since my faither dee’d; and though the minister o’ Gledsmuir, honest man, tries to win here every spring, it’s no’ often he gets the length. Twice in the ‘ear I gang far awa’ wi’ sheep, when I spain the lambs in the month o’ August, and draw the crocks in the back-end. I’m expectin’ every day to get word to tak’ off the yowes.”
“And how do you get word?” I asked.
“Weel, the post comes up the road to the foot o’ the Gled. Syne some o’ the fairmers up the water tak’ up a letter and leave it at the foot o’ the Cauldshaw Burn. A fisher, like yersel’, maybe, brings it up the glen and draps it at the herd’s cottage o’ the Front Muneraw, whaur it lies till the herd, Simon Mruddock, tak’s it wi’ him on his roonds. Noo, twice every week he passes the tap o’ the Aller, and I’ve gotten a cairn there, whaur he hides it in an auld tin box among the stanes. Twice a week I gang up that way mysel’, and find onything that’s lyin’. Oh, I’m no’ ill off for letters; I get them in about a week, if there’s no’ a snawstorm.”
The man leant forward to put a fresh coal to his pipe, and I marked his eyes, begrimed with peat smoke, but keen as a hawk’s, and the ragged, ill-patched homespun of his dress. I thought of the good folk in the lowlands and the cities who hugged their fancies of simple Arcadian shepherds, who, in decent cottage, surrounded by a smiling family, read God’s Word of a Saturday night. In the rugged man before me I found some hint of the truth.
“And how do you spend your days?” I asked. “Did you never think of trying a more kindly country-side?”
He looked at me long and quizzically.
“Yince,” he said, “I served a maister, a bit flesher-body doun at Gled-foot. He was aye biddin’ me dae odd jobs about the toun, and I couldna thole it, for I’m a herd, and my wark’s wi’ sheep. Noo I serve the Yerl o’ Callowa, and there’s no’ a body dare say a word to me; but I manage things according to my ain guid juidgement, wi’oot ony ‘by your leave.’ And whiles I’ve the best o’ company, for yince or twice the Yerl has bided here a’ nicht, when he was forewandered shooting amang thae muirs.”
But I was scarce listening, so busy was I in trying to picture an existence which meant incessant wanderings all day among the wilds, and firelit evenings, with no company but dogs. I asked him if he ever read.
“I ha’e a Bible,” he said doubtfully, “and I whiles tak’ a spell at it to see if I remember my schulin’. But I’m no keen on books o’ ony kind.”
“Then what in the name of goodness do you do?” said I.
Then his tongue was unloosed, and he told me the burden of his days; how he loved all weather, fighting a storm for the fight’s sake, and glorying in the conquest; how he would trap blue hares and shoot wild-fowl—for had he not the Earl’s leave?—and now and then kill a deer strayed among the snow. He was full of old tales of the place, learned from a thousand odd sources, of queer things that happened in these eternal deserts, and queer sights which he and others than himself had seen at dawning and sunset. Some day I will put them all down in a book, but then I will inscribe it to children and label it fantasy, for no one would believe them if told with the circumstance of truth. But, above all, he gloried in the tale of the changes of sky and earth, and the multitudinous lore of the hills. I heard of storms when the thunder echoed in the Caldron like the bleating of great sheep, and the man sat still at home in terror. He told with solemn eyes of the coming of snow, of masterful floods in the Aller, when the dead sheep came down and butted, as he said, with their foreheads against his house-wall. His voice grew high, and his figure, seen in the red glare of the peats, was like some creature of a tale.
But in time the fire sank, the dogs slumbered, our pipes went out, and he showed me my bed. It was in the garret, which you entered by a trap from the shed below. The one window had been shattered by some storm and boarded up with planks, through whose crevices I could see the driving mist and the bog lying dead under cover of night. I slept on rough blankets of homespun, and ere I lay down, in looking round the place, I came upon a book stuck fast between the rafters and the wall. It was the Bible used to brush up the shepherd’s learning, and for the sake of his chances hereafter I dragged it forth and blew the dust from it.
In the morning the mist had gone, and a blue sky shone out, over which sudden gusts swept like boats on a loch. The damp earth still reeked of rain; and as I stood at the door and watched the Aller, now one line of billows, strive impetuous through the bog-land, and the hills gleam in the dawning like wet jewels, I no more wondered at the shepherd’s choice. He came down from a morning’s round, his voice bellowing across the uplands, and hailed me from afar. “The hills are no vera dry,” he said, “but they micht be passed; and if I was sure I wadna bide, he wad set me on my way.” So in a little I followed his great strides through the moss and up the hill-shoulder, till in two hours I was breathing hard on the Dreichil summit, and looking down on awful craigs, which dropped sheerly to a tarn. Here he stopped, and, looking far over the chaos of ridges, gave me my directions.
“Ye see yon muckle soo-backit hill—yon’s the Yirnie Cleuch, and if ye keep alang the taps ye’ll come to it in an ‘oor’s time. Gang doun the far shouther o’t, and ye’ll see a burn which flows into a loch; gang on to the loch-foot, and ye ‘ll see a great deep hole in the hillside, what they ca’ the Nick o’ the Hurlstanes; gang through it, and ye ‘ll strike the Criven Burn, which flows into the Callowa; gang doun that water till it joins the Gled, and syne ye’re no’ abune ten mile from whaur ye’re bidin’. So guid-day to ye.”
And with these lucid words he left me and took his swinging path across the hill.
“…Nullum
Sacra caput Proserpina fugit.”
A noiseless evening fell chill and dank on the moorlands. The Dreichil was mist to the very rim of its precipitous face, and the long, dun sides of the Little Muneraw faded into grey vapour. Underfoot were plashy moss and dripping heather, and all the air was choked with autumnal heaviness. The herd of the Lanely Bield stumbled wearily homeward in this, the late afternoon, with the roof-tree of his cottage to guide him over the waste.
For weeks, months, he had been ill, fighting the battle of a lonely sickness. Two years agone his wife had died, and as there had been no child, he was left to fend for himself. He had no need for any woman, he declared, for his wants were few and his means of the scantiest, so he had cooked his own meals and done his own household work since the day he had stood by the grave in the Gledsmuir kirkyard. And for a little he did well; and then, inch by inch, trouble crept upon him. He would come home late in the winter nights, soaked to the skin, and sit in the peat-reek till his clothes dried on his body. The countless little ways in which a woman’s hand makes a place healthy and habitable were unknown to him, and soon he began to pay the price of his folly. For he was not a strong man, though a careless onlooker might have guessed the opposite from his mighty frame. His folk had all been short-lived, and already his was the age of his father at his death. Such a fact might have warned him to circumspection; but he took little heed till that night in the March before, when, coming up the Little Muneraw and breathing hard, a chill wind on the summit cut him to the bone. He rose the next morn, shaking like a leaf, and then for weeks he lay ill in bed, while a younger shepherd from the next sheep- farm did his work on the hill. In the early summer he rose a broken man, without strength or nerve, and always oppressed with an ominous sinking in the chest; but he toiled through his duties, and told no man his sorrow. The summer was parchingly hot, and the hillsides grew brown and dry as ashes. Often as he laboured up the interminable ridges, he found himself sickening at heart with a poignant regret. These were the places where once he had strode so freely with the crisp air cool on his forehead. Now he had no eye for the pastoral loveliness, no ear for the witch-song of the desert. When he reached a summit, it was only to fall panting, and when he came home at nightfall he sank wearily on a seat.
And so through the lingering summer the year waned to an autumn of storm. Now his malady seemed nearing its end. He had seen no man’s face for a week, for long miles of moor severed him from a homestead. He could scarce struggle from his bed by mid-day, and his daily round of the hill was gone through with tottering feet. The time would soon come for drawing the ewes and driving them to the Gledsmuir market. If he could but hold on till the word came, he might yet have speech of a fellow man and bequeath his duties to another. But if he died first, the charge would wander uncared for, while he himself would lie in that lonely cot till such time as the lowland farmer sent the messenger. With anxious care he tended his flickering spark of life—he had long ceased to hope—and with something like heroism looked blankly towards his end.
But on this afternoon all things had changed. At the edge of the water-meadow he had found blood dripping from his lips, and half-swooned under an agonising pain at his heart. With burning eyes he turned his face to home, and fought his way inch by inch through the desert. He counted the steps crazily, and with pitiful sobs looked upon mist and moorland. A faint bleat of a sheep came to his ear; he heard it clearly, and the hearing wrung his soul. Not for him any more the hills of sheep and a shepherd’s free and wholesome life. He was creeping, stricken, to his homestead to die, like a wounded fox crawling to its earth. And the loneliness of it all, the pity, choked him more than the fell grip of his sickness.
Inside the house a great banked fire of peats was smouldering. Unwashed dishes stood on the table, and the bed in the corner was unmade, for such things were of little moment in the extremity of his days. As he dragged his leaden foot over the threshold, the autumn dusk thickened through the white fog, and shadows awaited him, lurking in every corner. He dropped carelessly on the bed’s edge, and lay back in deadly weakness. No sound broke the stillness, for the clock had long ago stopped for lack of winding. Only the shaggy collie which had lain down by the fire looked to the bed and whined mournfully.
In a little he raised his eyes and saw that the place was filled with darkness, save where the red eye of the fire glowed hot and silent. His strength was too far gone to light the lamp, but he could make a crackling fire. Some power other than himself made him heap bog-sticks on the peat and poke it feebly, for he shuddered at the ominous long shades which peopled floor and ceiling. If he had but a leaping blaze he might yet die in a less gross mockery of comfort.
Long he lay in the firelight, sunk in the lethargy of illimitable feebleness. Then the strong spirit of the man began to flicker within him and rise to sight ere it sank in death. He had always been a godly liver, one who had no youth of folly to look back upon, but a well-spent life of toil lit by the lamp of a half- understood devotion. He it was who at his wife’s death-bed had administered words of comfort and hope; and had passed all his days with the thought of his own end fixed like a bull’s eye in the target of his meditations. In his lonely hill-watches, in the weariful lambing days, and on droving journeys to faraway towns, he had whiled the hours with self-communing, and self-examination, by the help of a rigid Word. Nay, there had been far more than the mere punctilios of obedience to the letter; there had been the living fire of love, the heroical altitude of self-denial, to be the halo of his solitary life. And now God had sent him the last fiery trial, and he was left alone to put off the garments of mortality.
He dragged himself to a cupboard where all the appurtenances of the religious life lay to his hands. There were Spurgeon’s sermons in torn covers, and a dozen musty “Christian Treasuries.” Some antiquated theology, which he had got from his father, lay lowest, and on the top was the gaudy Bible, which he had once received from a grateful Sabbath class while he yet sojourned in the lowlands. It was lined and re-lined, and there he had often found consolation. Now in the last faltering of mind he had braced himself to the thought that he must die as became his possession, with the Word of God in his hand, and his thoughts fixed on that better country, which is an heavenly.
The thin leaves mocked his hands, and he could not turn to any well- remembered text. In vain he struggled to reach the gospels; the obstinate leaves blew ever back to a dismal psalm or a prophet’s lamentation. A word caught his eye and he read vaguely: “The shepherds slumber, O King, … the people is scattered upon the mountains … and no man gathereth them … there is no healing of the hurt, for the wound is grievous.” Something in the poignant sorrow of the phrase caught his attention for one second, and then he was back in a fantasy of pain and impotence. He could not fix his mind, and even as he strove he remembered the warning he had so often given to others against death-bed repentance. Then, he had often said, a man has no time to make his peace with his Maker, when he is wrestling with death. Now the adage came back to him; and gleams of comfort shot for one moment through his soul. He at any rate had long since chosen for God, and the good Lord would see and pity His servant’s weakness.
A sheep bleated near the window, and then another. The flocks were huddling down, and wind and wet must be coming. Then a long dreary wind sighed round the dwelling, and at the same moment a bright tongue of flame shot up from the fire, and queer crooked shadows flickered over the ceiling. The sight caught his eyes, and he shuddered in nameless terror. He had never been a coward, but like all religious folk he had imagination and emotion. Now his fancy was perturbed, and he shrank from these uncanny shapes. In the failure of all else he had fallen to the repetition of bare phrases, telling of the fragrance and glory of the city of God. “River of the water of Life,” he said to himself, …“the glory and honour of the nations… and the street of the city was pure gold… and the saved shall walk in the light of it… and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
Again a sound without, the cry of sheep and the sough of a lone wind. He was sinking fast, but the noise gave him a spasm of strength. The dog rose and sniffed uneasily at the door, a trickle of rain dripped from the roofing, and all the while the silent heart of the fire glowed and hissed at his side. It seemed an uncanny thing that now in the moment of his anguish the sheep should bleat as they had done in the old strong days of herding.
Again the sound, and again the morris-dance of shadows among the rafters. The thing was too much for his failing mind. Some words of hope—“streams in the desert, and”—died on his lips, and he crawled from the bed to a cupboard. He had not tasted strong drink for a score of years, for to the true saint in the uplands abstinence is a primary virtue; but he kept brandy in the house for illness or wintry weather. Now it would give him strength, and it was no sin to cherish the spark of life.
He found the spirits and gulped down a mouthful—one, two, till the little flask was drained, and the raw fluid spilled over beard and coat. In his days of health it would have made him drunk, but now all the fibres of his being were relaxed, and it merely stung him to a fantasmal vigour. More, it maddened his brain, already tottering under the assaults of death. Before he had thought feebly and greyly, now his mind surged in an ecstasy.
The pain that lay heavy on his chest, that clutched his throat, that tugged at his heart, was as fierce as ever, but for one short second the utter weariness of spirit was gone. The old fair words of Scripture came back to him, and he murmured promises and hopes till his strength failed him for all but thought, and with closed eyes he fell back to dream.
But only for one moment; the next he was staring blankly in a mysterious terror. Again the voices of the wind, again the shapes on floor and wall and the relentless eye of the fire. He was too helpless to move and too crazy to pray; he could only lie and stare, numb with expectancy. The liquor seemed to have driven all memory from him, and left him with a child’s heritage of dreams and stories.
Crazily he pattered to himself a child’s charm against evil fairies, which the little folk of the moors still speak at their play,—
“Wearie, Ovie, gang awa’, Dinna show your face at a’, Ower the muir and down the burn, Wearie, Ovie, ne’er return.”
The black crook of the chimney was the object of his spells, for the kindly ingle was no less than a malignant twisted devil, with an awful red eye glowering through smoke.
His breath was winnowing through his worn chest like an autumn blast in bare rafters. The horror of the black night without, all filled with the wail of sheep, and the deeper fear of the red light within, stirred his brain, not with the far-reaching fanciful terror of men, but with the crude homely fright of a little child. He would have sought, had his strength suffered him, to cower one moment in the light as a refuge from the other, and the next to hide in the darkest corner to shun the maddening glow. And with it all he was acutely conscious of the last pangs of mortality. He felt the grating of cheekbones on skin, and the sighing, which did duty for breath, rocked him with agony.
Then a great shadow rose out of the gloom and stood shaggy in the firelight. The man’s mind was tottering, and once more he was back at his Scripture memories and vague repetitions. Aforetime his fancy had toyed with green fields, now it held to the darker places. “It was the day when Evil Merodach was king in Babylon,” came the quaint recollection, and some lingering ray of thought made him link the odd name with the amorphous presence before him. The thing moved and came nearer, touched him, and brooded by his side. He made to shriek, but no sound came, only a dry rasp in the throat and a convulsive twitch of the limbs.
For a second he lay in the agony of a terror worse than the extremes of death. It was only his dog, returned from his watch by the door, and seeking his master. He, poor beast, knew of some sorrow vaguely and afar, and nuzzled into his side with dumb affection.
Then from the chaos of faculties a shred of will survived. For an instant his brain cleared, for to most there comes a lull at the very article of death. He saw the bare moorland room, he felt the dissolution of his members, the palpable ebb of life. His religion had been swept from him like a rotten garment. His mind was vacant of memories, for all were driven forth by purging terror. Only some relic of manliness, the heritage of cleanly and honest days, was with him to the uttermost. With blank thoughts, without hope or vision, with naught save an aimless resolution and a causeless bravery, he passed into the short anguish which is death.
The farmer of Clachlands was a Tory, stern and unbending. It was the tradition of his family, from his grandfather, who had been land-steward to Lord Manorwater, down to his father, who had once seconded a vote of confidence in the sitting member. Such traditions, he felt, were not to be lightly despised; things might change, empires might wax and wane, but his obligation continued; a sort of perverted noblesse oblige was the farmer’s watchword in life; and by dint of much energy and bad language, he lived up to it.
As fate would have it, the Clachlands ploughman was a Radical of Radicals. He had imbibed his opinions early in life from a speaker on the green of Gledsmuir, and ever since, by the help of a weekly penny paper and an odd volume of Gladstone’s speeches, had continued his education. Such opinions in a conservative countryside carry with them a reputation for either abnormal cleverness or abnormal folly. The fact that he was a keen fisher, a famed singer of songs, and the best judge of horses in the place, caused the verdict of his neighbours to incline to the former, and he passed for something of an oracle among his fellows. The blacksmith, who was the critic of the neighbourhood, summed up his character in a few words. “Him,” said he, in a tone of mingled dislike and admiration, “him! He would sweer white was black the morn, and dod! he would prove it tae.”
It so happened in the early summer, when the land was green and the trout plashed in the river, that Her Majesty’s Government saw fit to appeal to an intelligent country. Among a people whose politics fight hard with their religion for a monopoly of their interests, feeling ran high and brotherly kindness departed. Houses were divided against themselves. Men formerly of no consideration found themselves suddenly important, and discovered that their intellects and conscience, which they had hitherto valued at little, were things of serious interest to their betters. The lurid light of publicity was shed upon the lives of the rival candidates; men formerly accounted worthy and respectable were proved no better than white sepulchres; and each man was filled with a morbid concern for his fellow’s character and beliefs.
The farmer of Clachlands called a meeting of his labourers in the great dusty barn, which had been the scene of many similar gatherings. His speech on the occasion was vigorous and to the point. “Ye are a’ my men,” he said, “an’ I ‘ll see that ye vote richt. Ye ‘re uneddicated folk, and ken naething aboot the matter, sae ye just tak’ my word for’t, that the Tories are in the richt and vote accordingly. I’ve been a guid maister to ye, and it’s shurely better to pleesure me, than a wheen leein’ scoondrels whae tramp the country wi’ leather bags and printit trash.”
Then arose from the back the ploughman, strong in his convictions. “Listen to me, you men,” says he; “just vote as ye think best. The maister’s a guid maister, as he says, but he’s nocht to dae wi’ your votin’. It’s what they ca’ inteemedation to interfere wi’ onybody in this matter. So mind that, an’ vote for the workin’-man an’ his richts.”
Then ensued a war of violent words. “Is this a meetin’ in my barn, or a pennywaddin?”
“Ca’t what ye please. I canna let ye mislead the men.”
“Whae talks about misleadin’? Is’t misleadin’ to lead them richt?”
“The question,” said the ploughman, solemnly, “is what you ca’ richt.”
“William Laverhope, if ye werena a guid plooman, ye wad gang post-haste oot o’ here the morn.”
“I care na what ye say. I ‘ll stand up for the richts o’ thae men.”
“Men!”—this with deep scorn. “I could mak’ better men than thae wi’ a stick oot o’ the plantin’.”
“Ay, ye say that noo, an’ the morn ye ‘ll be ca’in’ ilka yin o’ them Mister, a’ for their votes.”
The farmer left in dignified disgust, vanquished but still dangerous; the ploughman in triumph mingled with despair. For he knew that his fellow- labourers cared not a whit for politics, but would follow to the letter their master’s bidding.
The next morning rose clear and fine. There had been a great rain for the past few days, and the burns were coming down broad and surly. The Clachlands Water was chafing by bank and bridge and threatening to enter the hay-field, and every little ditch and sheep-drain was carrying its tribute of peaty water to the greater flood. The farmer of Clachlands, as he looked over the landscape from the doorstep of his dwelling, marked the state of the weather and pondered over it.
He was not in a pleasant frame of mind that morning. He had been crossed by a ploughman, his servant. He liked the man, and so the obvious way of dealing with him—by making things uncomfortable or turning him off—was shut against him. But he burned to get the upper hand of him, and discomfit once for all one who had dared to question his wisdom and good sense. If only he could get him to vote on the other side—but that was out of the question. If only he could keep him from voting—that was possible but unlikely. He might forcibly detain him, in which case he would lay himself open to the penalties of the law, and be nothing the gainer. For the victory which he desired was a moral one, not a triumph of force. He would like to circumvent him by cleverness, to score against him fairly and honourably on his own ground. But the thing was hard, and, as it seemed to him at the moment, impossible.
Suddenly, as he looked over the morning landscape, a thought struck him and made him slap his legs and chuckle hugely. He walked quickly up and down the gravelled walk. “Losh, it’s guid. I’ll dae’t. I’ll dae’t, if the weather juist hauds.”
His unseemly mirth was checked by the approach of some one who found the farmer engaged in the minute examination of gooseberry leaves. “I’m concerned aboot thae busses,” he was saying; “they’ve been ill lookit to, an’ we ‘ll no hae half a crop.” And he went off, still smiling, and spent a restless forenoon in the Gledsmuir market.
In the evening he met the ploughman, as he returned from the turnip-singling, with his hoe on his shoulder. The two men looked at one another with the air of those who know that all is not well between them. Then the farmer spoke with much humility.
“I maybe spoke rayther severe yestreen,” he said. “I hope I didna hurt your feelings.”
“Na, na! No me!” said the ploughman, airily.
“Because I’ve been thinking ower the matter, an’ I admit that a man has a richt to his ain thochts. A’body should hae principles an’ stick to them,” said the farmer, with the manner of one making a recondite quotation.
“Ay,” he went on, “I respect ye, William, for your consistency. Ye ‘re an example to us a’.”
The other shuffled and looked unhappy. He and his master were on the best of terms, but these unnecessary compliments were not usual in their intercourse. He began to suspect, and the farmer, who saw his mistake, hastened to change the subject.
“Graund weather for the fishin’,” said he.
“Oh, is it no?” said the other, roused to excited interest by this home topic. “I tell ye by the morn they ‘ll be takin’ as they’ve never ta’en this ‘ear. Doon in the big pool in the Clachlands Water, at the turn o’ the turnip-field, there are twae or three pounders, and aiblins yin o’ twae pund. I saw them mysel’ when the water was low. It’s ower big the noo, but when it gangs doon the morn, and gets the colour o’ porter, I ‘se warrant I could whup them oot o’ there wi’ the flee.”
“D’ ye say sae?” said the farmer, sweetly. “Weel, it’s a lang time since I tried the fishin’, but I yince was keen on’t. Come in bye, William; I’ve something ye micht like to see.”
From a corner he produced a rod, and handed it to the other. It was a very fine rod indeed, one which the owner had gained in a fishing competition many years before, and treasured accordingly. The ploughman examined it long and critically. Then he gave his verdict. “It’s the brawest rod I ever saw, wi’ a fine hickory butt, an’ guid greenhert tap and middle. It wad cast the sma’est flee, and haud the biggest troot.”
“Weel,” said the farmer, genially smiling, “ye have a half-holiday the morn when ye gang to the poll. There’ll be plenty o’ time in the evening to try a cast wi’ ‘t. I ‘ll lend it ye for the day.”
The man’s face brightened. “I wad tak’ it verra kindly,” he said, “if ye wad. My ain yin is no muckle worth, and, as ye say, I ‘ll hae time for a cast the morn’s nicht.”
“Dinna mention it. Did I ever let ye see my flee-book? Here it is,” and he produced a thick flannel book from a drawer. “There’s a maist miscellaneous collection, for a’ waters an’ a’ weathers. I got a heap o’ them frae auld Lord Manorwater, when I was a laddie, and used to cairry his basket.”
But the ploughman heeded him not, being deep in the examination of its mysteries. Very gingerly he handled the tiny spiders and hackles, surveying them with the eye of a connoisseur.
“If there’s anything there ye think at a’ like the water, I ‘ll be verra pleased if ye ‘ll try ‘t.”
The other was somewhat put out by this extreme friendliness. At another time he would have refused shamefacedly, but now the love of sport was too strong in him. “Ye ‘re far ower guid,” he said; “thae twae paitrick wings are the verra things I want, an’ I dinna think I’ve ony at hame. I’m awfu’ gratefu’ to ye, an’ I ‘ll bring them back the morn’s nicht.”
“Guid-e’en,” said the farmer, as he opened the door, “an’ I wish ye may hae a guid catch.” And he turned in again, smiling sardonically.
The next morning was like the last, save that a little wind had risen, which blew freshly from the west. White cloudlets drifted across the blue, and the air was as clear as spring-water. Down in the hollow the roaring torrent had sunk to a full, lipping stream, and the colour had changed from a turbid yellow to a clear, delicate brown. In the town of Gledsmuir, it was a day of wild excitement, and the quiet Clachlands road bustled with horses and men. The labourers in the fields scarce stopped to look at the passers, for in the afternoon they too would have their chance, when they might journey to the town in all importance, and record their opinions of the late Government.
The ploughman of Clachlands spent a troubled forenoon. His nightly dreams had been of landing great fish, and now his waking thoughts were of the same. Politics for the time were forgotten. This was the day which he had looked forward to for so long, when he was to have been busied in deciding doubtful voters, and breathing activity into the ranks of his cause. And lo! the day had come and found his thoughts elsewhere. For all such things are, at the best, of fleeting interest, and do not stir men otherwise than sentimentally; but the old kindly love of field-sports, the joy in the smell of the earth and the living air, lie very close to a man’s heart. So this apostate, as he cleaned his turnip rows, was filled with the excitement of the sport, and had no thoughts above the memory of past exploits and the anticipation of greater to come.