“Weel, keep up a good heart. Ye can study a’ the hairst.”
“I’m going to do something else besides.”
“Weel?”
“Ye see, if I can manage to get just one month at the Grammar School of Aberdeen before the competition, it will ensure my success.”
“To be sure; weel?”
“Weel, by the merest chance yesterday I met Lord Hamilton at the minister’s manse. He was having lunch there. He was bemoaning the fact that when the grouse-shooting began on the Twelfth, he should not have a single keeper who thoroughly knew the hills. Then a happy thought occurred to me, and something made me speak.
“‘My lord,’ I said, smiling, ‘there isn’t a corrie nor a knowe, a height nor a howe, all over these hills that I haven’t known since my childhood; will you accept my services as your head-keeper? I’ll serve you well and faithfully till past the middle of September.’
“‘But you,’ cried his lordship, laughing, ‘the minister’s friend and a farmer’s son! I should never think of offering you a post so menial. Oh! no, boy; you must be joking.’
“‘But I’m not joking,’ I insisted.
“Then I told him all the truth, and all my ambition to win a bursary and to study for the ministry, and to do all and everything by my own exertions entirely.