A Scots Quair. Lewis Grassic Gibbon

to look, and you liked the laugh of her.

      So through the wood and right into the hands of the daftie she went, and when he lifted her in his hands she was frightened not even then, not even when he bore her far back into the wood, the broom-branches whipped their faces and the wet of the dew sprayed on them, coming into a little space, broom-surrounded, where the sun reached down a long finger into the dimness. She stood up and shook herself when he set her down, and told him she couldn’t play any longer, she must really hurry else she’d miss her train. But he paid no heed, crouching on one knee he turned his head this way and that, jerking round and about, listening and listening, so that Maggie Jean listened as well and heard the ploughmen cry to their horses and her mother at that moment calling the hens to feed—Tickie-ae! Tickie-ae!—Well, I must go, she told him and caught her bag in her hand and hadn’t moved a step when he had her in his hands again; and after a minute or so, though she wasn’t frightened even then, she didn’t like him, telling him mother only was allowed to touch her there, not anyone else, and please she’d have to go. And she looked up at him, pushing him away, his mad, awful head, he began to purr like a great, wild cat, awful it must have been to see him and hear him. And God alone knows the next thing he’d have done but that then, for it was never such a morning before for that bright clearness, far away down and across the fields a man began to sing, distant but very clear, with a blithe lilt in the voice of him. And he broke off and whistled the song and then he sang it again:

      Bonny wee thing,

      Canty wee thing,

      Lovely wee thing,

      Wert thou mine

      I would clasp thee

      In my bosom

      Lest my jewel

      I should tyne!

      And at that, crouching and listening, the daftie took his hands from Maggie Jean and began to sing the song himself; and he took her in his arms again, but gently, fondling her as though she were a cat, and he set her on her feet and tugged straight the bit frock she wore; and stood up beside her and took her hand and guided her back to the path through the larch wood. And she went on and left him and once she looked back and saw him glowering after her; and because she saw he was weeping she ran back to him, kind thing, and patted his hand and said Don’t cry! and she saw his face like that of a tormented beast and went on again, down to the station. And only when she came home that night did she tell the story of her meeting with Cuddiestoun’s Andy.

      But as the day wore on and Long Rob, working in that orra field above the Mill, still sang and sweated and swore at his horses, the singing must have drawn the Andy creature down from the larch wood, by hedges creeping and slipping from the sight of the Upperhill men in the parks. And once Rob raised his head and thought he saw a moving shadow in a ditch that bounded the orra ground. But he thought it a dog and just heaved a stone or so in case it was some beast in heat or on chicken-killing. The shadow yelped and snarled at that, but was gone from the ditch when Rob picked up another stone; so he went on with his work; and the daftie, tearing along the Kinraddie road out towards the Bridge End, with the blood red trickling down his woesome face, was all unseen by him.

      But right at the corner, close where the road jerked round by Pooty’s place, he near ran full tilt into Chris herself, coming up from Auchinblae she was with the messages her mother had sent her on, her basket over her arm and her mind far off with the Latin verbs in-are. He slavered at her, running towards her, and she screamed, though she wasn’t over-frightened; and then she threw the basket clean at his head and made for Pooty’s. Pooty himself was sitting just inside the door when she reached it, the louping beast was close behind, she heard the pant of his breath and was to wonder often enough in later times over that coolness that came on her then. For she ran fleet as a bird inside the door and banged it right in the daftie’s face and dropped the bar and watched the planks bulge and crack as outside the body of the madman was flung against them again and again. Pooty mouthed and stuttered at her in the dimness, but he grew real brave when she made him understand, he sharpened two of his sutor’s knives and prowled trembling from window to window—the daftie left them untouched. Then Chris took a keek from one window and saw him again: he was raking about in the basket she’d thrown at his head, he made the parcels dirl on the road till he found a great bar of soap; and then he began to eat that, feuch! laughing and yammering all to himself, and running back to throw himself against the door of Pooty’s again, the foam burst yellow through the beard of him as he still ate and ate at the soap.

      But he soon grew thirsty and went down to the burn, Pooty and Chris stood watching him, and then it was that Cuddiestoun himself came ben the road. He sighted Andy and cried out to him, and Andy leapt the burn and was off, and behind him went Munro clatter-clang, and out of sight they vanished down the road to Bridge End. Chris unbarred the door in spite of Pooty’s stutterings and went and repacked the bit basket, and everything was there except the soap; and that was down poor Andy’s throat.

      Feint the thing else he’d to eat that day, he was near the end of his tether; for though he ran like a hare and Cuddiestoun behind him was more than coarse in the legs, yet luck would have it that Mutch of Bridge End was just guiding his team across the road to start harrowing his yavil park when the two runners came in sight, real daft-like both of them, Andy running near double, soap and madness a- foam on his face, Cuddiestoun bellowing behind. So Mutch slowed down his team and called out to Andy, Ay, man, you mustn’t run near as fast as that, and when Andy was opposite threw out a foot and tripped him up, and down in the stour went Andy, and Cuddiestoun was on top of him in a minute, bashing in the face of him, but Alec Mutch just stood and looked on, maybe working his meikle ears a bit, it was no concern of his. The daftie’s hands went up to his face as the bashings came and then Cuddiestoun gripped him right in the private parts, he screamed and went slack, like a sack in Cuddiestoun’s hands. And that was the end of Andy’s ploy, for back to the Cuddiestoun he was driven and they said Mistress Munro took down his breeks and leathered him sore; but you never know the lies they tell, for others said it was Cuddiestoun himself she leathered, him having let the daftie out of the house that morning to scandalise her name with his coarse on-goings. But he’d no chance more of them, poor stock, next day the asylum officials came out and took him away in a gig, his hands fast tied behind his back; and that was the last they ever saw of Andy in Kinraddie.

      FATHER RAGED when he heard the story from Chris, queer raging it was, he took her out to the barn and heard the story and his eyes slipped up and down her dress as she spoke, she felt sickened and queer. He shamed you then? he whispered; and Chris shook her head and at that father seemed to go limp and his eyes grew dull. Ah well, it’s the kind of thing that would happen in a godless parish like this. It can hardly happen again with the Reverend Gibbon in charge.

      Three minister creatures came down to Kinraddie to try for its empty pulpit. The first preached early in March, a pernickety thing as ever you saw, not over five feet in height, or he didn’t look more. He wore a brave gown with a purple hood on it, like a Catholic creature, and jerked and pranced round the pulpit like a snipe with the staggers, working himself up right sore about Latter-Day Doubt in the Kirk of Scotland. But Kinraddie had never a doubt of him, and Chris coming out of the kirk with Will and father heard Chae Strachan say he’d rather sit under a clucking hen than that for a minister. The second to try was an old bit man from Banff, shaking and old, and some said he’d be best, he’d have quietened down at his age, not aye on the look for a bigger kirk and a bigger stipend. For if there’s a body on earth that would skin a tink for his sark and preach for a pension in purgatory it’s an Auld Kirk minister.

      But the poor old brute from Banff seemed fair sucked dry. He’d spent years in the writing of books and things, the spunk of him had trickled out into his pen, forbye that he read his sermon; and that fair settled his hash to begin with. So hardly a soul paid heed to his reading, except Chris and her father, she thought it fine; for he told of the long dead beasts of the Scottish land in the times when jungle flowered its forests across the Howe and a red sun rose on the steaming earth that the feet of man had still to tread: and he pictured the dark, slow tribes that came drifting across the