“Faith, sir, come to Galloway,” he cried open-heartedly—“there’s the place to provide work for the like of you lads. And it’s Boyd Connoway will introduce you to all the excise-case defendants from Annan Port to Loch Ryan. It’s him that knows every man and mother’s son of them! And who, if ye plaise, has a better right?”
CHAPTER XXXV
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
“The strongest mental tonic in the world is solitude, but it takes a strong mind, fully equipped with thoughts, aims, work, to support it long without suffering. But once a man has made his best companion of his own mind, he has learned the secret of living.”
So I had written in an essay on Senancour during the days when the little white house was but a dream, and Irma had never come to me across the cleared space in front of Greyfriars Kirk amid the thud of mallets and the “chip” of trowels. But Irma taught me better things. She knew when to be silent. She understood, also, when speech would slacken the tension of the mind. As I sat writing by the soft glow of the lamp I could hear the rustle of her house-dress, the sharp, almost inaudible, tick-tick of her needle, and the soft sound as she smoothed out her seam. Little things that happen to everybody, but—well, I for one had never noticed them before.
It seemed as if this period of contentment would always continue. The present was so good that, save a little additional in the way of income, I asked for no better.
But one day the Advocate rudely shook my equanimity.
“You must have some of your family—some good woman—to be with Irma. Write at once!”