to the voices, and he showed so kindly that I shall take him as he
stands. A man of middle height, but stooping below it, with sandy
hair turning to grey, and bushy eye-brow covering keen, shrewd
grey eyes. You will notice that his linen is coarse but spotless,
and that, though his clothes are worn almost threadbare, they are
well brushed and orderly. But you will be chiefly arrested by the
Dominie's coat, for the like of it was not in the parish. It was a
black dress coat, and no man knew when it had begun its history; in
its origin and its continuance it resembled Melchisedek. Many were
the myths that gathered round that coat, but on this all were agreed,
that without it we could not have realised the Dominie, and it
became to us the sign and trappings of learning. He had taken a
high place at the University, and won a good degree, and I've heard
the Doctor say that he had a career before him. But something
happened in his life, and Domsie buried himself among the woods with
the bairns of Drumtochty. No one knew the story, but after he died I
found a locket on his breast, with a proud, beautiful face within,
and I have fancied it was a tragedy. It may have been in substitution
that he gave all his love to the children, and nearly all his money
too, helping lads to college, and affording an inexhaustible store
of peppermints for the little ones.

Perhaps one ought to have been ashamed of that school-house, but yet
it had its own distinction, for scholars were born there, and now
and then to this day some famous man will come and stand in the
deserted playground for a space. The door was at one end, and stood
open in summer, so that the boys saw the rabbits come out from their
holes on the edge of the wood, and birds sometimes flew in unheeded.
The fireplace was at the other end, and was fed in winter with the
sticks and peats brought by the scholars. On one side Domsie sat