The man who was thus addressed, and who now came up, was evidently somewhat inferior in station to the rest of the group. In fact, at first sight he looked shabby. His hat was weather-stained, his clothes were threadbare and even darned in some places, and his boots were rough and clumsy. But his well-developed figure, his clean-cut and healthy features, and his big blue eyes, gave him, in spite of his mean apparel, a look of superiority. Nay, the neat patches on his coat seemed, in some odd way, to be badges of respectability. He was the son of a small laird; but his father had recently died, a heartbroken bankrupt; the property had been sold; he had been left the sole support of his widowed mother, and had been obliged to hire himself out as an ordinary ploughman; and it was understood that he was now pinching himself to save money, in order, if possible, to redeem the little family inheritance.
Gilbert Strang, in fact, was one of those hardy human plants that can grow and flourish mentally and morally in any soil. He had been but a few years under the village teacher. The school in which he had learnt most was the world, where the lessons are undoubtedly very difficult, but, if once mastered, are most salutary. In the few books which he had, in the weekly sermons to which he listened, in the ever-varying shows of earth and sky, and in the rustic gatherings and merrymakings, he got abundant food both for mind and heart. Then, during the long quiet days when he was guiding the plough in the meadow, he found a favourite opportunity for thinking over what he had seen and read, and for forming his notions of men and things. In this way, he had made up his mind on most of the subjects that crop up in rural life, and was able to express his views, not only in the broad vernacular, but also, when occasion called, in good English. Altogether, he was a fair specimen of a man of Nature's own training, or what pious people used to call "one of God Almighty's own scholars."
"Don't you think I wad be richt, Gilbert Strang, to ceet him before the Presbytery, and if I canna get redress there to try the Law?"
"Ye wad be just playin' into his haunds, Mr Manson."
"In what way, Gilbert?"
"Ye wad mak him staund oot before the public as a martyr, and that's what a' thae kind want to be. What I would advise wad be, to gie him rope."
"What dae ye mean, Gilbert?"
"He kens the bothies only by hearsay; and he has spoken a lot o' nonsense aboot them. Let him alane. He'll gang deeper and deeper into the mess. Then he'll find himsel in a habble and be obleeged to apologeese."
"Apologeese!" cried Manson, "catch a minister apologeese! Dod man! they're never wrang. At the time o' the Reformation, they jist shifted the doctrine o' infallibility from the Pope's shouthers on to their ain; and now, instead o' ane, we hae thousands o' Popes."