Auld Licht Idylls | Page 2

send too many aspirants to
their doors. But, indeed, I have had the pleasantest relations with all my
publishers.
"Better Dead" is, by my wish, no longer on sale in Great Britain, and I
should have preferred not to see it here, for it is in no way worthy of the
beautiful clothes Messrs. Scribner have given it. Weighted with "An
Edinburgh Eleven" it would rest very comfortably in the mill dam, but
the publishers have reasons for its inclusion; among them, I suspect, is
a well-grounded fear that if I once began to hack and hew, I should not
stop until I had reduced the edition to two volumes. This juvenile effort
is a field of prickles into which none may be advised to penetrate--I
made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back shuddering, but I
had read enough to have the profoundest reason for declining to tell
what the book is about. And yet I have a sentimental interest in "Better
Dead," for it was my first--published when I had small hope of getting
any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a week when I loved to
carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead weight. Once I almost
saw it find a purchaser. She was a pretty girl and it lay on a bookstall,
and she read some pages and smiled, and then retired, and came back
and began another chapter. Several times she did this, and I stood in the
background trembling with hope and fear. At last she went away
without the book, but I am still of opinion that, had it been just a little
bit better, she would have bought it.

CONTENTS
I. THE SCHOOLHOUSE II. THRUMS III. THE AULD LICHT KIRK
IV. LADS AND LASSES V. THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS VI. THE
OLD DOMINIE VII. CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY VIII.
THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL IX. DAVIT LUNAN'S
POLITICAL REMINISCENCES X. A VERY OLD FAMILY XI.
LITTLE RATHIE'S "BURAL" XII. A LITERARY CLUB

ILLUSTRATIONS
J. M. BARRIE . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
Sabbath at T'nowhead

AULD LIGHT IDYLLS
CHAPTER I
THE SCHOOLHOUSE
Early this morning I opened a window in my schoolhouse in the glen of
Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the
frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to
the water-spout that suspends its "tangles" of ice over a gaping tank,
and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast,
bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a
forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my
hilarious bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was
found frozen in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces
by his side. Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At
meal-times they litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for the
most part they give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the
low-roofed kitchen among staves and fishing-rods.
Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out
last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze
for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the
waste. The schoolhouse, I suppose, serves similarly as a snowmark for
the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering
the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike hills
that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of the
sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to every
rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows here

and there a black ridge, rearing its head at the entrance to the glen and
struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of all, I
think as I close the window hastily, is the open farm-stile, its poles
lying embedded in the snow where they were last flung by Waster
Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a distance a vibration as
of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting on the wire of a broken
fence.
In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed
bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to
go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the
exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine days.
Yesterday she announced that there would be no more schooling till it
was fresh, "as she wasna comin';" and indeed, though the smoke from
the farm chimneys is a pretty