IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 73 



I had less trouble to get the opinion of an old 

 road-inender whom I fell in with one day. I was 

 walking toward Repentance Hill, when he overtook 

 me with his " machine " (all road vehicles in Scot- 

 land are called machines), and insisted upon my get- 

 ting up beside him. He had a little white pony, 

 "twenty-one years old, sir," and a heavy, rattling 

 two-wheeler, quite as old I should say. We dis- 

 coursed about roads. Had we good roads in America ? 

 No ? Had we no " metal " there, no stone ? Plenty 

 of it, I told him, too much; but we had not 

 learned the art of road-making yet. Then he would 

 have to come " out " and show us ; indeed, he had 

 been seriously thinking about it ; he had an uncle in 

 America, but had lost all track of him. He had 

 seen Carlyle many a time, "but the people here took 

 no interest in that man," he said ; " he never done 

 nothing for this place." Referring to Carlyle's an- 

 cestors, he said, " The Cairls were what we Scotch 

 call bullies, a set of bullies, sir. If you crossed 

 their path, they would murder you ; " and then came 

 out some highly - colored tradition of the " Eccle- 

 fechan dog fight," which Carlyle refers to in his 

 Reminiscences. On this occasion, the old road- 

 mender said, the " Cairls " had clubbed together, and 

 bullied and murdered half the people of the place! 

 " No, sir, we take no interest in that man here," and 

 he gave the pony a sharp punch with his stub of a 

 whip. But he himself took a friendly interest in the 

 school-girls whom we overtook along the road, and 



