FROM PLOUGHSHARE TO PULPIT

A Tale of the Battle of Life

BY
GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M.
(Surgeon Royal Navy)
AUTHOR OF “THE CRUISE OF THE SNOWBIRD,” “JUST LIKE JACK,”
“CHILDREN OF THE MOUNTAIN,” ETC. ETC.

“Who walked in glory and in pride,
Following his plough along the mountain-side”

SECOND EDITION.
London
JAMES NISBET & CO.
21 BERNERS STREET
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co
At the Ballantyne Press
TO
MY OLD PROFESSOR
SIR WM. D. GEDDES
PRINCIPAL OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY
This Book is Dedicated
WITH SUNNY MEMORIES OF AULD LANG SYNE
BY
THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS

BOOK I
THE STUDENT AT HOME

FROM PLOUGHSHARE TO PULPIT

CHAPTER I
A DEATH THE MOST DREADFUL LOOMED BEFORE HIM

There was something well calculated to raise the spirits of such a man as Mackenzie on this balmy spring morning. Mackenzie was the minister of the parish of Belhaven, a parish that lies far up the winding Don, in a country that combines all the beauties of Lowland vegetation and treescape with the wilder scenery of the true Scottish Highlands.

Mac had been called to this parish when very young, but had remained here ever since, and he was now over forty, hale, handsome, and as straight as the ramrod of the old muzzle-loader he used when shooting rabbits; cheery also to a degree, and he seldom moved around anywhere without singing some old Scotch lilt or merry jig. Well, the fact is Mac’s life was a very easy one. His Church was the Established, not the Free Kirk, and he therefore was to all intents and purposes independent. He had not to depend upon the whims and caprices of the people for his salary, nor upon the state of the crops at harvest-time. Not only had he a good stipend “bound to his head,” as his parishioners phrased it, but a bonnie stretch of glebe land, quite a farm, in fact, that extended for over a mile along one bank of the river.

On this fair day in May, with its blue, blue sky and its fleecy cloudlets, against which, like little dots of darkness, the laverocks quivered and sang, the corn braird was waving green on the braes; the fields, in which sleek-coated kine were roaming, were yellow with buttercups, and starred over with gowans or mountain daisies—Burns’s “wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower”—and a cool soft breeze went sighing through the lofty pine-trees. Here cawed the busy rooks, here the magpies chattered, and the cushats croodled and moaned; but elsewhere birds were seen and heard in every direction. In the thickets of spruce the blackbird and the mavis had their nests, and their musical rivalry was delightful to listen to, while high up in the lordly rowan-tree by the minister’s gate, the merry bold chaffinch chanted loud and long, and would not be denied. But it was away across the minister’s hill, perhaps, where spring was seen in its greatest beauty to-day. It was a heather hill and a blaeberry[1] hill, and it was gilded over here and there by great patches of golden whins or furze. These were now all in compact masses of bloom, and the rich delicious odour from their blossoms—Ah! surely there is no finer perfume in nature—filled the air on every side.

There would have been silence up there to-day, save for the plaintive bleating of lambs, the occasional barking of the shepherd’s collie, the hum of bees among the whins, and the sweet tender notes of the rose-linnet perched on a thorn twig above them.

Yes, it was indeed a day to raise the spirits of any one possessed of a soul, and that is just one thing that Mackenzie had, and a very sensitive one too. Not that he was ever much cast down, even in the gloomiest or murkiest of weather, but when the sun glinted in silver radiance off the river that went singing past the old-fashioned manse, with its old-fashioned front garden, and its gate-posts made out of a whale’s jaw-bones;—when the sun was bright, I say, and warm balmy western winds were blowing, then, whether in his study or out of doors, Mackenzie could no more help singing than could the mavis on the lawn, or the starling on the one solitary poplar-tree.

Mac’s life was not a very busy one. He bothered himself far less in visiting even his sick parishioners, and praying with them or talking good things to them, than English parsons invariably do; for most of this sort of thing he could with confidence leave the honest elders of his kirk to perform. But on this particular morning it happened that one of those very elders was lying ill and must be visited. So soon after breakfast, Mac had ordered out the Shetland pony and the little four-wheel trap.

Few who have not seen these ponies in their own wild homes in Shetland, the sea-girdled peat-mosses of the Northern seas, nor seen them in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire, which county seems congenial to the development of their health and powers, could believe the strength they are able at times to put forth, and the self-willed determination they exhibit when they take an idea into their hirsute little noddles.

Larnie, the minister’s pony, was no exception. But indeed he never had been thoroughly broken, since bought for a five-pound note out of a drove at Alford market. Stuart, the minister’s orra man, or, in plain English, man-of-all-work, had pretended to break in the beastie, but Stuart hadn’t really done anything of the kind, and Mackenzie himself was easy-going and far too apt to take things for granted.

But soon Larnie with his little trap was on the gravel in front of the porch, and looking full of life and spirit, despite the fact that Stuart held him not only by the bridle but by the snout as well; and the little animal casting sharp sidelong glances towards the house, kept scraping up the gravel as if impatient to be off.

“Maggie May! Maggie May! are ye coming?” shouted the minister as he strolled out. “It’s a heavenly morning, my lassie.”

Maggie May had appeared in the porch for just a moment in answer to the summons.

A sweet-faced girl of little over twelve, but tall for her years, with blue eyes, an intelligent face, and a wealth of brown hair flowing loose over her shoulders. A slight shade of sadness seemed natural to her, but rather increased than detracted from her singular beauty.

But a smile lit up that bonnie face of hers when she went to smooth and cuddle Larnie.

“Come,” Larnie appeared to say, if ponies’ eyes can speak, “kissing is all very well, but I want some more substantial proof of the affection you pretend to have for me.”

Back to the house ran Maggie May, and next minute had returned with a delicious slab of well-baked white oatcake, and Larnie was happy for once. “Yes, father, I will gladly go with you; I have merely my cloak to put on.”

. . . . . .

The day was so truly delightful that Mackenzie would have been glad to drive quite leisurely in order to enjoy the sweet spring scenery. But Larnie took another view of the matter. He scented oats at the other end of the journey, and determined to push on and have the business over.

The flowers were nodding in dingle and dell; the young crimson-tasselled larch-trees brightened many a hillside; the rich yellow primroses peeped coyly up at their feet; the silver-stemmed birch-trees were drooping on the braelands, their sweet-scented foliage still weeping with the dews of night; but nothing of all this saw Larnie—his thoughts were on oats intent.

Many a strange and beautiful wild bird made wood and welkin ring with his glad notes, but Larnie heard not the songs. Up yonder in a green corn patch a hare pauses in the act of washing his face, that he may sit up and stare curiously at the fast flying equipage—Larnie takes no heed. Rabbits in little groups of five or six scurry here and there among the boulders on bare hillsides, but Larnie takes not the slightest notice. Oats alone absorb his thoughts, so on he flies.

The road was a very winding one. It kept well away from the river, though sometimes approaching it. It was up hill and down dell too, and Larnie was wise enough to get up extra speed when rushing down a hill, so that the momentum might carry the vehicle half-way up the next hill. This is the Highland plan of driving, and in some ways is sensible enough.

But now they were within half-a-mile of the most dangerous part of all the road, for here there was a terribly steep descent, with a high precipice and sharp curve right at the bottom. More than one fatal accident had already taken place at this place, so Mackenzie set himself to the task of immediately restraining the impetuosity of his Shetland steed. This he might have succeeded in doing without much difficulty, but for once fate seemed against him, for just at that moment a hare suddenly bounded from a bush of broom, and crossed the path almost among Larnie’s feet. So startling an apparition caused the nervous little animal to lose all control over himself. Larnie felt as if under the influence of some dreadful nightmare, and I am convinced this is precisely how horses do feel under such circumstances, and off he dashed at a speed that was perfectly uncontrollable by his driver, and which would have been so even had he been a younger and stronger man.

Death, and a death the most dreadful, loomed before him and his little daughter. When they should make the descent and reach the precipice, nothing on earth could save them!

The ground beneath goes rushing past like a grey bewildering mist, the bank at each side, with its greenery of ferns and its wild flowers yellow and crimson, glides by like a lovely rainbow. Maggie May sits quiet and pale, holding on to the side of the trap; Mackenzie himself has almost ceased his futile endeavours to rein up, and abandoned himself to fate, yet his lips are moving in prayer.

And now they are within a hundred—seventy—fifty yards of the dreaded brae that has death at its foot.

Soon all will be over for ever and for aye.

. . . . . .

But see, while still within thirty yards of the hill, a stalwart young figure, who has been reading by the bush-side, takes cognisance of the situation at a glance. He drops the book, and next moment has sprung into the road.

Will he succeed in catching the reins? That is the momentous question. And if he catches them, will all his young strength suffice to restrain the speed of that equine demon? He has but a moment to brace himself for action. Next instant he has sprung like catamount upon its prey.

Brave lad! The attempt so manfully made has succeeded. Yes, he is successful, but the trap is overturned, and he himself has been dragged and is sadly stunned.

What matters that? we may say. He has saved two precious lives, for both Mackenzie and his little daughter are unhurt—intact.

But who is the hero? Who is this bold yet unfortunate stranger?

CHAPTER II
AT THE OLD FARM OF KILBUIE

The farm of Kilbuie was by no means of large dimensions, though it was a farm, and not merely a croft. Nor was it, at the time our story commences, in very flourishing conditions, for only one year ago more than twenty head of fat cattle had been taken dead from the byres, a sad and almost irreparable loss to honest Farmer M‘Crae, or “Kilbuie,” as he was more often called, according to the custom of the country.

That last summer and autumn had been a disastrous one all through, for besides the loss in fat cattle, a cow had succumbed in calving, a splendid horse had died; then in the autumn, ere the corn was cut, but when it was all ablaze and ready for the scythe, there had come a terrible storm of wind and hail, and the destruction to the standing crop was pitiable. There was lost at least as much seed as would have sufficed to sow the ground twice over.

“The hand of the Lord is against me,” said the farmer sadly and piously. And he tried to remember what sins he had been guilty of, that he might “repent,” as he phrased it, in “sackcloth and ashes.”

But there were really many far worse and more wicked men in the world than honest Farmer M‘Crae. He hadn’t a neighbour all around who would not have trusted him with their uttermost farthing. Indeed, every Friday, when he took his butter, eggs, and milk to the far-off city of Aberdeen by train, to dispose of in the New Market, his neighbours sent with him large sums of money to bank, and gave him many important commissions besides.

Then, as far as the internal economy and discipline of the farm and farm-steading were concerned, everything was as complete as could be desired.

Kilbuie lay some miles from the river, well into the quiet, still, beautiful country indeed, and at the foot of a highish hill, around whose lower portions grew the golden furze and the bonnie yellow broom, but on whose braes in autumn the heather bloomed purple and crimson. It was a romantic kind of a spot, because there was also not far off a pine wood of tall weird trees, branchless till near their summits, and with no undergrowth, though the ground was soft carpeted with the withered fir-needles of many a long year. This wood was dark even by daylight, and gazing into it from the fields on a summer’s day gave one the idea one was looking into some gloomsome pillared cave. This wood was the home, par excellence, of the cushat or wild pigeon, whose mournful croodling could be heard all day long. But here hares also dwelt, and the cony had many a well-arranged and comfortable burrow. On the whole, although the wood occupied more than a score of acres of the farm, it paid its way after a fashion, for it required no cultivation, it afforded excellent sport, and it kept the larder full when the purchase of meat would have been entirely out of the question, for more reasons than one.

The live stock and working plant of Kilbuie farm consisted of two pairs of sturdy horses and an orra beast. There is no word in the English language that could do duty for the term “orra.” An orra horse is one, say, about thirteen or fourteen hands high, and perhaps half-blooded. He is capable of doing duty either in a gig or a single harrow, or he will pull a large roller; you can ride on him to church or market, mill or smithy; and so long as he has enough to eat and drink, he is by no means particular as to the quality. He will eat good oats with relish, but he won’t refuse poor hay or even thistles, and I have known one drink sour beer or butter-milk, and smack his lips after it. He is generally good-natured and willing to do anything to oblige, and I do believe he likes his orra life and his constant change of employment.

Well, as there was an orra beast or horse, so there also was an orra man, and his were odd jobs also. To be sure, he did not milk the cows or kye—the indoor servant lassie Jeannie did that—but he fed and attended to them; he took them out in the morning and in at night, and he also attended well to the orra horse, did work in the garden, ran errands, and did everything he was told, like the willing and honest lad his master called him. He was up with the lark in the morning, and in summer-time to bed with the mavis at night.

His name was Geordie Black. But nobody ever thought of putting the Black to his Christian name. Geordie was just Geordie to all and sundry, and nothing more.

There being two pairs of horses, two horsemen were necessary. The first, or best pair, was worked by a tall, hardy, and handsome young fellow, as smart as some ancient Norseman, as tough as an old sea-king. He rejoiced in the simple name of Jamie Duncan, and took the greatest pride possible in his tall and handsome horses. He spared no pains in grooming them, so that what with the brush and the currycomb, and an occasional wash, there were no horses in all the countryside whose hides glittered and glanced as did Jamie’s. When Jamie marched them to the distant smithy to get their shoes seen to, riding sideways on one of them, and singing to himself some old Scotch lilt, the animals elicited universal praise and encomiums. Then Jamie was a happy man indeed.

Nearly all his spare time of an evening was devoted to cleaning the harness of his pets, till the black became like polished jet, and the brass like burnished gold.

Oh, I am not going to say that Jamie had not a sweetheart that he went to see at times, but I do aver that not even for her did he ever neglect the comfort of his horses.

Well, the other pair of horses were worked and seen to equally well by the farmer’s only son, while the only daughter, a blithe and intelligent lassie of sixteen, assisted her mother and Jeannie with the household work, the making of butter and cheese, cooking and cleaning. Jeannie was always cheerful, always merry, never frivolous. Like every one else in this book, she is a character from the real life, and while writing about her, I cannot possibly banish from my mind a bonnie old Scottish song, one verse of which I may be allowed to give, because it paints Jeannie herself. It is called—

THE NAMELESS LASSIE.

There’s nane may ever guess or tell
My bonnie lassie’s name;
There’s nane may ken the humble cot
My lassie ca’s her hame.
Yet, though my lassie’s nameless,
Her kin o’ low degree,
Her heart is warm, her thoughts are pure,
And oh! she’s dear to me!

The farm-steading of Kilbuie lay fully four miles back from the river, into the interior of the wild and beautiful country, a country but little known to the wandering Englishman, but romantic enough in all conscience, and rendered famous if only from the fact that here Robert the Bruce lay long in hiding before he made his grand and successful attempt to secure his kingdom and free his land from the tyranny of the Saxon invader. It is a country of hills and dells, of wood and water, lochs and roaring streams; a country almost every acre of which has been in days long gone by a battle-field; and hardly can you walk a mile here without stumbling upon the ruins of some feudal castle. Could these strongholds but speak, what tales we should have to listen to—tales that would cause our very heart’s blood to tingle, and nervous cold to run down our spines!

Although four miles from the river and about the same distance from a railway station, the farm was not over a quarter of a mile from a main road, being connected therewith by a level straight road, with a ditch at each side, called the “long loanings.” On each side the fields, level and green, were spread out, and all were surrounded by sturdy stone fences called dikes. A dike in England means a ditch, in Scotland it signifies a wall of loose stones—that is, stones built up without any lime.

The fields around Kilbuie were not, however, all level. By no means. There were hills on the farm so steep that it taxed all the ingenuity of the men to plough or harrow them.

A word about the steading itself. There was in front the square-built unpretentious square house, with bow windows below, and a good old-fashioned garden in front, a garden in which grew vegetables of all kinds, bar potatoes, and whose borders round about were filled with gooseberry and rose trees time about, with fine old-fashioned flowers between. Behind the house was the steading proper, and which was similar to those we see in England, with one most important exception, a dirty dunghill did not lie between the living house and the cattle houses. This is an unsanitary arrangement never beheld in Scotland. Such places are kept well away from the stable, byre, and dwelling-house.

It spoke well, I think, for Farmer M‘Crae’s kindliness of heart and manner, that none of his servants had left him for the last four years, nor were thinking of leaving him even now. You see, he never was a tyrant, and he as often as not took Jamie into consultation before carrying out any plan or beginning any new piece of work. Farmer M‘Crae was not much over forty, though his son was eighteen. He had married very young, but it seems never had had reason to repent it, for he was always happy and cheerful, even in situations where other men might have been much cast down, as during his recent terrible losses of cattle and corn. There were just two things, however, that Kilbuie insisted on: one was the presence of all the servants and family in the best room every evening to family worship; a chapter read from the Book of Books; a prayer and short dissertation from Norman Macleod’s book. That was all, short and simple, and every one felt the better for it. The son’s name was simple enough in all conscience. It was Sandie.

There were few more handsome lads in all the parish round than Sandie. You might have taken him to be two-and-twenty from his build and general deportment, and from the incipient whisker on his cheek and hair on his upper lip. His cheeks and lips were the rosiest ever seen, while his very blue eyes sparkled with ruddy health. Yet had he many ways that might have been called almost childish.

That evening, for instance, before the accident to the minister’s trap, Sandie entered the best room, where, near to the fire—the evenings are cold even in May in the far north of Scotland—his gentle mother sat knitting.

He took a low stool, and, seating himself by her knee, laid his head in her lap.

He had a little book in his hand, a Latin classic, Virgil to wit; but though his forefinger retained his place, he was not looking at it now. He was gazing at the fire. He gazed thus for some time, while his mother smoothed his brow with her soft hands.

“Is my laddie tired?”

“I dinna know, mother. Sometimes I’m happy and hopeful that I’ll take a bursary,[2] at other times I’m dull and wae and think I won’t.”

“Weel, laddie, you maun keep up your heart and pray.”

“Oh, yes, of course, mother, but I must work as well as pray. I think you’d better do the principal part of the praying, and I’ll do the work. The Lord is more likely to listen to you, mother, than to sinful me.”

“Whisht! Sandie; whisht! laddie. But pray I do, mornin’, noon, and nicht. Ay, and my boy is clever, too. I’ll hear him preachin’ yet in one of the best pulpits in a’ broad Scotland. And oh! Sandie, that will be a happy, happy day to me.”

The thoughts of it caused the tears to flow to the good lady’s eyes, and a lump to rise in her throat that for the time being effectually arrested speech.

“Well, mother, you see it’s like this. Work as I may, I come upon bits o’ hitches here and there that I can’t get over. I have nobody to help me, and can’t afford a tutor. Again, you see I have nobody else to compare my knowledge with. In the parish of Drumlade here, our minister is too old; I wouldn’t think of worrying him, and I don’t know Mackenzie of Belhaven, though they do say he is very clever, and was in his day a first bursar at King’s College in Auld Aberdeen.”

“Well, live in hope, my boy, and work awa’.”

“That is just what I mean to do.”

“And may be the Lord will raise you up a frien’.”

“Who can tell?”

Sandie was silent for a while. Then he raised himself up till his glance could meet that of his mother.

“O mother, dear,” he said gleefully, “won’t it be nice when I’m a minister, and when I get a call! It must be to some bonnie country parish, mother. I couldn’t stand the noisy town. I must hear the wild birds sing, see the wild flowers bloom, and listen to the winds sighing through the pine-trees. I must be near a stream where on bonnie summer evenings I can fish and read. My manse must be a bonnie one, too, surrounded by trees and fine old-fashioned gardens. Mother, I already can hear the church-bell ringing on the Sabbath morn, and I can see you and father—for, of course, you both will live with me—coming arm in arm through the auld kirkyard to the church-door, and slowly up the passage to your pew beneath the pulpit stairs. Oh, it will be a happy life! But now, mother, I’m off to my study, to struggle another hour or two with Virgil. I’ll be in again in time for supper. Ta-ta, mother.”

And off strode Sandie, and his mother resumed her knitting, the tear, however, still glancing in her eye.

CHAPTER III
THE PLOUGHMAN-STUDENT AT HOME

Sandie M‘Craw’s study was unique in its way. To get to it he had to enter the stable first, then scramble up a straight ladder fastened against the wall, and so through a trap-door. This landed him in a large granary and straw loft. There was a window at the far end, and around this window Sandie, with his own hands, had boarded off a portion about ten feet square. Here were a table, a chair, and some rough book-shelves, and this was Sandie’s study.

It was comfortable enough in summer nights, but when in winter the window was banked high with snow, when the winds howled wild and drear without, and the temperature had sunk almost to zero, then study in such a room was something of a hardship.

But although night was really the only time Sandie had for study, he never gave in. And in the darkest, dreariest nights of winter you might have found him here, his bonnet pulled down over his ears, a Scottish plaid rolled round his chest, and a horse-rug over his knees, deep in the learned intricacies of Juvenal, Horace, Homer, or Livy, or translating English into Latin and Greek, calm, sleepless, defiant of Boreas or any wind whatever. And strangers passing along the high-road at midnight, ay, or even long past that hour, would see the light blinking from the little window, and know that Sandie M‘Crae, the ploughman-student, as he was usually called, was hard at work.

It is not too much to say that Sandie was almost an enthusiast in his studies, so no wonder he sat late, night after night, in that rustic little chamber of his, where there was no sound to disturb him, save outside, now and then, the barking of Tyro, the bawsent-faced collie, or the crowing of some wakeful cock, and inside, beneath him, the occasional sound of a horse’s hoof upon the brick floor. Yes, Sandie was an enthusiast, and so the time glided very quickly by. The rolling thunder-laden lines of Homer carried the lad quite away; the poems of Horace, so full of scenes of country life, were music to his ear, the Bucolics of Virgil brought before his mind’s eye such visions of rustic beauty, of rural joys, as fairly dazzled his senses; while to him the bonnie wee Greek songs of Anacreon gave a pleasure he could not well define, except by saying that Anacreon was the Burns of Greece. But Sandie revelled in History as well. He was with the Greeks in their wondrous march as described by Xenophon; he went into raptures with the soldiers when they saw the sea. Nor were the Romans forgotten. Livy was an especial favourite with Sandie. Cæsar he considered too simple, but Cicero, in his grand Orations, was truly a delight. And strangely enough, while reading either Cicero or Livy, he could quite identify himself with every scene that was spread out before him. He was no longer sitting on a hard-bottomed chair by a rustic table in a grain loft. No, he was in the midst of great, busy, bustling Rome. Blue skies were shining over him, the green of the orange-tree was in every garden, flowers and fruit were everywhere, while around him was a strangely dressed multitude whose every attitude appealed to him. Or he would be lounging in the baths or in the Forum, or in the great theatres, while sometimes, sword in hand, he would be fighting by a bridge or on the city walls. Is it any wonder, I ask, that the time glided quickly by till Sandie’s immense great silver turnip of a watch warned him that it was what Burns calls—

“The wee short hoor ayont the twal?”

Then what do you think my hero did? Well, he slowly closed his books to begin with; then he reached him down a tiny New Testament which had been translated into Greek. From this he read a chapter, then he quietly knelt him down to pray. It is but fair to my hero to say that he was not what might be called greedy or ambitious in his prayers. The part of the Lord’s Prayer, for instance, which is most difficult of all for poor mankind to pray, is that which says, “Thy will be done on earth.” But Sandie had somehow mastered that, so that, in making his wishes known to Heaven, just as a child does and ought to, to its earthly father, this earnest student never forgot to append the words, “if it be for my good.” So might Heaven bless his one grand ambition to become a clergyman in the Church of Scotland.

He could not conceal from himself, however, what a dark and troublesome ocean there was to navigate before ever he could reach the goal he had set his face towards. Sometimes his heart would sink with doubts and fears as he thought of the little likelihood there was of his being successful. He was positively almost penniless, and he had never a friend in all the wide, wide world, even had he not been too proud to accept pecuniary assistance, while his parents were far too poor to assist him. No, it must be bursary or not bursary—bursary or utter failure.

After Sandie had said his prayers, he lit his lantern, blew out his oil lamp, and started for the house. Tyro, the dear kind-hearted collie, always met him at the stable door, and always insisted on dancing a ram-reel with him before permitting him to go. But ten minutes after this ram-reel, poor Sandie M‘Crae was sleeping the sleep of the tired and weary. This ploughman-student possessed, however, wonderful recuperative powers, for he always awakened by eight o’clock, feeling as fresh as a mountain trout, to begin the hard day’s manual labour on the farm.

I should say he was awakened every morning, and by no less a personage than Tyro, the beautiful and wise collie. Exactly at a quarter to eight every morning, this doggie used to run feathering up the stairs, open his master’s door with a bang, and arouse him by licking his cheek and ear with soft, warm, loving tongue. There was a stream ran by at no great distance from the house, and in the stream a deep brown pool, or pot, as it is called in Scotland. Into this, winter or summer, all the long year through, Sandie and Tyro plunged, revelled for a few minutes, and then would Sandie dry himself and dress.

Breakfast would be eaten—porridge, that blithesome Jeannie knew so well how to make, and bread and milk to follow. No, no tea; Sandie cared but little for it, and was glad of this, for he knew it affected the nerves and produced sleeplessness. Why, tea-drinking might really ruin all his prospects!

. . . . . .

On that beautiful morning in May described in my first chapter, Sandie had an errand to a distant mill by the Donside. There was no great hurry; the work on the farm was somewhat slack at present; ploughing was of course all over, the potatoes had been planted a month ago, and were peeping blue and green above the drills, and even turnip-sowing had been finished, and the young leaflets were already appearing in long lines of emerald along the centre of the flattened ridges. It was the horses’ holiday season, and Sandie wouldn’t have taken even Lord Raglan, the orra beast, away from the delights of that beautiful meadow, where all five of them waded pastern-deep in the richest grass and whitest of white clover, pausing now and then in the act of eating to stand neck to neck and nibble each other’s shoulders.

No, Sandie would walk—he would dawdle along the road, and enjoy the sight of all the happy creatures he might see on every side of him, trees and birds and flowers, and even the shoals of minnows that wantoned and gambolled in the sunlit pools, or the blithe little frogs that leapt lightly through the still dewy grass. But Sandie took a companion with him—a companion, too, well suited for just such a day as this—and that companion was his good friend Horace, who had been to him a solace many a day and many a year.

There was one particular poem that struck Sandie as very beautiful and true to nature. In order to enjoy it more thoroughly, he had seated himself on a bank under the shade of a silver birch. He was now on the main road, and not a very long way from the mill. While still reading, there had fallen upon his ears the rapid rattling of a swiftly advancing trap, and the sound of a horse’s hoofs coming onwards at full gallop. Sandie took in the situation at a glance. He knew the extreme danger of the hill and the precipice, and resolved to act on the spur of the moment, even although it was at the risk of his own life.

How bravely and how well he acted we already know, and we also know how successful he was, though, alas! so sadly stunned and wounded.

Luckily, while Larnie was still plunging on the ground, the minister sitting on his head, and poor Sandie lying so stark and still, two countrymen came up. The trap and pony, from whom now all spunk had clean gone, were righted, and Larnie’s head turned homewards.

Sandie was got on board and made as easy as possible, and a doctor being sent for, Larnie was driven slowly homewards.

The ploughman-student never spoke, but he was breathing.

Mackenzie had bound up his wounded head with his own and Maggie May’s handkerchiefs, and the bleeding was in a measure staunched,

. . . . . .

“Mother, mother, where am I?”

It was the first words Sandie had spoken for a long weary week. It was the first time he had opened his eyes.

“Where am I?”

He well might ask this. He was in a room which, as far as beauty of furnishing went, was as unlike his own little bed-closet as Paradise might be supposed to be unlike a kitchen garden. The prettily dressed mantelpiece, the cheerful paper on the walls, the mirrors, the brackets, the pictures and flowers, all combined to cause Sandie to think he was in a dream.

Besides, by the window-side, sewing some white seam, sat a beautiful child, that Sandie thought must be a fairy.

But his own mother was not far away; she was seated knitting near his pillow.

“The Lord’s name be praised,” she said fervently. “He has heard my prayer, and my laddie will live. But ye maunna speak, my dearie, ye maunna talk. The doctor says, ‘No.’ And the doctor kens best.”

“But, mother, one question: What has happened?”

Little Maggie May now dropped her white seam and advanced towards the bed.

The tears were chasing each other adown the child’s face.

“Larnie, our pony, ran off,” she said simply; “father was driving, but couldn’t hold him. We were close to Cauldron Hill, and would all have been killed; but you jumped up and catched the bridle and stopped us. Only you got hurt. Father says God sent you, you dear, dear boy.”

Sandie did not speak for a few moments. He had but little breath.

“I think,” he said, “that God must have sent me. But don’t cry, because I’ll soon get better.”

“It is—it is—for joy I’m crying now.”

“What is your name, child?”

“My name is Maggie May. But I’m not a child.”

“Well, when I opened my eyes I took you for a fairy, and——”

What more he would have said may never be known, for just then the doctor entered the room. He smiled to find Sandie awake, re-dressed his wounds, then gave him a draught, and commanded silence.

The fairy went back to her white seam; Mrs. M‘Crae once more took up her knitting; Sandie’s eyelids began to droop; wave after wave of sleep appeared to roll up and over his brain, and soon he was once more in the land of forgetfulness.

CHAPTER IV
AN IDYLLIC LIFE

When Sandie awoke again, he felt so much fresher, lightsomer, and better, and was admitted by the doctor to be so far recovered that he was permitted to sit up a little and engage in conversation with his mother and gentle little nurse, Maggie May.

The latter interested Sandie very much indeed. He had never before seen a child-girl half so lovely. To him she was idyllic, a poem, a dream-child. It seemed to this romantic ploughboy-student as if Maggie May—what a sweet name, too!—had flown straight out from the pages of Anacreon.

Of course there may have been a good deal of super-sentimentality about all this, for the mind is always more sensitive when the body is feeble and weak; and weak Sandie still was, and would be for many a day. However, it may be confessed, before we go any farther, that Maggie May was an innocent, artless, and a very beautiful child.

I have myself an opinion that no girl can be really beautiful who is not truly good, whose heart is not imbued with religion and in touch with nature. If the soul, in all truthfulness, does not shine through the eyes, be they brown or be they blue, then, ah! me, beauty is far, far away. And yet many girls now-a-days think that the more closely they approach in figure, face, and complexion to the waxen dummies we see in the windows of hairdressers the prettier they must be. A greater mistake could not be made. Let me say earnestly to every girl who may read these lines, “Cultivate mind and soul if you wish to become beautiful.”

This is a digression, and I apologise for it, and proceed with my true story.

A day or two afterwards, Sandie’s sister came over to the manse, and the mother went home.

Maggie May and she soon became fast friends, and together it was evident they would soon nurse Sandie back to life.

Maggie May possessed a zither, on which, for so young a girl, she played charmingly, singing thereto old Scotch songs, such as “The Flowers of the Forest,” “The Parting,” “Wae’s me for Prince Charlie,” and other Jacobite lilts, that caused the tears to come welling up into Sandie’s eyes till he could see nothing for the mist they produced; for Sandie was still very weak and hysterical.

The minister came daily, twice a day, to see the patient. One day he brought Sandie’s Horace.

“Do you mean to tell me, Sandie,” said the minister, “that you read Latin?”

“Oh, yes, just a little. And a little Greek,” he added.

Mackenzie patted his thin white hand, and looked wonderingly down into his pinched and worn face.

From that moment Sandie knew he had found a friend.

Then he told him all—all his ambitions, all his struggles, and all his doubts and fears.

Mackenzie was silent for a time after he had ceased speaking. Then he took Sandie’s hand in his. “Listen!” he said. “I was a bursar at my University, or I would not be where I am now, for my people were only fisher-folks at Peterhead. I was a bursar, and I have ever since kept up my classics. Now, I can put you in the way of working up for the Grand Competition at the end of October, if you care to come over here about twice or thrice a week.”

Once more came that wildering mist of tears to Sandie’s weak eyes. “The Lord be praised and you be thanked,” he said, pressing Mackenzie’s hand. “He has raised me up a friend, and I am more happy now and hopeful than I have ever been in life.”

For another whole week Sandie was still so weak as to be unable to leave his room; then he was able to totter out into the minister’s garden, and seat himself on the summer-seat, in the warm spring sunshine, in the healthful bracing breath of the sweetest month in all the year.

Maggie May went with him, and sat near him, and read to him little stories, in which he pretended to take great interest, though it really was the story-teller, not the story, he was studying all the time. Soon after his first out-going, young blood began to assert itself, and he somehow felt ashamed of being ill or a patient. He was getting rapidly stronger, at all events, and one morning announced his intention of going home. The minister knew it would be useless to argue with him. Genius is wilful, and there was every probability even now that Sandie would eventually prove that he possessed genius. “What is genius after all,” said somebody, or words to this effect, “but the capability of plodding and steady work?” I am certainly not prepared to agree with this. Genius depends greatly on brain power and brain formation. I never would expect much except a grunt from a sow, however much she applied herself to study.

Sandie went home. The spring and merry May were now almost gone. The joy of June would soon be here. The men, and even Jeannie, the simple servant lassie, were busily engaged thinning the young turnips. As Sandie drove slowly down the loanings in the gig, he could hear their merry voices as they talked and laughed, with now and then Jeannie’s gentle voice raised in song, to which Jamie appended a deep broad bass. The horses were still in the fields as he had seen them last—Glancer nibbling the shoulder of Tippet, Tippet nibbling that of Glancer, the best proof one horse can give his fellow that he loves and respects him.

The banks by the dike and ditch-sides were now all ablaze with the most charming wild-flowers. I might be accused of making copy were I to mention the half of them; but on the water itself floated the spotlessly white water-anemone and the wild forget-me-not. On the banks near by nodded the crimson ragged-robin and blood-red selené. They seemed to be looking at and admiring their own sweet faces reflected from the pools beneath. But the banks were also patched with sky-blue speedwells, starred over with great, solemn-looking, oxeye daisies, and backed by a profusion of the tall and lordly purple orchis.

Sandie took all this in at a glance. His own humble home was the chief part of the picture before him; the banks of wild-flowers, and the clear flowing wee burns or streamlets, were but settings.

His doctor had warned him that he must not use his study for some days to come. Sandie had promised, and he determined to obey. Well, he could not work just yet, so he determined to fall back upon Robbie Burns and Anacreon. With a volume of each in his pocket, he went to the fields every day, and just dawdled along behind the workers, the rooks in turn following up at a respectful distance behind all. Sandie read to the workers, and read so pleasantly, that one moment he would have all hands laughing enough to scare the very rooks, and next the men-folks looking solemn and sad, and the salt, salt tear in Jeannie’s eyes. Dear me! what a power there is in poetry and song when it is well and feelingly read! Somehow I cannot help thinking that, to read poetry well, the reader himself must be possessed of a portion of the divine afflatus.

“Well, mother,” said Sandie one evening, just after June had come in, “I’ve made up my mind to go in for the bursary competition in the end of October. I can but fail.”

“You winna fail, laddie. I’ll pray.”

“Ah! mother, prayer is only one thing. I’m going to work.”

“You winna kill yoursel’?”

“No fears, mother. Honest work never killed anybody, though the hoofs of a daft Shetland pony skilfully applied might. No; I’m going to work, mother mine, and go over twice a week to see Minister Mackenzie. It really is good of him to promise to put me on the straight road, isn’t it?”

“It is, laddie. It was mebbe all for the best that the pony hurt you.”

“I think it was.”

“God moves in a mysterious way, Sandie.”

“He does, mother; but now there is something else worrying me. Should I succeed in getting a bursary, that, with the addition of a little pupil-teaching, will be enough to support me, won’t father miss my work very much all winter?”

“We maun do the best we can, laddie; that maunna stand in the way o’ your advancement. Na, na, Sandie; banish a’ sich thochts frae your heid.”

“Weel then, mother, I’ll make my first run over to the minister’s to-morrow, and to save time I’ll ride on Lord Raglan. He’ll be turned into one of Mackenzie’s fields till I’m ready to come back.”

. . . . . .

That was one of the most pleasant day’s outings that ever Sandie had had, and there were many such to follow during the long sweet summer days.

Mackenzie was simply astonished at the amount of the lad’s erudition. He, however, managed to put him right in many little things; that is, there were subjects that Sandie had been studying, and studying hard too, which would not be required of him while competing for a bursary. It would be obviously worse than useless to continue with these. So the minister was of real service to our ploughboy-student.

But Mackenzie was wise in his day and generation. No one knew better than he that a brain kept constantly on the rack soon becomes a weakened brain, and that poverty of blood and body follows. So on the days when Sandie came over to the manse, the kindly minister just granted him three hours of tuition in the forenoon; then came luncheon, and after that he was sent off to fish. On these little piscatorial forays, Sandie’s constant companion was little Maggie May. None knew better than she where the best

and biggest mountain trout lay, or where to use fly and where to fish with bait; and her knowledge she invariably communicated to her big companion. And he—well, he never had been very much of a fisherman, but now it seemed to him that he was less artistic than ever. If the truth must be told, he could not do so much as he could have wished, because he wanted to watch Maggie May. There was something in every look and movement of this beautiful child, and in her innocent prattle as well, that drew Sandie irresistibly towards her. To his way of thinking she was idyllic.

Was he falling in love with the bonnie bairn? Oh, I do not wish for a single moment to suggest anything of the sort; only be it remembered that Sandie really was a poet at heart, and that poets love all things lovely that they see around them.

Towards six o’clock sport always ended, and with their bags on their backs, and fishing-rods over their shoulders, they went together slowly back to the manse.

Dinner followed. Mackenzie would always insist on his pupil staying to dinner. Then, in the calm summer’s gloaming, Sandie would bid his friends adieu, mount Lord Raglan, and ride slowly home. Mrs. M‘Crae and his father invariably sat up for him, and he had always much that was hopeful to tell them. But he must even yet spend a few hours in his study; for, pleasant though they were, Sandie could not help looking upon those fishing excursions as so much time wasted or thrown away. Therefore he resorted to his rustic study in the corn loft, and there he would sometimes sit till grey daylight in the morning. This at the summer’s height is not necessarily very late, for, far away north in Aberdeenshire, about mid-summer, there is really very little darkness.

But never, I ween, did sleeper sleep more sweetly than did Sandie when his head was at last on the pillow. Slumber stole over his senses—immediate, instantaneous—and he never awoke until Tyro the collie put his paws on the bed and licked his ear; and thus for the present was his life almost an idyllic one. Alas! this is a kind of life that does not last long with any one in this weary world.

CHAPTER V
SORROW NEVER COMES SINGLY—CHRIST-LIKE CHRISTIANITY

I don’t think there is a more truthful aphorism in our language than that which tells us that sorrows seldom come singly.

Fortune or fate had dealt so very hardly with honest Farmer Kilbuie last season, that he might reasonably have expected now some surcease of sorrow—a respite, if not indeed a flow of good luck. Alas! it was otherwise.

The turnips had been thinned and earthed up—they were already beginning to cover the drills—and the haymaking season was in full blow. It was hot sunshine now every day, with now and then a gentle breeze blowing from westward or south, a breeze that blew through the tossed and tumbled hay and made and “won” it.

There was still a good deal to cut down, however, and Sandie himself was walking behind the reaping-machine with the great horse Glancer dragging. This machine not only cut the hay, but tossed it into wreaths.

Sandie didn’t look particularly like a student or genius at present. He wore little save a blue checked shirt, his trousers, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, inside which was a cabbage leaf as a security against sunstroke.

The mowing went merrily on.

In another part of the field the servants, with Mr. M‘Crae himself, were busily and cheerfully engaged among the hay that had been cut down yesterday, and which was already dry enough to put into “cocks” or “coles.”

Sandie was just about half-way down a ridge, when he pulled up to wipe his wet perspiring brow. Just at that moment Glancer threw up his head and emitted a kind of pained and stifled cry. He reeled for a moment, then fell heavily on his side. Coup de soleil, or sunstroke, without a shadow of doubt.

Mr. M‘Crae and the servants saw the poor horse fall, and hurried at once to Sandie’s assistance. At first an attempt was made to raise the animal, but this was found impossible; the neck drooped, the legs were paralysed. M‘Crae had always been his own veterinary surgeon, and perhaps knew quite as much about the ailments of cattle and horses as did the drunken little smith and farrier who lived in the neighbouring village. So Glancer’s harness was unloosened, a bundle of soft dry hay was placed under his head, and a canvas shelter was erected to save him from the burning rays of the sun. His poor head, too, was kept constantly wet with the coldest of water, and now and then his tongue was pulled to one side, and a cooling draught administered.

Sandie and Jamie never left him all that day; Jeannie brought their dinner out to the field, and their supper also, and they ate it beside the dying Glancer.

Poor Tyro, the collie, seemed to know he was in the presence of death. He sat or lay, though not asleep, near to the horse till the end, often heaving deep sighs, for the farm nags were all special favourites of his.

Tyro really was a faithful and kind-hearted dog. I need not tell the reader he was wise, because he was a Scottish collie, and collies are the kings of the race canine. Yes, he was loving and gentle, and he was an excellent guard by night. Once upon a time he surprised a hawker-tramp robbing the fowl-house. Tyro did not fly at the man and bite him, as a less sensible dog would have done. No, he simply placed that fowl-house, with the itinerant hardware merchant inside, in a state of siege.

“If you dare to come out,” Tyro told him, “I will cut your throat, as certain as sunrise.”

So the unhappy man preferred capture to a cut throat; and when M‘Crae came round in the grey dawn, he found the tramp, and in due course he was landed in prison.

But in the interests of truth, I must state here that Tyro had one fault, and a very sad one it was. In company with another dog, a smooth-coated cross ’twixt a greyhound and collie, he used in the season to go hunting the turnip-fields for hares or rabbits. They worked very systematically, Spot going into the field to start the game and chase it towards the gate, where Tyro lay in wait to seize and kill it. In this way they sometimes laid dead as many as six or eight hares a night, bringing home one each in the grey of the morn, and hiding the others to be recovered by degrees.

Tyro had even been accused of sheep-killing, but the crime was brought home to another dog, and Tyro left without a stain on his character.

Just as the sun had dipped behind the wooded hills of the west, and gloaming shadows began to fill up the hollows, it was evident that great Glancer’s minutes were numbered. The fast glazing eye and the stertorous breathing told the watchers that. Soon after, he had a few fits of shivering, one last long sigh, and then he lay still—all was over.

Jamie Duncan had kept up till now, but when he heard that sigh, and knew the horse was dead, he lost all control over himself, and threw himself on the body in a paroxysm of grief and tears.

You must remember he was an illiterate ploughman, reader.

“O Glancer, Glancer!” he cried; “oh! my poor dead friend Glancer, will I never mair clean your harness, or lead you to the fields in the mornin’? O Glancer, my heart is br’akin’! my heart is br’akin’!”

And so he kept on for a time, until Sandie insisted on leading him homewards.

But Jamie wasn’t well for days.

The next death at Kilbuie occurred about two weeks after this, and affected Mrs. M‘Crae and her two children more than any one else. It was that of Crummie, a cow nearly fifteen years old, but yet in calf. She took what is called the “quarter-ill,” or mortification of one joint or limb, and quickly succumbed. There was a halo of romance about this wise old cow. Like the bovine in the old Scotch song called “Tak’ your auld cloak about you”—

“Crummie was a usefu’ coo,
And aft she wet the bairnie’s mou’.”

Ah! that was just where the sorrow came in. Long, long ago, when Sandie and Elsie were but toddling thingies, in the bright and early days of her husband’s love, when all was hope and happiness about the smiling farm, and sorrow seemed very far away indeed, that old-fashioned cow had given the milk for the bairnies’ porridge, and the cream for butter. During all these long years she had kept the same stall in the byre, and woe be to any other cow beast that thoughtlessly dared to enter it. The retribution was sharp and swift.

Hardly ever a day passed either that, before going to her stall, after having been out for water or away in the green fields, Crummie did not come to the back door and knock with her head, and Mrs. M‘Crae, or Jeannie latterly, would present her with a nice piece of oat-cake, after which she would gracefully retire, that is as gracefully as a cow can, walking backwards a considerable way, as if she had been in the presence of royalty.

But now Crummie was “nae mair,” as Jeannie phrased it, and the bairns and the mother were inconsolable.

In a week more the calf would have been born. As it was, its skin was utilised. There is a curious but rather beautiful superstition away in northern Aberdeenshire, namely, that the very large family or hall Bible should be covered with the skin of a calf that has never been born. So poor Crummie’s calf’s skin was used by M‘Crae to cover his great Brown’s Bible.

. . . . . .

Now I must tell you that Kilbuie was very much respected and beloved by the neighbouring farmers. For Kilbuie was a farmer, and not an upstart. He had been among them all his life. His father, too, had farmed Kilbuie before him. Had M‘Crae been a shopkeeper or sailor turned farmer, they would have left him severely alone. They were clannish.

Well, one evening there was a secret meeting of these farmer folks in the little village school-house. It was a secret meeting, but they weren’t plotting to blow up the manse with dynamite, or set the old town-hall in a blaze. No, and the result of the secret meeting one day about a week after walked down the long loaning towards Kilbuie, in the shape of a fine sturdy young cart-horse, as like Glancer as possibly could be. He was, as may be guessed, a gift to the unfortunate M‘Crae from his kindly neighbours. To refuse would have been to offend. So what could he do but accept, to thank and bless them? The neighbours’ kindness did not end here. They had heard that Sandie M‘Crae meant to compete for a bursary, and, after taking his Master or Bachelor of Arts degree, study for the ministry. Well, it occurred to them that, one way or another, Kilbuie would be rather short handed for the ensuing harvest, that is, if Sandie was going to get anything like fair play, and be allowed to make preparations for the competition; so they determined to give Kilbuie a love-darg, not only for the harvest, but with the subsequent ploughing.

In case there may be some readers of mine in the far south who do not know what a love-darg means, I must explain. I have said already that the farmers of the North are clannish. Well, it often occurs that when, through misfortune, one of their number falls behind-hand, say in the ploughing, the neighbours all assemble in force with horses and ploughs, and in one day turn over every yard of his stubble or leas; or in the same way they may sow his oats in spring, or reap them for him in harvest-time.

Surely this is genuine and Christlike Christianity!

They did not, however, communicate their intention to the farmer himself, but to Sandie they did. Sandie’s eyes sparkled with joy.

“Hurrah!” he cried, “the bursary is as good as won. How can I thank you, gentlemen?”

“By no thankin’ us at a’,” returned Farmer Mon’ Blairie, the spokesman.

“Man!” he added, “we’re a’ as prood o’ ye, lad, as prood can be. We’d like to hae a minister reared frae among oursels, and we’ll hae you.”

“I hope so.”

“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.

“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.

On the top of the main hall this seminary had a little belfry, in which was a little bell, which it was the duty of old John the porter to ring at stated hours every day, in order to call the noisy students to study and to work.

. . . . . .

At eight o’clock on a dull September evening Sandie M‘Crae was trudging along one of the best terraces in the west end of the Granite City. The lamps were bright enough surely, and the houses were as white as the driven snow. Yet Sandie had some difficulty in finding a certain number. By the help of a Herculean policeman he was successful at last, however, and trotting up the steps, he knocked modestly at the door. His own heart was beating at that moment far more vehemently than any door-knocker could have done. The next half-hour would be big with his fate.

Was Mr. Geddes,[3] Rector of the Grammar School, in, and could he see him?

These were the questions he put to the neat-fingered Phyllis, who held the door a little open, and peeped round the edge of it.

She would see in a moment. What name?

Alexander M‘Crae of Kilbuie.

Nanny returned in half a minute.

Then Sandie was admitted, and ushered into a room in which he could hear a voice wishing him good evening, but could see nothing save the glimmer of the gas-light and the hazy flicker of the fire. The whole room was filled with tobacco-smoke as with a dense cloud.

“Nanny, show the young gentleman into the drawing-room,” said the Rector; and next minute Sandie found himself in a cool and pleasant room indeed, a great portion of whose furniture was books—poets, novelists, theologians, historians, all sorts and in all tongues apparently.

And now there entered the Rector himself, and Sandie stood up to greet him, but was waved back to his seat. The Rector took a seat very close to him, as if to read his every thought.

“I await your pleasure,” said Rector Geddes.

Then Sandie opened fire and told him he desired to take a month or six weeks at the Grammar School, if he might do so previous to the annual competition for bursaries.

The Rector at this time was a young man of probably not more than seven-and-twenty, tall, very dark in hair, and with cheeks as rosy as those of a ploughboy. He looked Sandie up and down before he replied; he even scanned his boots, and doubtless noted that the legs of his well-worn trousers were hardly long enough to meet the boots, thus showing a considerable expanse of blue ribbed stockings.

“No doubt,” he said at last, “you have been at the best parish schools?”

“With the exception of a few lessons, sir, given me by the Rev. D. Mackenzie of Belhaven, within the last few months, I am entirely self-taught.”

“You are ambitious, young sir.” Geddes was smiling now.

“I am, sir, and I am something else.”

“And that is?”

“Hopeful.”

“Well, I shall be the last to throw cold water over those hopes. On the one hand, I shall not extinguish them; on the other, I should be the last to fan them into a blaze if they are false. I shall now,” he added, “see what you can do. Shall I try you with Cæsar?”

“No, please, I hate it. It is only fit for babies.”

“Omne Gallia divisa est in partes tres! ha! ha! ha!”

And Sandie burst out laughing.

The Rector joined him right merrily.

“No,” continued Sandie, “let me try Livy and Cicero and Virgil, with Horace, Homer, Anacreon, and Juvenal.”

The Rector got up from his seat and left the room. Presently he returned, carrying a whole pile of books, and next half-hour flew by on the wings of the wind, apparently so busy was Sandie, reading and translating passages from his favourite authors.

The Rector was delighted, astonished; and when he learned that all day long this lad worked as a farm-labourer, studying only in the evenings and at night, he marvelled still more.

“Will I do?” said Sandie at last. “Have I a chance?”

His whole soul seemed to go out with these two simple questions; his whole happiness hung on the answer thereto.

That answer was forthcoming at once.

“Do!” said the Rector, “yes, my dear boy, you’ll do. Yours is more than a chance; it is all but a certainty of success. You will, I feel convinced, reap the guerdon of all your long and weary nocturnal studies, and that right soon. But,” he added, “you are not a solitary example of the indomitable energy and perseverance of the Northern Scottish student. You are not the only ploughman-student. Every year we have them. They come from the lowliest of Lowland hamlets and crofters’ cottages, and from the meanest of little Highland huts and shielings. Their mind is in their work. They live apparently on the wind, but night and day they study, and at the end of the curriculum go out into the world an honour and a glory to themselves, and to our great Northern University.

“But now, Mr. M‘Crae, you’ll lose no time. You will come to-morrow. It is version or translation day. Seat yourself at the bottom of the lowest faction, and next morning, when the versions have been examined, you will find your level.”

When Sandie walked homewards that evening, after this memorable interview with the Rector, he felt as if he was treading the air instead of the hard granite streets. He had found himself a lodging in Union Terrace, an attic three storeys high above the street, and which he was to share with a bank-clerk, each paying the modest sum of three shillings, which would include cooking and attendance. The clerk was a modest and retiring young man, but he showed great interest in Sandie’s welfare, and was delighted to hear the result of the interview with the Rector.

Next morning Sandie was early at the Grammar School. He stood modestly in a corner of the quad until such time as the door should be opened by the porter, John. This functionary presently presented himself before Sandie, where he stood for a few moments smiling but silent; then he took a large pinch of snuff, and handed the sneeshin mull to Sandie.

“A stranger, aren’t you?”

“I am that.”

“Well, I’m going to give ye a bit o’ advice.” The old man’s bright eyes sparkled as he spoke, and his rosy cheeks seemed to grow rosier. “The boys,” he said, “will tease you for a bit, but don’t you take any notice of them. There is nothing really bad at their hearts.”

“Thank you,” said Sandie; “I’ll try to take your advice.”

By-and-bye the young men began to arrive in swarms, and Sandie at once became the centre of attraction. It must be confessed that Sandie’s clothes, if not decidedly countrified, were not over fashionable.

“Hullo, Geordie,” cried one fellow, rushing up and seizing Sandie by the hand; “man, I’m awfu’ glaid to see you.”

“And hoo’s the taties and neeps?” cried another.

Sandie answered never a word.

“Man, Geordie Muckiefoot, do you think ye can manage to do a version?”

“Can you conjugate amo, Geordie? Ye ken hoo it goes: Amo, amas, I love a lass; amas, amat, she lived in a flat, and so on?”

“But I say, Geordie Muckiefoot,” cried a taller fellow, coming forward and throwing himself into a pugilistic attitude before Sandie—squaring up, as it is called—“can ye fecht? Losh! I’m spoilin’ for a fecht.”

“I can’t fight, and I won’t fight,” said Sandie; “I’d rather be friends with you.”

“Rather run a mile than fecht a minute, eh? Weel, weel, dinna fash your fins; I wadna like to hurt ye, Geordie Muckiefoot.”

This hulking lad, it may be as well to state, was the bully of the school, and all had to lower their flag to him. He changed his tactics now to tactics more tantalising.

“And foo (how) did ye leave a’ at hame?” he asked. “Foo is your big fat mither, and your sister, muckle-moo’d Meg?”

Sandie’s face grew crimson with rage.

“Stop just right there,” he cried; “you may insult me as much as you like, but you shall leave my dear mother and sister alone.”

“Bravo!” cried several students.

But the bully didn’t mean to be put back. He threw off his jacket, and advanced once more in a threatening attitude, and once more launched an insult at Sandie’s sister.

Off came the ploughman-student’s coat, and in half-a-minute more the bully was lying in the quad, breathless, and bleeding from nose and eye. But he hadn’t quite enough. He rallied, and once again came on like death.

And now Sandie got his head in chancery, and simply made what is called a mummy of the fellow. When our hero let him go, he dropped down on the gravel as limp and “dweeble” as bath-towel, and the rest of the students crowded round the victor to wish him luck, and bid him welcome to the Grammar School. Fraser, the bully, they said, richly deserved what he had gotten, and he, Sandie M‘Crae, had emancipated the whole school.

Just then the bell began to ring, and presently Rector Geddes himself walked up to the hall-door. He walked with a slight studious stoop. Whether or not he saw Fraser doubled up there like an old dishcloth may never be known; at all events, he took no notice.

Sandie said that he quite reciprocated the good feeling of the lads, and hoped they would all be friends henceforward. Then he went quietly in with his burden of books, and seated himself at the very bottom of the lowest faction. Here Lord Byron’s name was cut out in the desk; it had been carved by his own hand, and the lads who occupied this faction pointed to it with no little pride. They were a merry lot in this corner, and laughed and talked instead of paying any attention to what the Rector was saying.

“You’ll be as happy as a king down here for months,” said one bright-faced and particularly well-dressed boy; “I’ll lend you novels to read, if you like.”

“But I hope,” said Sandie, “I won’t be long down here. Your father is rich, I suppose?”

“Yes, my father is Provost.”

“Ah! but mine is only a poor farmer, and I am really only a farm-servant to him. If I get a bursary this year, I will get on; if not, I shall have to go back again to the plough.”

“Poor fellow! what is your name?”

“Sandie M‘Crae.”

“Well, Sandie, I like you; you are brave. I rejoiced in the way you stood up for your mother and sister; I’m sure she must be a nice girl.”

“She is the best and sweetest girl in all the parish of Drumlade.”

“And I like the way you tumbled old Eraser, the bully, up, and turned him outside in. Will you come and have supper with me to-night? Do.”

What could Sandie say to this idle but gentle boy? He could not well refuse.

“My life depends on my gaining a bursary,” he replied; “but I will come for two hours.”

“Well, two hours be it.”