"Mr. Julian looks after himself," said Stair, brusquely; "at present he is wearing one of my grey woollen shirts, and I have not heard him complain. Go home, Joseph, and look after the house. Keep the doors locked, the guns loaded, and the dogs loose. Mr. Julian was never better in his life!"
After this Joseph complained less, and probably slept better. It had always been in his mind that perhaps this unknown Stair Garland might supplant him in the personal service of his master. But when once he understood that Stair was of a breed so extraordinary that he recognized no difference in rank between himself and his guest, that instead of proffering service, he exacted that Mr. Julian should do his fair share of the work, and finally, that many of the books he carried were designed for the enlightenment of Stair Garland, whom his master had taken as a pupil, he ceased to be jealous and became again merely serviceable.
Stair had his full share of the local thirst for knowledge, and the determination to get it in one way or another. So with the self-assertion without which a Scot ceases to be a Scot, he had fastened upon those winter months with Julian Wemyss to fill in the lacunes of Dominie McAll's instruction. A good good deal of classics, daily readings in the French and German tongues, conversation after the Socratic method—these were the pillars of Stair's temple of learning at the Bothy. And because the root of the matter had always been in him—which is the determination to excel—he progressed with a rapidity that astounded his teacher.
Every morning Julian Wemyss said to himself, "It is impossible that he can have remembered and assimilated all that we went over yesterday!" But once the breakfast-things cleared away, he found Stair as sharp-set as a terrier at a rat-hole, as it were, nosing after knowledge. Nothing seemed to come wrong to him, and if he did not understand anything, an apt question set him right, and when Stair flung up his head, his eye misty and his intelligence withdrawn, Julian Wemyss stopped also, because he understood.
"He is filing that away where he can find it," he thought to himself. And far into the night he could see reflected on the roof a faint glimmer from Stair's dark-lantern. His curiosity was aroused, and he looked into the gloomy kitchen with the heaped peats filling all the space even to the roof. There, with his feet to the smouldering fire of red ashes, lay Stair Garland, his notebooks in front of him and a volume propped against an upturned pot, threshing his way pioneer-wise through the work of the next day. Julian Wemyss went softly back to bed, but did not sleep for a long while.
"If that fellow fights for the Emperor," he said to himself, "he will do it with his head. Yet they call him the 'fechtin' fool' in these parts. The boy has never had a chance, that is all. His ambition and facility have given him the leading-place among these smugglers and defiers of the press-gang, because no other career opened itself to him. We shall see when the Good Intent comes in the spring. In the meanwhile, never tutor had such a pupil!"
Yet more marvellous were the weeks as they went past for Stair Garland. Every morning he woke fresh to the romantic adventure of books. His eyes flashed down marvellous pages, taking in their gist, and then he settled himself with a happy sigh to analyze line upon line, to warehouse precept upon precept.
Yet he did not leave any of his outside duties unattended to. He knew of every change made in the garrison at Stranryan. Fergus and Agnew came nightly to the verge of the Wild. He met with Jean at the alder copse. His father talked with him standing upon Peden's Stone, and (as he said) "tairged him tightly" for his occasional neglect in reading the Bible, which was the root of all things of good report in this world as well as in the next.
To which Julian Wemyss added that it was also the foundation of good manners and good style. For all which reasons and also because of the reverence natural to his people, Stair Garland read a good deal in the Bible, and it was the only book concerning which he asked no enlightenment from his master, Julian Wemyss.
Stair heard extracts from the letters from London which Patsy sent to her father and uncle under the frank of the Earl Raincy, but he had one or two altogether his own, and these he judged more precious than gold. They came to him by way of his sister Jean, and the trysting-place in the alder copse by the side of the Mays Water.