66 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



the glowing peats and coal, surrounded by books of travel, 

 illuminated missals and natural history, to read or to listen 

 to my host telling tales of the times of our fathers, told as 

 they told them, without haste and with exquisite inflection 

 and skill in picturing peoples and places at home or abroad. 



One family story he told me should be of national, or even 

 international interest, so I must make it a classic. It was 

 in the first days of trains in this country that my host and 

 his brother were coming back to school in Edinburgh from 

 Cloan in Perthshire with their father. The father was con- 

 sidered a splendid traveller, for he could actually sleep in 

 these Early- Victorian carriages ! As he lay asleep with a red 

 rug drawn over him which Haldane says figures largely in 

 his boyish recollections he and his brother plugged cattle and 

 engine-drivers and various things as they passed, or at the 

 stations, with their catapults, till at Larbert old Haldane 

 awakened and saw the instruments and asked the boys what 

 they were. " Never had such things when I was a boy," 

 he said. They explained to him how to fit a stone into the 

 leather, and he did so and held the catapult out of the window 

 and let fly, and with inexpressible joy the boys watched the 

 stone go hurtling into the centre of the stationmaster's 

 window. Old Haldane promptly pulled the red plaid over 

 his head, and out came the wrathful stationmaster, and the 

 guard, and a boy clerk, who took them to the Haldane 

 carriage. Wrathfully the stationmaster pulled open the 

 door, and met the gaze of the cherubic innocents. Then 

 angrily he pulled the red rug aside and disclosed the stern, 

 judicial features of Haldane senior. 



" How dare you, sir, disturb me in this rude manner ? " he 

 demanded of the guard he knew so well, and " Och, sir ! 

 Save us 1 It's you, Mr Haldane ! A' maist humbly apologise. 

 A' maun hae made a mistake," and he bustled away, angrily 

 elbowing the boy clerk and muttering : " Yon's Mr Haldane, 

 ye full, ye gowk, Haldane o' Cloan, yin o' the biggest share- 

 holders o' the Company." "Ye may ca' him what ye like," 

 said the clerk, " but A' saw him let flee yon stane." 



As the train proceeded, Haldane pere emerged from the 

 red rug again and the three laughed long and loud, and the 



