It was while we continued to sojourn in Edinburgh for the protection of the Convention that first I began to turn my mind to the stated ministry of the Kirk, for I saw well that this soldiering work must ere long come to an end. And yet all my heart went out towards something better than the hewing of peats upon the moor and the foddering of oxen in stall.

Yet for long I could not see how the matter was to be accomplished, for the Cameronian hill-folk had never had a minister since James Renwick bade his farewell to sun and moon and Desirable General Meetings down in the Edinburgh Grassmarket. There was no authority in Scotland capable of ordaining a Cameronian minister. I knew how impossible it was that I could go to Holland, as Renwick and Linning and Shields had done, at the expense of the societies—for the way of some of these men had even{94} now begun to sour and disgust the elders of the Hill Folk.

So since no better might be I turned my mind to the ministry of the Reformed Kirk as it had been established by law, and resolved to spend my needful seasons as a student of the theologies in the town of Edinburgh. I spoke to my father of my decision, and he was willing that I should try the work.

“I will gladly be at your college charges, Quintin,” he said; “but mind, lad, it will depend how I sell my sheep, whether ye get muckle to put in your belly. Yet, perchance, as the auld saw hath it, ‘hungry dogs hunt best,’ So mayhap that may likewise hold true of the getting of learning.”

So in the autumn of that year of the Convention, and some months after our return, I made me ready to go to college, and to my infinite surprise Hob, my brother, declared that he would come also.

“For,” said he, “my father does not need me now at home, at least, not till the spring and the lambing time.”

My father demurred a little. But Hob got his way because he had, as I well saw, my mother behind him. Now Hob was (and is) the{95} best of brothers—slow, placid, self-contained, with little humour in him, but filled with a great, quiet faithfulness. And he has abode with me through many tears and stern trials.

So in due time to Edinburgh we twain went, and while I trudged it back and forth to the college Hob bought with his savings a pedlar’s pack, and travelled town and country with swatches of cloth, taches for the hair, pins for the dresses of women-folk, and for the men chap-books and Testaments. But the strange thing is that, slow and silent as our Hob is at most times, he could make his way with the good wives of the Lothians as none of those bred to the trade could do. They tell me he was mightily successful.

I only know that many a day we two might have gone hungry to bed had it not been for what Hob brought home, instead of, as it was, having our kites panged full with good meat, like Tod Lowrie when the lambs are young on the hill.[6]

And often when my heart was done with the dull and dowie days, the hardness of my heart, and the wryness of learning, Hob would{96} come in with a lightsome quirk on his queer face, or a jest on his tongue, picked up in some of the outlying villages, so that I could not help but smile at him, which made the learning all the easier afterward.

Yet the hardest part of my sore toil at college was the thought that the more I travailed at the theologies, the less of living religion was in my soul. Indeed, it was not till I had been back some time among the common folk who sin and die and are buried, that I began again to taste the savour of vital religion as of old. For to my thinking there is no more godless class than just the young collegers in divinity. Nor is this only a mock, as Hob would have made of it, saying with his queer smile, “Quintin, what think ye o’ a mission to the heathen divinity lads—to set the fire o’ hell to their tails, even as Peden the Prophet bade Richie Cameron do to the border thieves o’ Annandale?”

Connect and Addition to Chapter XI. made in after years by Me, Hob MacClellan.

It is well seen from the foregoing that Quintin, my brother, had no easy time of it while he was at the college, where they called him “Separator,” “Hill Whig,” “Young Drumclog,” and{97} other nicknames, some of which grieved the lad sore.

Now they were mostly leather-jawed, slack-twisted Geordies from the Hieland border that so troubled our Quintin—who, though he was not averse to the sword or the pistol in a good cause, yet would not even be persuaded to lift his fist to one of these rascals, lest it should cause religion to be spoken against. But I was held by none of these scruples.

So it chanced that one night as we came out of the College Wynd in the early falling winter gloaming, one of these bothy-men from the North called out an ill name after us—“porridge-fed Galloway pigs,” or something of the kind. Whereat very gladly I dealt him so sound a buffet on the angle of his jaw that his head was not set on straight again all the winter.

After this we adjourned to settle our differences at the corner of the plainstones; but Quintin and the other theologians who had characters to lose took their way home, grieved in spirit. Or so at least I think he pretended to himself.

For when I came in to our lodging an hour after his first words were: “Did ye give him his licks, Hob?” And that question, to which{98} I answered simply that I had and soundly, did not argue that the ancient Adam had been fully exorcised from our Quintin.

All the same the Highlandman was none so easy to handle, being a red-headed Grant from Speyside, and more inclined to come at you with his thick skull, like a charging boar of Rothiemurchus, than decently to stand up with the brave bare knuckles, as we are wont to do in the South.

A turn or two at Kelton Hill fair would have done him no harm and taught him that he must not fight with such an ungodly battering-ram as his head. I know lads there who would have met him on the crown with the toe of their brogans.

But this I scorned, judging it feater to deal him a round-arm blow behind the ear and leap aside. The first of these discouraged the Grant; the second dropped him on the causeway dumb and limp.

“Well done, Galloway!” cried a voice above; “but ye shall answer for this the morn, every man o’ ye!”

“Run, lads, run! ’Tis the Regent!” came the answering cry from the collegers.

And with that every remaining student lad ran his best in the direction of his own lodging.{99}

“Well, sir, have ye killed the Speyside Hielandman?” said the Doctor from his window, when I remained alone by the fallen chieftain. The Regent came fro............