ss."

"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
to be a minister."

Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
growled.

So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
still was the home-coming--to board the empty train at Skeighan when
the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
nights--his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
school days--and are fools for the remainder of their lives.

The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
youngster in their ken.

"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.

"To no good--you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
train the other day