three miles of P.P.R. metals gave him little work, but a good deal of healthy exercise.  The black-faced sheep breaking down the fences and straying on the line side, and the torrents coming down the granite gullies, foaming white after a water-spout, and tearing into his embankments, undermining his chairs and plates, were the only troubles of his life.  There was, however, a little public-house at The Huts, which in the old days of construction had had the license, and which had lingered alone, license and all, when its immediate purpose in life had been fulfilled, because there was nobody but the whaups and the railway officials on the passing trains to object to its continuance.  Now it is cold and blowy on the west-land moors, and neither whaups nor dark-blue uniforms object to a little refreshment up there.  The mischief was that Gavin Balchrystie did not, like the guards and engine-drivers, go on with the passing train.  He was always on the spot, and the path through Barbrax Wood to the Railway Inn was as well trodden as that which led over the bog moss, where the whaups built, to the great white viaduct of Loch Merrick, where his three miles of parallel gleaming responsibility began.

When his wife was but newly dead, and his Janet just a smart elf-locked lassie running to and from the school, Gavin got too much in the way of “slippin’ doon by.”  When Janet grew to be woman muckle, Gavin kept the habit, and Janet hardly knew that it was not the use and wont of all fathers to sidle down to a contiguous Railway Arms, and return some hours later with uncertain step, and face pricked out with bright pin-points of red—­the sure mark of the confirmed drinker of whisky neat.

They were long days in the cottage at the back of Barbrax Long Wood.  The little “but an’ ben” was whitewashed till it dazzled the eyes as you came over the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths of dark-green firwood.  From early morn, when she saw her father off, till the dusk of the day, when he would return for his supper, Janet Balchrystie saw no human being.  She heard the muffled roar of the trains through the deep cutting at the back of the wood, but she herself was entirely out of sight of the carriagefuls of travellers whisking past within half a mile of her solitude and meditation.

Janet was what is called a “through-gaun lass,” and her work for the day was often over by eight o’clock in the morning.  Janet grew to womanhood without a sweetheart.  She was plain, and she looked plainer than she was in the dresses which she made for herself by the light of nature and what she could remember of the current fashions at Merrick Kirk, to which she went every alternate Sunday.  Her father and she took day about.  Wet or shine, she tramped to Merrick Kirk, even when the rain blattered and the wind raved and bleated alternately among the pines of the Long Wood of Barbrax.  Her father had a simpler way of spending his day out.  He went down to the Railway Inn and drank “ginger-beer” all day with the landlord.  Ginger-beer is an unsteadying beverage when taken the day by the length.  Also the man who drinks it steadily and quietly never enters on any inheritance of length of days.