“I want to speak to you, Ranald,” he said.
I remember so well how the barn looked that day. The upper half of one of the doors had a hole in it, and a long pencil of sunlight streamed in, and fell like a pool of glory upon a heap of yellow straw. So golden grew the straw beneath it, that the spot looked as if it were the source of the shine, and sent the slanting ray up and out of the hole in the door. We sat down beside it, I wondering why Turkey looked so serious and important, for it was not his wont.
“Ranald,” said Turkey, “I can’t bear that the master should have bad people about him.”
“What do you mean, Turkey?” I rejoined.
“I mean the Kelpie.”
“She’s a nasty thing, I know,” I answered. “But my father considers her a faithful servant.”
“That’s just where it is. She is not faithful. I’ve suspected her for a long time. She’s so rough and ill-tempered that she looks honest; but I shall be able to show her up yet. You wouldn’t call it honest to cheat the poor, would you?”
“I should think not. But what do you mean?”
“There must have been something to put old Eppie in such an ill-temper on Saturday, don’t you think?”
“I suppose she had had a sting from the Kelpie’s tongue.”
“No, Ranald, that’s not it. I had heard whispers going about; and last Saturday, after we came home from John Adam’s, and after I had told Elsie about Jamie, I ran up the street to old Eppie. You would have got nothing out of her, for she would not have liked to tell you; but she told me all about it.”
“What a creature you are, Turkey! Everybody tells you everything.”
“No, Ranald; I don’t think I am such a gossip as that. But when you have a chance, you ought to set right whatever you can. Right’s the only thing, Ranald.”
“But aren’t you afraid they’ll call you a meddler, Turkey? Not that I think so, for I’m sure if you do anything against anybody, it’s for some other body.”
“That would be no justification if I wasn’t in the right,” said Turkey. “But if I am, I’m willing to bear any blame that comes of it. And I wouldn’t meddle for anybody that could take care of himself. But neither old Eppie nor your father can do that: the one’s too poor, and the other too good.”
“I was wondering what you meant by saying my father couldn’t take care of himself.”
“He’s too good; he’s too good, Ranald. He believes in everybody. I wouldn’t have kept that Kelpie in my house half the time.”
“Did you ever say anything to Kirsty about her?”
“I did once; but she told me to mind my own business. Kirsty snubs me because I laugh at her stories. But Kirsty is as good as gold, and I wouldn’t mind if she boxed my ears—as indeed she’s done—many’s the time.”
“But what’s the Kelpie been doing to old Eppie?”
“First of all, Eppie has been playing her a trick.”
“Then she mustn’t complain.”
“Eppie’s was a lawful trick, though. The old women have been laying their old heads together—but to begin at the beginning: there has been for some time a growing conviction amongst the poor folk that the Kelpie never gives them an honest handful of meal when they go their rounds. But this was very hard to prove, and although they all suspected it, few of them were absolutely certain about it. So they resolved that some of them should go with empty bags. Every one of those found a full handful at the bottom. Still they were not satisfied. They said she was the one to take care what she was about. Thereupon old Eppie resolved to go with something at the bottom of her bag to look like a good quantity of meal already gathered. The moment the door was closed behind her—that was last Saturday—she peeped into the bag. Not one grain of meal was to be discovered. That was why she passed you muttering to herself and looking so angry. Now it will never do that the manse, of all places, should be the one where the poor people are cheated of their dues. But we roust have yet better proof than this before we can say anything.”
“Well, what do you mean to do, Turkey?” I asked. “Why does she do it, do you suppose? It’s not for the sake of saving my father’s meal, I should think.”
“No, she does something with it, and, I suppose, flatters herself she is not stealing—only saving it off the poor, and so making a right to it for herself. I can’t help thinking that her being out that same night had something to do with it. Did you ever know her go to see old Betty?”
“No, she doesn’t like her. I know that.”
“I’m not so sure. She pretends perhaps. But we’ll have a try. I think I can outwit her. She’s fair game, you know.”
“How? What? Do tell me, Turkey,” I cried, right eagerly.
“Not to-day. I will tell you by and by.”
He got up and went about his work.
CHAPTER XXVI
Old John Jamieson
As I returned to the house I met my father.
“Well, Ranald, what are you about?” he said, in his usual gentle tone.
“Nothing in particular, father,” I answered.
“Well, I’m going to see an old man—John Jamieson—I don’t think you know him: he has not been able to come to church for a long time. They tell me he is dying. Would you like to go with me?”
“Yes, father. But won’t you take Missy?”
“Not if you will walk with me. It’s only about three miles.”
“Very well, father. I should like to go with you.”
My father talked about various things on the way. I remember in particular some remarks he made about reading Virgil, for I had just begun the Æneid. For one thing, he told me I must scan every line until I could make it sound like poetry, else I should neither enjoy it properly, nor be fair to the author. Then he repeated some lines from Milton, saying them first just as if they were prose, and after that the same lines as they ought to be sounded, making me mark the difference. Next he did the same with a few of the opening lines of Virgil’s great poem, and made me feel the difference there.
“The sound is the shape of it, you know, Ranald,” he said, “for a poem is all for the ear and not for the eye. The eye sees only the sense of it; the ear sees the shape of it. To judge poetry without heeding the sound of it, is nearly as bad as to judge a rose by smelling it with your eyes shut. The sound, besides being a beautiful thing in itself, has a sense in it which helps the other out. A psalm tune, if it’s the right one, helps you to see how beautiful the psalm is. Every poem carries its own tune in its own heart, and to read it aloud is the only way to bring out its tune.”
I liked Virgil ever so much better after this, and always tried to get at the tune of it, and of every other poem I read.
“The right way of anything,” said my father, “may be called the tune of it. We have to find out the tune of our own lives. Some people don’t seem ever to find it out, and so their lives are a broken and uncomfortable thing to them—full of ups and downs and disappointments, and never going as it was meant to go.”
“But what is the right tune of a body’s life, father?”
“The will of God, my boy.”
“But how is a person to know that, father?”
“By trying to do what he knows of it already. Everybody has a different kind of tune in his life, and no one can find out another’s tune for him, though he may help him to find it for himself.”
“But aren’t we to read the Bible, father?”
“Yes, if it’s in order to obey it. To read the Bible thinking to please God by the mere reading of it, is to think like a heathen.”
“And aren’t we to say our prayers, father?”