“And what tempted you to emigrate, and better your condition, as it is ironically termed?”
“Weel, aweel,” pursued the old man, contemplatively, “my nature was aye deeply tinged wi’ romance. I had heard tell o’ the grand plains and forests, and the great sheep farms of Australia, with opportunities of makin’ a poseetion just uncommon, and I was tempted, like anither fule, to quit the hame of my fathers, and the bonny Ettrick-shaw, and Mary Gilsland, that was bonnier than a’, to mak’ my fortune. And a pretty like fortune I hae made o’ it.”
“Well, but how did you come to grief? There must have been so many people too glad to get a man like you among their sheep.”
“I had my chances, I’ll no deny,” said the old man. “Ilka one o’ us has ae guid chance in this life, forbye a wheen sma’ opportunities o’ weel-doin’. But though I wrocht, and toiled, and scrapit for the day when I should write and bid Mary to join me across the sea, I had nae great luck, and mair times than one I coupit a’ the siller just as I had filled the stocking. At the lang end of a’, just as things had mended, my puir Mary died, and I had nae strength left to strive against the evil one that came in the form of comfort to my sair heart and broken speerit. Maybe I had learned to pass a wee thing too near to the edge when I was working—there’s a deal too much of that amang men that would scorn the idea of drunkenness.”
“And the end?”
“And the end was that I was delivered over bound hand and foot to a debasing habit, which has clung to me for thretty years, in spite of prayers and resolutions, and tears of blood. And so it will be, wae’s me, till the day when auld Jock Harlaw dies in a ditch or under a tree like a gaberlunzie crater, or is streekit in the dead-house o’ a bush public. And which gate are ye gangin’ the noo?” demanded the old man with a sudden change from his dolorous subject.
“Haven’t an idea; don’t know, and don’t care.”
“That’s bad,” said the old shepherd, looking at him with pained and earnest looks; “but ye’re looking no fit to leave this. I misdoot that I wranged ye when I thocht it was the drink. What will I do if it is the fever?”
“Let me rest here; I dare say I shall soon get over it,” said Jack, with a gleam of his old hopefulness, but he was touched with the anxious manner of the kind old man, and made the best of what he was afraid would be a serious illness.
But he was happily mistaken; a few days’ rest and the careful nursing of the shepherd, whose small stock of medicine had never before been broken into, sufficed to restore him, not to health, but to a state of convalescence which permitted him to stroll a little way from the hut.