barn in which to conduct his class. There were seldom more than twenty scholars. They sat on planks at the end of the barn as near to the peat fire as they could get. And in winter when it got too cold Sam dismissed the class – maybe keeping a few of his keener pupils so that they could sit close up to the fire and enable him to warm his old bones too.
Sam had a soft pleasant voice that soothed and caressed and yet there was authority behind it. He did not believe in his pupils learning by heart. Knowledge did not come that way. Wisdom lay in understanding. He did not much care whether they could repeat accurately the answers in the Catechism so long as they understood the nature of the question and the meaning of the answer. He always mistrusted and tried to discourage the quick and accurate reply. Often as not he would say:
‘Aye: now that’s quite right, John: but just tell us what that means in your own words.’
And as often as not the scholar shewed by his answer that he did not understand the true nature of the question.
The Bible lesson was conducted in the nature of a service. They began with the Lord’s Prayer and finished with the Apostles’ Creed. Sam would read a chapter of the Old Testament, reading it slowly and with great dignity. It was not that Sam was nearing his end that made him specially reverent. All his life he had had a great reverence for the Good Book: and he had always prayed – even when his youth had been wildest and most riotous. He believed that if people kept the image of their Maker constantly before them their lives could never go very far wrong. So successful indeed was his method of imparting religious instruction that not one of his scholars in after life ever failed to have that image somewhere before them. They might cease to go to church: they might even in exceptional circumstances neglect to have their children baptized. But they never forgot the God of Sam MacKitteroch – the Father, the Maker of Heaven and Earth …
Sam was a much better scholar than John Gibb, even though he had never been to college. There was something a trifle old-fashioned in his arithmetical methods and he had certain peculiarities in the matter of spelling – he never used a capital at the first person singular – but literary composition was Sam’s weakest subject and the one he reckoned least useful to his scholars. As long as they grasped some elements of arithmetic and were able to read and write – even if only their names – something had been achieved.
His attendance was much more broken and irregular than John Gibb’s and his equipment was more primitive. He had only a small-scale map of the world, indicating British possessions in red, certain main trade routes, the equator and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But mean and inadequate as the map was, he made it live through his vivid descriptions.
Sam MacKitteroch’s school was a pleasant affair. He had no strap and he never had occasion to wish he had. His scholars applied themselves or not as they felt inclined. He prescribed no home work. He knew what their homes were like: how impossible conditions were for home study. But occasionally he would visit a home, usually a farm-house, and coach a boy for an hour in Latin so that he might qualify for entrance to college and in due course qualify as a doctor or a minister. Sometimes a successful student would come back and call on Sam and on parting would slip him a sovereign or two in appreciation of the service he had done him.
David Ramsay soon became one of Sam’s favourite scholars. David had a great admiration for the old man and applied himself diligently to his studies. David liked the geography lessons which, in addition to giving much factual knowledge, were a mixture of the science of navigation and the travellers’ tales.
David decided that as soon as he grew up he would go to sea like his brother Dick – even as old Sam himself had done. It was not that Sam romanticised the sailor’s lot. Far from it. Indeed he gripped them with tales of hardship, starvation and shipwreck. Yet there was glory in a shipwreck as Sam described it – the essential quality of drama was there.
It was this drama, this heightened colour of experience that young David fed on. He would often find an excuse to wander as far as Corsewell Point to catch a glimpse of the rigged ships sailing down the Northern Channel. He would sit on the heughs and follow them in imagination as far as the Horn or maybe Australia. He was grateful to Sam for having sketched the world for him: made it familiar to his mind’s eye so that the horizons of his mental voyages were boundless.
Sam MacKitteroch and Andrew Ramsay often exchanged words about the boy.
‘That boy of yours, Andra: he’s a bright lad. I never passed a more intelligent boy through my hands.’
‘Aye: he’s like his brother Dick. They’re the only two that take after me, Sam.’
‘You’ve reason to be proud of them, Andra. But David has a way with him that Richard never had. I misdoubt but he’ll turn out as strong as Richard – I wouldna say he’d stand up to the sea as well—’
‘And you think his mind’s bent on the sea? Well, what else is there for him but the fishing or the farm?’
‘You don’t see your way to put him to the college, Andra? He’s the makings of a grand doctor in him.’
‘Aye: I’ve thought of it, Sam. I doubt if I could see him through. The rest of them will get married as soon as they can. I couldna blame them, Sam – that’s all they’ll ever be good for. And once they’re married their hands will be full and they’ll hardly have time to straighten their backs. And if I set the laddie to the college I would like to see him through with it.’
‘Aye – ye’d want to see him through and set out on his own once ye started. Better never to send him at all than disappoint his life by taking him away after he’d gotten a taste of it.’
‘That’s it, Sam. I’m no’ getting any younger. Work’s no’ what it used to be. Damnt, Sam, but it’s hard.’
‘Well, well, Andra: there’s no use in mourning. Things maun aey be some way. No doubt but the boy will find something to his bent – but guid kens I would rather see him apprenticed before the mast than taking a pair o’ horse wi’ John MacMeechan.’
‘No, no: Achgammie will never break his spirit: that would just kill the boy. No, no: I’ll find a road out for him somehow – even if it means the sea. He’s all I’ve got to live for now. It’s little enough I see o’ Dick without losing David.’
Sam MacKitteroch did not reply. He himself was alone in the world and had never married. And though he did not know what it meant to be a father he regretted deeply that he had never had a son. This was one reason why he was so gentle and painstaking with his scholars.
It was the first time Andrew Ramsay had ever admitted how much he cared for his youngest son – and how much he regretted the sea-going of Richard. Dick had had brains, initiative and courage. He had never taken life lying down but from his earliest days had endeavoured to strike out for himself.
Andrew had thought that the other boys would be the same. But they had disappointed him. Not that he ever felt inclined to blame them. Rather did he blame himself: their dullness and stupidity oppressed him with a sense of guilt.
And then, at the last, had come David, the bright-eyed. Now the years he had missed the company of Richard were being compensated. And yet he felt that the compensation was coming too late: that his efforts to give David a start in life would be inadequate. He had been an idler: he had let opportunities for material advancement slip. He could have made a greater effort and managed to save a pound or two. But – he had not. He had to face the fact. Now the best years of his life were past. He had lost custom: he had alienated custom: he had let life take its course. And all the while he had maintained his self-respect by fostering his innate radicalism: self-satisfied in his role of parish-pump philosopher.
Still, even now it was not too late: he would think out some plans for assisting the lad who was so truly his own son: his Joseph.
Of all his brothers, David liked Richard best. He had only one memory of him – when he had come home for a short week-end the previous winter and had given him a bag of sweets and a ride on his back. But even during the short time he had been at home David