R. Crockett
Janet Balchrystie lived in a little cottage at the back of the Long
Wood of Barbrax. She had been a hard-working woman all her days, for her
mother died when she was but young, and she had lived on, keeping her
father's house by the side of the single-track railway-line. Gavin
Balchrystie was a foreman plate-layer on the P.P.R., and with two men
under him, had charge of a section of three miles. He lived just where
that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered
granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a
shepherd's hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a
train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced
sheep. Gavin Balchrystie's three miles of P.P.R. metals gave him
little work, but a good deal of healthy exercise. The black-faced sheep
breaking down the fences and straying on the line side, and the torrents
coming down the granite gullies, foaming white after a water-spout, and
tearing into his embankments, undermining his chairs and plates, were
the only troubles of his life. There was, however, a little public-house
at The Huts, which in the old days of construction had had the license,
and which had lingered alone, license and all, when its immediate
purpose in life had been fulfilled, because there was nobody but the
whaups and the railway officials on the passing trains to object to
its continuance.
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