There was nothing to mar the quaint and antique flavour of existence. The post, like our lifeboat institution, was here supported by voluntary contributions. If anyone were ‘gannin’ up the wattor,’ well and good; he would take the letters with him. If not, then they were left at the schoolmaster’s till called for. Newspapers, again, with the exception of a weekly Courant or a Scots Mail, were, like the woodcock, but ‘occasional visitors’ in that region; and when it is added that the house I usually stayed at was situated eighteen miles from a terminus of a slow branch line of the North British Railway Company, it will be evident that the ordinary tourist had a very poor chance of putting in an appearance in that favoured region.
I was recalling all these little details with infinite gusto as I sat down at my desk to write to my friend the Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster of Fair-Green Haugh, suggesting a visit from myself a week ahead.
The answer came just in time for me to pack up and start within the week.
‘I am sorry to say,’ wrote my friend in conclusion, ‘that my accommodation is somewhat limited this summer, as I have had to give up my small sanctum to a protégé of mine, who, though he has just been discharged from gaol, will yet, I feel assured, become a highly useful and respectable member of society.
‘I know your kind heart, my friend,’ he continued, ‘and feel sure you will not regret a temporary lack of comfort in so good a cause. You can always use the schoolroom, as it is holiday time, for reading, writing and smoking.’
‘Heavens!’ I murmured to myself, as I took in the monstrous situation; ‘fancy having to spend my vacation trying to improve an infernal burglar! He knows my kind heart, he says. Well, it only proves the truth of the poet’s lines:
‘“Not e’en the dearest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or cry.”
I wonder,’ I soliloquized, ‘whether he is of the heavy, hang-dog, dropped-jaw type—the knifing variety, in brief—or the other species—the shifty-eyed, chinless, quick but evil brained sort. On the whole, I prefer the first, for if he cannot control his temper, at any rate you know where you are with him, whereas with the latter you never can tell what he may be up to.’
Anyway, it was exasperating, for here had I been congratulating myself upon the sweet security of my proposed retreat, only to discover at the last moment that I was destined to become co-warder of a criminal.