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The Great Right-Of-Way Case
by
The situation became acute owing to the indignant feelings of the visitors, now reinforced by the dwellers in the various houses of private entertainment. Indignation meetings increased and abounded. A grand demonstration along the path and under the windows of the lodge was arranged for Sunday after morning church–several clergymen agreeing to take part, on the well-known principle of the better day the better deed. What might have happened no one can say. An action for assault and battery would have been the English way; a selection of slugs and tenpenny nails over the hedge might possibly have been the Irish way; but what actually happened in this law-abiding strath was quite different.
In this parish of Glen Conquhar there was a minister, as there is a minister in every parish in broad Scotland. He was very happy. He had a cow or two of his own on the glebe, and part of it he let to the master of the hotel.
The Reverend Donald Grant of Glen Conquhar was an old man now, but, though a little bowed, he was still strong and hearty, and well able for his meal of meat. He lived high up on the hill, whose heathery sides looked down upon the kirk and riverside glebe. His simplicity of heart and excellence of character endeared him to his parish, as indeed was afterwards inscribed upon enduring marble on the tablet which was placed under the list of benefactions in the little kirk of the strath.
The minister did not often come down from his Mount of the Wide Prospects; and when he did, it was for some definite purpose, which being performed, he straightway returned to his hill-nest.
He had heard nothing of the great Glen Conquhar right-of-way case, when one fine morning he made his way down to the hamlet to see one of his scanty flock, whose church attendance had not been all that could be desired. As he went down the hill he passed within a few feet of the newly painted trespass notice-board; but it was not till his return, with slow steps, a little weary with the uphill road and the heat of the day, that his eyes rested on the glaring white notice. Still more slowly and deliberately he got his glasses out of their shagreen case, mounted their massive silver rims on his nose, and slowly read the legend which intimated that ” Trespassers on this Private Road will be Prosecuted with the utmost Rigour of the Law.”
Having got to the large BY ORDER at the end, he calmly dismounted the benignant silver spectacles, returned them to the shagreen case, and so to the tail-pocket of his black coat. Then, still more benignantly, he sought about among the roots of the trees till he found the stout branch of a fir broken off in some spring gale, but still tough and able-bodied. With an energy which could hardly have been expected from one of his hoar hairs, the minister climbed part way up the pole, and dealt the obnoxious board such hearty thwacks, first on one side and then on the other, that in a trice it came tumbling down.
As he was picking it up and tucking it beneath his arm, the gamekeeper on the watch in some hidden sentry-box among the leaves came hurrying down.
“Oh, Mr. Grant, Mr. Grant!” he exclaimed in horror, “what are you doing with that board?”–his professional indignation grievously at war with his racial respect for the clerical office.
“‘Deed, Dugald, I’m just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my arm. It will make not that ill firewood, and it has no business whatever to be cockin’ up there on the corner of my glebe.”
The end of the Great Glen Conquhar Right-of-Way Case.