When illness had the audacity to attack a Drumtochty man, it was described as a “whup,” and was treated by the men with a fine negligence.  Hillocks was sitting in the post-office one afternoon when I looked in for my letters, and the right side of his face was blazing red.  His subject of discourse was the prospects of the turnip “breer,” but he casually explained that he was waiting for medical advice.

“The gudewife is keepin’ up a ding-dong frae mornin’ till nicht aboot ma face, and a’ ‘m fair deaved (deafened), so a’ ‘m watchin’ for MacLure tae get a bottle as he comes wast; yon’s him noo.”

The doctor made his diagnosis from horseback on sight, and stated the result with that admirable clearness which endeared him to Drumtochty: 

“Confound ye, Hillocks, what are ye ploiterin’ aboot here for in the weet wi’ a face like a boiled beer?  Div ye no ken that ye’ve a tetch o’ the rose (erysipelas), and ocht tae be in the hoose?  Gae hame wi’ ye afore a’ leave the bit, and send a halflin’ for some medicine.  Ye donnerd idiot, are ye ettlin tae follow Drums afore yir time?” And the medical attendant of Drumtochty continued his invective till Hillocks started, and still pursued his retreating figure with medical directions of a simple and practical character: 

“A’ ‘m watchin’, an’ peety ye if ye pit aff time.  Keep yir bed the mornin’, and dinna show yir face in the fields till a’ see ye.  A’ll gie ye a cry on Monday,—­sic an auld fule,—­but there’s no ane o’ them tae mind anither in the hale pairish.”

Hillocks’s wife informed the kirkyard that the doctor “gied the gudeman an awful’ clearin’,” and that Hillocks “wes keepin’ the hoose,” which meant that the patient had tea breakfast, and at that time was wandering about the farm buildings in an easy undress, with his head in a plaid.

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.