that I couldna lang thole to stand this way like a heron in the water.
‘I lookit round, and then turned again wi’ a stert, for there were thae leaden een o’ that awfu’ deid thing staring at me still.
‘For anither quarter-hour I stood and shivered, and then my guid sense returned, and I tried again. I walkit backward, never lookin’ round, through the water to the shore, whaur I thocht the corp was lyin’. And a’ the time I could hear my hert chokin’ in my breist.
‘My God, I fell ower it, and for one moment lay aside it, wi’ my heid touchin’ its deathly skin. Then wi’ a skelloch like a daft man, I took the thing in my airms and flung it wi’ a’ my strength into the water. The swirl took it, and it dipped and swam like a fish till it gaed out o’sicht.
‘I saw doun on the grass and grat like a bairn wi’ fair horror and weakness. Yin by yin the nowt came back, and shouthered anither around me, and the puir beasts brocht me yince mair to myself. But I keepit my een on the grund, and thocht o’ hame and a’ thing decent and kindly, for I daurna for my life look out to the black water in dreid o’ what it micht bring.
‘At the first licht, the herd and twae ither men cam’ ower in a boat to tak me aff and bring fodder for the beasts. They fand me still sittin’ wi’ my heid atween my knees, and my face like a peeled wand. They lifted me intil the boat and rowed me ower, driftin’ far down wi’ the angry current. At the ither side the shepherd says to me in an awed voice, –
‘“There’s a fearfu’ thing happened. The young laird o’ Manorwater’s drooned in the spate. He was ridin’ back late and tried the ford o’ the Cauldshaw foot. Ye ken his wild cantrips, but there’s an end o’ them noo. The horse cam’ hame in the nicht wi’ an empty saddle, and the Gled Water rinnin’ frae him in streams. The corp’ll be far on to the sea by this time, and they’ll never see’t mair.”’
‘“I ken,” I cried wi’ a dry throat, “I ken; I saw him floatin’ by.” And then I broke yince mair into a silly greetin’, while the men watched me as if they thocht I was out o’ my mind.’
So much the farmer of Clachlands told me, but to the countryside he repeated merely the bare facts of weariness and discomfort. I have heard that he was accosted a week later by the minister of the place, a well-intentioned, phrasing man, who had strayed from his native city with its familiar air of tea and temperance to those stony uplands.
‘And what thoughts had you, Mr Linklater, in that awful position? Had you no serious reflection upon your life?’
‘Me,’ said the farmer; ‘no me. I juist was thinkin’ that it was dooms cauld, and that I wad hae gien a guid deal for a pipe o’ tobaccy.’ This in the racy, careless tone of one to whom such incidents were the merest child’s play.
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