CHAPTER XXV
BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

CAN tell still how the whole of the glen was
I engaged about the hour of noon on the fourth
of August month; a day to be among the last
forgotten by any of us, though it began as quietly
as a roaring March. At the Spittal, between
which and Thrums this is a half-way house, were
gathered two hundred men in kilts, and many
gentry from the neighbouring glens, to celebrate
the earl’s marriage, which was to take place on the
morrow, and thither, too, had gone many of my
pupils to gather gossip, at which girls of six are
trustier hands than boys of twelve. Those of us,
however, who were neither children nor of gentle
blood, remained at home, the farmers more taken
up with the want of rain, now become a calamity,
than with an old man’s wedding, and their women-
folk wringing their hands for rain also, yet find-
ing time to marvel at the marriage’s taking place
at the Spittal instead of in England, of which
the ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate of the
bride’s.

For my own part I could talk of the disastrous
drought with Waster Lunny as I walked over his
parched fields, but I had not such cause as he to
brood upon it by day and night; and the ins and
outs of the earl’s marriage were for discussing at

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