At home he had twenty-two hundred sheep to tend in the summer, and sixteen hundred in winter. One should always bear in mind that sheep are healthiest on these wild runs, and it must be the same, he supposed, with men. For himself, he had been forty years a shepherd, and had been absent through illness one week only during that period.
He had often seen Queen Victoria, when she was staying in the Highlands. “She used to visit my grandmother’s hoose, and that was only thackit wi’ heather. There was an old fiddler who lived not far away, and she would spend a whole afternoon with him, to be oot of the clatter at Balmoral. Am na’ sure that I blame her. And that was a hoose made of sods, with nothing between the floor and the roof but the jists, and with a fire in the middle.”
They could na’ drag Queen Victoria awa’ from Balmoral, and be jabbers, there was a stir when she had to go. She was fond of walking oot in the airly morning, and once she went into a hoose, where the woman was scolding the children because they were na getting ready fast enough to go to the gathering of the clans at Braemar. Ye know that is twenty-two miles from a railway station, and the Gordons, the Forbes, the Mackenzies raced to see which clan got there first. Deil knows there was a clatter. ‘Twas a grand sight to see the badges and tartans, the Forbes with their . . .