Auld Licht Idylls | Page 9

to the wrong place. I remember an old man,
a relative of my own, who happened for once in his life to have several
letters to post at one time. The circumstance was so out of the common
that he considered it only reasonable to make Lizzie a small present.
Perhaps the postmistress was belled; but if she did not "steam" the
letters and confide their titbits to favoured friends of her own sex, it is
difficult to see how all the gossip got out. The schoolmaster once
played an unmanly trick on her, with the view of catching her in the act.
He was a bachelor who had long been given up by all the maids in the
town. One day, however, he wrote a letter to an imaginary lady in the
county-town, asking her to be his, and going into full particulars about
his income, his age, and his prospects. A male friend in the secret, at
the other end, was to reply, in a lady's handwriting, accepting him, and
also giving personal particulars. The first letter was written; and an
answer arrived in due course--two days, the schoolmaster said, after
date. No other person knew of this scheme for the undoing of the
postmistress, yet in a very short time the schoolmaster's coming
marriage was the talk of Thrums. Everybody became suddenly aware of

the lady's name, of her abode, and of the sum of money she was to
bring her husband. It was even noised abroad that the schoolmaster had
represented his age as a good ten years less than it was. Then the
schoolmaster divulged everything. To his mortification, he was not
quite believed. All the proof he could bring forward to support his story
was this: that time would show whether he got married or not. Foolish
man! this argument was met by another, which was accepted at once.
The lady had jilted the schoolmaster. Whether this explanation came
from the post-office, who shall say? But so long as he lived the
schoolmaster was twitted about the lady who threw him over. He took
his revenge in two ways. He wrote and posted letters exceedingly
abusive of the postmistress. The matter might be libellous; but then, as
he pointed out, she would incriminate herself if she "brought him up"
about it. Probably Lizzie felt his other insult more. By publishing his
suspicions of her on every possible occasion he got a few people to seal
their letters. So bitter was his feeling against her that he was even
willing to supply the wax.
They know all about post-offices in Thrums now, and even jeer at the
telegraph-boy's uniform. In the old days they gathered round him when
he was seen in the street, and escorted him to his destination in triumph.
That, too, was after Lizzie had gone the way of all the earth. But
perhaps they are not even yet as knowing as they think themselves. I
was told the other day that one of them took out a postal order,
meaning to send the money to a relative, and kept the order as a receipt.
I have said that the town is sometimes full of snow. One frosty
Saturday, seven years ago, I trudged into it from the schoolhouse, and
on the Monday morning we could not see Thrums anywhere.
I was in one of the proud two-storied houses in the place, and could
have shaken hands with my friends without from the upper windows.
To get out of doors you had to walk upstairs. The outlook was a sea of
snow fading into white hills and sky with the quarry standing out red
and ragged to the right like a rock in the ocean. The Auld Licht manse
was gone, but had left its garden-trees behind, their lean branches soft
with snow. Roofs were humps in the white blanket. The spire of the

Established Kirk stood up cold and stiff, like a monument to the buried
inhabitants.
Those of the natives who had taken the precaution of conveying spades
into their houses the night before, which is my plan at the schoolhouse,
dug themselves out. They hobbled cautiously over the snow, sometimes
sinking into it to their knees, when they stood still and slowly took in
the situation. It had been snowing more or less for a week, but in a
commonplace kind of way, and they had gone to bed thinking all was
well. This night the snow must have fallen as if the heavens had opened
up, determined to shake themselves free of it for ever.
The man who first came to himself and saw what was to be done was
young Henders Ramsay. Henders had no fixed occupation, being but an
"orra man" about the place, and the best thing