But never, I ween, did sleeper sleep more sweetly than did Sandie when his head was at last on the pillow. Slumber stole over his senses—immediate, instantaneous—and he never awoke until Tyro the collie put his paws on the bed and licked his ear; and thus for the present was his life almost an idyllic one. Alas! this is a kind of life that does not last long with any one in this weary world.
CHAPTER V
SORROW NEVER COMES SINGLY—CHRIST-LIKE CHRISTIANITY
I don’t think there is a more truthful aphorism in our language than that which tells us that sorrows seldom come singly.
Fortune or fate had dealt so very hardly with honest Farmer Kilbuie last season, that he might reasonably have expected now some surcease of sorrow—a respite, if not indeed a flow of good luck. Alas! it was otherwise.
The turnips had been thinned and earthed up—they were already beginning to cover the drills—and the haymaking season was in full blow. It was hot sunshine now every day, with now and then a gentle breeze blowing from westward or south, a breeze that blew through the tossed and tumbled hay and made and “won” it.
There was still a good deal to cut down, however, and Sandie himself was walking behind the reaping-machine with the great horse Glancer dragging. This machine not only cut the hay, but tossed it into wreaths.
Sandie didn’t look particularly like a student or genius at present. He wore little save a blue checked shirt, his trousers, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, inside which was a cabbage leaf as a security against sunstroke.
The mowing went merrily on.
In another part of the field the servants, with Mr. M‘Crae himself, were busily and cheerfully engaged among the hay that had been cut down yesterday, and which was already dry enough to put into “cocks” or “coles.”
Sandie was just about half-way down a ridge, when he pulled up to wipe his wet perspiring brow. Just at that moment Glancer threw up his head and emitted a kind of pained and stifled cry. He reeled for a moment, then fell heavily on his side. Coup de soleil, or sunstroke, without a shadow of doubt.