Allison Bain; Or, By a Way She Knew Not

by Margaret M. Robertson

Chapter Two.

“Martinmas dowie did wind up the year.”

The little town of Nethermuir stands in the shire of “bonnie Aberdeen,” though not in the part of it which has been celebrated in song and story for beauty or for grandeur. But in summertime the “gowany braes” which lie nearest to it, and the “heather braes” into which they gradually change as they rise higher in the distance, have a certain beauty of their own. So have the clear brown burns which water its narrow fields, and the belts of wood which are planted here and there on the hillsides.

In summertime, even the little town itself, as it was fifty years ago and more, might be called a pretty place, at least the lanes about it were pretty. There were many lanes about it, some of them shaded by tall firs or spreading beeches, others shut in by grassy dikes which inclosed the long, narrow “kail-yards” running back from the clusters of dwellings which fronted the narrow streets. There were tall laburnums here and there, and larch and rowan trees, and hedges of hawthorn or elder, everywhere, some of them shutting in gardens full of such fruits and flowers as flourish in the north.

Yes, in summer the place might have been called a pretty place; but under low, leaden skies, when the reaches of sodden grass-land and rain-bleached stubble had to relieve their grey dreariness only a newly ploughed brown ridge, or the long turnip fields, green still under the rain and sleet of the last November days, even the hills were not beautiful, and the place itself had a look of unspeakable dreariness.

On such a day the Reverend Robert Hume was leading his horse down the slope which looks on the town from the south, and though his eyes had the faculty of seeing something cheerful even in dismal things, he acknowledged that, to eyes looking on it for the first time, the place might seem a little dreary.

It did not look dreary to him, as he came into one of the two long streets which, crossing each other at right angles, made the town. Though he bowed his high head to meet the bitter wind, and plashed through the muddy pools which the rain had left in the hollows here and there, he was glad at heart to see the place, and to be at home; and he smiled to himself as he came in sight of the corner, beyond which lay the house which held his treasures.

All the town seemed like home to him. As he went slowly on, he had a thought to give to many dwellers on the street. Was “auld Maggie’s” thatch holding out the wet? And surely there was danger that the water of that pool might find its way in beneath “Cripple Sandy’s” door. There were friendly faces regarding him from some of the narrow windows, and “welcome hame,” came to him from more than one open door. The town pump was by no means a beautiful object in itself, but his eye rested with great satisfaction upon it. It stood on the square where the houses fell back a little, at the place where the two streets crossed, and it could be seen from the furthest end of either of them. It had not long stood there, and as it caught his eye, the pleasant thought came freshly to him, how the comfort and cleanliness of the homes might be helped, and how much the labour of busy housewives must be lightened by it.

But it was no Nethermuir woman who so deftly plied the heavy handle, and lifted her full buckets as if they had been empty, and who walked before him down the street with a step which made him think of the heather hills and the days of his youth. There was no woman of that height in Nethermuir, nor one who carried herself so freely and so lightly. It was no one he had ever seen before. But some one crossed the way to speak to him, and he lost sight of her, and a few steps brought him to his own door. His house was close upon the street. It was of grey stone, and only looked high because of the low thatched cottages near it, on both sides of the way. On the left, a little back from the street, stood the kirk, hardly higher than the house. It had no special features, and was not unlike in appearance to the low outbuildings of the manse, which extended behind it.