The McBrides | Page 2

was the
old frail frame of what once he was,--like a dead and withered ash-tree,
dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where
once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its youth,--and the blood
would rise up on his neck, where the flesh had shrunk like old cracked
parchment, and left cords and pipes of arteries and veins, gnarled like
old ivy round a tree.
Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had
twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on
your in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have
set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a

rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in
grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the
grain--the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among
the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of kine
in the evening.
On that morning so long ago Dan and I were ploughing stubble, and I
followed my horses in all joy, laughing to see them snap as I turned
them in at the head-rigs, and coaxing them as they threw their big
glossy shoulders into the collar on the brae face. So the morning wore
on as I ploughed, with maybe a word now and then to Dick, and a
touch of the rein to Darling, and the sea-gulls screaming after us as the
good land was turned over. The sun came glinting through the hill mist,
and the green buds were bursting in the hedgerows for very gladness.
I was free from the college, free from the smoke-wrack and the grime
of the town, free to hear the birds awake and singing in the planting
behind the stackyard, and I breathed great gulps of air and felt clean
and purged of all the evil of the town; for if there is vice in the country,
it is to my mind evil without sordidness.
I remember my foolish thoughts were something like these, even
though my reading should have taught me better, for the Garden of
Eden was a fine place to sin in by all accounts, yet the environment did
not mitigate the punishment. In these young days, when my body
glowed from a swim and my eyes were clear, I thought the minister too
hard on that original iniquity.
It was coming on for dinner-time--lowsin' time, as we say in the
field--when Dan shouted--
"Hamish," says he, "who'll yon be that's travellin' so fast above the
Craig-an-dubh?"
"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."
"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would
ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last three 'bouts."

"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?
Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"
"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his
moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and
weemen noo. It's not a bad thing--a while wi' a lass after the horses are
bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"--his smile
broadened until I could see his teeth--"if it had been Dauvit the leddy
had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about
it. . . .
"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but
deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a lusty lad yirsel', and
there's many a cheery nicht among the lasses wi' petticoats and
short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot if ye would leave
your books and come raking wi' Dan."
We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the
gate there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl.
Dan drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient
semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman
looking up at us.
She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a
water-dog's clustered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about
the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and faultless,
and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind. There
seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about her
eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.
"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for