Page:The McClure Family.djvu/17

Rh two roses, and in base a quatrefoil, gules, a martlet between two escallopes of the first.

Crest: An eagle's head, erased, proper."

Mr. Robert W. McClure, of the firm of Black, McClure & McDonald, Glasgow, writes, February 17, 1913: "My grandfather, James McClure, was a sea captain and I rather think was born in Bargany Estate, a few miles from Girvan. My father, James McClure, was Parochial Schoolmaster in Riccarton, near Kilmarnock, Ayrshire.."

Ian Maclaren has given a master's touch and added interest to the name in Scotland in his portrayal of William McLure, in A Doctor of the Old School.—"A tall, gaunt, loosely made man, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, his face burned a dark brick color by constant exposure to the weather, red hair and beard turning grey, honest blue eyes that look you ever in the face, huge hands, with wrist-bones like the shank of a ham, and a voice that hurled his salutations across two fields, he suggested the moor rather than the drawing room. But what a clever hand it was in an operation, and what a kindly voice it was in the humble room when the shepherd's wife was weeping by her man's bedside. ***** He was 'ill pitten the gither' to begin with, but many of his physical defects were the penalty of his work, and endeared him to the glen. He could not swing himself into the saddle without making two attempts and holding Jess's mane, neither can you 'warstle' through the peat-bogs and snow-drifts for forty years without a touch of rheumatism. But they were honorable scars, and for such risks of life men get the Victoria Cross in other fields. McLure got nothing but the secret affection of the Glen, which knew that none had ever done so much for it as this ungainly, twisted, battered figure, and I have seen a Drumtochty face soften at the sight of McLure limping to his horse. 'His father was here afore him,' Mrs. McFadyen used to explain, 'atween them, they've hed the country side for well on tae a century.'"