From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

I don't think there is a more truthful aphorism in our language than that which tells us that sorrows seldom come singly.

Fortune or fate had dealt so very hardly with honest Farmer Kilbuie last season, that he might reasonably have expected now some surcease of sorrow -- a respite, if not indeed a flow of good luck. Alas! it was otherwise.

The turnips had been thinned and earthed up -- they were already beginning to cover the drills -- and the haymaking season was in full blow. It was hot sunshine now every day, with now and then a gentle breeze blowing from westward or south, a breeze that blew through the tossed and tumbled hay and made and "won" it.

There was still a good deal to cut down, however, and Sandie himself was walking behind the reaping-machine with the great horse Glancer dragging. This machine not only cut the hay, but tossed it into wreaths.

Sandie didn't look particularly like a student or genius at present. He wore little save a blue checked shirt, his trousers, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, inside which was a cabbage leaf as a security against sunstroke.

The mowing went merrily on.

In another part of the field the servants, with Mr. M‘Crae himself, were busily and cheerfully engaged among the hay that had been cut down yesterday, and which was already dry enough to put into "cocks" or "coles."

Sandie was just about half-way down a ridge, when he pulled up to wipe his wet perspiring brow. Just at that moment Glancer threw up his head and emitted a kind of pained and stifled cry. He reeled for a moment, then fell heavily on his side. _Coup de soleil_, or sunstroke, without a shadow of doubt.

Mr. M‘Crae and the servants saw the poor horse fall, and hurried at once to Sandie's assistance. At first an attempt was made to raise the animal, but this was found impossible; the neck drooped, the legs were paralysed. M‘Crae had always been his own veterinary surgeon, and perhaps knew quite as much about the ailments of cattle and horses as did the drunken little smith and farrier who lived in the neighbouring village. So Glancer's harness was unloosened, a bundle of soft dry hay was placed under his head, and a canvas shelter was erected to save him from the burning rays of the sun. His poor head, too, was kept constantly wet with the coldest of water, and now and then his tongue was pulled to one side, and a cooling draught administered.

Sandie and Jamie never left him all that day; Jeannie brought their dinner out to the field, and their supper also, and they ate it beside the dying Glancer.

Poor Tyro, the collie, seemed to know he was in the presence of death. He sat or lay, though not asleep, near to the horse till the end, often heaving deep sighs, for the farm nags were all special favourites of his.

Tyro really was a faithful and kind-hearted dog. I need not tell the reader he was wise, because he was a Scottish collie, and collies are the kings of the race canine. Yes, he was loving and gentle, and he was an excellent guard by night. Once upon a time he surprised a hawker-tramp robbing the fowl-house. Tyro did not fly at the man and bite him, as a less sensible dog would have done. No, he simply placed that fowl-house, with the itinerant hardware merchant inside, in a state of siege.

"If you dare to come out," Tyro told him, "I will cut your throat, as certain as sunrise."

So the unhappy man preferred capture to a cut throat; and when M‘Crae came round in the grey dawn, he found the tramp, and in due course he was landed in prison.

But in the interests of truth, I must state here that Tyro had one fault, and a very sad one it was. In company with another dog, a smooth-coated cross 'twixt a greyhound and collie, he used in the season to go hunting the turnip-fields for hares or rabbits. They worked very systematically, Spot going into the field to start the game and chase it towards the gate, where Tyro lay in wait to seize and kill it. In this way they sometimes laid dead as many as six or eight hares a night, bringing home one each in the grey of the morn, and hiding the others to be recovered by degrees.

Tyro had even been accused of sheep-killing, but the crime was brought home to another dog, and Tyro left without a stain on his character.

Just as the sun had dipped behind the wooded hills of the west, and gloaming shadows began to fill up the hollows, it was evident that great Glancer's minutes were numbered. The fast glazing eye and the stertorous breathing told the watchers that. Soon after, he had a few fits of shivering, one last long sigh, and then he lay still -- all was over.

Jamie Duncan had kept up till now, but when he heard that sigh, and knew the horse was dead, he lost all control over himself, and threw himself on the body in a paroxysm of grief and tears.

You must remember he was an illiterate ploughman, reader.

"O Glancer, Glancer! " he cried; "oh! my poor dead friend Glancer, will I never mair clean your harness, or lead you to the fields in the mornin'? O Glancer, my heart is br'akin'! my heart is br'akin'!"