e large room the
ministers gossiped about eternal punishment, and of the two dominies one
sat at his ease, like a passenger who knows that the coach will reach
the goal without any exertion on his part, while the other paced the
floor, with many a despondent glance through the open door whence the
scraping proceeded; and the one was pleasantly cool; and the other in a
plot of heat; and the one made genial remarks about every-day matters,
and the answers of the other stood on their heads. It was a familiar
comedy to Mr. Ogilvy, hardly a variation on what had happened five times
in six for many years: the same scene, the same scraping in the little
room, the same background of ministers (black-aviced Mr. Lorrimer had
begun to bark again), the same dominies; everything was as it had so
often been, except that he and Cathro had changed places; it was Cathro
who sat smiling now and Mr. Ogilvy who dolefully paced the floor.

To be able to write! Throughout Mr. Ogilvy's life, save when he was
about one and twenty, this had seemed the great thing, and he ever
approached the thought reverently, as if it were a maid of more than
mortal purity. And it is, and because he knew this she let him see her
face, which shall ever be hidden from those who look not for the soul,
and to help him nearer to her came assistance in strange guise, the loss
of loved ones, dolour unutterable; but still she was beyond his reach.
Night by night, when the only light in the glen was the school-house
lamp, of use at least as a landmark to solitary travellers--who miss it
nowadays, for it burns no more--she hovered over him, nor did she deride
his hopeless efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray
and from gray to white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful
because she was not for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so
that once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly
spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is
literature.

He knew that oblivion was at hand, ready to sweep away his pages almost
as soon as they were filled (Do we not all hear her besom when we pause
to dip?), but he had done his best and he had a sense of humor, and
perhaps some day would come a pupil of whom he could make what he had
failed to make of himself. That prodigy never did come, though it was
not for want of nursing, and there came at least, in succession most
maddening to Mr. Cathro, a row of youths