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

the small trout flash. Remembering this burn, and the cool
delight of it, I packed a bundle of washing and a bar of soap among the fencing material and, while Jim dug holes for the strainers, I did the family wash in a pool of golden water. I hung it to
bleach on the dwarf alder bushes, while Helen splashed about and floated twig boats in the pool. We made a fire to boil our tea kettle and afterwards I helped to stretch wire for Jim. We bumped
home happily in the trailer, Helen and I each clutching a bundle of clean linen, Jim whistling softly with satisfaction at the thought of a job well begun.
    We spent several more days working at that fence. Strangers passing along the road in cars, seeing our picnic fire and Helen gallivanting in her sun-suit, mistook us for holiday-makers and gave
us an encouraging wave. We waved back enthusiastically for we did almost feel we were on holiday. I say almost, because even the most fascinating of holidays had never given us quite as satisfying
a feel as most of our working days gave us. To know you were achieving something real, in the best company in the world, with the sun warm on your hands and all the wild things you
loved—bird, hill, flower, sky—surrounding you, was deeply pleasurable. Of course, we hammered our thumbs, we dropped staples at crucial moments in the rushes, we tore our legs on pieces
of barbed wire, but that was just the pepper and salt. When the last stob was in and the last wire tightened, we waded in the burn with Helen and sat on the bank watching a heron flap his lonely
way up to the lochan in the hill beyond Rhivoulich.
    By the third week in September the corn was ripe. This is a reasonably early date for these heights—the previous autumn we had seen stooks still lying out in November. And the crop was
really one to be proud of. We had had a very heavy thunderstorm in August which had laid part of the oats in one field, where the yield was particularly heavy. But, on the whole, it was a good,
standing crop. On the twenty-fourth of the month Jim began cutting ‘roads’ for the binder, that is, cutting a border around the edge of each field with a scythe to allow the binder to
work freely without damaging any of the corn. I followed in his wake, tying the swathes into bundles with a stalk and setting them up in stooks.
    We hadn’t been long on the job when we saw Willie Maclean making his way slowly across the burn and up through the heather to join us. He was leaning heavily on his stick and he looked
tired and a little shaky, but his face lit with pleasure as he picked up a sheaf and shook it by his ear. ‘It rattles!’ He beamed at us through his glasses, ‘It’s fine when
you hear it rattle!’ He looked over the small golden field appraisingly. ‘It’s a grand crop you have there’, he said, and we felt a small glow of pride. To hear a neighbour
praise a crop or a beast always brings a small thrill of pleasure to their owner. Hill people are not given to expressing enthusiasms, but when they do, in their own quiet, well-worn phrases, you
know you can believe what they say.
    In a couple of days the corn was cut and then began the laborious process of stooking. Everyone was busy at the same time, with their own crop, so that it was impossible to exchange help. But
the weather remained magnificent until the last afternoon. It was a Saturday and we began to panic just a little as we saw the sky clouding and felt the first small drops of rain. We had to get the
field in stook before dark so we worked on steadily, stopping only for a snatched cup of tea and then, at about half-past four, we saw a pair of legs swinging over the fence at the top of the
field. Their owner gave no sign that he’d seen us working away at the bottom, but simply began stooking his way in our direction. Only when we were within earshot did he greet us with
‘Aye, aye, you’ll be wanting to get done before the rain’. It was our friend Bill (pronounced