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losses. I spent the worst days catching up on arrears of housework, while Jim made
fencing posts in the shelter of the barn. We were cheered, too, by visits from neighbours and Helen had many happy games with the children from Woodend and young Bertha, from over the burn. We had
first made the acquaintance of this lively, yellow-haired small girl when she had been sent over, one day at the end of winter, with a bottle of milk for Helen, from Willie Maclean’s newly
calved cow. She had been boarded out with the Macleans since an early age and was one of the many children they had brought up along with their own daughter.
    Practically every croft house has one or more of these foster-children and we have seen several grow from little thin-faced waifs into burly youngsters. Their up-bringing is supervised by
officials from the city of their birth (in most cases it is Glasgow), who pay them regular visits and provide them with clothing and pocket money. In most cases they are regarded as sons and
daughters of the house and they come back, once they are launched into the world, to spend their holidays, or bring their own families to visit in the only real home they have known. In the
Macleans’ house at this time there was Bertha, aged ten, Billy, twelve and Sadie, eighteen, and they were a happy, lively trio of whom we were to see a lot.
    Willie Maclean himself (‘Beelack’, as the affectionate Gaelic diminutive of his name was pronounced) was a man of the old Highland type, well-read, with an inquiring mind and a
genuine courtesy of manner. In his younger days he had been a great piper. His brother was a well-known doctor in Glasgow. His kindly wife would always meet us on the doorstep with the greeting,
‘Come away in’ and we could be sure of good talk over a cup of tea at her fireside. As we left, her ‘haste ye back!’ would ring in our ears, as we made our way over the
little bridge and along the track through the heather to our home. At night we would see the yellow glow of the light in her kitchen window and in the morning we would watch the smoke rising in a
thin blue plume from her chimney and we found it immensely cheering to know we had these hill-folk for friends. They would anticipate our needs before we were fully aware of them ourselves. Many a
time Bertha has come flying across the moor with a drench for the cow, because we had mentioned that she was off her feed, or a broody hen to mother some chicks whose own parent had abandoned
them.
    At last May brought more genial weather. The rush of work was over and we dispensed with the boys’ help. Jim borrowed a ridge-plough and ridged the potato field and we spent a couple of
days planting potatoes. It is back-breaking work, tramping up and down the drills, bent double, dropping the potatoes into place. But the weather was wonderful and we made a picnic of it. I spread
a rug on the grass verge at the top of the field, on which Helen sprawled with her dolls. Every now and again she would seize a small pail of potatoes and thrust a dozen or so tubers solemnly into
the ground, then scamper back to the rug and instruct each doll in turn in the art of potato-planting. At mid-day we stretched out on the rug beside her and ate sandwiches and drank flasks of tea.
Overhead, the sky was a pale, milky blue and the air rang with lark song. We were glad to be alive and to be doing exactly what we were doing.
    With the potatoes safely in the ground there was a lull till turnip-sowing time. We spent most of this gathering fuel from the felled woodland. The Forestry fence was going up rapidly and we
wanted to lay in a stock of wood for winter before this useful source of supply was shut off. So, once again, we made a picnic of it and spent several whole days carting loads of wood to a dump on
our own ground.
    For the turnip-sowing we sought the good offices of Charlie. This was the first field work we had done with him and he at once proved his worth. With