..."

So the father was tracing in the dust of the road with the point
of his stick the course of the Zambesi which Livingstone had just
explored for the first time.

On these walks with his father Alec, with his blue eyes wide open,
used to listen to stories like the Yarn we have read of the marvellous
adventures of Livingstone.[50] Sometimes Mr. Mackay would stop and
draw triangles and circles with his stick. Then Alec would be learning
a problem in Euclid on this strange "blackboard" of the road. He
learned the Euclid--but he preferred the Zambesi and Livingstone!

One day Alec was off by himself trudging down the road with a fixed
purpose in his mind, a purpose that seemed to have nothing in the
world to do with either Africa or Euclid. He marched away from his
little village of Rhynie, where the burn runs around the foot of
the great granite mountain across the strath. He trudged on for four
miles. Then he heard a shrill whistle. Would he be late after all?
He ran swiftly toward the little railway station. A ribbon of smoke
showed over the cutting, away to the right. Alec entered the station
and ran to one end of the platform as the train slowed down and the
engine stopped just opposite where he stood.

He gazed at the driver and his mate on the footplate. He followed
every movement as the driver came round the engine with his long-nosed
oil-can, and opened and shut small brass lids and felt the bearings
with his hand to see whether they were hot. The guard waved his green
flag. The whistle of the engine shrieked, and the train steamed out of
the station along the burnside toward Huntly. Alec gazed down the line
till the train was out of sight and then, turning, left the station
and trudged homeward. When he reached Rhynie he had walked eight miles
to look at a railway engine for two and a half minutes--and he was
happy!

As he went along the village street he heard a familiar sound.

"Clang-a-clang clang!--ssssssss!" It was irresistible. He stopped,
and stepped into the magic cavern of darkness, gleaming with the
forge-fire, where George Lobban, the smith, having hammered a glowing
horseshoe into shape, gripped it with his pincers and flung it hissing
into the water.

Having cracked a joke with the laughing smith, Alec dragged himself
away from the smithy, past the green, and looked in at the stable to
curry-comb the pony and enjoy feeling the little beast's muzzle nosing
in his hand for oats.

He let h