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"Five and six, and as much mutton as you want!" "Too much, perhaps, and braxy at that!" "Come, a cottage to yourselves, rations, and five and six a day!" "Cottage! A tumble-down wharè is what he means!" "Fresh meat every day with me, boys beef, mutton, and pork!" "Yes; and he'll want you to work twelve hours!" "Better engage with me at five and nine; I'll lodge you well, and feed you first chop!"
Indeed, it was a matter of a braxy ewe, and the poor beast lay at the hedge-side and the blood clotting at her throat, for Dan had bled her, and the briars o' many a brake trailed behind her. "Braxy and oatmeal, Hamish," says he, "there's many a lusty lad reared on worse; but we'll be hivin' tatties and herrin' for a change, and plenty o' sour milk tae slocken the drouth o' it."
She never tells any one what is coming, but leaves them to find it out for themselves. She lets them put their fingers in the fire, and never tells them that they will get burnt. But that is very cruel and treacherous of her. My boy, our business is not to call hard names, but to take things as we find them, as the Highlandman said when he ate the braxy mutton.
'Here's me no seen baker's bread for a month, and no company but a wheen ignorant Hielanders that yatter Gawlic. I wish I was back in the Glenkens. And I'd gang the morn if I could get paid what I'm awed. However, he gave me supper a braxy ham and oatcake, and I bought the remnants off him for use next day.
He has a delicate stomach, the man that's coming, and a bit of braxy mutton might be the death of him." He spoke to Paddy Doolan and told him that his old mother would be wanted to attend on the new doctor and must be ready whenever she was called for.
When I told him about breaking in from the moor, he hummed and hawed and gloomed at me. "This will mean the less sheep," says he. "There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a sheuch like a braxy ewe."
"It was a' poison," he used to say, "in London. Bread full o' alum and bones, and sic filth meat over-driven till it was a' braxy water sopped wi' dead men's juice. Naething was safe but gude Scots parrich and Athol brose." He carried his water-horror so far as to walk some quarter of a mile every morning to fill his kettle at a favourite pump.
After breakfasting on my last morsels of food a knuckle of braxy and a bit of oatcake I set about tracking him from the place where he had first entered the glen. To get my bearings, I went back over the road I had come myself, and after a good deal of trouble I found his spoor.
The tongue was soft and fair-spoken, the hand seemed generous enough, but this by all accounts had been so even with Drimdarroch himself, and Drimdarroch was rotten to the core. "Very curious," thought Montaiglon, making poor play with his braxy ham. "Could Bethune be mistaken in this extraordinary Baron?"
As I scanned the acres of rough moor and then looked at the sea lapping delicately on the grey sand I had the feeling that a knotty problem was before me. It was too dark to try to track his steps. That must be left for the morning, and I prayed that there would be no rain in the night. I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had brought from Macmorran's cottage.
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