CHAPTER XIX
OUT OF THE MISTS
This record of a Yorkshire village—a true chronicle of life among the canny folk who dwell on the “moor edge”—might well be left at the point it reached when one of its chief characters saw before him the smooth and sunlit road of a notable career.
But history, though romantic, is not writ as romance, and the story of Elmsdale is fact, not fiction. After eight years of somnolence the village awoke again. It was roused from sleep by the tumult of a world at war; mayhap the present generation shall pass away before the hamlet relapses into its humdrum ways.
Martin was twenty-two when his father and he journeyed north to attend the annual sale of the Elmsdale herd, which was fixed for the two opening days of July, 1914. Each year Colonel Grant brought his son to the village for six weeks prior to the twelfth of August; this year there was a well-founded rumor in the little community that the colonel meant to buy The Elms.
The announcement of Bolland’s sale brought foreign agents from abroad and well-known stock-raisers from all parts of the Kingdom. No less than forty animals entered the auction ring. One bull, Bainesse Boy IV., realized £800. Bainesse Boy IV. held a species of levee in a special stall. He had grown into a wonder. On a table, over which Sergeant Benson mounted guard, were displayed five championship cups he had carried off, while fifteen cards, arranged in horseshoe pattern on the wall, each bore the magic words, “First Prize,” awarded at Islington, Birmingham, the Royal, and wherever else in Britain shorthorns and their admirers most do congregate.
The village hummed with life; around the sale ring gathered a multitude of men arrayed in Melton cloth and leather leggings, whose general appearance betokened the wisdom of Dr. Johnson’s sarcastic dictum: “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.”
Martha and a cohort of maids boiled hams by the dozen and baked cakes in fabulous quantities. John graced the occasion by donning a new suit and new boots, in which the crooked giant was singularly ill at ease.