Little Rivers [28]
For the inn was full. There were but five bedrooms and two
parlours. The gentlemen who had the neighbouring shootings
occupied three bedrooms and a parlour; the other two bedrooms had
just been taken by the English fishermen who had passed me in the
road an hour ago in the mail-coach (oh! why had I not suspected
that treacherous vehicle?); and the landlord and his wife assured
me, with equal firmness and sympathy, that there was not another
cot or pair of blankets in the house. I believed them, and was
sinking into despair when Sandy M'Kaye appeared on the scene as my
angel of deliverance. Sandy was a small, withered, wiry man,
dressed in rusty gray, with an immense white collar thrusting out
its points on either side of his chin, and a black stock climbing
over the top of it. I guessed from his speech that he had once
lived in the lowlands. He had hoped to be engaged as a gillie by
the shooting party, but had been disappointed. He had wanted to be
taken by the English fishermen, but another and younger man had
stepped in before him. Now Sandy saw in me his Predestinated
Opportunity, and had no idea of letting it post up the road that
night to the next village. He cleared his throat respectfully and
cut into the conversation.
"Ah'm thinkin' the gentleman micht find a coomfortaible lodgin' wi'
the weedow Macphairson a wee bittie doon the road. Her dochter is
awa' in Ameriky, an' the room is a verra fine room, an' it is a
peety to hae it stannin' idle, an' ye wudna mind the few steps to
and fro tae yir meals here, sir, wud ye? An' if ye 'ill gang wi'
me efter dinner, 'a 'll be prood to shoo ye the hoose."
So, after a good dinner with the English fishermen, Sandy piloted
me down the road through the thickening dusk. I remember a hoodie
crow flew close behind us with a choking, ghostly cough that
startled me. The Macpherson cottage was a snug little house of
stone, with fuchsias and roses growing in the front yard: and the
widow was a douce old lady, with a face like a winter apple in the
month of April, wrinkled, but still rosy. She was a little
doubtful about entertaining strangers, but when she heard I was
from America she opened the doors of her house and her heart. And
when, by a subtle cross examination that would have been a credit
to the wife of a Connecticut deacon, she discovered the fact that
her lodger was a minister, she did two things, with equal and
immediate fervour; she brought out the big Bible and asked him to
conduct evening worship, and she produced a bottle of old Glenlivet
and begged him to "guard against takkin' cauld by takkin' a glass
of speerits."
It was a very pleasant fortnight at Melvich. Mistress Macpherson
was so motherly that "takkin' cauld" was reduced to a permanent
impossibility. The other men at the inn proved to be very
companionable fellows, quite different from the monsters of
insolence that my anger had imagined in the moment of
disappointment. The shooting party kept the table abundantly
supplied with grouse and hares and highland venison; and there was
a piper to march up and down before the window and play while we
ate dinner--a very complimentary and disquieting performance. But
there are many occasions in life when pride can be entertained only
at the expense of comfort.
Of course Sandy was my gillie. It was a fine sight to see him
exhibiting the tiny American trout-rod, tied with silk ribbons in
its delicate case, to the other gillies and exulting over them.
Every morning he would lead me away through the heather to some
lonely loch on the shoulders of the hills, from which we could look
down upon the Northern Sea and the blue Orkney Isles far away across
the Pentland Firth. Sometimes we would find a loch with a boat on
it, and drift up and down, casting along the shores. Sometimes,
in spite of Sandy's confident predictions, no boat could be found,
and then