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Updated: May 18, 2025
"Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad," the boy answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and openly in the direction of Kenmuir. M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped. "I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin'," he cried with cruel significance.
In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A wenomous one!" and "A wiralent wiper!" to the applause of tinkling pewters. A shepherd without his dog is like a ship without a rudder, and M'Adam felt his loss practically as well as otherwise. Especially did he experience this on a day when he had to take a batch of draft-ewes over to Grammoch-town.
So it was that M'Adam, on coming quietly into the kitchen one day, was consumed with angry resentment to find David actually handling the object of his reverence; and the manner of his doing it added a thousandfold to the offence.
It appeared as if M'Adam had emptied every stone he ever broke to be strewed over this metalled region. The edges of the stones were not, however, rounded by attrition, or mixed together, but laid on the plains in distinct patches, as if large masses of the different rocks had been placed at certain distances from each other and then shivered into pieces.
"Yo' mon hold it steadier, little mon, if yo'd hit!" he said grimly. "There, I'll coom help yo'!" He withdrew slowly; and all the time was wondering where the gray dog was. In another moment he was downstairs, undoing the bolts and bars of the door. On the other side stood M'Adam, his blunderbuss at his shoulder, his finger trembling on the trigger, waiting. "Hi, Master!
While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley, and the rest joined hands and went raving round like so many giddy girls. Of them all, however, none was so uproarious in the mad heat of his enthusiasm as David M'Adam. He stood in the Kenmuir wagon beside Maggie, a conspicuous figure above the crowd, as he roared in hoarse ecstasy: "Weel done, oor Bob! Weel done, Mr. Moore!
Moore," Teddy was saying, "and says he, 'I'll gie ye twal' pun for yon gray dog o' yourn. 'Ah, says Moore, 'yo' may gie me twal' hunner'd and yet you'll not get ma Bob. Eh, Jim?" "And he did thot," corroborated Jim. "'Twal' hunner'd, says he." "James Moore and his dog agin" snapped M'Adam. "There's ithers in the warld for bye them twa." "Ay, but none like 'em," quoth loyal Jim.
And the last Bessie saw of them was that bloody, rolling head, with the puny legs staggering beneath their load, as the two passed out of the world's ken. In the Devil's Bowl, next day, they found the pair: Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone.
M'Adam, for a wunnerfu' story of a wunnerfu' tyke?" he asked. "It's a gude tale, a vera gude tale," the little man answered dreamily. "And James Moore didna invent it; he had it from the Christmas number o' the Flock-keeper in saxty." To his amazement he found the little man was right. There was the story almost identically.
"An' ye hit me agin there may be no mither to save ye." M'Adam stood huddling in the corner. He shook like an aspen leaf; his eyes blazed in his white face; and he still nursed one arm with the other. "Honor yer father," he quoted in small, low voice. TAMMAS is on his feet in the tap-room of the Arms, brandishing a pewter mug. "Gen'lemen!" he cries, his old face flushed; "I gie you a toast.
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