FullReads

“Some put their trust in horses, and some in chariots,” said the minister, “but we will trust in the Lord.”

He spake half aloud.

“As ye war sayin’, sir, we wull trust the Lord–Himsel’ wull be oor strength and stay.”

The minister turned. It was a middle-aged man who spoke–David M’Kie, the familiar good spirit of the village of Whunnyliggate, and indeed of the whole parish. Wherever sickness was, there David was to be found.

“I was thinking,” said the minister sententiously, “that it is not the high and lofty ones who sit most securely on their seats. The Lord is on the side of the quiet folk who wait.”

“Ay, minister,” said David M’Kie tentatively.

It was worth while coming five miles out of a man’s road to hear the minister’s words. There was not a man who would have a word to say, except himself, in the smiddy of Whunnyliggate that night–not even the autocratic smith.

“Yes, David, it was grand, no doubt, to hear Clavers clattering down the Lawnmarket and turning the West Port like a whirlwind, with all his pennons fluttering; but it was the Westland Levies, with their pikes and their Bibles, that won the day at Dunkeld in the hinder-end. The king and his men were a bonnie sicht, with their lace collars and their floating love-locks; but the drab-coats beat him out of the field, because the Lord was on their side, at Naseby and Marston Moor.”

The two men were now on the final rise of the hillside. The whole valley of the Dee lay beneath them, rich with trees and pasture-lands, waving crops and the mansions of the great. The minister shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked beneath the sun. He pointed with his finger to Thrieve, whose tall keep glimmered up from its island amid the mists of the river.

“There is the castle where the proud once dwelt and looked to dwell for ever, having no fear of God or man. The hanging-stone is there that never wanted its tassel, the courtyard where was the ready block, the dungeon for the captive, the banquet-hall and the earl’s chamber. They are all there, yet only the owl and the bat dwell in them for ever.”

“There is a boy that makes poetry aboot the like o’ that,” said David M’Kie, who loved to astonish the minister.

“And who, pray, is the boy who makes poetry? I would like to see him.”

“‘Deed, minister, gin ye’re gaun up to Drumquhat the day, as I jalouse ye are, ye may see him. They ca’ him Walter Carmichael. He’s some sib to the mistress, I’m thinkin’.”

“Yes, I have seen him in church, but I never had speech with the lad,” said the minister.

“Na, I can weel believe that. The boy’s no’ partial-like to ministers–ye’ll excuse me for sayin’–ever since he fell oot wi’ the minister’s loon, and staned him aff the Drumquhat grund. Saunders lickit him for that, an’ so he tak’s the road if ever a minister looks near. But gin ye come on him afore he can make the Hanging Shaw, ye may get speech o’ him, and be the means o’ doing him a heap o’ guid.”

At this point their ways parted. The minister held on up the valley of the Ken, curving over the moorland towards the farm of Drumquhat. He went more leisurely now that he had broken the back of his morning’s walk. The larks sprang upward from his feet, and their songs were the expression of an innocent gladness like that which filled his own heart.

He climbed the high stone dykes as they came in his way, sometimes crossing his legs and sitting a while on the top with a sort of boyish freedom in his heart as though he too were off for a holiday–a feeling born in part of the breezy uplands and the wide spaces of the sky. On his right hand was the dark mass of the Hanging Shaw, where it began to feather down to the Black Water, which rushed along in the shadow to meet the broad and equable waters of the Ken.