The dominie looked in a startled remonstrance. “I would not blame him for that, Cornal,” he said: “that was what the Sheriff calls _damnum fatale_. Upon my word, though Gilian has been something of a heart-break to myself, I must say you give him but scant justice among you here.” “I can see in him but youth wasted, and the prodigal of that is spendthrift indeed.” “I would not just say wasted,” protested the dominie. “There’s the makings of a fine man in him if we give him but a shove in the right direction. He baffles me to comprehend, and yet”--this a little shamefacedly--“and yet I’ve brought him to my evening prayers. I would like guidance on the laddie. With him it’s a spoon made or a horn spoiled. Sometimes I feel I have in him fine stuff and pliable, and I’ll be trying to fathom how best to work it, but my experience has always been with more common metal, and I am feared, I’m feared, we may be botching him.” “That was done for us in the making of him,” said the Cornal. “I would not say that either, Cornal,” said the dominie firmly. “But I’m wae to see him brought up on no special plan. The Captain seems to have given up his notion of the army for him.” “You can lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What’s to be made of him? Here’s he sixteen or thereabouts, and just a bairn over lesson-books at every chance.” Brooks smiled wistfully. “It is not the lesson-books, Cornal, not the lesson-books exactly. I wish it was, but books of any kind--come now, Cornal, you can hardly expect me to condemn them in the hands of youth,” He fondled the little Horace in his pocket as a man in company may squeeze his wife’s hand. “They made my bread and butter, did the books, for fifty years, and Gilian will get no harm there. The lightest of novelles and the thinnest of ballants have something precious for a lad of his kind.” The Cornal made no response; the issue was too trivial to keep him from his meditation. His chin sunk upon his chest as it would not have done had the dominie kept to the commoner channels of his gossip, that was generally on universal history, philosophy of a rough and ready rural kind, and theology handled with a freedom that would have seriously alarmed Dr. Colin if he could have heard his Session Clerk in the operation. “Eh? Are you hearing me, Cornal?” he pressed, eager to compel something for the youth whose days were being wasted. “Speak to Miss Mary,” was all the Cornal would say. “I have nothing to do with him, and John’s heedless now, for he knows his plan for the army is useless.” The dominie shook his head. “Man!” he cried. “I cannot even tell of his truancy there, for her heart’s wrapped up in the youth. When she speaks to me about him her face is lighted up like a day in spring, and I dare not say cheep to shatter her illusion.”