The Days of Auld Lang Syne

by Ian Maclaren

He caught the sound of a cart from the Glen, and a sudden fear overcame him at the meet-of the first Drumtochty man. His first movement was to the shelter of the wood; then he lay down behind the gorse and watched the bend of the road. It was a double cart, laden with potatoes for Kildrummie station, and the very horses had a homely look; while the driver was singing in a deep, mellow voice, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot.” The light was on his face, and the wanderer recognised him at once. They had been at school together, and were of the same age, but there was not a grey hair in young Burnbrae's beard, nor a line on his face.

As the cart passed, Grant watched the tram, and marked that the Christian name was in fresh paint.

“It 's James, no John, noo. Burnbrae hesna feenished his lease, an' a'm thinkin' Jean 'ill no hae lasted long aifter him. He wes a gude man, an' he hed gude sons.”

The cart was a mile on the road, and Burn-brae's song had long died into silence among the pines, before Grant rose from the ground and went on his way.

There is a certain point where the road from Kildrummie disentangles itself from the wood, and begins the descent to Tochty Bridge. Drumtochty exiles used to stand there for a space and rest their eyes on the Glen which they could now see, from the hills that made its western wall to the woods of Tochty that began below the parish kirk, and though each man might not be able to detect the old home, he had some landmark—a tree or a rise of the hill—to distinguish the spot where he was born, and if such were still his good fortune, where true hearts were waiting to bid him welcome. Two Drumtochty students returning in the spring with their honours might talk of learned studies and resume their debates coming through the wood, but as the trees thinned conversation languished, and then the lads would go over to the style. No man said aught unto his neighbour as they drank in the Glen, but when they turned and went down the hill, a change had come over them.

“Man, Dauvid,” Ross would say—with three medals to give to his mother, who had been all day making ready for his arrival, and was already watching the upland road—“far or near, ye 'ill never fin' a bonnier burn than the Tochty; see yonder the glisk o 't through the bridge as it whummels ower the stanes and shimmers in the evening licht.”

“An' Hillocks's haughs,” cried Baxter, who was supposed to think in Hebrew and had won a Fellowship for foreign travel, “are green an' sweet the nicht, wi' the bank o' birks ahint them, an' a' saw the hill abune yir hame, Jock, an' it wes glistenin' like the sea.”

Quite suddenly, at the sight of the Glen, and for the breath of it in their lungs, they had become Drumtochty again, to the names they had called one another in Domsie's school, and as they came to the bottom of the hill, they raced to see who first would reach the crest of the ancient bridge that might have been Marshal Wade's for its steepness, and then were met on the other side by Hillocks, who gave them joyful greeting in name of the parish. But not even Hillocks, with all his blandishments, could wile them within doors that evening. John Ross saw his mother shading her eyes at the garden gate and wearying for the sight of his head above the hill, and already David Baxter seemed to hear his father's voice, “God bless ye, laddie; welcome hame, and weel dune.” For the choice reward of a true man's work is not the applause of the street, which comes and goes, but the pride of them that love him.

What might have been so came upon this emigrant as he gazed upon the Glen, that the driver of the Kildrummie bread cart, a man quite below the average of Drumtochty intelligence, was struck by the hopelessness of his attitude, and refrained from a remark on the completion of harvest which he had been offering freely all day. They were threshing at Hillocks's farm that day, and across the river Grant saw the pleasant bustle in the stackyard and heard the hum of the mill. It used to be believed that Hillocks held a strategic position of such commanding power that no one had ever crossed that bridge without his supervision—except on Friday when he was in Muirtown—and so strong was the wayfarer's longing for some face of the former time, that he loitered opposite the barn door, in hopes that a battered hat, dating from the middle of the century and utilised at times for the protection of potatoes, might appear, and a voice be heard, “A 've seen a waur day, ye 'ill be gaein' up the Glen,” merely as a preliminary to more searching investigation at what was the frontier of Drumtochty. Hillocks also must be dead, and as for the others, they were too busy with their work to give any heed to a stranger. A gust of wind catching up the chaff, whirled it across the yard and powdered his coat. The prodigal accepted the omen, and turned himself to the hill that went up to Mary's cottage.

He had planned to pass the place, and then from the footpath to the kirkyard to have looked down on the home of his boyhood, but he need not have taken precautions. No one was there to question or recognise him; Mary's little house was empty and forsaken. The thatch had fallen in with the weight of winter snows, the garden gate was lying on the walk, the scrap of ground once so carefully kept was overgrown with weeds. Grant opened the unlatched door—taking off his hat—and stood in the desolate kitchen. He sat down on the edge of the box-bed no one had thought it worth while to remove, and covered his face while memory awoke. The fire again burned on the hearth, and was reflected from the dishes on the opposite wall; the table was spread for supper, and he saw his wooden bicker with the black horn spoon beside it; Mary sat in her deep old armchair, and stirred the porridge sputtering in the pot; a rosy-cheeked laddie curled in a heap at his grandmother's feet saw great marvels in the magic firelight.