第61章

JESSIE HEWSON.

The wound on Robert's foot festered, and had not yet healed when the sickle was first put to the barley.He hobbled out, however, to the reapers, for he could not bear to be left alone with his violin, so dreadfully oppressive was the knowledge that he could not use it after its nature.He began to think whether his incapacity was not a judgment upon him for taking it away from the soutar, who could do so much more with it, and to whom, consequently, it was so much more valuable.The pain in his foot, likewise, had been very depressing;and but for the kindness of his friends, especially of Miss Lammie, he would have been altogether 'a weary wight forlorn.'

Shargar was happier than ever he had been in his life.His white face hung on Miss Lammie's looks, and haunted her steps from spence (store-room, as in Devonshire) to milk-house, and from milk-house to chessel, surmounted by the glory of his red hair, which a farm-servant declared he had once mistaken for a fun-buss (whin-bush) on fire.This day she had gone to the field to see the first handful of barley cut, and Shargar was there, of course.

It was a glorious day of blue and gold, with just wind enough to set the barley-heads a-talking.But, whether from the heat of the sun, or the pain of his foot operating on the general discouragement under which he laboured, Robert turned faint all at once, and dragged himself away to a cottage on the edge of the field.

It was the dwelling of a cottar, whose family had been settled upon the farm of Bodyfauld from time immemorial.They were, indeed, like other cottars, a kind of feudal dependents, occupying an acre or two of the land, in return for which they performed certain stipulated labour, called cottar-wark.The greater part of the family was employed in the work of the farm, at the regular wages.

Alas for Scotland that such families are now to seek! Would that the parliaments of our country held such a proportion of noble-minded men as was once to be found in the clay huts on a hill-side, or grouped about a central farm, huts whose wretched look would move the pity of many a man as inferior to their occupants as a King Charles's lap-dog is to a shepherd's colley.The utensils of their life were mean enough: the life itself was often elixir vitae--a true family life, looking up to the high, divine life.But well for the world that such life has been scattered over it, east and west, the seed of fresh growth in new lands.Out of offence to the individual, God brings good to the whole; for he pets no nation, but trains it for the perfect globular life of all nations--of his world--of his universe.As he makes families mingle, to redeem each from its family selfishness, so will he make nations mingle, and love and correct and reform and develop each other, till the planet-world shall go singing through space one harmony to the God of the whole earth.The excellence must vanish from one portion, that it may be diffused through the whole.The seed ripens on one favoured mound, and is scattered over the plain.We console ourselves with the higher thought, that if Scotland is worse, the world is better.Yea, even they by whom the offence came, and who have first to reap the woe of that offence, because they did the will of God to satisfy their own avarice in laying land to land and house to house, shall not reap their punishment in having their own will, and standing therefore alone in the earth when the good of their evil deeds returns upon it; but the tears of men that ascended to heaven in the heat of their burning dwellings shall descend in the dew of blessing even on the hearts of them that kindled the fire.--'Something too much of this.'

Robert lifted the latch, and walked into the cottage.It was not quite so strange to him as it would be to most of my readers; still, he had not been in such a place before.A girl who was stooping by the small peat fire on the hearth looked up, and seeing that he was lame, came across the heights and hollows of the clay floor to meet him.Robert spoke so faintly that she could not hear.

'What's yer wull?' she asked; then, changing her tone,--'Eh! ye're no weel,' she said.'Come in to the fire.Tak a haud o' me, and come yer wa's butt.'

She was a pretty, indeed graceful girl of about eighteen, with the elasticity rather than undulation of movement which distinguishes the peasant from the city girl.She led him to the chimla-lug (the ear of the chimney), carefully levelled a wooden chair to the inequalities of the floor, and said,'Sit ye doon.Will I fess a drappy o' milk?'

'Gie me a drink o' water, gin ye please,' said Robert.

She brought it.He drank, and felt better.A baby woke in a cradle on the other side of the fire, and began to cry.The girl went and took him up; and then Robert saw what she was like.Light-brown hair clustered about a delicately-coloured face and hazel eyes.

Later in the harvest her cheeks would be ruddy--now they were peach-coloured.A white neck rose above a pink print jacket, called a wrapper; and the rest of her visible dress was a blue petticoat.

She ended in pretty, brown bare feet.Robert liked her, and began to talk.If his imagination had not been already filled, he would have fallen in love with her, I dare say, at once; for, except Miss St.John, he had never seen anything he thought so beautiful.The baby cried now and then.

'What ails the bairnie?' he asked.

'Ow, it's jist cuttin' its teeth.Gin it greits muckle, I maun jist tak it oot to my mither.She'll sune quaiet it.Are ye haudin'

better?'

'Hoot, ay.I'm a' richt noo.Is yer mither shearin'?'

'Na.She's gatherin'.The shearin' 's some sair wark for her e'en noo.I suld hae been shearin', but my mither wad fain hae a day o'

the hairst.She thocht it wud du her gude.But I s' warran' a day o' 't 'll sair (satisfy) her, and I s' be at it the morn.She's been unco dowie (ailing) a' the summer; and sae has the bairnie.'

'Ye maun hae had a sair time o' 't, than.'