to leeward,
and the watchers, as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the
windward bars of the furnace; it was only thus that I could see my
grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard road from
Pittenweem to Crail, and for all his business hurry, drawing up to speak
good-humouredly with those he met. And now, in his turn, Lindsay is gone
also; inhabits only the memories of other men, till these shall follow
him; and figures in my reminiscences as my grandfather figured in his.

To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I hear he has a
prodigious deal of Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who is a man
filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these are set-offs. But they
cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, and that
Professor Kelland is dead. No man's education is complete or truly
liberal who knew not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the mere
sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a
fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of
that very kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class
time, though not for long, and give us glimpses of old-world life in
out-of-the-way English parishes when he was young; thus playing the same
part as Lindsay--the part of the surviving memory, signalling out of the
dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished things. But it
was a part that scarce became him; he somehow lacked the means: for all
his silver hair and worn face, he was not truly old; and he had too much
of the unrest and petulant fire of youth, and too much invincible
innocence of mind, to play the veteran well. The time to measure him
best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, was when he
received his class at home. What a pretty simplicity would he then show,
trying to amuse us like children with toys; and what an engaging
nervousness of manner, as fearing that his efforts might not succeed!
Truly, he made us all feel like children, and like children embarrassed,
but at the same time filled with sympathy for the conscientious,
troubled elder-boy who was working so hard to entertain us. A theorist
has held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-tale as his
spectacles; that the mouth may be compressed and the brow smoothed
artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is diagnostic. And truly it
must have been thus with Kelland; for as I still fancy I behold him