"Oh, yes!" Scotty gasped eagerly, "easy."
"All right, we'll take to-morrow; I'll come over and help you. Good-night!"
And he turned away, leaving his pupil standing in the middle of the road amazed and humbled.
Number Nine learned during the following week that for some inexplicable reason the MacDonalds, whose hand had hitherto been against every other man's hand, were on the side of the new master, and that anyone who gave him trouble was courting dire calamities at the hands of Big Malcolm's Scot. As a direct result the fiat went forth that Dan Murphy, and consequently all his generation, also approved of the new rule. Subsequently the Tenth announced its neutrality; and from that time the new era, which had arisen at the building of the church in the social world of the Oro valley, dawned in the schoolhouse too, and the land had rest from war.
To no one did the new dispensation bring greater things than to Scotty. Ever since the days when all knowledge and wisdom could be extracted, by persistent questionings, from Hamish, he had experienced an unslakable thirst for books. He had been much more fortunate in finding reading material than his uncle had been, for Captain Herbert's library was always at Scotty's disposal. Every summer and winter Isabel came to Kirsty's laden with books, and what feasts she and Scotty had reading under the boughs of the Silver Maple or before Kirsty's fire! Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Macaulay—they devoured them all; and once, by mistake, she had brought some books by a wonderful man named Carlyle, which she declared were dreadfully stupid, but which Scotty found strangely fascinating, though somewhat beyond his understanding.
But Isabel had been away at school for more than a year now, and though she wrote Scotty voluminous letters, which he answered at shamefully long intervals, and only when Kirsty's reproaches goaded him to the effort, she had almost entirely passed out of his life.
So when there had been no more books to read he had turned his restless energies into less profitable channels. But now, here were not only books of all kinds, but a man ready and willing to interpret them. Scotty heard no more of the sentence of expulsion, and with the energy that characterised everything he did, he plunged headlong into a course of study far beyond any public school curriculum. Monteith was first amazed, then delighted, and lastly found he had to set himself severe tasks to keep sufficiently ahead of his pupil.
And in return for his pains Scotty gave an allegiance to his master that had in it something of homage. Not the gay, reckless Callum was his hero now, but this quiet, self-controlled gentleman. Unconsciously the boy copied him in every particular, and unquestioningly adopted his opinions. Monteith had seen the world, had lived in cities, and even in that magic land, "the old country," and surely he should be an authority. Scotty early learned that the new master despised the tavern, not quite in the way Store Thompson and the minister and his grandfather did, as a force of evil, but in lofty scorn of its lowness.
In consequence the boy was never found hanging about its doors any more. And though the teacher said nothing about his religious views, the pupil soon learned and adopted them too. Monteith treated all creeds with a good-natured tolerance. The Bible, he declared, was a grand piece of literature, and he liked to go to church because Mr. Cameron's sermons gave him some intellectual stimulus. Religion he characterised chiefly as an emotion. A man needed only common sense to show him how to live, he declared. Scotty felt that this was the creed for him; he had come under Monteith's control at a period when he was in revolt against all earlier restraint and rejoiced in the feeling of independence which the new belief brought.
The two soon became fast friends in their common pursuit of learning. When the second winter came, and Scotty had become too old for school, he and Monteith studied together in the long evenings, and each month of companionship served to deepen their friendship. But in spite of their intimacy the boy never elicited any explanation of his friend's strange behaviour when he first realised that Scotty's name was Stanwell. Monteith was always careful to call him Ralph, but he forebore from any allusion to the subject; and as the days went happily on the matter dropped from the boy's thoughts.