“The wee short hoor ayont the twal?”
“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 whichsays, “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 hewasawakened 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 Sandiewouldn’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, allcombined 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.
WhenSandie 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. Ifthe 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 theshoulder 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 toscare 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
“HE WANTED TO WATCH MAGGIE MAY”—Page 37.
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 helplooking 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.
I don’tthink 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 orgenius 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 thatTyro 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’.”
“Crummie was a usefu’ coo,And aft she wet the bairnie’s mou’.”
“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 goingto 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 hisstubble 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, andgave 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.
A lowlarge 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 knockedmodestly 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 energyand 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 theporter, 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 conjugateamo, 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 hehadn’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 formonths,” 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.”
And no more was said.
That forenoon the students under the Rector adjourned to the hall, and the version was dictated, and translations gone on with.
Sandie found that version far more easy than he had expected. He hardly had to use a dictionary twice the whole time. When he had finished, he carefully revised it twice, than handed it in, and received a bow and thanks from the polite Rector.
. . . . . .
He did not forget his appointment with gentle Willie Munro, the Provost’s son. Sandie dressed most carefully for the occasion, and in his Sunday’s clothes, with a flower in his button-hole, he really looked handsome.
He was shy, however, and a little taken aback when ushered into the splendidly furnished and well-lighted drawing-room, more particularly as Willie’s mother and ever so many sisters were there. The mother rallied him about the battle with the bully, and Willie arriving just then, Sandie was soon completely at his ease. He soon found that he was among real friends, in the bosom of a family of kind-hearted people, who, though very well-to-do in the world, had none of that foolish pride only too common to people in such a station.
When at the two hours’ end Sandie left to burn the midnight oil, it was with a promise that he would come again and again, that he would look upon them as friends, and the house as his home. Sandie promised.
Very much to his own astonishment, and to the wonder of everybody else, Sandie’s version next daywas declaredsine errore(free from all mistakes), and from the bottom faction he was elevated to the very first, close beneath the Rector’s desk.
As he walked up the passage between the rows of seats, he held down his head, for his face was burning like a coal.
Rector Geddes held out his hand, and shook that of Sandie.
“I congratulate you, boy, from my heart, and trust you will maintain the proud position you have now secured.”
And Sandie did. He never once had reason to leave that first faction all the time he was there. And the Munroes became his constant friends and companions whenever he had an hour to spare. Many a delightful long walk Willie and he had together out by the dark woods of Rubislaw, or by the old bridge of Balgownie, that Byron writes about so feelingly. After walks like these, Sandie always went to Willie’s house to supper. The girls would play and sing to him, and sometimes he himself would be induced to sing an auld Scotch song, so that the evenings passed quickly and pleasantly enough.
One day Sandie received a polite invitation from the Rector to come to supper. It wanted just eight days from the great competition day. The Rector was very merry to-night, and did not talk classics at all; but just before Sandie left, he took him by the hand.
“You’ll do what I tell you, won’t you?”
“I will, sir, right gladly.”
“Well, you shall go home to-morrow to the country, and you shall not open a book nor pass a single hour in study until you are seated in the University Hall with the competition papers before you. Do this, and you will succeed. Disobey me, and you will worry yourself and fail.”
“I promise,” said Sandie; and he kept his word.
Homewith Sandie to his rural residence went Willie Munro. Willie had invited himself. Willie would not be denied. It was all in vain that Sandie had told him flatly that he would be a stranger to all luxury, that he would have to live on milk, oatmeal, sheep’s-head broth, and new-laid eggs, and sleep in a closet not big enough to swing a cat in.
“I don’t care,” cried Willie determinedly; “I’m going. Rural fare will be a delightful change, and I don’t want to swing a cat, so I’m going, Sandie. Besides,” he added demurely, “I want to get some fishing, and to hear your sister play the zither.”
There had been no gainsaying such arguments as these; so on the evening of a bright clear day in October, Sandie’s mother was bidding her son and his friend a right hearty welcome in the best parlour.
If ever there was a real city lad, that lad was Willie Munro. His total ignorance of country and farm life was delightfully refreshing to Sandie and his sister. Of course Willie knew that potatoes did not grow ontrees, but that was about the extent of his agricultural knowledge; and as to natural history and the lives of birds, moths, beetles, &c., he really knew nothing. Had any one told him that the rook built its nest in a bush of broom, and that the lark built high in a swaying ash-tree, Willie would have taken it for truth.
Willie’s ignorance of country life did not, however, detract in the least from his enjoyment thereof. He had come out from town with the intention of being jolly and happy, and he determined he should be so.
He was not long in confiding to Sandy that his sister Elsie was an angel, and that his mother was an angel’s mother. Elsie was quite as much pleased with Willie as Willie was with her, and it gave her very great pleasure to play the zither and sing to him in the evening.
Well, then, they paid a visit to the manse together. Mackenzie was much pleased to see Sandie once again, and to hear of his success, and Willie seemed to fall head over heels in love with Maggie May. But Maggie May was severely demure, very much to Sandie’s delight, and he felt that the child loved no one half so well as she loved him—that is, after her father, of course.
They all went fishing together, and wonderful to relate, Willie succeeded in catching a trout, a real live trout, that capered and jumped about on the green grassy bank at a fine rate, turning up itssilvery sides to the sun till in mercy Sandie put it out of pain.
But Willie was not really happy until, that same evening, he had written home a long account of the capture of that fish and his hopes of catching more.
The day after that was a big day at Kilbuie, for the love-darg in ploughing came off. Almost before the dawn, horses and ploughs and ploughmen began to arrive at the farm from all directions, and when all were assembled, it was found there were no fewer than two-and-twenty pairs. With such a force, long before sundown every ridge of stubble or grass on Kilbuie would be turned over.
Not only the ploughmen themselves, but in many cases the farmer-owners of the horses had come over, and these farmers had made up between them several prizes to be awarded to the men who did the best work.
So the ploughing went merrily on. It was a fine sight too to see all those gallant horses in their light but polished harness, and gay with silken ribbons of every colour, and brass bradoons, walking majestically to and fro the ridges, the gaily dressed honest-faced ploughmen holding the stilts and quietly but earnestly trying to do their best.
Willie Munro was delighted. But he and Sandie had something else to do that day than simply look on at the ploughing match; for that evening, in Kilbuie’s largest grain loft, there was going to takeplace a grand country ball, and the decorations of the room devolved upon Sandie, Willie freely offering to help.
Well, the first thing was to get the place thoroughly swept out and cleaned. This was a dusty job, but it was finished at last. It also had been a thirsty job, but Sandie’s sister Elsie had brought the boys a whole gallon of delicious butter-milk, and thirst was kept in abeyance. Geordie Black, the orra man, had been busy for days in making wooden sconces for candles, and these were nailed up all around the hall, and tall candles placed in them.
Off now to the woods went Sandie and Willie to cut down green boughs for the purpose of decoration. They made many such journeys to and fro, and did not spare their backs, so that by the time the frugal mid-day meal was on the board, they had conveyed home nearly enough. Elsie was too busy in the house, so the whole work devolved upon the two boys; but right cheerily it went on.
The last part of the room to be decorated was the orchestra. This was simply a raised bench close to the wall in the middle of the room, so that dancers at either end could have an equal chance of hearing the music.
The band was to consist of three small fiddles, one double-bass, and a clarionet. They were all volunteers, and would not charge Mr. M‘Crae a brass farthing for their services. This was the band proper,but during the evening they would be relieved occasionally by a couple of Highland pipers—