Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 48

It was worth while coming five miles out of a man's road to hear the minister's words. There was not a man who would have a word to say, except himself, in the smiddy of Whunnyliggate that night--not even the autocratic smith.

"Yes, David, it was grand, no doubt, to hear Clavers clattering down the Lawnmarket and turning the West Port like a whirlwind, with all his pennons fluttering; but it was the Westland Levies, with their pikes and their Bibles, that won the day at Dunkeld in the hinder-end. The king and his men were a bonnie sicht, with their lace collars and their floating love-locks; but the drab-coats beat him out of the field, because the Lord was on their side, at Naseby and Marston Moor."

The two men were now on the final rise of the hillside. The whole valley of the Dee lay beneath them, rich with trees and pasture-lands, waving crops and the mansions of the great. The minister shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked beneath the sun. He pointed with his finger to Thrieve, whose tall keep glimmered up from its island amid the mists of the river.

"There is the castle where the proud once dwelt and looked to dwell for ever, having no fear of G.o.d or man. The hanging-stone is there that never wanted its ta.s.sel, the courtyard where was the ready block, the dungeon for the captive, the banquet-hall and the earl's chamber. They are all there, yet only the owl and the bat dwell in them for ever."

"There is a boy that makes poetry aboot the like o' that," said David M'Kie, who loved to astonish the minister.

"And who, pray, is the boy who makes poetry? I would like to see him."

"'Deed, minister, gin ye're gaun up to Drumquhat the day, as I jalouse ye are, ye may see him. They ca' him Walter Carmichael. He's some sib to the mistress, I'm thinkin'."

"Yes, I have seen him in church, but I never had speech with the lad,"

said the minister.

"Na, I can weel believe that. The boy's no' partial-like to ministers--ye'll excuse me for sayin'--ever since he fell oot wi' the minister's loon, and staned him aff the Drumquhat grund. Saunders lickit him for that, an' so he tak's the road if ever a minister looks near.

But gin ye come on him afore he can make the Hanging Shaw, ye may get speech o' him, and be the means o' doing him a heap o' guid."

At this point their ways parted. The minister held on up the valley of the Ken, curving over the moorland towards the farm of Drumquhat. He went more leisurely now that he had broken the back of his morning's walk. The larks sprang upward from his feet, and their songs were the expression of an innocent gladness like that which filled his own heart.

He climbed the high stone d.y.k.es as they came in his way, sometimes crossing his legs and sitting a while on the top with a sort of boyish freedom in his heart as though he too were off for a holiday--a feeling born in part of the breezy uplands and the wide s.p.a.ces of the sky. On his right hand was the dark ma.s.s of the Hanging Shaw, where it began to feather down to the Black Water, which rushed along in the shadow to meet the broad and equable waters of the Ken.

As the minister came to one of these d.y.k.es, treading softly on a noiseless cushion of heather and moss, he put his foot on a projecting stone and vaulted over with one hand lightly laid on the top stone. He alighted with a sudden bound of the heart, for he had nearly leapt on the top of a boy, who lay p.r.o.ne on his face, deeply studying a book. The boy sprang up, startled by the minister's unexpected entrance into his wide world of air, empty of all but the muirfowls' cries.

For a few moments they remained staring at each other--tall, well-attired minister and rough-coated herdboy.

"You are diligent," at last said the minister, looking out of his dark eyes into the blue wondering orbs which met his so squarely and honestly. "What is that you are reading?"

"Shakespeare, sir," said the boy, not without some fear in telling the minister that he was reading the works of the man who was known among many of the Cameronians as "nocht but the greatest of the play-actors."

But the minister was placable and interested. He recognised the face as that of the boy who came to church on various occasions; but with whom he had found it so difficult to come to speech.

"How many plays of Shakespeare have you read?" queried the minister again.

"Them a'--mony a time," said the boy. The minister marvelled still more.

"But ye'll no' tell my gran'mither?" said the boy beseechingly, putting the minister upon his honour.

Mr. Cameron hesitated for a moment, and then said--

"I will not tell your grandmother unless you are doing something worse than reading Shakespeare, my boy. You are from Drumquhat, I think," he continued. "What are you doing here?"

The boy blushed, and hung his head.

"Cutting thistles," he said.

The minister laughed and looked about. On one hand there was a mown swathe of thistles, on the other they still grew luxuriantly all down the slope to the burnside.

"I suppose you are cutting down the thistles in Shakespeare? There are a good many of them," he said; "but is that what your master keeps you for?"

The boy looked up quickly at this imputation on his honesty.

"I'm on piecework," he said, with a kind of defiance in his tone.

"On piecework?" asked the minister, perplexed; "how is that?"

"Weel, sir, it's this way, ye see. Gran'faither used to pay me a penny an hour for cuttin' the thistles. He did that till he said I was the slowest worker ever he had, an' that by the time that I was done wi' ae side o' the field, the ither was ready to begin owre again. I said that I was quite willin' to begin again, but he said that to sit doon wi' a book and cut as far roon' ye as the hook could reach, was no' the kind o' wark that he had been accustomed to on the farm o' Drumquhat. So he took me off working by time and put me on piecework. I dinna get as muckle siller, but I like it juist as weel. So I can work and read time aboot."

"But how do you know how the time goes?" asked the minister, for watches were not at that date to be found in the pockets of herdboys on the Galloway hills.

The boy pointed to a peeled willow-wand which was stuck in the ground, with a rough circle drawn round it.

"I made that sun-dial. Rab Affleck showed me," he said simply, without any of the pride of genius.

"And are ye sure that the working hour is always the same length as the reading time?" asked the minister.

Walter looked up with a bright twinkle in his eye.

"Whiles when I'm workin' at the thistles, she may get a bit kick forrit," he said.

The minister laughed a low, mellow laugh. Then he quoted a text, as was customary with him:

"'And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees in the dial of Ahaz.'"

The minister and Walter sat for a long time in the heat of the noonday regarding one another with undisguised interest. They were in the midst of a plain of moorland, over which a haze of heat hung like a diaphanous veil. Over the edge there appeared, like a plain of blue mist, the strath, with the whitewashed farmhouses glimmering up like patches of snow on a March hillside. The minister came down from the d.y.k.e and sat beside the boy on the heather clumps.

"You are a herd, you tell me. Well, so am I--I am a shepherd of men, though unworthy of such a charge," he added.

Walter looked for further light.

"Did you ever hear," continued Mr. Cameron, looking away over the valley, "of One who went about, almost barefoot like you, over rocky roads and up and down hillsides?"

"Ye needna tell me--I ken His name," said Walter reverently.

"Well," continued the minister, "would you not like to be a herd like Him, and look after men and not sheep?"

"Sheep need to be lookit after as weel," said Walter.

"But sheep have no souls to be saved!" said Richard Cameron.

"Dowgs hae!" a.s.serted Walter stoutly.

"What makes you say so?" said the minister indulgently. He was out for a holiday.

"Because, if my dowg Royal hasna a soul, there's a heap o' fowk gangs to the kirk withoot!"

"What does Royal do that makes you think that he has a soul?" asked the minister.