But what a clever hand it was in an operation--as delicate
as a woman's! and what a kindly voice it was in the humble room where
the shepherd's wife was weeping by her man's bedside! He was "ill pitten
thegither" to begin with, but many of his physical defects were the
penalties of his work, and endeared him to the Glen. That ugly scar,
that cut into his right eyebrow and gave him such a sinister expression,
was got one night Jess slipped on the ice and laid him insensible eight
miles from home. His limp marked the big snowstorm in the fifties, when
his horse missed the road in Glen Urtach, and they rolled together in a
drift. MacLure escaped with a broken leg and the fracture of three ribs,
but he never walked like other men again. He could not swing himself
into the saddle without making two attempts and holding Jess's mane.
Neither can you "warstle" through the peat-bogs and snow-drifts for
forty winters without a touch of rheumatism. But they were honourable
scars, and for such risks of life men get the Victoria Cross in other
fields. MacLure got nothing but the secret affection of the Glen, which
knew that none had ever done one tenth as much for it as this ungainly,
twisted, battered figure, and I have seen a Drumtochty face soften at
the sight of MacLure limping to his horse.
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