Читать книгу Horae subsecivae. Rab and His Friends, and Other Papers - John Brown - Страница 19

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Our next friend was an exquisite shepherd's dog; fleet, thin-flanked, dainty, and handsome as a small greyhound, with all the grace of silky waving black and tan hair. We got her thus. Being then young and keen botanists, and full of the knowledge and love of Tweedside, having been on every hilltop from Muckle Mendie to Hundles-hope and the Lee Pen, and having fished every water from Tarth to the Leithen, we discovered early in spring that young Stewart, author of an excellent book on natural history, a young man of great promise and early death, had found the Buxbaumia aphylla, a beautiful and odd-looking moss, west of Newbie heights, in the very month we were that moment in. We resolved to start next day. We walked to Peebles, and then up Hay-stoun Glen to the cottage of Adam Cairns, the aged shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we knew, and who knew of us from his daughter, Nancy Cairns, a servant with Uncle Aitken of Callands. We found our way up the burn with difficulty, as the evening was getting dark; and on getting near the cottage heard them at worship. We got in, and made ourselves known, and got a famous tea, and such cream and oat cake!—old Adam looking on us as "clean dementit" to come out for "a bit moss," which, however, he knew, and with some pride said he would take us in the morning to the place. As we were going into a box bed for the night, two young men came in, and said they were "gaun to burn the water." Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight frosty night. They had their leisters and tar torches, and it was something worth seeing—the wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming to the light—how splendid they looked with the light on their scales, coming out of the darkness—the stumblings and quenchings suddenly of the lights, as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past midnight, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning Adam, who had been long risen, and up the Hope with his dog, when he found we had wakened, told us there were four inches of snow, and we soon saw it wras too true. So we had to go home without our cryptogamie prize.

It turned out that Adam, who was an old man and frail, and had made some money, was going at Whitsunday to leave, and live with his son in Glasgow. We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and perfect shape of Wylie, the finest collie I ever saw, and said, "What are you going to do with Wylie?"

"'Deed," says he, "I hardly ken. I canna think o' selling her, though she's worth four pound, and she'll no like the toun." I said, "Would you let me have her?" and Adam, looking at her fondly,—she came up instantly to him, and made of him—said, "Ay, I wull, if ye'll be gude to her;" and it was settled that when Adam left for Glasgow she should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier.

She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts—even grandmother liked her; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in all respects like a lady. When out with me, if she saw sheep in the streets or road, she got quite excited, and helped the work, and was curiously useful, the being so making her wonderfully happy.