chman. His husk was so thick and prickly that one approached
him at his peril. I knew that he was as hard as nails and as real as
boiled cabbage; I knew, also, that just within his rough exterior there
were unusual qualities of strength and warmth, and I had grown strangely
to like him and trust him; but there were reaches and depths in his
character that I was long in discovering.

I remember his telling me with some pride that he was a skeptic in
religion, "an infidel if ye like," and that the "Address to the Unco
Guid," about expressed his views. He could also repeat "Holy Willie's
Prayer" to perfection. But I soon found that he was an infidel in much
the same terms that his forefathers had been Covenanters--a terribly
orthodox infidel, if that can be imagined. Skepticism meant no mushy
liberalism with him; it only meant that he had adopted a new creed, and
that he would fight as hard for his skepticism as other men fight for
their more positive beliefs. But if he had changed his religious views,
the moral standards which lay beneath them like the primordial rocks had
not been in the least shaken.

There remained something deep within him of the old spirit of clan
loyalty. Anthy's father had almost brought him up; he had been in the
office of the _Star_ for more years than he cared to remember; he had
watched Anthy through her unconscious and dreamy girlhood; had seen her
blossom into youth and come to the full glory of womanhood. I never
found out how old he was, for he was one of those hard-knit,
red-favoured men who live sometimes from the age of twenty-five to fifty
with scarcely more evidences of change than a granite boulder. He
thought himself ugly, and he was, indeed, rough, uncouth, and uneducated
in the schools, though in many ways as thoroughly educated a man, if
education means the ability to command instantly and for any purpose the
full powers of one's mind and body, as one often finds.

I do not know to this day whether Fergus loved Anthy in the sense in
which a man loves a woman. Certainly it was no selfish love, but rather
a great passionate fidelity to one who, he thought, was infinitely above
him, the sort of devotion which asks only to serve, and expects no
reward. There are few such people in this world, and they usually get
what they expect.

I saw afterward, as I did not see so clearly at the time, how
faithfully, jealously, completely, Fergus had served and watched over
Anthy, particularly