Chapter III: Hard Work and Earnest Struggles

On the morning before starting for the distant city, Sandie had an interview with his father.

“Now, daddie,” he said straightforwardly, “I am going to borrow money from you. Mind you, it is only a loan, and as soon as I get my first bursary money I will refund.”

“Don’t mention that, dear boy. You have made your mother and me as proud as princes. You are an honour to us and an honour to the district, though I say it to your face. Now, how much money do you want?”

“Well, I have my gown to buy and books to buy, besides a tweed suit of clothes, a little longer in the legs than this, father; then my landlady to pay, and so on. But ten pounds, father, will do amply.”

The money was soon forthcoming; then Mr. M‘Crae gave his son much good advice, especially as to the evils of intemperance and bad company. To this advice he, Scotsman-like, appended his blessing, and his last words to Sandie were these: “Never forget to read the Book and pray.”

Sandie’s mother and sister promised that, in a few weeks’ time, they would both come to Aberdeen and pay him a visit.

The boys had the minister’s blessing as well, and poor little Maggie May cried bitterly when parting with Sandie, and, innocent morsel that she was, held up her tear-bedewed face to be kissed.

Sandie all throughout the session never forgot dear Maggie May as he had last seen her--her eyes swollen with weeping, but beautiful withal, as she stood at the garden-gate, waving her wet handkerchief to him as long as he was in sight.

* * * * *

John Adams was then the students’ bookseller. His shop was in the New Market, and he really gave the boys bargains of second-hand books. To him therefore went Sandie with his custom. John even went so far as to recommend him a tailor, and having ordered a good useful suit of tweed clothes, Willie and he went off to buy their gowns.

These gowns were of scarlet baize, with loose-hanging sleeves, and very broad collars of dark red silk velvet. They are much the same at the present time, but now-a-days the students wear trencher caps. Then they did not. They might array themselves in Glengarries, in broad Prince Charlies, or in Tarn o’ Shanters, just as they chose, so long as they wore the gown.

The King’s College University gown had only a plain collar, and it had no loose sleeves. The reason, it was said, why the gown was deprived of sleeves was this: the students used to fasten a stone in the end of each, and go swinging along the streets, hitting the passengers right and left in all directions.

It was also said that at one time this King’s College gown had a velvet collar, but that this was taken away on account of a crime the students committed. It seems that a certain porter played the sneak, and got many of them into serious trouble for some lark they had taken part in. They determined to punish this porter by pretending to execute him.

At the midnight hour he was taken from his bed, his eyes were bandaged, and he was led through the streets. When the bandage was removed, to the poor fellow’s horror he found himself in a room all hung with black. At one side sat judge and jury, at another stood, immovable as statues, two masked men with broad axes beside a crape-covered block. The porter was tried and at once condemned to death. He was allowed five minutes, then led trembling to the block. His head was placed thereon.

“Strike!” cried the judge.

A student struck a light blow with a wet towel across the neck.

“Now,” said the judge, “now, Mr. Porter, you can get up. You’ve had your fright, but take care how you play the sneak again. Arise!”

But the poor porter never moved.

He was dead!

Dead, from the very fear of death.

* * * * *

Buying those gowns afforded Sandie and Willie a good deal of fun. Well, they were light-hearted, and inclined to make merry over anything. But the gowns were so ridiculously long, they came down nearly to their heels. That would never do. So they commanded the shopkeeper to dock them by a foot at least; then they were paid for and taken away.

Classes were duly opened next day, and Sandie, somewhat shame-facedly it must be confessed, walked out into the street, bearing his blushing honours on his back. Somehow he had an idea that every one was looking at him. Well, at all events he was an object of very great interest to bevies of little guttersnipe urchins, who followed him shouting, “Buttery Willie Collie, red-backed and holy.”

I don’t know at all why they should shout such doggerel at the gown students, but they do. His back also became a target for innumerable snowballs, so that on the whole he was not sorry when safe in the quad at last.

The class-rooms were seated after the fashion of the gallery of a church or theatre, the seats rising tier after tier from the floor near the windows, where stood the professor’s table, towards the roof, so that to gain their places the students had first to climb a back stair, then descend the centre stair-like passage to their seats on either side. In Sandie’s days, whatever it may be now, practical joking was in its glory. Sometimes these jokes took what Sandie considered a mean and ungentlemanly turn, as when, to his astonishment, he saw a fusillade of snowballs coming over the gallery from the back-stairs and falling on the professor’s table.

All the more unworthy of any student was such conduct, inasmuch as it was the Professor of Greek who was thus assailed, and he was a very old and nervous man.

Another day a door-mat was thrown over the gallery class-room, alighting on the table and demolishing everything; and this by men who would have been mortally offended had you told them they were not gentlemen.

Sandie soon settled down to the routine of the class-rooms, and also to his own quiet studies at home. He soon found out the truth about the lecture system, however, namely, that it is a mistake, and that an earnest student can learn more at home from books in one hour than he could from twenty lectures.

* * * * *

Although Sandie paid three shillings and sixpence of weekly rent for his room, he had it all to himself. He could therefore study when he pleased, without fear of interruption, and his landlady was really very good and kind to him. Willie was his constant visitor, but knowing Sandie’s studious habits, made it a point never to come and see him of an evening unless specially invited. And if, when Willie invited Sandie to his house to spend the evening, he replied that he could not well spare the time, nothing more was said on the subject.

Sandie had entered on a new sphere of study that possessed great attractions for him, namely, algebra and the higher branches of mathematics.

He made a solemn resolve to pay his father back the ten pounds as soon as possible, and what with this debt and one thing or another, he found he would have enough to do to rub along.

So he determined now to take a pupil, that is, if he could find one. Surely a first bursar would be successful in a little matter like this. Well, Sandie was so after a fashion. He was engaged by a widow lady, who lived on the outskirts of the town, to teach her fat-faced pudding-headed “loon,” aged about twelve, for one hour every night for the large sum of ten shillings a week.

A more provoking pupil it would have been difficult for any one to conceive. He was his mother’s darling, a spoiled and ignorant child, who at times would positively refuse to be taught or to open a book.

Sandie lost his temper with him one night, and pulled his ears.

“Oh, don’t do that,” said his mother pleadingly.

“I will, and more,” cried Sandie determinedly. “If he will not work, I am but robbing you, and losing my own precious time besides.”

“Now, look here, Andrew: if there is any more of this, either now or any other night, I’m going to give you a jolly good belting, and to-morrow I shall bring a strap in my pocket for the purpose.” And so Sandie did, and laid it ominously on the table in the boy’s sight.

Andrew became quite a reformed character after this, and Sandie used to take him out for long rambles on Saturday afternoons, and to the church on Sundays.

* * * * *

A rather curious fact must here be mentioned regarding Willie Munro, as it not only gives an additional insight to the lad’s character, but really has some bearing on future acts in our story.

Willie, then, had never forgotten that fiasco on the hill, when he loaded his gun by putting in the charge of shot first. He was a very sensitive boy, and sometimes since that day, in his dreams, he would hear Maggie May’s shrill peals of laughter, and see her merry mischievous face. Had Sandie alone been there, it would not have mattered so much, but to have made a fool of himself before a girl--ah! there was the rub. He felt at times that he almost hated Maggie May, though surely it was no fault of hers.

However, he made a vow that he would rectify the mistake. He told his father the whole story, and his father kindly acquiesced in his wishes. Willie paid a visit to a keeper who lived a little way up Deeside. A crack shot he was. The man was grooming a Lavereck setter when Willie reached his humble dwelling.

“Fat can I dee for ye, laddie?” said Bob Brown, meaning, “What can I do for you?”

“Oh,” said Willie, “I want you to teach me to shoot birds, so that I can go to the hill and not make a fool of myself.”

Bob looked him all over. He even tested his eye-sight and the quickness and steadiness of his hand.

“You’ll do,” he said. “How often can you come here?”

“Every afternoon, and I’m willing to pay fairly well.”

“Richt! in a month or sax weeks you ought to be as gweed (good) a shot as mysel’. Hae ye a gun?”

“No.”

“Weel, we’ll gang and buy ane the day.”

And so they did--not a very heavy one, but a breech-loader by one of the best makers.

They also bought a spring-trap to throw crystal balls into the air, to represent birds. These balls were filled with feathers, so it was easy to see when they were broken.

For the first few days Willie was awkward enough, and hardly broke a ball; then all at once he seemed, to get into the knack of the thing, and broke the balls fast enough, and without apparent aim or effort.

The lad was rejoiced beyond measure. I am really afraid he neglected his studies somewhat for this new-fangled fad of his, only he was determined to wipe out what he looked upon as a stain on his character. He practised at home every morning, as well as going to Bob’s in the afternoons.

Bob had a bit of private shooting, and now he began to take Willie out with him, and an excellent hill-man the boy proved.

“Man,” said Bob more than once, “I’m perfectly prood o’ ye. And ye’re a’ ma ain makin’ too.”

Willie now added the revolver to his armoury. Very awkward, indeed, he was at first with this weapon, but the pistol was pronounced a good one, and he soon became very precise in his shooting indeed.

Now Willie was sly.

Willie never told Sandie, his friend, what he was doing or studying. Not he. If you had asked him why he did not, he might have replied--

“Because I know a trick worth two of that. I want my revenge. I want to astonish Sandie, and Maggie May as well.”

There is a good old saying which, I must confess, has been of much service to me during life. It is this: “You never know what you can do till you try.”

I have often felt so ill, that I thought to get out of bed and begin literary work would be a sheer impossibility. Then that bold saying has come to my mind, and I have got up, and shaved myself--a terrible ordeal when one is low and sick--and had my cold bath--another terrible ordeal, even for a Scotsman, when out of form. Then I have had breakfast and begun work, and wonderful to relate, the more I wrote the better I grew. What think you of that, reader mine?

Well, in Willie’s case there was another proof of the truth of the grand old aphorism. Willie persevered and persevered, and in six weeks’ time, long before Christmas, he had been pronounced by Bob Brown a crack shot, one who could single out his bird from a covey, and bring one down with each barrel.

“I dinna think,” said Bob frankly and honestly, “I can teach you muckle mair.”

But Willie went every night to Bob Brown’s all the same.

They had two spring-traps now, and two balls were dislodged into the air at one time, and Bob rubbed his hands with delight, and laughed to see his pupil smash each ball, making the feathers fly right and left.

* * * * *

Sandie continued hard at his studies, especially mathematics, night after night, and made considerable progress.

What a happy day that was, though, when his mother and sister Elsie came to visit him.

Not only he, but Willie himself absented themselves from classes that day, simply dropping a line to the various professors candidly owning up to the cause of their playing truant.

So Sandie escorted his dear mother, and Willie chaperoned Elsie, all over the Granite City. It was the first time Elsie had been to Aberdeen, and she was naturally much struck by the marble whiteness of the stately buildings.

The ladies were even taken into the quad to gaze upon the University at which Sandie had achieved such signal success.

Then, when tired of wandering through the streets and seeing the lions of the place, Willie--wilful Willie, as Sandie called him--insisted upon their all dining together in the M‘Gregor Hotel.

“It is only four o’clock,” he said, “and you go away at six. Well, I would have asked you to my house, but we will be ever so much more free and easy here.”

“I shall pay,” said Sandie.

“Indeed, indeed you won’t.”

“Oh, but I must.”

“Well, if you do, I shan’t come out with you to Kilbuie to spend the Christmas week. So there!”

That settled it.

Not only did Willie pay, but he ordered the dinner, and it was one just suited to the requirements of a bright clear winter’s day. No French names either. 1. Delicious Scotch barley-broth. 2. Fresh salmon from the Dee, caught the day before, not Norwegian salmon that had lain dead in ice for three weeks, till all taste and flavour had fled to the moon or elsewhere. 3. A juicy joint of roast-beef with snow-white mashed potatoes and cauliflower. 4. Pudding and custard. 5. Cheese, oat-cakes, fresh butter, and salad. For wine, although the ladies had their option, they chose good table-ale, and the boys joined them. When about half-past five tea was brought, I think both the mother and Elsie were very happy; at any rate, they both confessed that they had never in their lives spent a more pleasant or happy day.

“The time is getting short now,” said Mrs. M‘Crae, “and I want to make sure of one thing.”

“And that is?” asked Willie.

“Sure o’ your promise to come out at Christmas when Sandie comes.”

“I promise, mother,” said Willie.

“You both look rather pale. I’m sure you’ve both been studying very hard.”

Willie smiled inwardly, but made no reply.

They sauntered down to the station in good time, and just as they were going away, and Elsie extended her hand to Willie, he gallantly pressed it to his lips.

As he raised his cap, shy eyes met his, and a smiling but blushing face.

The whistle shrieked.

The train was gone.