Auld Licht Idylls | Page 6

my
window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of

water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the
sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken
it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the
square would be empty but for one vegetable cart left in the care of a
lean collie, which, tied to the wheel, whined and shivered underneath.
Pools of water gather in the coarse sacks, that have been spread over
the potatoes and bundles of greens, which turn to manure in their
lidless barrels. The eyes of the whimpering dog never leave a black
close over which hangs the sign of the Bull, probably the refuge of the
hawker. At long intervals a farmer's gig rumbles over the bumpy,
ill-paved square, or a native, with his head buried in his coat, peeps out
of doors, skurries across the way, and vanishes. Most of the leading
shops are here, and the decorous draper ventures a few yards from the
pavement to scan the sky, or note the effect of his new arrangement in
scarves. Planted against his door is the butcher, Henders Todd,
white-aproned, and with a knife in his hand, gazing interestedly at the
draper, for a mere man may look at an elder. The tinsmith brings out
his steps, and, mounting them, stealthily removes the saucepans and
pepper-pots that dangle on a wire above his sign-board. Pulling to his
door he shuts out the foggy light that showed in his solder-strewn
workshop. The square is deserted again. A bundle of sloppy parsley
slips from the hawker's cart and topples over the wheel in driblets. The
puddles in the sacks overflow and run together. The dog has twisted his
chain round a barrel and yelps sharply. As if in response comes a rush
of other dogs. A terrified fox-terrier tears across the square with half a
score of mongrels, the butcher's mastiff and some collies at his heels;
he is doubtless a stranger who has insulted them by his glossy coat. For
two seconds the square shakes to an invasion of dogs, and then, again,
there is only one dog in sight.
No one will admit the Scotch mist. It "looks saft." The tinsmith "wudna
wonder but what it was makkin for rain." Tammas Haggart and Pete
Lunan dander into sight bareheaded, and have to stretch out their hands
to discover what the weather is like. By and by they come to a standstill
to discuss the immortality of the soul, and then they are looking silently
at the Bull. Neither speaks, but they begin to move toward the inn at the
same time, and its door closes on them before they know what they are

doing. A few minutes afterwards Jinny Dundas, who is Pete's wife, runs
straight for the Bull in her short gown, which is tucked up very high,
and emerges with her husband soon afterwards. Jinny is voluble, but
Pete says nothing. Tammas follows later, putting his head out at the
door first, and looking cautiously about him to see if any one is in sight.
Pete is a U. P., and may be left to his fate, but the Auld Licht minister
thinks that though it be hard work, Tammas is worth saving.
To the Auld Licht of the past there were three degrees of
damnation--auld kirk, play-acting, chapel. Chapel was the name always
given to the English Church, of which I am too much an Auld Licht
myself to care to write even now. To belong to the chapel was, in
Thrums, to be a Roman Catholic, and the boy who flung a clod of earth
at the English minister--who called the Sabbath Sunday--or dropped a
"divet" down his chimney was held to be in the right way. The only
pleasant story Thrums could tell of the chapel was that its steeple once
fell. It is surprising that an English church was ever suffered to be built
in such a place; though probably the county gentry had something to do
with it. They travelled about too much to be good men. Small though
Thrums used to be, it had four kirks in all before the Disruption, and
then another, which split into two immediately afterwards. The spire of
the parish church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the
square, from which the entrance to the kirkyard would be visible, if it
were not hidden by the town-house. The kirkyard has long been
crammed, and is not now in use, but the church is sufficiently large to
hold nearly all the congregations in Thrums. Just at the gate lived Pete
Todd, the father of Sam'l, a man of whom the