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It was to gie him twa pound, and, says my father, 'God helping me, he says, 'I'll droon mysel in the dam rather than let the drink master me, but in case it should get haud o' me and I should die drunk, it would be a michty gratification to me to ken that you had the siller to bury me respectable without ony help frae the poor's rates. The minister wasna for taking it at first, but he took it when he saw how earnest my father was.
For I heard him fa' clean into the water, and I kent ye micht as sune droon a herrin as Alec Forbes. I ran richt to the mids' o' the brig and there was the black heid o' him bobbin' awa' doon the water i' the hert o' the munelicht. I'm terrible lang-sichtit, gentlemen.
The white miller in the doorway of the gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay dooryards. "I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog," the miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the dam. "He isna oor ain dog," Geordie called back. "But he wullna droon.
A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din. Tweed said tae Till: "What gars ye rin sae Still?" Till said tae Tweed: "Though ye rin wi' speed An' I rin slaw Yet where ye droon ae man I droon twa."
Between bites he was singing dolefully to the tune of "Annie Laurie" one of the ditties of his quondam Sunday School: "The Boorjoys' brays are bonnie, Too-roo-ra-roo-raloo, But the Workers of the World Wull gar them a' look blue, And droon them in the sea, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'll lay me down and dee." "Losh, laddie," she cried, "that's cauld food for the stomach.
"Alec!" shouted Thomas, in a voice that might have been heard across the roar of the Glamour, "Will ye lat the women droon?" "Thomas," answered Alec, meekly, trembling from head to foot, "gin I gang to the boddom, I gang to hell." "Better be damned, doin' the will o' God, than saved doin' noathing!" said Thomas. The blood shot into Alec's face. He turned and ran.
Sleep I can get nane, Ay waukin O! She. "It's fair insultin' to rent a hoose wi' so few convenience." We. 'An' I'm ower auld to fish ony mair, An' I hinna the chance to droon. She. "The work is fair sickenin' i' this hoose, an' a' for ane puir body to do by her lane." We. 'How can ye chant, ye little birds, An' I sae weary, fu' o' care? She.
"I doobt I'll hae to droon mysel'," she added with a wail, as he stood in compassionate silence, until the gust should blow over; and as she said it she lifted a face tear stained, and all white, save where five fingers had branded their shapes in red. Her eyes scarcely encountered his; again she buried her face in her hands, and rocked herself to and fro, moaning in fresh agony.
"Na, na, Jean," interposed the farmer, "they wad tak care o' themsel's to the last, an' aye haud to the dryest, jist as ye wad yersel'." "Allooin'," said the stranger, replying to Jean, yet speaking rather as if to herself, while she thought about something else, "I wad raither droon soomin' nor tied by the heid. But what's the guid o' doctrine whaur there's onything to be dune?
"A wud tell the daidlin', thowless, feckless, fushionless wratch o' a cratur tae watch for the first spate and droon himsel' in the Tochty." "What's he aff through the graves for in sic a hurry?" and Jamie followed Charlie's retreating figure with a glance of admirable amazement; "thae's no very gude mainners he's learned in Americky."
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