“‘What is it you hinna done that you should
hae done?’ she said. ‘Oh, Mr. Whamond,
if you want my help, it’s yours.’
“‘Your son’s a’ the earth
to you,’ I cried, ’but my eldership’s
as muckle to me. Sax-and-twenty years hae I been
an elder, and now I maun gie it up.’
“’Wha says that?” she speirs.
“‘I say it,’ I cried. ’I’ve
shirked my duty. I gie ap my eldership now.
Tammas Whamond is no langer an elder o’ the kirk;’
ay, and I was chief elder.
“Dominie, I think she began to say that when
the minister came hame he wouldna accept my resignation,
but I paid no heed to her. You ken what was the
sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the
sound o’ a machine coming yont the Tenements.
You ken what was the sicht that made me glare through
the window instead o’ looking at her; it was
the sicht o’ Mr. Dishart in the machine.
I couldna speak, but I got my body atween her and
the window, for I heard shouting, and I couldna doubt
that it was the folk cursing him.
“But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed
by me to the window, I couldna look out; I just walked
saft-like to the parlor door, but afore I reached
it she cried joyously—
“‘It’s my son come back, and see
how fond o’ him they are! They are running
at the side o’ the machine, and the laddies are
tossing their bonnets in the air.’
“‘God help you, woman!’ I said to
mysel’, ’it canna be bonnets—
it’s stanes and divits mair likely that they’re
flinging at him.’ Syne I creeped out o’
the manse. Dominie, you mind I passed you in
the kitchen, and didna say a word?”
Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen,
with such a face on him as no man ever saw him wear
again. Since Tammas Whamond died we have had
to enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter
not at all to him, and but little to me, what you
who read think of him. All his life children ran
from him. He was the dourest, the most unlovable
man in Thrums. But may my right hand wither,
and may my tongue be cancer-bitten, and may my mind
be gone into a dry rot, before I forget what he did
for me and mine that day!
Rain—mist—thejaws.
To this day we argue in the glen about the sound mistaken
by many of us for the firing of the Spittal cannon,
some calling it thunder and others the tearing of
trees in the torrent. I think it must have been
the roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill,
of which a corner has been missing since that day.
Silver Hill is all stones, as if creation had been
riddled there, and in the sun the mica on them shines
like many pools of water.
