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The little "but an' ben" was whitewashed till it dazzled the eyes as you came over the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths of dark-green firwood. From early morn, when she saw her father off, till the dusk of the day, when he would return for his supper, Janet Balchrystie saw no human being.
Then they softly ran back, and there lay Gavin fallen forward on his knees, as though he had been trying to rise, or had knelt down to pray. Let him have "the benefit of the doubt" in this world. In the next, if all tales be true, there is no such thing. So Janet Balchrystie dwelt alone in the white "but an' ben" at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax.
But his farmers liked him, knowing him to be an easy man with those who had been really unfortunate, for he knew to what the year's crops of each had amounted, to a single chalder and head of nowt. Deep in her heart Janet Balchrystie cherished a great ambition. When the earliest blackbird awoke and began to sing, while it was yet gray twilight, Janet would be up and at her work.
So when they stopped the express for Gavin Balchrystie, every man on the line felt that it was an honour to the dead. John Platt sent a "gurring" thrill through the train as he put his brakes hard down and whistled for the guard. He, thinking that the Merrick Viaduct was down at least, twirled his brake to such purpose that the rear car progressed along the metals by a series of convulsive bounds.
She had also many years ago decided upon the title, so that Reckitt had printed upon it, back and side, "The Heather Lintie," while inside there was the acknowledgment of authorship, which Janet felt to be a solemn duty to the world: "Poems by Janet Balchrystie, Barbrax Cottage, by New Dalry."
The factor gave her notice, but the laird, who was not accounted by his neighbours to be very wise, because he did needlessly kind things, told the factor to let the lassie bide, and delivered to herself with his own handwriting to the effect that Janet Balchrystie, in consideration of her lonely condition, was to be allowed the house for her lifetime, a cow's grass, and thirty pound sterling in the year as a charge on the estate.
Also the man who drinks it steadily and quietly never enters on any inheritance of length of days. So it came to pass that one night Gavin Balchrystie did not come home at all at least, not till he was brought lying comfortably on the door of a disused third-class carriage, which was now seeing out its career anchored under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used it as a shelter.
"They say," some other weaver would remark, "'at it was you Bell liked best." "I d'na kin," Sam'l would reply; "but there's nae doot the lassie was fell fond o' me; ou, a mere passin' fancy, 's ye micht say." Janet Balchrystie lived in a little cottage at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax.
Now it is cold and blowy on the west-land moors, and neither whaups nor dark-blue uniforms object to a little refreshment up there. The mischief was that Gavin Balchrystie did not, like the guards and engine-drivers, go on with the passing train.
She had been a hard-working woman all her days, for her mother died when she was but young, and she had lived on, keeping her father's house by the side of the single-track railway-line. Gavin Balchrystie was a foreman plate-layer on the P.P.R., and with two men under him, had charge of a section of three miles.
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