ed
in a business-like manner.

"Oh, yes!" Scotty gasped eagerly, "easy."

"All right, we'll take to-morrow; I'll come over and help you.
Good-night!"

And he turned away, leaving his pupil standing in the middle of the
road amazed and humbled.

Number Nine learned during the following week that for some
inexplicable reason the MacDonalds, whose hand had hitherto been
against every other man's hand, were on the side of the new master, and
that anyone who gave him trouble was courting dire calamities at the
hands of Big Malcolm's Scot. As a direct result the fiat went forth
that Dan Murphy, and consequently all his generation, also approved of
the new rule. Subsequently the Tenth announced its neutrality; and
from that time the new era, which had arisen at the building of the
church in the social world of the Oro valley, dawned in the schoolhouse
too, and the land had rest from war.

To no one did the new dispensation bring greater things than to Scotty.
Ever since the days when all knowledge and wisdom could be extracted,
by persistent questionings, from Hamish, he had experienced an
unslakable thirst for books. He had been much more fortunate in
finding reading material than his uncle had been, for Captain Herbert's
library was always at Scotty's disposal. Every summer and winter
Isabel came to Kirsty's laden with books, and what feasts she and
Scotty had reading under the boughs of the Silver Maple or before
Kirsty's fire! Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Macaulay--they devoured them
all; and once, by mistake, she had brought some books by a wonderful
man named Carlyle, which she declared were dreadfully stupid, but which
Scotty found strangely fascinating, though somewhat beyond his
understanding.

But Isabel had been away at school for more than a year now, and though
she wrote Scotty voluminous letters, which he answered at shamefully
long intervals, and only when Kirsty's reproaches goaded him to the
effort, she had almost entirely passed out of his life.

So when there had been no more books to read he had turned his restless
energies into less profitable channels. But now, here were not only
books of all kinds, but a man ready and willing to interpret them.
Scotty heard no more of the sentence of expulsion, and with the energy
that characterised everything he did, he plunged headlong into a course
of study far beyond any public school curriculum. Monteith was first
amazed, then delighted, and lastly fo