“He smiled once more; then he stretched out his soft white hand and grasped mine.
“‘Sandie M‘Crae,’ he said, ‘I admire your pluck; you’re a Scotsman every inch. Yes, I accept your services. Be at the shooting-box the day before the Twelfth.’”
. . . . . .
The Twelfth of August—that glorious day on Scottish hills—came round at last, and Sandie found himself starting off to the heather with Lord Hamilton and party long before sunrise. There was to be no battue shooting, none of that unfair driving so common in Yorkshire: each man walked behind his well-trained setter and retriever. This was real sport, and gave the birds a chance, as well as showing what kind of a shot each man was.
Sandie attended personally on Lord Hamilton, and gave such entire satisfaction that his lordship was loud in his praises at eventide, when he found his bag so large that two ordinary keepers were needed to carry it.
There was a great dinner-party that day in the shooting-box, and wine and wit sparkled bright and merrily; but Sandie, as soon as he had dined sumptuously in the kitchen with the other keepers, begged leave to retire, and sought the solitude of his little bedroom, where his books were, there to study as usual till far into the night.
He was up and ready for Lord Hamilton, however, some time before that gentleman appeared, and another excellent day on the hill succeeded.
Well, why need I say more about it? Each day was like another, and so the time flew on, only Sandie grew every day more brown and hard, till at the end of the six weeks he left Lord Hamilton’s service as happy as a king, with his lordship’s words of praise ringing in his head, and quite enough money jingling in his pocket to maintain him for a whole month and a week at the Grammar School.
CHAPTER VI
SMASHING A BULLY—GENTLE WILLIE MUNRO
A low large squat building, with an iron-railed quad, a building with two wings in front and two running out behind, abutting on to the grounds of the Gordon Hospital or Sillerton Boys’ School, such was the old Grammar School of Aberdeen, which has given literary birth to so many men of eminence, including the great poet Lord Byron himself.