The Serpent by Neil M. Gunn Page A

that you might come home for a little but I don know what to say myself if it made any difference at yer work I wouldnt like that unless they could let you of for a little seeing its your father. Youll know best yerself and Ill always manage fine. Be looking after yerself whatever else and let me know.
    your mother.
    So his father was ill. He stared before him, bereft at last of thought and feeling. The pound note was in his hand. He must put it away with the pound that he never broke on. She wanted him home. It was quite clear she wanted him home. He became worried, wondering whether the boss would let him go. He had never asked for anything. He would hate asking. And his job? They did not keep a job like his open. Dougal would have to get someone else. He would speak to Dougal first. That’s it. He would speak to Dougal first thing.
    Feeling relieved, he turned his head and stared at the blinded window. The turmoil of the night was outside, and Winnie’s face.
    Now there was his father’s face on the pillow. He turned away from that. He was very tired. I’m dog tired, he said, and down upon him came a strange fatal quietude. This quietude went into bed with him and in its far wastes he wandered, seeing that which did not move, hearkening for the sound that never came in its great stillness.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The Philosopher rested again, for though he had been climbing slowly, even a quickened thought could increase his heart-beat, and, anyway, there was no hurry. Besides, this deliberate seeing of his past had a certain detached interest, giving to the flight of a chaffinch, to its short airy waves of flight, an indescribable pleasure. How clean and bright were the feathers this sunny day, how vivid and immediate the song and the movement! The dip of the branch, the swaying of the green leaf. The green grass and the warm scents and the wind that found its pleasure not in far wandering but in immediate eddies of fun among the small bushes.
    He could still see the red pump. Henry was walking back from it to the shop. Below the cream-coloured shop, stretched the old croft house, tarred felt, black where formerly had been straw thatch. Very quiet about the house, for no-one moved around it but himself. The straw had had perhaps a brighter air, but his idea had been to make the place permanently weather-tight for his mother.
    He had been full of ideas in these distant days, full of projects. They engaged his mind, for his father lying on his bed was something not to be thought about too much. He had always been rather a solemn man, slow and quiet and big-boned, his ginger beard turning quite grey as he lay in bed, and his skin turning grey, too, in a clean, washed way. His father’s spareness of build made him a tall man, his mother’s stoutness made her a short dumpy woman; he himself was like something that had escaped from between them, slight in build and stature, fair in hair between the ginger and the black, and in mindvery much like something that had escaped and secretly knew it.
    For the first few weeks harvesting took his time and energy. As his father had been forbidden to do any work for months, Tom had reconciled himself to not going back to Glasgow, not anyway until next spring, and had written Dougal to that effect and asked him to explain to the master how he was placed. Any other decision was impossible, and though he could see his mother was sometimes a little mournful about it, yet he could also see she was glad to have him, particularly as he himself put as cheerful an air as he could on the business.
    And some of the lads of the village, and even one or two of the young farm hands from the Glen, came in the evening to help. This was a neighbourly thing to do in the circumstances, but always, in the country, for young men to give a fellow a hand was not work, it was a sort of pleasure. One did not need to do it, so the doing held a light-hearted virtue. If there was any fun going, here