It was this abstraction that divided him from the other boys of his age, not because he was unpopular, not because he lacked pluck, but just because he was silent for days at a time, and made no confidences. It was a state of mind that drove his aunt, good woman, to a kind of arctic fury. For years she strove to beat it out of him, but it served no purpose except to send him upon the hills for days together.
There comes a time when you can't beat a boy larger than yourself. Not that Rob would have complained or refused to submit. He was indifferent to such things. He had plenty of spirit of a dogged and inflammatory character, but it did not lie that way. If it consoled his aunt to beat him, then let her do so by all means. For all he knew it might be the time-honoured custom of maiden aunts.
Miss Macpherson was, above all, a practical woman, and it was Rob's dreamy obliviousness to facts that fretted her. To sit watching muirfowl for hours together was more than any sensible body could tolerate. And that was Rob all over. He knew where the two-pound trout lay in the burn up in the hills. He could bring a curlew from the next glen in a perfect frenzy of agitation to learn what was the matter. He would spend nights together watching fox cubs playing under the moon. But of school and its tasks he had no tolerance.
He was lying on the bank of a stream that spring day when it all came about. He did not hear the footsteps nor did he see the shadow on the water, but of a sudden there stood a very large and pleasant gentleman beside him, dressed in riding clothes, and with a handsome claymore at his side.
"Cuddling?" said he very affably. "I mind the day when I could lay the bonnie ones in rows upon the bank."
Rob stared at him with his ingenuous eyes.
"It is fine to be young," went on the strange gentleman, "but there were no days like the old days."
"Why do you say that?" asked Rob.
The stranger suppressed a smile at his eager curiosity.
"They have said that," he replied, "since Robert the Bruce heard it from his grandfather."