브라이언 와이스(Brian Weiss) 박사와의 인터뷰 - 사후세계를 통해 배우는 삶의 교훈

[머콜라 박사(Dr. Mercola)] 반드시 알아야 할 비타민 D 관련 정보

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 24

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 24

"But ye didna' speak aboot it ony mair than me, Auld Chairlie!"

retorted Poet Jock.

 

"An' what for should I do that? I thocht the laddie maybe prefer't to

'bide wat!" said Auld Chairlie, with emphasis.

 

"Ye are surely growin' doited, Chairles," said the poet; "ye took the

Netherby clearin' hoose clerk for the General Manager o' the line the

day afore yesterday!"

 

"An' so micht onybody," replied Auld Chairlie, "upsetting blastie that

he is! Sic a wame as the craitur cairries, wag-waggin' afore him. I

declare I thocht he wad be either General Manager o' the line or the

Provist o' Glescae!"

 

"Haud your tongue, man Chairlie, and see if ye can own up, for yince!

If we are to judge folk by their wames, gussy pig gruntin' in the

trough wad be king o' men. But stop your haverin' and see if ye hae ony

dry claes that ye can lend this boy. He'll get his death o' cauld if he

lets them dry on him."

 

But Auld Chairlie had nothing whatever in the way of change, except a

checked red-and-white Sunday handkerchief for the neck.

 

"And I hae nocht ava'!" exclaimed the poet. "Ye maun juist gang to your

bed, my man, and I'll feed ye over the edge wi' a fork!"

 

But Cleg saw in the corner the old flour sack in which the surfaceman

had imported his last winter's flour. The bag had long been empty.

 

"Is this ony use?" said Cleg. "I could put this on!"

 

"Use," cried the poet, "what use can an auld flour sack be when a man's

claes are wat?"

 

"Aweel," said Cleg, "ye'll see, gin ye wait. Railway folk dinna ken a'

thing, though they think they do!"

 

So with that he cut a couple of holes at the corners, and made a still

larger hole in the middle of the sack bottom. Then he disrobed himself

with the utmost gravity, drew the empty sack over his head, and put his

arms through the holes in the corners.

 

"It only needs a sma' alteration at the oxters to fit like your very

skin," he said. Then he took up Auld Chairlie's table-knife and made a

couple of slits beneath the arms, "and there ye hae a comfortable suit

o' claes."

 

The poet burst into a great laugh and smote his thigh. "I never saw the

match o' the loon!" he cried, joyously.

 

"They are nocht gaudy," Cleg went on, as he seated himself at the

corner of the table, having first spread his wet garments carefully

before the stove, "but it is a fine an' airy suit for summer wear. The

surtowt comes below the knee, so it's in the fashion. Lang-skirted

coats are a' the go on Princes Street the noo. A' the lawyers wear

them."

 

At this point Cleg rose and gave an imitation of the walk and

conversation of a gentleman of the long robe, as seen from the

standpoint of the Sooth Back.

 

Once he had looked into Parliament House itself, and managed to walk

twice round before "getting chucked," as he remarked. So he knew all

about it.

 

He took an oily piece of cotton waste with which Poet Jock cleaned his

lamps. He secured it about his head, so that it hung down his back

for a wig. He put a penny in his eye, instead of the orthodox legal

eyeglass. Then he set his hands in the small of his back, and began to

parade up and down the centre of the old railway carriage in a very

dignified manner, with the old sack waving behind him after the fashion

of a gown.

 

He pretended to look down with a lofty contempt upon Poet Jock and Auld

Chairlie, as they watched him open-mouthed.

 

"Who the devil are those fellows?" he said; "lot of asses about.

Everybody is an ass. Who's sitting to-day? Ha! old Bully-boy—bally ass

he is! Who's speaking? Young Covercase—another bleating ass! Say, old

chappie, come and let's have a drink, and get out of the way of the

asses."

 

It is to be feared that Cleg would next have gone on to imitate the

clergy of his native city. But he was hampered by the fact that his

opportunities for observation had been limited to the street. He had

never been within a church door in his life. And that not so much

because he would have stood a good chance of being turned out as a

mischief-maker, but from natural aversion to an hour's confinement.

 

Then Cleg wrapped his old sack about him very tightly, and assumed

a fixed smile of great suavity. He approached the poet, who was

stretching his long limbs in the upper bunk which occupied one side of

the hut.

 

"Ah," said Cleg, slowly wagging his head from side to side, "and how do

we find ourselves to-day? Better? Let me feel your pulse—Ah, just as

I expected. Tongue—furry? Have you taken the medicine? What you need

is strengthening food, and the treatment as before. See that you get

it—blue mange, grouse pie, and the best champagne! And continue the

treatment! _Good_-morning!"

 

Cleg wrapped his sack closer about him as he finished, to represent the

slim surtout of the healing faculty, and, setting an old tea "cannie"

of tin upon his head to represent a tall hat, he bowed himself out with

his best Canongate imitation of a suitable and effective bedside manner.

 

There was no end to Cleg's entertainment when he felt that he had an

appreciative audience. And as the comedy consisted not so much in what

he said as in the perfect solemnity of his countenance, the charm of

his bare arms meandering through the holes in the corners of the sack,

and the bare legs stalking compass-like through its open mouth, Poet

Jock laughed till he had to lie down on the floor in the corner. Even

Auld Chairlie was compelled perforce to smile, though he often declared

his belief that it was all vanity, and that Cleg was certainly a child

of the devil.

 

Chairlie was specially confirmed in this opinion by Cleg's next

characterisation.

 

"Did ye ever see the Track Woman?" said Cleg, dropping for a moment

into his own manner. "I canna' bide her ava. There's them that we like

to see comin' into our hooses—folk like Miss Celie, that is veesitor in

oor district, or Big Smith, the Pleasance Missionary, even though he

whiles gies us a lick wi' his knobby stick for cloddin' cats. But the

Track Woman I canna bide. This is her!"

 

And he gathered up his sack very high in front of him, to express the

damage which it would receive by contact with the dirt of Poet Jock's

abode. Then he threw back his head and stuck out his chin, to convey an

impression of extreme condescension.

 

"Good day, poor people," he said, "I have called to leave you a little

tract. I don't know how you can live in such a place. Why don't you

move away? And the stair is so dirty and sticky! It is really not fit

for a lady to come up. What's this? What's this"—(smelling)—"chops!

Chops are far too expensive and wasteful for people in your position. A

little liver, now, or beef-bone——. What did you say? 'Get out of this!'

Surely I did not hear you right! Do you know that I came here to do you

good, and to leave you a little tract? Now, I pray you, do not let your

angry passions rise. I will, however, do my duty, and leave a little

tract. Read it carefully; I hope it will do you good. It is fitted to

teach you how to be grateful for the interest that is taken in you by

your betters!"

 

As soon as Cleg had finished, he lifted the skirts of his old sack

still higher, tilted his nose yet more in the air, and sailed out,

sniffing meanwhile from right to left and back again with extreme

disfavour.

 

But as soon as he had reached the door his manner suffered a

sea-change. He bounded in with a somersault, leaped to his feet, and

pretended to look out of the door after the departing "Track Woman."

 

"O ye besom!" he cried, "comin' here nosing and advising—as stuffed wi'

stinkin' pride as a butcher's shop wi' bluebottles in the last week o'

July! Dook her in the dub! Fling dead cats at her, and clod her wi'

cabbages and glaur! Pour dish-washin's on her. Ah, the pridefu' besom!"

 

And with this dramatic conclusion Cleg sank apparently exhausted into a

chair with the skirts of the sack sticking out in an elegant frill in

front of him, and fanned himself gracefully with an iron shovel taken

from the stove top, exactly as he had seen the young lady performers at

the penny theatres do as they waited in the wings for their "turn."

 

Great was the applause from Poet Jock, who lay in a state of collapse

on the floor.

 

"Boys O!" he exclaimed feebly, "but ye are a lad!"

 

Auld Chairlie only shook his head, and repeated, "I misdoot that ye are

a verra child o' the deevil!"

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XLVII.

 

THE SLEEP OF JAMES CANNON, SIGNALMAN.

 

 

On the morrow Cleg was up betimes. But not so early as Poet Jock and

Auld Chairlie. His own clothes were pretty dry, but Cleg had been so

pleased with the freedom and airiness of his "sack suit," as he called

it, that, as it was a warm morning and a lonely place, he decided to

wear it all day.

 

Cleg went out, and, starting from the side of the line, he ran

light-foot to the top of a little hill, from whence he could look

over a vast moorish wilderness—league upon league of purple heather,

through which the railway had been cut and levelled with infinite but

unremunerative art.

 

From horizon to horizon not a living thing could Cleg see except the

moorbirds and the sheep. But over the woods to the east he could catch

one glimpse of Loch Spellanderie, basking blue in the sunlight. He

could not, however, see the farmhouse. But he rubbed his hands with

satisfaction as he thought of swimming away from them all into the

darkness the night before.

 

"I showed her wha was the man, I'm thinkin'!" he said. And there upon

the heather-blooms Cleg Kelly flapped his thin arms against his sack

and crowed like a chanticleer. Then in a few moments there came back

from over the moor and loch a phantom cock-crow reduced to the airiest

diminuendo. It was the tyrant of the Loch Spellanderie dung-hill which

spoke back to him.

 

"I'm richt glad I'm no there," said Cleg, heartily.

 

Nevertheless he went down the hill again a little sadly, as though he

were not quite sure, when he came to think about it, whether he was

glad or not.

 

But on the whole it was perhaps as well that he was where he was, at

least in his present costume.

 

When Cleg got back to the hut, he looked about for something to do

till his friends returned. His active frame did not stand idleness

well. He grew distracted with the silence and the wide spaces of air

and sunshine about him. He longed to hear the thunderous rattle of the

coal-carts coming out of the station of St. Leonards. He missed the

long wolf's howl of the seasoned South Side coalman. In the morning,

indeed, the whaups had done something to cheer him, wailing and crying

to the peewits. But as the forenoon advanced even they went off to the

shore-side pools, or dropped into the tufts of heather and were mute.

 

Cleg grew more and more tired of the silence. It deafened him, so that

several times he had to go outside and yell at the top of his voice

simply, as it were, to relieve nature.

 

It happened that on the second occasion, as soon as he had finished

yelling—that is, exhausted an entire vocabulary of hideous sounds—a

train to Port Andrew broke the monotony. It did not actually stop,

because it was a passenger train and had already "watered up" at

Netherby. But Cleg was as pleased as if it had brought him a box of

apples. He climbed up and sat cross-legged on the top of the hut in his

sack, for all the world like an Indian idol; and the engine-driver was

so astonished that he forgot to put the brake on till he was thundering

headlong half way down the incline on the western side of the Summit

cabin.

 

But the stoker, a young man incapable of astonishment (as many of the

very young are), picked up a lump of coal from the tender and threw

it at Cleg with excellent aim. However, as the train was going slowly

uphill at the time, Cleg caught it and set the piece of coal between

his teeth. His aspect on this occasion was such as would fully have

warranted Auld Chairlie in setting him down not as a child of the

devil, but as the father of all the children of the devil.

 

The train passed, and Cleg was again in want of something to do. He

could not sit there in the sun, and be slowly roasted with a piece of

coal between his teeth, all for the benefit of the whaups. He thought

with regret how he should like to sit, just as he was, on some towering

pinnacle of the Scott monument where the police could not get him, and

make faces at all the envious keelies in Edinburgh. To do this through

all eternity would have afforded him much more pleasure than any

realisation of more contentional presentations of the joys of heaven.

 

He descended and looked about him.

 

At the end of the little cabin he found a pitcher of tar, but no brush.

He searched further, however, till he found it thrown carelessly

away among the heather. Whereupon Cleg forthwith appointed himself

house-painter-in-ordinary to the Port Andrew Railway Company, and

attacked the Summit cabin. He laid the tar on thick and good, so that

when the sun beat upon his handiwork it had the effect of raising

a smell which made Cleg's heart beat with the joy of reminiscence.

It reminded him of a thousand things—of the brickyard on blistering

afternoons, and also (when the perfume came most undiluted to his

nose) of that district of Fountainbridge which has the privilege of

standing upon the banks of the Forth and Clyde canal, and of containing

several highly respectable and well-connected glue factories. Cleg had

once gone there to "lag for a boy" who had offended his dignity by

"trapping" him at school in the spelling of the word "coffin."

 

Cleg had spelled it, simply and severely, "kofn."

 

The boy from Fountainbridge, however, had spelled it correctly. Not

only so, but he had been elated about the matter—very foolishly and

rashly so, indeed.

 

"For," said Cleg, "it's easy for him. His faither is a joiner, and

makes coffins to his trade. Besides, he had a half-brither that died

last week. He micht easy be able to spell 'coffin'!"

 

To prevent the pride which so surely comes before a fall, Cleg waited

for the "coffin" boy and administered the fall in person—indeed,

several of them, and mostly in puddles.

 

He was therefore agreeably reminded of his visit to Fountainbridge

whenever he stirred up the pitch from the bottom and the smell rose

to his nostrils particularly solid and emulous. He shut his eyes and

coughed. He dreamed that he was back and happily employed in "downing"

the orthographist of Fountainbridge upon the flowery banks of the Union

Canal.

 

It was after ten o'clock in the evening before Poet Jock came in

sight. He had been on a heavy job with a break-down gang on the Muckle

Fleet incline. All day long he had been rhyming verses to the rasp of

pick and the scrape of shovel. Sometimes so busy was he that he had

barely time to take his mate's warning and leap to the side before

the engine came leaping round the curve scarcely thirty lengths of

rail away. But Poet Jock was entirely happy. Probably he might have

travelled far and never known greater exhilaration than now, when he

heard the engine surge along the irons, while he tingled with the

thought that it was his strong arms which kept the track by which man

was joined to man and city linked to city.

 

A fine, free, broad-browed, open-eyed man was Poet Jock. And his hand

was as heavy as his heart was tender. As, indeed, many a rascal had

found to his cost. Those who know railwaymen best, are surest that

there does not exist in the world so fine a set of workers as the men

whose care is the rails and the road, the engines and the guard vans,

the platforms, goods sheds, and offices of our common railways.

 

A railway never sleeps. A thousand watchful eyes are at this moment

glancing through the bull's-eyes of the driver's cab. A thousand strong

hands are on the driving lever. Aloft, in wind-beaten, rain-battered

signal boxes, stand the solitary men who, with every faculty on the

alert, keep ten thousand from instant destruction. How tense their

muscles, how clear their brains must be as they pull the signal and

open the points! That brown hand gripping lever number seventeen,

instead of number eighteen within six inches of it, is all that

preserves three hundred people from instant and terrible death. That

pound or two of pressure on the signal chain which sent abroad the

red flash of danger, stopped the express in which sat our wives and

children, and kept it from dashing at full speed into that over-shunted

truck which a minute ago toppled over and lay squarely across the

racer's path.

 

And the surfacemen, of whom are Auld Chairlie and Poet Jock? Have you

thought of how, night and day, they patrol every rod of iron path—how

with clink of hammer and swing of arm they test every length of

rail—how they dash the rain out of their eyes that they may discern

whether the sidelong pressure of the swift express, or the lumbering

thunder of the overladen goods, have not bent outwards the steel rail,

forced it from its "chair," or caused the end of the length to spring

upward like a fixed bayonet after the weight has passed over it?

 

A few men standing by the line side as the train speeds by. What of

them? Heroes? They look by no means like it. Lazy fellows, rather,

leaning on their picks and shovels when they should be working. Or a

solitary man far up among the hills, idly clinking the metals with his

hammer as he saunters along through the stillness.

 

These are the surfacemen—and that is all most know of them. But wait.

When the night is blackest, the storm grimmest, there is a bridge out

yonder which has been weakened—a culvert strained where a stream from

the hillside has undermined the track. The trains are passing every

quarter of an hour in each direction. Nevertheless, a length of rail

must be lifted and laid during that time. A watch must be kept. The

destructiveness of nature must be fought in the face of wetness and

weariness. And, in spite of all, the train may come too quick round

the curve. Then there follows the usual paragraph in the corner of

the local paper if the accident has happened in the country, a bare

announcement of the coroner's inquest if it be in the town.

 

A porter is crushed between the platform and the moving carriages; a

goods guard killed at the night shunt in the yard. Careless fellow!

Serves him right for his recklessness. Did he not know the risk when

he engaged? Of course he did—none better. But then he got twenty-two

shillings a week to feed wife and bairns with for taking that risk. And

if he did not take it, are there not plenty who would be glad of the

chance of his empty berth?

 

And what then? Why, just this: there is one added to the thousands

killed upon the railways of our lands—one stroke, a little figure 1

made at the foot of the unfinished column, a grave, a family in black,

a widow with six children moved out of the company's house on which

grow the roses which he planted about the door that first year, when

all the world was young and a pound a week spelled Paradise. The six

children have gone into a single room and she takes in washing, and is

hoping by and by to get the cleaning of a board school, if she be very

fortunate.

 

To blame? Who said that any one was to blame? Of course not. Are we not

all shareholders in the railways, and do we not grumble vastly when our

half-yearly dividend is low? So lengthen the hours of these over-paid,

lazy fellows in corduroys—lengthen that column over which the Board of

Trade's clerk lingers a moment ere he adds a unit. O well, what matter?

'Tis only statistics filed for reference in a Government office.

 

But while Cleg waited for Poet Jock something else was happening at

Netherby.

 

It was a bitter night there, with a westerly wind sweeping up torrents

of slanting rain through the pitchy dark. Netherby Junction was

asleep, but it was the sleep which draws near the resurrection. The

station-master was enjoying his short after-supper nap in the armchair

by the fire. For the down boat-train from Port Andrew and the Duncan

Urquhart's goods train would pass each other at Netherby Junction at

10.5 P. M.

 

The signal box up yonder in the breast of the storm was almost carried

away. So tall it rose that the whole fabric bent and shivered in each

fierce gust which came hurtling in from the Atlantic. James Cannon,

the signalman of Netherby West, was not asleep. His mate was ill, but

not ill enough to be quite off duty. James Cannon had applied for a

substitute, but headquarters were overtaxed for spare men and had not

responded. Netherby was considered a light station to work, and the

duty would no doubt be done somehow.

 

James Cannon had been on duty since six in the morning—sixteen hours

already at the levers. Then he had also been up nearly all the night

before with a weakly and fretful child. But the company's regulations could not be expected to provide for that.

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 23

Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City 23

But a sudden thought of inconceivable grandeur flushed Cleg's cheek.

Once for all, he would show them what he could do. He would evade his

pursuers, make his late adversary burst with envy, and wring the heart

of Vara Kavannah, all by one incomparable act of daring. So he stood

still till Mistress McWalter arose again to her feet and charged upon

him with a perfect scream of anger. At the same time John McWalter

closed in upon the other side with his hay-fork and his dogs. Cleg

allowed them to approach till they were almost within striking distance

of him. Then, without giving himself a moment for reflection, he

wheeled about on his heels, balanced a moment on the brink, bent his

arms with the fingers touching into a beautiful bow, and sprang far out

into the black water.

 

So suddenly was this done that the good man of Loch Spellanderie,

approaching with his hay-fork from one direction, ran hastily into the

arms of his spouse charging from the other. And from her he received

a most unwifely ring on the side of the head with the poker, which

loosened every tooth John McWalter still retained in his jawbones.

 

"Tak' that, ye donnert auld deevil, for lettin' him by!" cried the

harridan.

 

"Ye let him by yoursel', guidwife," cried her husband, who did not

often resent anything which his wife might do, but who felt that he

must draw the line at having to welcome the poker on the side of his

head. "Dinna come that road again, my woman. I declare to peace; had it

no been for the hay-time comin' on, and few hands to win it, I wad hae

stuck the fork brave and firmly intil ye, ye randy besom!"

 

To what lengths the quarrel would have gone if it had been allowed to

proceed, will never be known. For just at that moment the head of Cleg

emerged far out upon the dark waters of Loch Spellanderie.

 

Cleg Kelly swam nearly as easily in his clothes as without them. For he

had cast his coat at the beginning of the fray, and as to his trousers,

they were loose and especially well ventilated. So that the water

gushed in and out of the holes as he swam, much as though they had

been the gills of a fish. Indeed, they rather helped his progress than

otherwise.

 

Then from the dusky breadths of the lake arose the voice, mocking and

bitter, of the Thersites of the Sooth Back, equally well equipped for

compliment and deadly in debate.

 

"Loup in," he cried, "try a dook. It is fine and caller in here the

nicht. But leave the poker ahint ye. It will tak' ye a' your time to

keep your ain thick heid abune the water. Come on, you!" he cried

pointedly to Mistress McWalter. "That face o' yours hasna seen water

for a month, I'll wager. A soom will do you a' the guid in the world!

And you, ye guano-sack on stilts, come and try a spar oot here. I'll

learn ye to stick hay-fows into decent folk!"

 

But neither John McWalter nor yet his wife had a word to say in answer.

 

Then began such an exhibition as Loch Spellanderie had never seen.

Cleg trod water. He dived. He swam on his back, on his side, on his

breast. His arms described dignified alternate circles—half in air and

half in water. He pretended to be drowning and let himself, after a

terror-striking outcry, sink slowly down into deep water, from which

presently he arose laughing.

 

And all the time his heart was hot and prideful within him.

 

"I'll learn her," he said over and over to himself, "I'll learn her to

tak' up wi' a country Jock."

 

And then he would execute another foolhardy prank, dismally rejoicing

the while in Vara's manifest terror.

 

"Cleg, come oot! Ye'll be drooned!" Vara cried, wringing her hands in

agony. Simple and innocent herself, she could not understand why her

kind good Cleg should act so. She had no conception of the evil spirit

of pride and vainglory, which upon occasion rent and tormented that

small pagan bosom.

 

"I'll show her!" remained the refrain of all Cleg's meditations for

many a day.

 

Finally, when this had gone on for a quarter of an hour, Cleg trod

water long enough to kiss his hand, and cry "Guidnicht!" to Mistress

McWalter and her husband, who meanwhile stood dumb and astonished on

the bank.

 

Then he turned and swam steadily away across the loch. He did not know

in the least how he would get his clothes dried, nor yet where he would

have to sleep. But his many adventures that day, and in especial the

way he had "taken the shine oot o' that loonie wi' the curls," warmed

and comforted him more than a brand new suit of dry clothes. So long as

he could see them he looked over his shoulder occasionally. And when he

noted the four dark figures still standing on the bank, Cleg chuckled

to himself and his proud heart rejoiced within him.

 

"I telled ye I wad show her," he said to himself, "and I hae shown her!"

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XLV.

 

THE CABIN ON THE SUMMIT.

 

 

Like most Scottish lakes, Loch Spellanderie is not wide, and Cleg

manfully ploughed his way across without fear of the result. For he

had often swam much further at the piers of Leith and Trinity, as

well as much longer in the many lochs which are girt like a girdle of

jewels round about his native city. But presently his clothes began to

tire him, and long ere the dark line of the trees on the further side

approached, he was longing to be on shore again.

 

Sometimes also he seemed to hear the voices of men before him, though,

owing the deep shadow of the trees, he could see no one. Cleg's arms

began to ache terribly, and his feet to drag lower and lower. The power

went out of his strokes. He called out lustily for the men to wait for

him. He could hear something like a boat moving along the edge of the

reeds, rustling through them with a sough as it went.

 

Suddenly Cleg saw something dark swimming slowly along the surface of

the water. He struck towards it fearlessly. It was a piece of wood

moved, as it seemed, by some mysterious power from the shore. Cleg

called out again for the men whose voices he had heard to wait for him.

But, instead of waiting, they promptly turned and fled. Cleg could

hear them crashing like bullocks through the briars and hazels of the

underbrush.

 

However, he was not far from the land now, and in a minute more he felt

his feet rest upon the shelving gravel of the lake shore. Cleg brought

the wedge-shaped piece of wood with him. He found upon holding it close

to his eyes in the dim light, that a double row of hooks was attached

to it beneath, and that there were half a dozen good trout leaping and

squirming upon different sides of it.

 

Cleg had no notion of the nature of the instrument he had captured. Nor

indeed had he the least idea that he had disturbed certain very honest

men in a wholly illegal operation.

 

He only shook himself like a water-dog and proceeded to run through the

wood at an easy trot, for the purpose of getting some heat back into

his chilled limbs.

 

As he ran his thoughts returned often to Loch Spellanderie, and each

time he cracked his thumbs with glee.

 

"I showed her, I'm thinkin'!" he said aloud.

 

Suddenly Cleg found himself out of the wood. He came upon a slight

fence of wire hung upon cloven undressed posts, over which ran the

shallow trench of the railway to Port Andrew.

 

Cleg knew himself on sure ground again so soon as he came to something

so familiar as the four-foot way. He felt as if he had a friend in each

telegraph post, and that the shining perspective of the parallel metals

stretched on and on into direct connection with Princes Street Station

and the North Bridge tram lines which ran almost to the Canongate Head.

He was, as it were, at home.

 

The boy hesitated a little which way to turn. But ultimately he decided

that he would take the left hand. So Cleg sped along the permanent way

towards Port Andrew at the rate of six miles an hour.

 

Had he known it, he was running as fast as he could out of all

civilisation. For at this point the railway passes into a purely

pastoral region of sheep and muircocks, where even farms and cot-houses

are scarcer than in any other part of the lowlands of Scotland.

 

Nevertheless Cleg kept up the steady swinging trot, which had come to

him by nature in direct descent from Tim Kelly, the Irish harvestman

and burglar who in his day had trotted so disastrously into Isbel

Beattie's life.

 

But Cleg was not to lie homeless and houseless that night, as Vara and

the children had often done. Cleg possessed all a cat's faculty for

falling on his feet.

 

At a lonely place on the side of the line he came upon a little cluster

of tanks and offices, which was yet not a station. There was, in fact,

no platform at all. It consisted mainly of the little tank for watering

the engine, and, set deep under an overhanging snout of heathery

moorland, an old narrow-windowed railway carriage raised upon wooden

uprights.

 

Cleg stood petrified with astonishment before this strange encampment.

For there were lights in the windows, and the sound of voices came

cheerfully from within. Yet here was the lonely moor, with the birds

calling weirdly all about him, and only the parallel bars of the

four-foot way starting out east and west into the darkness, from the

broad stream of comfortable light which fell across them from the

windows of the wheelless railway carriage.

 

Finally Cleg plucked up heart to knock. He had a feeling that nothing

far amiss could happen to him, so near a railway which led at long

and last to Princes Street, where even at that moment so many of his

friends were busily engaged selling the evening papers. Besides which

he was in still nearer connection with his friends Muckle Alick,

the porter, and Duncan Urquhart, the goods enginedriver at Netherby

Junction.

 

Cleg tapped gently, but there was at first no cessation in the noise.

He knocked a second time a little harder; still it was without effect.

 

A voice within took up a rollicking tune, and the words came rantingly

through the wooden partition. Cleg's hand slid down till it rested

upon the stirrup-shaped brass handle of a railway carriage. It turned

readily in his fingers, and Cleg peered curiously within.

 

He could now see the singer, who sat on a wooden chair with his

stocking-soles cocked up on the little stove which filled all one end

of the hut. There came from within a delightful smell of broiling bacon

ham, which hungry Cleg sniffed up with gusto.

 

The singer was a rough-haired, black-bearded man with a wide chest

and mighty shoulders, even though he could not be called a giant when

compared with Muckle Alick down at Netherby. And this is what he sang:

 

Auld Granny Grey Pow,

Fetch the bairnies in;

Bring them frae the Scaur Heid,

Whaur they mak' sic din.

Chase them frae the washin' pool,

Thrang at skippin' stanes—

 

_Auld Granny Grey Pow,

Gather hame the weans._

 

The singer's voice sang this verse of the Poet of the Iron Road[6] so

gaily that Cleg felt that his quarters for the night were assured. He

was about to step within when a new voice spoke.

 

"'Deed and it micht serve ye better a deal, Poet Jock, gin ye wad

set doon your feet and lift your Bible to tak' a lesson to yoursel',

instead o' rantin' there at a gilravage o' vain sangs—aye, even wastin'

your precious time in makkin' them, when ye micht be either readin'

the Company's rules or thinkin' aboot the concerns o' your never-dying

sowl!"

 

"You haud your tongue, Auld Chairlie," cried the singer, pausing a

moment, but not turning round; "gin ye hadna missed thae troots the

nicht and lost your otter to the keepers in Loch Spellanderie, ye wadna

hae been sitting there busy wi' Second Chronicles!"

 

And again the singer took up his ranting melody:

 

Bring in Rab to get him washed,

Weel I ken the loon,

Canna do unless he be

Dirt frae fit to croon.

Tam and Wull are juist the same

For a' I tak' sic pains—

 

_Auld Granny Grey Pow,

Gather hame the weans._

 

So the singer sang, and ever as he came to the refrain he cuddled an

imaginary fiddle under his chin and played it brisk and tauntingly like

a spring:

 

_Auld Granny Grey Pow,

Gather hame the weans._

 

Then, before another word could be spoken, Cleg stepped inside.

 

"Guidnicht to ye a'!" he said politely.

 

The man who had been called Poet Jock took down his feet from the top

of the stove so quickly that the legs of the chair slipped from under

him, and he came down upon the floor of the carriage with a resounding

thump. Auld Chairlie, a white-haired old man who sat under a lamp with

a large book on his knee, also stood up so suddenly that the volume

slipped to the floor.

 

"O mercy! Lord, preserve me, what's this?" he cried, his teeth

chattering in his head as he spoke.

 

"Wha may you be and what do ye want?" asked poet Sandy, without,

however, getting up from the floor.

 

"I'm juist Cleg Kelly frae the Sooth Back," said the apparition.

 

"And whaur got ye that otter and troots?" broke in Auld Chairlie, who

could not take his eyes off them.

 

"I got them in the loch. Did ye think they grew in the field, man?"

retorted Cleg, whose natural man was rising within him at the enforced

catechism.

 

"Preserve us a'—I thocht ye had been either the deil or a gamekeeper!"

said Auld Chairlie, with intense earnestness; "weel, I'm awesome glad

ye are no a game watcher, at ony rate. We micht maybe hae managed to

gie the deil a bit fley by haudin' the muckle Bible to his e'e. But

gamekeepers are a' juist regairdless heathen loons that care neither

for Kirk nor minister—except maybe an orra while at election time."

 

"Aye, man, an' ye are Cleg Kelly? Where did ye 'Cleg' frae?" asked the

poet, who contented himself jovially with his position in the corner of

the floor, till a few cinders fell from the stove and made him leap to

his feet with an alacrity which was quite astounding in so big a man.

Then the reason why he had been content to sit still became manifest.

For his head struck the roof of the little carriage with a bang which

made him cower. Whereupon he sat down again, rubbing it ruefully,

muttering to himself, "There maun be the maist part o' an octavo volume

o' poems stuck to that roof already, and there gangs anither epic!"

 

When the Poet and Auld Chairlie had re-composed themselves in the

little hut, Cleg proceeded to tell them all his adventures, and

especially all those which concerned Mistress McWalter of Loch

Spellanderie, and the great swim across the water.

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURE XLVI.

 

A CHILD OF THE DEVIL.

 

 

"We'll e'en hae yon trouts to our suppers yet!" said Poet Jock.

"Chairlie, man, pit on the pan. It's wonderfu' the works o' a gracious

Providence!"

 

And so in a trice the two noble loch trouts were frying with a pat

of butter and some oatmeal in the pan, and sending up a smell which

mingled deliciously enough with that of the fried ham which already

smoked upon an aschet by the fireside.

 

The good-hearted surfacemen at the Summit Hut seemed to take it for

granted that Cleg was to remain with them. At least neither of them

asked him any further questions. This might be because in the course of

his story he had mentioned familiarly the name of Duncan Urquhart the

goods guard, and the still greater one of Muckle Alick, the head porter

at Netherby. And these to a railway man on the Port Road were as good

as half-a-dozen certificates of character.

 

What a night it was in that wild place! The poet chanted his lays

between alternate mouthfuls of ham and fried scones of heavenly

toothsomeness. Auld Chairlie said quite a lengthy prayer by way of

asking a blessing. And the supplication would have continued a longer

time still, but for Poet Jock's base trick of rattling a knife and fork

on a plate, which caused Auld Chairlie to come to an abrupt stoppage

lest any unsportsmanlike march should be stolen upon him.

 

Finally, however, all started fair.

 

"I wadna' wonder gin thae troots were poached!" said the poet, winking

slily at Cleg; "ye wadna' believe what a set o' ill-contrivin' fallows

there are in this countryside!"

 

"As for me," said Auld Chairlie, "I can see naething wrang in catchin'

the bit things. Ye see it's no only allowed, it's commanded. Did ye

never read how the birds in the air and the fishes in the flood were

committed too or faither Aaidam to tell the names o' them? Noo, unless

he gruppit them, how could he possibly tell their names? The thing's

clean ridiculous!"

 

"Mony a decent man has gotten sixty days for believin' that!" cried the

poet between the mouthfuls.

 

In the middle of the meal the poet leaped up suddenly, checking

himself, however, in the middle of his spring with a quick remembrance

of the roof above him. "Preserve us, laddie, ye are a' wat!"

 

"So would you," quoth Cleg, who in the congenial atmosphere of the

cabin had recovered all his natural briskness, "gin ye had soomed Loch

Spellanderie as weel as me! Even a pairish minister wad be wat then!"

 

"Aye," said Auld Chairlie, sententiously, "that's juist like your poet.

He hears ye tell a' aboot soomin' a loch. But he never thinks that yewad hae to wat your claes when ye did it."