20 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
so," or "ay, ay," to him, according as they were loquacious or merely polite.
"We was speakin' aboot matermony," the mole- catcher remarked, as the back-bent little party strag- gled toward Thrums.
"It's a caution," murmured the farm-laborer, who had heard the observation from the other side of the dyke. "Ay, ye may say so," he added, thoughtfully addressing himself.
With the mole-catcher's companions, however, the talk passed into another rut. Nevertheless Haggart was thinking matrimony over, and by and by he saw his way to a joke, for one of the other stone-breakers had recently married a very small woman, and in Thrums, where women have to work, the far-seeing men prefer their wives big.
"Ye drew a sma' prize yersel', Sam'l," said Tam- mas, with the gleam in his eye which showed that he was now in sarcastic fettle.
"Ay, "said the mole-catcher, "SainTs Kitty is sma'. I suppose Sam'l thocht it wud be prudent-like to begin in a modest way."
"If Kitty hadna haen sae sma' hands," said an- other stone-breaker, " I wud hae haen a bid for her mysel'."
The women smiled ; they had very large hands.
"They say," said the youngest of them, who had a load of firewood on her back, " 'at there's places whaur little hands is thocht muckle oV
ROB ANGUS IS NOT A FREE MAN. 21
There was an in credulous laugh at this.
"I wudna wonder, though," said the mole-catcher, who had travelled ; " there's some michty queer ideas i' the big toons."
"Ye'd better ging to the big toons, then, Sam'l," suggested the merciless Tammas.
Sam'l woke up.
" Kitty's sma'," he said, with a chuckle, "but she's an auld tid."
"What made ye think o' speirin' her, Sam'l?"
"I cudna say for sartin," answered Sam'l, reflect- ively. " I had nae intention o't till I saw Pete Proc- tor after her, an' syne, thinks I, I'll hae her. Ay, ye micht say as Pete was the instrument o' Provi- dence in that case."
"Man, man," murmured Jamie, who knew Pete, " Providence sometimes maks use o' strange instru- ments. "
" Ye was lang in gettin' a man yersel', Jinny," said Tammas to an elderly woman.
"Fower-an' -forty year," replied Jinny. "It was like a stockin', lang i' the futin', but turned at last."
"Lassies nooadays," said the old woman who smoked, "is partikler by what they used to be. I mind when Jeames Gowrie speired me: 'Ye wud raither hae Davit Curly, I ken, ' he says. ' I dinna deny't,' I says, for the thing was well kent, 'but ye'll do vara weel, Jeames, ' says I, an' mairy him I did."
22 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
"He was a harmless crittur, Jeames," said Hag- gart, " but queer. Ay, he was full o' maggots."
"Ay," said Jeames' widow, "but though it's no' for me to say't, he deid a deacon."
" There's some rale queer wys o' speirin' a wum- an," began the mole-catcher.
"Vary true, Jamie," said a stone-breaker. "I mind hoo
" There was a chappy ower by Blair," continued Ja- mie, raising his voice, " 'at micht hae been a single man to this day if it hadna been for the toothache."
"Ay, man?"
"Joey Fargus was the stock's name. He was on- common troubled wi' the toothache till he found a cure. "
" I didna ken o' ony cure for sair teeth?"
" Joey's cure was to pour cauld watter stretcht on into his mooth for the maitter o' twa 'oors, an' ane day he cam into Blair an' found Jess McTaggart (a speerity bit thingy she was ou, she was so) fair greetin' wi' sair teeth. Joey advised the crittur to try his cure, an' when he left she was pourin' the watter into her mooth ower the sink. Weel, it soo happened 'at Joey was in Blair again aboot twa'** month after, an' he gies a cry in at Willie's that's Jess' father's, as ye'll un'erstan'. Ay, then Jess had haen anither fit o' the toothache, an' she was hingin' ower the sink wi' a tanker o' watter in her han', juist as she'd been when he saw her last.
ROB ANGUS IS NOT A FREE HAN. 23
' What!' says Joey, wi' rale consairn, 'nae better yet?' The stock thocht she had been haddin' gaen at the watter a' thae twa month."
" I call to mind," the stone-breaker broke in again, " hoo a body "
"So," continued Jamie, "Joey cudna help but ad- mire the patience o' the lassie, an' says he, 'Jess,' he says, 'come cot by to Mortar Pits, an' try oor well.' That's hoo Joey Fargus speired's wife, an' if ye dinna believe's, ye've nae mair to do but ging to Mortar Pits an' see the well yersels."
"I recall," said the stone-breaker, "a vary neat case o' speirin'. It was Jocky Wilkie, him 'at's brither was grieve to Broken Busses, an' the lass was Leeby Lunan. She was aye puttin' Jocky aff when he was on the point o' speirin' her, keepin' 'im hingin' on the hook like a trout, as ye may say, an' takkin' her fling wi' ither lads at the same time."
"Ay, I've kent them do that."
" Weel, it fair maddened Jocky, so ane nicht he gings to her father's hoose wi' a present o' a grand thimble to her in his pooch, an' afore the hale hoose- hold he perdooces't an flings't wi' a bang on the dresser: 'Tak it,' he says to Leeby, 'or leave't.' In coorse the thing's bein' done sae public-like, Leeby kent she had to mak up her mind there an' then. Ay, she took it."
"But hoo did ye speir Chirsty yersel', Dan'l?" asked Jinny of the speaker.
24 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
There was a laugh at this, for, as was well known, Dan'l had jilted Chirsty.
"I never kent I had speired," replied the stone- breaker, "till Chirsty told me."
" Ye'll no' say ye wasna fond o' her?"
" Sometimes I was, an' syne at other times I was indifferent-like. The mair I thocht o't the mair risky I saw it was, so i' the tail o' the day I says to Chirsty, says I, 'Na, na, Chirsty, lat'sbe as I am.'"
"They say she took on terrible, Dan'l."
" Ay, nae doot, but a man has 'imsel' to conseeder."
By this time they had crossed the moor of whins. It was a cold, still evening, and as they paused be- fore climbing down into the town they heard the tinkle of a bell.
'That's Snecky's bell," said the mole-catcher. " What can he be cryin' at this time o' nicht?"
"There's something far wrang," said one of the women. "Look, a 'body's rinnin' to the square."
The troubled look returned to Tammas Haggart's face, and he stopped to look back across the fast- darkening moor.
" Did ony o' ye see little Davy Dundas, the saw- miller's bairny?" he began.
At that moment a young man swept by. His teeth were clinched, his eyes glaring.
"Speak o' the deil," said the mole-catcher: "that was Rob Angus."
CHAPTER II.
ROB BECOMES FREE.
As Haggart hobbled down into the square, in the mole-catcher's rear, Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and immediately afterward the bell- man took his stand by the side of Tarn Peter's fish- cart. Snecky gave his audience time to gather, for not every day was it given him to cry a lost bairn. The words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Be- fore he flung back his head and ejected his proclama- tion in a series of puffs he was the possessor of exclu- sive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the crowd took up the cry themselves. Wives flinging open their windows shouted their fears across the wynds. Davy Dundas had wandered from the kirkyard, where Rob had left her in Kitty Wilkie's charge till he returned from the woods. What had Kitty been about? It was believed that the litlin had taken with her a letter that had come for Rob. Was Rob back from the woods yet? Ay, he had scoured the whole countryside already for her.
Men gathered on the saw-mill brig, looking per- plexedly at the burn that swivelled at this point, a 25
26 WHEN A MAX'S SINGLE.
sawdust color, between wooden boards ; but the wom- en pressed their bairns closely to their wrappers and gazed in each other's faces.
A log of wood, with which some one had sought to improvise a fire between the bricks that narrowed Rob Angus' grate, turned peevishly to charcoal with- out ca
sting much light on the men and women in the saw-mill kitchen. Already the burn had been searched near the mill, with Rob's white face staring at the searchers from his door.
The room was small and close. A closet-bed with the door off afforded seats for several persons; and Davit Lunan, the tinsmith, who could read Homer with Rob in the original, sat clumsily on the dresser. The j» eudulum of a wag-at-the-wa' clock swung si- lently against the wall, casting a mouse-like shadow on the hearth. Over the mantelpiece was a sampler in many colors, the work of Rob's mother when she was still a maid. The book-case, fitted into a recess that had once held a press, was Rob's own handi- work, and contained more books than any other house in Thrums. Overhead the thick wooden rafters were crossed with saws and staves.
There was a painful silence in the gloomy room. Snecky Hobart tried to break the log in the fire-place, using his leg as a poker, but desisted when he saw every eye turned on him. A glitter of sparks shot up the chimney, and the starling in the window be- gan to whistle. Pete Todd looked undecidedly at the
ROB BECOMES FREE. 27
minister, and, lifting a sack, flung it over the bird's cage, as if anticipating the worst. In Thrums they veil their cages if there is a death in the house.
"What do ye mean, Pete Todd?" cried Rob An- gus fiercely.
His voice broke, but he seized the sack and cast it on the floor. The starling, however, whistled no more.
Looking as if he could strike Pete Todd, Rob stood in the centre of his kitchen, a saw-miller for the last time. Though they did not know it, his neighbors there were photographing him in their minds, and their children were destined to gape in the days to come over descriptions of Rob Angus in corduroys.
These pictures showed a broad-shouldered man of twenty-six, whose face was already rugged. A short brown beard hid the heavy chin, and the lips were locked as if Rob feared to show that he was anxious about the child. His clear gray eyes were younger- looking than his forehead, and the swollen balls be- neath them suggested a student rather than a working- man. His hands were too tanned and hard ever to be white, and he delved a little in his walk, as if he felt uncomfortable without a weight on his back. He was the best saw-miller in his county, but his ambition would have scared his customers had he not kept it to himself. Many a time strangers had stared at him as he strode along the Whunny road, and wondered what made this stalwart man whirl
28 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
the axe that he had been using as a staff. Then Rob was thinking of the man he was going to be when he could safely leave little Davy behind him, and it was not the firs of the Whunny wood that were in his eye, but a roaring city and a saw-miller taking it by the throat. There had been a time when he bore no love for the bairn who came between him and his career.
Rob was so tall that he could stand erect in but few rooms in Thrums, and long afterward, when very different doors opened to him, he still involuntarily ducked, as he crossed a threshold, to save his head. Up to the day on which Davy wandered from home he had never lifted his hat to a lady ; when he did that the influence of Thrums would be broken forever.
"It's oncommon foolish o' Rob," said Pete Todd, retreating to the side of the mole -catcher, "no' to be mair resigned-like."
"It's his ind'pendence," answered Jamie; "ay, the wricht was sayin' the noo,.says he, 'If Davy's deid, Rob'll mak the coffin 'imseP, he's sae michty ind'pendent.'"
Tammas Haggart stumbled into the saw-miller's kitchen. It would have been a womanish kind of thing to fling to the door behind him.
"Fine growin' day, Rob," he said, deliberately.
"It is so, Tammas," answered the saw-miller hos- pitably, for Haggart had been his father's bosom friend.
ROB BECOMES FREE. 29
"No' much drowth, I'm thinkin'," said Hobart, relieved by the turn the conversation had taken.
Tammas pulled from beneath the table an unsteady three-legged stool Davy's stool and sat down on it slowly. Rob took a step nearer as if to ask him to sit somewhere else, and then turned away his head.
"Ay, ay," said Haggart.
Then, as he saw the others gathering round the minister at the door, he moved uneasily on his stool.
" Whaur's Davy?" he said.
"Did ye no' ken she was lost?" the saw-miller asked, in a voice that was hardly his own.
" Ay, I kent," said Tammas ; " she's on the Whunn}' road."
Rob had been talking to the minister in what both thought English, which in Thrums is considered an ostentatious language, but he turned on Tammas in broad Scotch. In the years to come, when he could wear gloves without concealing his hands in his pockets, excitement brought on Scotch as a poultice raises blisters.
"Tammas Haggart," he cried, pulling the stone- breaker off his stool.
The minister interposed.
"Tell us what you know at once, Tammas," said Mr. Dishart, who, out of the pulpit, bad still a heart.
It was a sad tale that Haggart had to tell, if a short one, and several of the listeners shook their heads as they heard it.
30 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
"I meant to turn the lassieky," the stone-breaker explained, "but, ou, she was past in a twinklin'."
On the saw-mill brig the minister quickly organized a search party, the brig that Rob had floored anew but the week before, rising daily with the sun to do it because the child's little boot had caught in a worn board. From it she had often crooned to watch the dank mill-wheel climbing the bouncing burn. Ah, Rob, the rotten old planks would have served your turn.
"The Whunny road," were the words passed from mouth to mouth, and the driblet of men fell into line.
Impetuous is youth, and the minister was not per- haps greatly to blame for starting at once. But Lang Tammas, his chief elder, paused on the threshold.
"The Lord giveth," be said, solemnly, taking off his hat and letting the night air cut through his white hair, "and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord."
The saw-miller opened his mouth, but no words came.
The little search party took the cold Whunny road. The day had been bright and fine, and still there was a smell of flowers in the air. The fickle flowers! They had clustered round Davy and nestled on her neck when she drew the half-ashamed saw-miller through the bleating meadows, and now they could smile on him when he came alone all except the daisies. The daisies, that cannot play a child false,
ROB BECOMES FREE. 31
had craned their necks to call Davy back as she tripped over them, and bowed their heavy little heads as she toddled on. It was from them that the bairn's track was learned after she wandered from the Whunny road.
By and by the hills ceased to echo their wailing response to Hobart's bell.
Far in the rear of the more eager searchers the bellman and the joiner had found a seat on a mossy bank, and others, footsore and weary, had fallen else- where from the ranks. The minister and half a dozen others scattered over the fields and on the hillsides despondent, but not daring to lag. Tinkers cowered round their kettles under threatening banks, and the squirrels were shadows gliding from tree to tree.
At a distant smithy a fitful light still winked to the wind, but the farm lamps were out and all the land was hushed. It was now long past midnight in country parts.
Rob Angus was young and strong, but the heaven- sent gift of tears was not for him. Blessed the moan- ing mother by the cradle of her eldest-born, and the maid in tears for the lover who went out so brave in the morning and was not at evenfall, and the weep- ing sister who can pray for her soldier brother, and the wife on her husband's bosom.
Some of his neighbors had thought it unmanly when Rob, at the rumble of a cart, hurried from the saw -mill to snatch the child in his arms, and bear
32 WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE.
her to a bed of shavings. At such a time Davy would lift a saw to within an inch of her baby-face, and then, letting it fall with a wicked chuckle, run to the saw-miller's arms, as sure of her lover as ever maiden was of man.
A bashful lover he had been, shy, not of Davy, but of what men would say, and now the time had come when he looked wistfully back to a fevered child toss- ing in a dark bed, the time when a light burned all night in Rob's kitchen, and a trembling, heavy-eyed man sat motionless on a high-backed chair. How noiselessly he approached the bonny mite and replaced the arm that had wandered from beneath the cover- let ! Ah, for the old time when a sick, imperious child told her uncle to lie down beside her, and Rob sat on the bed, looking shamefacedly at the minister. Mr. Disliart had turned away his head. Such things are not to be told. They are between a man and his God.
Far up the Whunny hill they found Davy's little shoe. Rob took it in his hand, a muddy, draggled shoe that had been a pretty thing when he put it on her foot that morning. The others gathered austerely around him, and strong Rob stood still among the brackens.
"I'm dootin' she's deid," said Tammas Haggart.
Haggart looked into the face of old Rob's son, end then a strange and beautiful thing happened. To the wizened stone-breaker it was no longer the som- bre Whunny hill that lay before him. Two bare-
ROB BECOMES FREE. 33
footed herd -laddies were on the green fields of adjoining farms. The moon looking over the hills found them on their ragged backs, with the cows munching by their side. They had grown different boys, nor known why, among the wild roses of red and white, and trampling neck-high among the ferns. Haggart saw once again the raspberry bushes they had stripped together into flagons gleaming in the grass. Rob had provided the bent pin with which Tammas lured his first trout to land, and Tammas in return had invited him to t hraw the neck of a doomed hen. They had wandered hand-in-hand through thirsty grass, when scythes whistled in the corn- fields, and larks thrilled overhead, and braes were golden with broom.
Barrie, J M - When A Man's Single Page 2