Kennedy kept up a certain parade of humility, but his looks and walk belied him. A Royal Commission once approached him with a summons to give evidence as to a plague of voles which was desolating the fertile fields of the south-west, and his opinion was valuable because he had recently acquired by purchase the great, barren hill called Ben Marrick.
"What is your business?" said the chairman, a profound English agriculturist, with as profound an ignorance of the fine shades of Galloway speech.
"I work on the land," said Kennedy McClure with smileless deference.
"What, a farm labourer?" said the great man; "this is first-hand evidence indeed. Well, I suppose that you have studied the devastation caused by these animals on the—the—what is the name—ah, yes, Ben Marrick?"
"My lord," said the many-acred "farm labourer," "there is never a vole on the Ben o' Marrick. The vole is far ower good a judge of land to waste his time on the Marrick."
It needed the intervention of the local clerk of the commission to convince the chairman that he was talking to a man far richer than himself, besides being experienced and sage to the confines of rural wisdom.
It was to this kinsman that Eben McClure was thinking of making an appeal. He knew that along with the property, Kennedy had taken over the carriage and capitally matched horses of the late laird of Glen Marrick. Perhaps he would lend them to a kinsman in order to oblige a Royal Duke. He need not be too precise as to what the Royal Duke wanted them for if the pay were good and sure.
Accordingly Eben the Spy went to Supsorrow with an unquiet heart. He was not at all assured how he would be received. He guessed, however, that a promise made to the laird his cousin, that his herds and workmen, his plough-hands and cattlemen, should be respected by the superintendent of the "press," might do much to calm the first indignation which his proposal would infallibly arouse.
Then Kennedy of Supsorrow hated the Free Traders, because they drew away young men from his service and gave them false notions as to the amount of yearly wage with which they ought to be content.
When a man can make as much by a couple of successful "runs" as by a year's hard work at Supsorrow, he naturally began to reflect. And when the Laird approached him to know if he were "staying on" as term-time approached, the bargain became more difficult to strike. In many cases it was finally understood between contracting parties that the wages should continue the same, but that the occasional absence of a pair of horses from the stables was a matter to which the master should shut his eyes so long as he was satisfied in other ways.