Auld Licht Idyls | Page 2

staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder
what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself out of the
school-house with the spade I now keep for the purpose in my
bedroom.
The kail grows brittle from the snow in my dank and cheerless garden.
A crust of bread gathers timid pheasants round me. The robins, I see,
have made the coal-house their home. Waster Lunny's dog never barks
without rousing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It is Dutch
courage with the birds and beasts of the glen, hard driven for food; but I
look attentively for them in these long forenoons, and they have begun
to regard me as one of themselves. My breath freezes, despite my pipe,
as I peer from the door: and with a fortnight-old newspaper I retire to
the ingle-nook. The friendliest thing I have seen to-day is the
well-smoked ham suspended, from my kitchen rafters. It was a gift
from the farm of Tullin, with a load of peats, the day before the snow
began to fall. I doubt if I have seen a cart since.
This afternoon I was the not altogether passive spectator of a curious
scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout "tackety" boots, I had
waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen burn: in summer
the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm or garish fly,
I can any morning whip a savory breakfast; in the winter time the only
thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the
water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its
edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it
has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rose-bush on the
farther bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a
black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. I was not less
interested when my startled eyes divided this phenomenon into its
component parts, and recognized in the disturbance on the opposite
bank only another fierce struggle among the hungry animals for

existence: they need no professor to teach them the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest. A weasel had gripped a water-hen (whit-tit and
beltie they are called In these parts) cowering at the root of the
rose-bush, and was being dragged down the bank by the terrified bird,
which made for the water as its only chance of escape. In less
disadvantageous circumstances the weasel would have made short
work of his victim; but as he only had the bird by the tail, the prospects
of the combatants were equalized. It was the tug-of-war being played
with a life as the stakes. "If I do not reach the water," was the argument
that went on in the heaving little breast of the one, "I am a dead bird."
"If this water-hen," reasoned the other, "reaches the burn, my supper
vanishes with her." Down the sloping bank the hen had distinctly the
best of it, but after that came a yard, of level snow, and here she tugged
and screamed in vain. I had so far been an unobserved spectator; but
my sympathies were with the beltie, and, thinking it high time to
interfere, I jumped into the water. The water-hen gave one mighty final
tug and toppled into the burn; while the weasel viciously showed me
his teeth, and then stole slowly up the bank to the rose-bush, whence,
"girning," he watched me lift his exhausted victim from the water, and
set off with her for the school-house. Except for her draggled tail, she
already looks wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I
shall have little difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found a
frozen sparrow, whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused
pigsty, and put him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful
little scrub bolted without a word of thanks about ten minutes afterward,
to the alarm of my cat, which had not known his whereabouts.
I am alone in the school-house. On just such an evening as this last year
my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed for
the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm hearth, to
challenge my right hand again to a game at the "dambrod" against my
left. I do not lock the school-house door at nights; for even a
highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open arms,
and I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it is cosier to
put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself miles down the