the answer: "Oh, he stayed by the
house, the morn. He got a new book frae the library, ye ken."

Douglas was, indeed, bookish and was inclined to favor the inglenook
rather than the heather. As he grew older he discovered a strong
liking for books on theology. It was the old Presbyterian streak
cropping out.

The last thing one would expect from such a boy, was to become a
soldier. A divinity student, yes,--perhaps a college professor--but a
soldier, never! Yet it was to soldiering that this quiet boy turned.

The one thing which linked him up with the field was horsemanship. He
was always a devotee of riding, and soon learned to ride well, with a
natural ease and grace.

He received a general education at Clifton, then entered Brasenose
College, Oxford, at the age of twenty. He was never a
"hail-fellow-well-met" sort of person. Reserve was his hallmark. But
the longer he stayed in college, the more of an outdoorsman he became.
Every afternoon would find him mounted on his big gray horse for a
gallop across the moors, or perhaps an exciting canter behind the
hounds on the scent of a fox. It was then that his habitual reserve
would melt away, and he would wave his hat and cheer like a high-school
boy.

The record of his classes is in no sense remarkable. He turned in neat
and precise papers, without making shining marks in any particular
study. Literature and science were his best subjects.

"Well, son, how goes it now?" his father would ask. "Ready to make a
lawyer out of yourself?"

Douglas would shake his head. He could never share his father's
enthusiasm for the law. "I guess not, father," he would reply quietly.
"Somehow, I am not built that way. I want a try at soldier life."

So his father let him follow his bent, and procured for him a position
in the Seventh Regiment of Hussars. His career as a soldier was
threatened at the outset by the refusal of the medical board to admit
him to the Staff College on the ground that he was color-blind; but
this decision was over-ruled by the Duke of Cambridge, then
commander-in-chief, who nominated him personally. This was in 1885.
England was then as nearly at peace as she ever became, and it seemed
that young Haig was destined to become a feather-bed soldier.

But it was not for long. They presently began to stir up trouble down
in Egypt, and England found, as on many previous occasions, that she
didn't have half enough regulars for the job in