cement to study?"

"Such as?" asked Cathro, who could at times be as inquisitive as the
doctor.

"We need not go into that. But suppose it appealed to him?"

Cathro considered. "To be candid," he said, "I don't think he could
study, in the big meaning of the word. I daresay I'm wrong, but I have a
feeling that whatever knowledge that boy acquires he will dig out of
himself. There is something inside him, or so I think at times, that is
his master, and rebels against book-learning. No, I can't tell what it
is; when we know that we shall know the real Tommy."

"And yet," said McLean, curiously, "you advise his being allowed to
compete for a bursary. That, if you will excuse my saying so, sounds
foolish to me."

"It can't seem so foolish to you," replied Cathro, scratching his head,
"as it seems to me six days in seven."

"And you know that Aaron Latta has sworn to send him to the herding if
he does not carry a bursary. Surely the wisest course would be to
apprentice him now to some trade--"

"What trade would not be the worse of him? He would cut off his fingers
with a joiner's saw, and smash them with a mason's mell; put him in a
brot behind a counter, and in some grand, magnanimous mood he would sell
off his master's things for nothing; make a clerk of him, and he would
only ravel the figures; send him to the soldiering, and he would have a
sudden impulse to fight on the wrong side. No, no, Miss Ailie says he
has a gift for the ministry, and we must cling to that."

In thus sheltering himself behind Miss Ailie, where he had never skulked
before, the dominie showed how weak he thought his position, and he
added, with a brazen laugh, "Then if he does distinguish himself at the
examinations I can take the credit for it, and if he comes back in
disgrace I shall call you to witness that I only sent him to them at her
instigation."

"All which," maintained McLean, as he put on his top-coat, "means that
somehow, against your better judgment, you think he may distinguish
himself after all."

"You've found me out," answered Cathro, half relieved, half sorry. "I
had no intention of telling you so much, but as you have found me out
I'll make a clean breast of it. Unless something unexpected happens to
the laddie--unless he take to playing at scholarship as if it were a
Jacobite rebellion, for instance--he shouldna have the ghost of a chance
of a bursary, and if he were any other boy as ill-prepared I should be
ashamed