The Standard Bearer

And so he took through the door as if the dogs had been after him.

Then the blood-letting man was for charging me with the cost of his time, but I bade him apply to Regent Campbell over at the college, telling him that it was he who had sent me. But whether ever he did so or not I never heard.

Now the rarest jest of the whole matter was on the morrow, when Quintin went to attend his prelection in Hall. The lesson, so he told me, was in the Latin of Essenius, his Compend, and Quintin was called up. After he had answered upon his portion, and well, as I presume, for Quintin was no dullard at his books, Dr. Campbell looked down a little queerly at him.

“Can you tell me which is the sixth commandment?” says he.

“Thou shalt not kill!” answers Quintin, as simple as supping brose.

“Then, are you a murderer or no – this morning?”

Quintin, thinking that, after the fashion of the time, the Regent meant some divinity quirk or puzzle, laid his brains asteep, and answered that as he had certainly “hated his brother,” in that sense he was doubtless, like all the rest of the human race, technically and theologically a murderer.

“But,” said the Professor, “what of the Highland Grant lad that ye felled like a bullock yestreen under my window?”

Now it had never struck me that I was like my brother Quintin in outward appearance, save in the way that all we black MacClellans are like one another – long in the nose, bushy in the eyebrows, which mostly reach over to meet one another. And I grant it that Quintin was ever better mettle for a lass’s eye than I – though not worth a pail of calf’s feed in the matter of making love as love ought to be made, which counts more with women than all fine appearings.

But for the nonce let that fly stick to the wall; at any rate, sure it is that the Professor loon had taken me for Quintin.

Now it will greatly help those who read this chronicle to remember what Quintin did on this occasion. I would not have cared a doit if he had said, in the plain hearing of the class, that it was his brother Hob the Lothian packman who had felled the Red Grant.

But would the lad betray his brother? No! He rather hung his head, and said no more than that he heard the Red Grant was not seriously hurt. For as he said afterwards, “I did not know what such a tribe of angry, dirked Highlandmen might have done to you, Hob, if they had so much as guessed it was no colleger’s fist which had taken Donald an inch beneath the ear.

“Then,” said the Regent to Quintin, “my warrior of Wild Whigdom, you may set to the learning of thirty psalms by heart in the original Hebrew. And after you have said them without the book I will consider of your letters of certification from this class.”

To which task my brother owes that familiarity with the Psalms of David which has often served him to such noble purpose – both when, like Boanerges, he thundered in the open fields to the listening peoples, and when at closer range he spoke with his enemies in the gate. For thirty would not suit this hungrisome Quintin of ours. He must needs learn the whole hundred and fifty (is it not?) by rote before he went back to the Regent.

“Which thirty psalms are ye prepared to recite?” queried the Professor under the bush of his eyebrows.

“Any thirty!” answered brave Quintin, unabashed, yet noways uplifted.

…

Now the rest of my brother’s college life may be told in a word. I know that he had written many chapters upon his struggles and heart-questionings as to duty and guidance at that time. But whether he destroyed them himself, or whether they exist in some undiscovered repository, certain it is that the next portion of his autobiography which has come into my hands deals with the time of his settlement in the parish of Balmaghie, where he was to endure so many strange things.

It is enough to say that year after year Quintin and I returned to the college with the fall of the leaf, I with my pack upon my back, ever gaining ready hospitality because of the songs and merry tales in my wallet. When we journeyed to and fro Quintin abode mostly at the road-ends and loaning-foots while I went up to chaffer with the good-wives in the hallans and ben-rooms of the farmhouses. Then, in the same manner as at first, we fought our way through the dull, iron-grey months of winter in Auld Reekie. Each spring, as the willow buds furred and yellowed, saw us returning to the hill-farm again with our books and packs. And all the while I kept Quintin cheerful company, looking to his clothes and mending at his stockings and body-gear as he sat over his books. Mainly it was a happy time, for I knew that the lad would do us credit. And as my mother said many and many a time, “Our Quintin has wealth o’ lear and wealth o’ grace, but he hasna as muckle common-sense as wad seriously blind a midge.”

So partly because my mother put me through a searching catechism on my return, and also because I greatly loved the lad, I watched him night and day, laid his clothes out, dried his rig-and-fur hose, greased his shoon of home-tanned leather to keep out the searching snow-brew of the Edinburgh streets. For, save when the frost grips it, sharp and snell, ’tis a terrible place to live in, that town of Edinburgh in the winter season.

Here begins again the narrative of Quintin mybrother

CHAPTER XII

THE LASS IN THE KIRKYARD

I had been well-nigh a year about the great house of Girthon as family chaplain to the laird, when there came a call to accept the ministry of the Gospel among the people of Balmaghie. It was a parish greatly to my mind. It lies, as all know, in the heart of Galloway, between the slow, placid sylvan stretches of the Ken and the rapid, turbulent mill-race of the Black Water of Dee.

From a worldly point of view the parish was most desirable. For though the income in money and grain was not great, nevertheless the whole amount was equal to the income of most of the smaller lairds in the neighbourhood.

Yet for all these things, I trust that those in future times who may read this my life record will acquit me of the sin of self-seeking.

I mind well the first time that I preached in the parish which was to be mine own. I had walked with naught but my Bible in my pocket over the long, lone hill-road from Girthon to Balmaghie. I had with me no provender to comfort my stomach by the way, or to speed my feet over the miles of black heather moors and green morass.

For the housekeeper, to whom (for reasons into which I need not enter) everything in the laird’s house of Girthon was committed, was a fair-faced, hard-natured, ill-hearted woman, who liked not the coming of a chaplain into the house – as she said, “stirring up the servants to gad about to preachings, and taking up their time with family worship and the like foolishness.”

So she went out of her way to ensure that the chaplains would stay only until they could obtain quittance of so bare and thankless a service.

When I arrived at the kirk of Balmaghie, having come all the long journey from Girthon on foot and fasting, I sat me down on a flat stone in the kirkyard, near by where the martyrs lie snug and bieldy at the gable-end.

So exhausted was I that I know not what I should have done but for a young lass, comely and well put on, who gave me the farle of oatcake she had brought with her for her “morning.”

“You are the young minister who is to preach to us this day?” she said, going over to the edge of the little wood which at that time bounded the kirkyard.

I answered her that I was and that I had walked all the way from the great house of Girthon that morning – whereat she held up her hands in utter astonishment.

“It is just not possible,” she cried.

And after pitying me a long time with her eyes, and urging me to eat her “piece” up quickly, she featly stooped down to the water and washed her feet and ankles, before drawing upon them a pair of white hosen, fair and thin, and fastening her shoes with the buckles of silver after a pretty fashion which was just coming in.

It was yet a full hour and a half before the beginning of the morning diet of worship, for I had risen betimes and travelled steadily. Now the kirk of Balmaghie stands in a lonely place, and even the adjoining little clachan of folk averts itself some distance from it.

Then being hungry I sat and munched at the lass’s piece, till, with thinking on my sermon and looking at her by the waterside, I had well-nigh eaten it every snatch. So when I awoke from my reverie, as from a deep sleep, I sat with a little bit of bread, the size of my thumb, in my hand, staring at it as if I had seen a fairlie.[7 - I. e., a marvel.]

And what was worse, the lass seeing me thus speechless, and with my jaws yet working on the last of the crust, went off into peal after peal of laughter.

“What for do ye look at me like that, young lad?” she said, when she had sufficiently commanded herself.

“I – I have eaten all your midday piece, whiles I was thinking upon my sermon,” I said.

“More befitting is it that you should think upon your sermon than of things lighter and less worthy,” said she, without looking up at me. I was pleased with her solid answer and felt abashed.

“But you will go wanting,” I began.

She gartered one shapely stocking of silk ere she answered me, holding the riband that was to cincture the other in her mouth, as appears to be the curious fashion of women.

“What matter,” she said, presently, as she stroked down her kirtle over her knee modestly, with an air that took me mightily, it was so full of distance and respect. “I come not far, but only from the farm town of Drumglass down there on the meadow’s edge. Ye are welcome to the bit piece; I am as glad to see ye eat it as of a sunny morn in haytime. You have come far, and a brave day’s wark we are expecting from you this Sabbath day.”

Then, as was my duty, I rebuked her for looking to man for that which could alone come from the Master and Maker of man.

She listened very demurely, with her eyes upon the silver buckles of her shoon, which she had admiringly placed side by side on the grass, when she set herself down on the low boundary wall of the kirkyard.

“I ken I am too young and light and foolish to be fit company even for a young minister,” she said, and there was a blush upon her cheek which vexed me, though it was bonny enough to look upon.

“Nay,” answered I quickly; “there you mistake me. I meant no such thing, bonnie lass. We are all both fond and foolish, minister and maid.” (Well might I say it, for – God forgive me! – at that very moment my mind ran more on how the lass looked and on the way she had of tapping the grass with her foot than on the solemn work of the day.)

“No, no,” she interrupted, hastily; “I am but a silly lass, poor and ignorant, and you do well to fault me.”

Now this put me in a painful predicament, for I still held in my hand the solitary scraplet left of the young lass’s “piece,” and I must needs, like a dull, splenetic fool, go on fretting her for a harmless word.