FullReads

Some said that it was the farmer of Portmark who had done this thing once too often. At least it is sure that it was to his house that the Death first came in the parish of Dour. At the sound of the shrill crying, of which they every one knew the meaning, men dropped their tools in the field and fled to the hills. It was like the Day of Judgment. The household servants disappeared. Hired men and field-workers dispersed like the wave from a stone in a pool, carrying infection with them. Men fell over at their own doors with the rattle in their throats, and there lay, none daring to touch them. In Kirk Oswald town the grass grew in the vennels and along the High Street. In Dour the horses starved in the stables, the cattle in the byres.

Then came Abraham Ligartwood out of the manse of Dour. He went down to the farm towns and into the village huts and lifted the dead. He harnessed the horse in the cart, and swathed the body in sheets. He dug the graves, and laid the corpse in the kindly soil. He nursed the sick. He organised help everywhere. He went from house to stricken house with the high assured words of a messenger fresh from God.

He let out the horses to the pasture. He milked the kine, that bellowed after him with the plague of their milk. He had thought and hands for all. His courage shamed the cowards. He quickened the laggards. He stilled the agony of fear that killed three for every one who died of the White Death.

For the first time since the minister came to Dour, the kirk-bell did not ring on Sabbath, for the minister was at the other end of the parish setting a house in order whence three children had been carried. In the kirkyard there was the dull rattle of sods. The burying-party consisted of the roughest rogues in the parish, whom the minister had fetched from their hiding-holes in the hills.

Up the long roads that led to the kirk on its windy height the scanty funerals wended their way. For three weeks they say that in the kirkyard, from dawn to dusk, there was always a grave uncovered or a funeral in sight. There was no burial service in the kirkyard save the rattle of the clods; for now the minister had set the carpenters to work and coffins were being made. But the minister had prayer in all the houses ere the dead was lifted.

Then he went off to lay hot stones to the feet of another, and to get a nurse for yet another. For twenty days he never slept and seldom ate, till the plague was stayed.

The last case was on the 27th of September. Then Abraham Ligartwood himself was stricken in one of the village hovels, and fell forward across a sick man’s bed. They carried him to the manse of Dour, and wept as they went. The next day all the men that were alive in the parish of Dour stood about the minister’s grave in the kirkyard on the hill. There was none there that could pray. But as they were about to separate, some one, it was never known who, raised the tune of the first Psalm. And the wind wafted to the weeping wives in the cottages of the stricken parish of Dour the sound of the hoarse and broken singing of men. In three weeks the minister had brought the evil parish of Dour into the presence of God.

And these were the words of their singing, while the gravediggers stood with the red earth ready on their spades, but before a clod fell on the minister’s grave:–

“That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners’ way,
Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair;
But placeth his delight
Upon God’s law, and meditates
On his law day and night.”

The new minister who succeeded had an easy time and a willing people. But he can never be to them what Abraham Ligartwood was. They graved on his tomb, and that with good cause, the words, “Here lyes a Man who never feared the face of Man.”

The lovers are whispering under thy shade,

Grey Tower of Dalmeny!

I leave them and wander alone in the glade

Beneath thee, Dalmeny.

Their thoughts are of all the bright years coming on,

But mine are of days and of dreams that are gone;

They see the fair flowers Spring has thrown on the grass,

And the clouds in the blue light their eyes as they pass;

But my feet are deep dawn in a drift of dead leaves,

And I hear what they hear not–a lone bird that grieves.

What matter? the end is not far for us all,

And spring, through the summer, to winter must fall,

And the lovers’ light hearts, e’en as mine, will be laid,

At last, and for ever, low under thy shade,

Grey Tower of Dalmeny.

GEORGE MILNER.