Gilian grew like a sapling in all seasons, in mind and fancy as in body. Ever he would be bent above the books of Marget Maclean, getting deeper to the meaning of them. The most trivial, the most inadequate and common story had for him more than for its author, for under the poor battered phrase that runs through book and book, the universal gestures of bookmen, he could see history and renew the tragedies that suggested them at the outset. He was no more Brooks’ scholar though he sat upon his upper forms, for, as the dominie well could see, he was launching out on barques of his own; the plain lessons ot the school were without any interest as they were without any difficulty to him. He roamed about the woods, he passed precious hours upon the shore, his mind plangent like the wave. “A droll fellow that of the Paymaster’s,” they said of him in the town. For as he aged his shyness grew upon him, and he went about the community at ease with himself only when his mind was elsewhere. “A remarkable young gentleman,” said Mr. Spencer one day to the Paymaster. “I am struck by him, sir, I am struck. He has an air of cleverness, and yet they tell me he is--” “He is what?” asked the Paymaster, lowering his brows suspicious on the innkeeper’s hesitation. “They tell me he is not so great a credit to old Brooks as he might expect,” said the innkeeper, who was not lacking in boldness or plain speaking if pushed to it. “Ay, they say that?” repeated the Paymaster, pinching his snuff vigorously. “Maybe they’re right too. I’ll tell you what. The lad’s head is stuffed with wind. He goes about with notions swishing round inside that head of his, as much the plaything of nature as the reed that whistles in the wind at the riverside and fancies itself a songster.” Mr. Spencer tilted his London hat down upon his brow, fumbled with his fob-chain, and would have liked to ask the Paymaster if his well-known intention to send Gilian on the same career he and his brothers had followed was to be carried into effect But he felt instinctively that this was a delicate question. He let it pass unput. Bob MacGibbon had no such delicacy. The same day at their meridian in the “Abercrombie” he broached the topic. “I’ll tell you what it is, Captain: if that young fellow of yours is ever to earn salt for his kail, it is time he was taking a crook in his hand.” “A crook in his hand?” said the Paymaster. “Would you have nothing else for him but a crook?” “Well,” said MacGibbon, “I supposed you would be for putting him into Ladyfield. If that is not your notion, I wonder why you keep it on for.” “Ladyfield!” cried the Paymaster. “There was no notion further from my mind. Farming, for all Duke George’s reductions, is the last of trades nowadays. I think I told you plain enough that we meant to make him a soger.”