‘You can’t possibly go, Alec,’ said the laird, when the message was delivered; ‘Mr. Cameron won’t care to hang about here alone all day.’
Mr. Lindsay was secretly proud of his son’s reputation as a curler; but he did not wish him to go to the match, because he did not care that he should be exposed to the contaminating influences of a very mixed company, and he did not relish the prospect of Alec’s carrying away his friend and leaving him alone for the day. But when Duncan heard of the match he declared that he must see it—there was hardly ever any frost worth speaking of in the Hebrides; and he had never seen a curling-match.
‘You’ll want the dog-cart to take your stones to the loch, Alec,’ said Mr. Lindsay. ‘I think I will go with you, and go on to Netherburn about those tiles.’
‘I wish you would come with us, Maggie,’ said Alec. ‘Father will be passing the loch on his way back in half an hour, and he can pick you up and bring you home. The drive will do you good.’
To this arrangement Margaret consented, and early next morning the little party set out in the keen wintry air. The sun, not long risen, was making the snow sparkle on the fields, and turning the desolate scene into fairyland.
After an hour’s drive they arrived at the scene of the match—a sheet of water, on one side of which the open moor stretched away to the horizon, while on the other side there was a thin belt of fir-trees. The ice, two or three acres in extent, was covered with a sprinkling of snow, which had been carefully cleared from the ‘rinks.’ The rinks were sixty or seventy yards long by six or eight wide, and they showed like pools of black water beside the clear white snow.
Already the surface of the little lake was dotted with boys on ‘skeitchers,’ as skates are called in that part of the country; and the margin was fringed with dog-carts from which the horses had been removed. The stones, circular blocks of granite, nearly a foot in diameter, and about five inches thick, fitted with brass handles, were lying in order on the bank on beds of straw.
Quite a little crowd of farmers, farm-servants, and schoolboys were assembled beside the stones, waiting till the match should begin. Lord Bantock, the chief landowner in that part of Kyleshire, was there, his red, good-humoured face beaming on everybody, his hands thrust into the pockets of his knickerbockers, the regulation green broom under his arm. Next him stood a little spare man in a tall hat. This was Johnnie Fergus, draper, ironmonger, guardian of the poor, and Free Church deacon in the neighbouring village of Auchinbyres.
Nothing was ever done at Auchinbyres without Johnnie Fergus having a hand in it. He was a man of importance, and he knew it. No man had ever seen Johnnie in a round hat. He always carried his chin very much in the air, and kept his lips well pursed up, and spoke in a peremptory tone of voice—especially when (as on the present occasion) he was in the company of his betters.
Next to him stood Hamilton of the Holme, a great giant of a man, slow in his movements, slow in his speech, wearing the roughest of rough tweeds, and boots whose soles were at least an inch in thickness. At present, however, he was encased as to his lower man in enormous stockings, drawn over boots and trousers, to prevent him from slipping about on the ice; and many of the players were arrayed in a similar fashion.