t a loom in addition
many of them would have starved, and on Saturdays the big farmer and
his wife, driving home in a gig, would pass the little farmer carrying
or wheeling his wob to Thrums. When there was no longer a market for
the produce of the hand-loom these farms had to be given up, and thus
it is that the old school is not the only house in our weary glen
around which gooseberry and currant bushes, once tended by careful
hands, now grow wild.

In heavy spates the children were conveyed to the old school, as they
are still to the new one, in carts, and between it and the dominie's
whitewashed dwelling-house swirled in winter a torrent of water that
often carried lumps of the land along with it. This burn he had at
times to ford on stilts.

Before the Education Act passed the dominie was not much troubled by
the school inspector, who appeared in great splendour every year at
Thrums. Fifteen years ago, however, Glen Quharity resolved itself into
a School Board, and marched down the glen, with the minister at its
head, to condemn the school. When the dominie, who had heard of their
design, saw the Board approaching, he sent one of his scholars, who
enjoyed making a mess of himself, wading across the burn to bring over
the stilts which were lying on the other side. The Board were thus
unable to send across a spokesman, and after they had harangued the
dominie, who was in the best of tempers, from the wrong side of the
stream, the siege was raised by their returning home, this time with
the minister in the rear. So far as is known this was the only
occasion on which the dominie ever lifted his hat to the minister. He
was the Established Church minister at the top of the glen, but the
dominie was an Auld Licht, and trudged into Thrums to church nearly
every Sunday with his daughter.

The farm of Little Tilly lay so close to the dominie's house that from
one window he could see through a telescope whether the farmer was
going to church, owing to Little Tilly's habit of never shaving except
with that intention, and of always doing it at a looking-glass which he
hung on a nail in his door. The farmer was Established Church, and
when the dominie saw him in his shirt-sleeves with a razor in his hand,
he called for his black clothes. If he did not see him it is
undeniable that the dominie sent his daughter to Thrums, but remained
at home himself. Possibly, therefore, the dominie sometimes went to
church, becaus