It was impossible for a doctor to earn even the most modest competence
from a people of such scandalous health, and so MacLure had annexed
neighbouring parishes. His house--little more than a cottage--stood on
the roadside among the pines toward the head of our Glen, and from this
base of operations he dominated the wild glen that broke the wall of the
Grampians above Drumtochty--where the snow-drifts were twelve feet deep
in winter, and the only way of passage at times was the channel of the
river--and the moorland district westward till he came to the Dunleith
sphere of influence, where there were four doctors and a hydropathic.
Drumtochty in its length, which was eight miles, and its breadth, which
was four, lay in his hand; besides a glen behind, unknown to the world,
which in the night-time he visited at the risk of life, for the way
thereto was across the big moor with its peat-holes and treacherous
bogs. And he held the land eastward toward Muirtown so far as Geordie.
The Drumtochty post travelled every day, and could carry word that the
doctor was wanted. He did his best for the need of every man, woman, and
child in this wild, straggling district, year in, year out, in the snow
and in the heat, in the dark and in the light, without rest, and without
holiday for forty years.
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