When the warm weather came round, the boys and girls of Andrew Drever's school were dismissed for their holidays. Sometimes, when I saw some of them passing along the cliffs with their climbing ropes over their arms, I confess I felt some twinge of regret that I was no longer a schoolboy, and that my duties on the farm no longer permitted me to join in the pleasures of a bird-catching expedition. My fowling piece was now hung up in the barn, and few were my opportunities of taking it down. What sport it would have afforded me had I been still a schoolboy!
On a certain fine morning, soon after the holidays commenced, I was very busily employed at the work of helping in our sheep shearing--not that I myself ventured to handle the shears; my part in the business was simply to carry the wool into the loft, and to assist in bringing out the sheep from the pens as the shearers required them. My mother, who had been born and brought up on Lyndardy farm, was, however, an expert hand at sheep-shearing, and I believe there was no other woman in the whole parish of Stromness who could do the work with such speed and neatness.
I was admiring the skill with which she stripped a sheep of its fleece, and standing near her at the same time, with a black-faced ewe between my knees, ready to pass the animal to her when she was ready for it. Letting the shorn ewe escape, she stood up and looked over the moorland in the direction of Stromness.
"Hullo! here's some stranger coming up the brae," she said, shading her eyes with her hand. "Who in the world can it be, Halcro? Surely it's not the dominie?"
But the dominie it was. He came up to where we were at work, and sat upon a heathery knoll near my mother, with whom he engaged in some ordinary gossip.
"But," said he, after a while, "it was Halcro himself that I came up to see."
"Me!" I said. "What can ye want to see me about, Mr. Drever?"
"To tell you that I'm to gang to Edinburgh," he replied.
"To Edinburgh!" I exclaimed, wondering what his mission could be.
"Ay, Halcro, I'm to be there for a few weeks, partly on pleasure and partly on business, concerning our auld friend Jarl Haffling. The museum folk there are anxious to have the viking's treasure, and I hae gotten permission to deal wi' them in the matter. I dinna ken what money they will gie me for the things; but, ye see, whatever it be, Halcro, a third part of it will come to Hercus and Rosson and yersel', to be divided among ye. Do ye agree to that? Will ye trust me to transact the business for ye?"