However, the poor benighted Kavannahs did not know one kirk from another. And what is worse, indeed held almost criminal in Netherby, they did not care.
It was here at the parting of the roads that John the carrier took his leave of them. His farewell was not effusive.
"Weel," he said, cracking his whip three times over, while he thought of the rest of his speech, "guid-day. Be sure and come back and see us, as the wife bade ye. The sooner the better!"
But he put a shilling into Hugh's hand as they parted.
"For peppermints!" he said.
Vara did not know when she might come to another town on her way, so she decided to buy a loaf in Netherby before going further. For though they never asked for food, except when driven by hunger, as in the case of Snap's dinner, yet since the night on the moor she had resolved to ask for shelter if they came to any house at nightfall. So after the carrier was gone, with many charges Vara left Hugh in care of Gavin and went into the town to make her markets.
Hugh Boy sat a good while by the roadside, till the time began to pass very dully. Then he became interested in the trains which kept shunting and whistling behind him. So he carried Gavin to the side of the railway line, where he could just see the road by which Vara would return. He was quite sure that he could not be doing any harm. Directly opposite there was a fascinating turn-table, upon which two men stood with iron poles in their hands wheeling round a great engine as if it had been a toy. This was really too much for Boy Hugh. Forgetting all about Vara's warning, he scrambled over the wire paling, and staggered across the netted lines in order to get a nearer view of the marvel.
But just at that moment up came the main line express twenty minutes behind time, and the engine-driver in a bad temper. And if Muckle Alick had not opposed the breadth of his beam to the buffer of Geordie Grierson's engine, this tale, so far at least as two of the Kavannahs were concerned, would have ended here. But when Muckle Alick gripped the children in his great arms, and made that spring to the side, the engine caught him so exactly in the right place that it did no more than considerably accelerate his lateral motion, and project him half-way up the bank. As has been recorded, Muckle Alick's first exclamation (which immediately became proverbial all over the Greenock and South-Eastern) was, "Is there aught broke, Geordie, think ye?"
They talked of getting up a testimonial to Muckle Alick. But the hero himself strongly discouraged the notion. Indeed, he went so far as to declare that he "wad gie the fule a ring on the lug that cam' to him wi' ony sic a thing!" This was a somewhat unusual attitude for a hero to assume in the circumstances. But it was quite genuine. And so well known was the horse-power of Alick's buffet, that it would have been easier to recruit a storming party in Netherby than a deputation to present a "token of esteem" to the head porter at Netherby Junction.
In time, however (though this is somewhat to anticipate the tale), there came from the Royal Humane Society a medal, together with a long paper setting forth the noble deed of the saving of the children. No notice of this ever appeared publicly in the local prints, to which such things are usually a godsend.