The meeting was delayed till Professor Ross had come home from Australia, with his F.R.S. and all his other honours, for he was marked out to make the presentation; and every Drumtochty scholar within reach was enjoined to attend.
They came from Kildrummie at various hours and in many conveyances, and Hillocks checked the number at the bridge with evident satisfaction.
“Atween yesterday and the day,” he reported to Jamie, in the afternoon, “aucht and twenty scholars hae passed, no including the Professor, and there's fower expected by the next train; they'll just be in time,” which they were, to everybody's delight.
“It's a gude thing, Hillocks,” said Jamie, “that bridge was mended; there's been fifty degrees gane over it the day, Hillocks! to say naithin' o' a wecht o' knowledge.”
The Doctor had them all, thirty-three University men, with Domsie and Carmichael and Weelum MacLure, as good a graduate as any man, to dinner, and for that end had his barn wonderfully prepared. Some of the guests have written famous books since then, some are great preachers now, some are chief authorities to science, some have never been heard of beyond a little sphere, some are living, and some are dead; but all have done their part, and each man that night showed, by the grip of his hand, and the look on his face, that he knew where his debt was due.
Domsie sat on the Doctor's right hand, and the Professor on his left, and a great effort was made at easy conversation, Domsie asking the Professor three times whether he had completely recovered from the fever which had frightened them all so much in the Glen, and the Professor congratulating the Doctor at intervals on the decorations of the dinner hall. Domsie pretended to eat, and declared he had never made so hearty a dinner in his life, but his hands could hardly hold the knife and fork, and he was plainly going over the story of each man at the table, while the place rang with reminiscences of the old school among the pines.
Before they left the barn, Doctor Davidson proposed Domsie's health, and the laddies—all laddies that day—drank it, some in wine, some in water, every man from the heart, and then one of them—they say it was a quiet divine—started, In face of Doctor Davidson, “For he's a jolly good fellow,” and there are those who now dare to say that the Doctor joined in with much gusto, but in these days no man's reputation is safe.
Domsie was not able to say much, but he said more than could have been expected. He called them his laddies for the last time, and thanked them for the kindness they were doing their old master. There was not an honour any one of them had won, from a prize in the junior Humanity to the last degree, he could not mention.
Before sitting down he said that they all missed George Howe that day, and that Marget, his mother, had sent her greetings to the scholars.
Then they went to the kirk, where Drumtochty was waiting, and as Domsie came in with his laddies round him the people rose, and would have cheered had they been elsewhere and some one had led. The Doctor went into the precentor's desk and gave out the hundredth psalm, which is ever sung on great days and can never be sung dry. After which one of the thirty-three thanked the Almighty for all pure knowledge, all good books, all faithful teachers, and besought peace and joy for “our dear master in the evening of his days.”