Read Online A Croft in the Hills by Katharine Stewart - Free Book Online Page B

favourite tune. As soon as I began to intone it, to a slow rather melancholy rhythm, I
would glance along her back and see her ears twitch and a dreamy look come into the one eye visible to me. Then the milk would spurt steadily into the pail and I knew all was well.
    The pace of spring was now increasing rapidly. Each evening at dusk we would see the gleam of fires, as the heather was burnt to make room for new growth. In the distance we could see the small
black specks of figures silhouetted against the glow. With sticks and switches they were keeping the flames under control. The boys of the neighbourhood took a sort of primitive delight in
assisting at these firing operations, and it did seem as though the purifying flames were really laying the ghost of winter in the hills.
    With the approach of the lambing season there was another ghost to be laid—that of the threatening, elusive fox. A drive was organised and all guns mobilised. One cold Saturday afternoon
Jim and Billy set off, with the others, to search the crags and thickets round the Red Rock. They swarmed up precipices and slid down scree, but never a fox did they bag. However, a gesture had
been made and some good sport enjoyed. Communal activity always acts as a tonic—the men came home with a gleam in their eyes and a chuckle in their throats.
    The ploughing was easier that year, for Jim and Billy could take turns at it, and all the field work went quite smoothly. But we were coming to a crucial point in our enterprise. Our capital was
all laid out in the land and stock and it would be some time before either could give us a substantial return. Could we hold on and keep the place going till that time arrived? Were we justified in
paying Billy a wage, small though it was? As Jim crawled up and down the field on the tractor, as I gathered pailfuls of stones from the garden plot, with Helen making mud pies in her own corner,
these questions were nagging away at our minds.
    Finally, we went to see our man of business in Inverness. He is at all times most helpful and understanding, and a problem shared is usually half-way to being solved. The banker, too, was
co-operative. All bankers have a spine-chilling effect on us, but I think the small country-town banker who, in many cases, is of farming stock himself, is perhaps the one representative of the
order who does come within our understanding. Our particular banker has enjoyed several days shooting grouse and hares over our acres and looks positively human in rough tweeds with a gun under his
arm.
    Finally, we decided that we could cope with the situation and that Billy could be kept on for the time being at any rate. The pullets were showing a profit and at this peak time of egg
production we would be cleaning eggs till midnight, while listening to a radio play. The ducks, too, were laying again. The sun had a warmth to it, coltsfoot was blazing along the sheltered bank of
the burn, the peewits were tossing and flashing over the fields, the wild geese had gone off, honking their way gaily into the white north sky. It was a time of promise after all.
    Hope presented us with a tidy little black bull-calf, one morning at seven. Two days later the first of the lambs was born. Each morning after that we would look out first thing to see how many
new white specks had appeared on the moor overnight. Helen was the quickest at spotting them and she kept the tally. Each evening we would walk right round the flock, watching for any ewe that
needed help; but they were wonderful mothers and we only lost one lamb. Billy quickly skinned it and draped the small, fleecy coat over the body of a lamb which had lost its mother. The bereft ewe,
after an astonished nosing, adopted it as her own. We had some anxious moments, for there are so many creatures ready to make a meal of a new-born lamb—the fox, the buzzard, the killer dog.
The weather itself can be cruel. Driving rain is one of their worst enemies. But we