Then with the morning came the new day. The bitterest blast was over for these small pilgrims. The night's rest, the clean clothes, the goodness of the kind carrier folk were new life to Vara. There was brighter hope in her heart as the carrier's wife set them under the blue [228]hood of the light cart, for her "man" did not expect any heavy loads that day. The children, therefore, were to ride in the covered waggon. The good woman wept to let them go, and made Vara promise many a time, to be sure and send her a letter. As they went away she slipped half-a-crown into Vara's hand.
"For the baby!" she whispered, like one who makes a shamefaced excuse. And at that moment the carrier pretended to be specially busy about his harness.
But Hugh Boy had quarrelled again with Snap's master, and that enterprising youth sat on the fence opposite and made faces at the party, till his mother, turning round somewhat quickly, caught him in the act.
"Ye ill-set hyule," said she, "wait till I get ye!"
But her firstborn did not wait. On the other hand, he betook himself down the meadow with much alacrity. His mother's voice followed him.
"My lad, wait till bedtime. It'll dirl far waur then. 'Warm backs, guid bairns!' I'll learn you to make faces ahint my back."
And as Snap's master went down the meadow, the parts likely to be nocturnally affected began to burn and tingle.
And the thought of the interview she would have with her son in the evening did something to console the carrier's wife for the loss of the children to whom she had taken such a sudden liking.
The light cart went jingling on. The Netherby carrier whistled steadily as he sat on the edge of his driving-board, with his feet on the shaft. Every now and then he passed over a bag of peppermint drops to the children.
"Hae!" he said.
The Netherby carrier was a man of few words, and this was his idea of hospitality. Hugh Boy did not remember [229]ever to have been so happy in his life. Kissing was very well in its way, though Vara had not been pleased when she heard of it. But it was nothing to sitting in a blue-hooded cart and hearing the click and jingle of brass-mounted harness. Now and then the carrier stopped at snug farm-houses, and went in to chaffer with the goodwife for her eggs. Then he left the horse in charge of Hugh Boy, and so completely won that small heart. When the carrier came out again, the farmer's wife mostly came too, and the bargaining and bantering were kept up as the cart receded from the door. Even when the blue-hooded cart was far down the loaning, a belated and forgetful goodwife would come running to some knowe-top, and from that eminence she would proceed to give further directions for commissions from the town.
"Mind ye buy the thread at Rob Heslop's—no at that upstart sieffer's at the corner, wi' his wax figgurs an' his adverteesements. I dinna haud wi' them ava'!"
For there are still uncouth and outlandish parts of the country, where the medical axiom that it is wicked and unprofessional to advertise holds good in practical commerce. Now the road toward England does not run directly through Netherby, but leaves the town a little to one side with its many spires and its warring denominations. From the outside Netherby looks like a home of ancient peace. But for all that, there were hardly two neighbour shopkeepers down all its long main street who belonged to the same religious denomination—the only exceptions being Dickson the baker and Henderson the butcher. But Henderson and Dickson did not speak to one another, having quarrelled about the singing of paraphrases in the Seceder kirk.
However, the poor benighted Kavannahs did not know [230]one kirk from another. And what is worse, indeed held almost criminal in Netherby, they did not care.
It was here at the parting of the roads that John the carrier took his leave of them. His farewell was not effusive.
"Weel," he said, cracking his whip three times over, while he thought of the rest of his speech, "guid-day. Be sure and come back and see us, as the wife bade ye. The sooner the better!"
But he put a shilling into Hugh's hand as they parted.
"For peppermints!" he said.
Vara did not know when she might come to another town on her way, so she decided to buy a loaf in Netherby before going further. For though they never asked for food, except when driven by hunger, as in the case of Snap's dinner, yet since the night on the moor she had resolved to ask for shelter if they came to any house at nightfall. So after the carrier was gone, with many charges Vara left Hugh in care of Gavin and went into the town to make her markets.
Hugh Boy sat a good while by the roadside, till the time began to pass very dully. Then he became interested in the trains which kept shunting and whistling behind him. So he carried Gavin to the side of the railway line, where he could just see the road by which Vara would return. He was quite sure that he could not be doing any harm. Directly opposite there was a fascinating turn-table, upon which two men stood with iron poles in their hands wheeling round a great engine as if it had been a toy. This was really too much for Boy Hugh. Forgetting all about Vara's warning, he scrambled over the wire paling, and staggered across the netted lines in order to get a nearer view of the marvel.
But just at that moment up came the main line express [231]twenty minutes behind time, and the engine-driver in a bad temper. And if Muckle Alick had not opposed the breadth of his beam to the buffer of Geordie Grierson's engine, this tale, so far at least as two of the Kavannahs were concerned, would have ended here. But when Muckle Alick gripped the children in his great arms, and made that spring to the side, the engine caught him so exactly in the right place that it did no more than considerably accelerate his lateral motion, and project him half-way up the bank. As has been recorded, Muckle Alick's first exclamation (which immediately became proverbial all over the Greenock and South-Eastern) was, "Is there aught broke, Geordie, think ye?"
They talked of getting up a testimonial to Muckle Alick. But the hero himself strongly discouraged the notion. Indeed, he went so far as to declare that he "wad gie the fule a ring on the lug that cam' to him wi' ony sic a thing!" This was a somewhat unusual attitude for a hero to assume in the circumstances. But it was quite genuine. And so well known was the horse-power of Alick's buffet, that it would have been easier to recruit a storming party in Netherby than a deputation to present a "token of esteem" to the head porter at Netherby Junction.
In time, however (though this is somewhat to anticipate the tale), there came from the Royal Humane Society a medal, together with a long paper setting forth the noble deed of the saving of the children. No notice of this ever appeared publicly in the local prints, to which such things are usually a godsend.
For Alick immediately put the medal in the bottom of his trunk, beneath his "best blacks" which he wore only twice a year at Sacraments.
He had heard that the editor of the "Netherby Chronicle [232]and Advertiser" had collogued with the provost of the town to bring about this "fitting acknowledgment." Now Muckle Alick could not help the thing itself, but he could help people in Netherby getting to hear about it.
Muckle Alick called upon the editor of the "Chronicle." He found him in, and engaged in the difficult task of penning an editorial which would not alienate the most thin-skinned subscriber, but which would yet be calculated to exasperate the editor of the opposition local paper published in the next county.
"Maister Heron," said the head-porter, "I juist looked in to tell ye, that there's nocht to come oot in the 'Chronicle' aboot me the morn."
"But, my dear sir," said the editor, "the item has been specially communicated, and is already set up."
"Then it'll hae to be set doon again!" said Muckle Alick, firmly.
"Impossible, impossible, I do assure you, my dear friend," remonstrated the editor. He was proprietor—editor and proprietor in one. Such editors in agricultural communities are always polite to subscribers.
"But it's no onpossible. It's to be!" said Alick—"or there's no a paper will leave the junction the morn—aye, and there'll no be a paper sell't in this toon eyther."
It was not clear to the editor how Muckle Alick could bring about this result.
"But," said he, tapping the desk with his pen, "my dear sir, the stationmaster—the railway company——"
"Ow aye, I ken," said Muckle Alick, "there wad be a wark aboot it after, nae doot. But it's the morn I'm speakin' aboot, Maister Heron. It is possible I micht get the sack ower the head o' it—(though I'm thinkin' no). But that wadna help your papers to sell the morn." [233]Alick paused to let this sink well in. Then he took his leave.
"Noo, mind, I'm tellin' ye. Guid day, Yedditur!"
That afternoon Alick presided at a gathering of the amalgamated paper boys of the town, being accredited representatives of all the various newsagents. The proceedings were private, and as soon as strangers were observed, the house was counted out (and stones thrown at them). But the general tenor of the resolutions passed may be gathered from the fact that when Mr. Heron heard of it, he ordered the junior reporter to "slate a novel" just come in—a novel by an eminent hand. "It's to make three quarters of a column, less two lines," he said.
So that we know from this, the length of the suppressed article on the presentation of a medal of the Royal Humane Society to "our noble and esteemed townsman, Mr. Alexander Douglas." The "Netherby Chronicle and Advertiser" enjoyed its normal circulation next day. And, after Muckle Alick had carefully searched every column of the paper, the parcels were forwarded from the junction with the usual promptitude and despatch.
But this is telling our tale "withershins about," as they say in Netherby. We return to Vara and her bairns.