broken organization; branches went down, and it was
many years afterwards before it was again reestablished in some of the
districts.

Though at the time it might have seemed all loss, yet it had its
advantages, and especially demonstrated the fact that there was a fine
discipline and the necessary unity among the rank and file. The next
great work was to find out how that unity could be guided and that
discipline perfected--how to find a common ideal for the men. This was
Robert Smillie's task, and who shall say, looking at the rank and file
to-day, that he has failed?

CHAPTER XII

THE RIVALS

Eight years passed, and Robert grew into young manhood. One of his
younger brothers had joined him and Andrew Marshall in the partnership.
It had been a long, stiff struggle, and his mother knew all the hardness
and cruelty of it. In after years Robert loved his mother more for the
fight she put up, though it never seemed to him that he himself had done
anything extraordinary. He was always thoughtful, and planned to save
her worry. On "pay-nights," once a fortnight, when other boys of his age
were getting a sixpence, or perhaps even a shilling, as pocket-money, so
that they could spend a few coppers on the things that delight a boy's
heart, Robert resolutely refused to take a penny. For years he continued
thus, always solacing himself with the thought that it was a "shilling's
worth less of worry" his mother would have.

Yet, riches were his in that the enchantment of literature held him
captive, and his imagination gained for him treasures incomparably
greater than the solid wealth prized by worldly minds. His father had
possessed about a dozen good books, among others such familiar Scottish
household favorites as "Wilson's Tales of the Borders," "Mansie Waugh,"
by "Delta," "Scots Worthies," Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," Scott's
"Rob Roy" and "Old Mortality," and the well-thumbed and dog-eared copy
of Robert Burns' Poems.

"Gae awa', man Robin," his mother would say sometimes to him, as he sat
devouring Wilson's "Tales" or weeping over the tragic end of Wallace's
wife Marion as recounted in Jean Porter's entrancing "Scottish Chiefs."

"Gang awa' oot an' tak' a walk. Ither laddies are a' oot playin' at
something, an' forby it's no' healthy to sit too long aye readin'."

"Ach. I canna' be bothered," he would answer. "I'd raither read."

"What is't you're readin' noo?" she would enquire. "Oh, it's the
'Scot