But, as for me, it mattered not greatly. My heart within me was determined that which it should do. Come storm or peaceful years, come life or death, I was determined to stand in the forefront and hold up again the banner which had been dabbled in the blood of Richard Cameron at Ayrsmoss, and trailed in the dust of victory by the haughty and the cruel. That very year I went to my father, and I asked of him a wage to be spent in buying me books for my learning. “You want to be a minister?” said my father, looking, as he well might, no little astonished. “Have you gotten the grace of God in your heart?” “Nay, father,” I answered him, “that I know not. But nevertheless I have a desire to know and to learn----” But another voice cut into the matter and gravity of our discourse. “Bless the lad, and so you shall, Quintin!” cried my mother from the door. I heard my father sigh as though he would have said, “The fat is in the fire now!” Yet he refrained him and said nothing, standing as was his custom with his hands deep in the long side flaps of his waistcoat. Then he showed how hard it was to become a minister, and ever my mother countered his objections, telling how such-an-one’s son had gone forward and been successful. “And they had none such a comfortable down-sitting nor yet any such blessing in flocks and herds as you, goodman!” she would say. “Nor yet a mother so set and determined in her own way!” cried my father a little sharply. “Nay, now, John,” she made answer; “I did but mention those other lads, because not one of them is to be compared with our Quintin!” My father laughed a little. “Well,” he said, “at all events there is time enough. The lad is but fourteen, and muckle much good water will run under the brigs ere it be time to send him to the college. But I will speak to Gilbert Semple, the Edinburgh carrier, to ask his cousin, the goodly minister, what books are best fitted for a lad who desires to seek learning and college breeding. And in the meantime the laddie has aye his Bible. I mind what good Master Rutherford said when he was in Anwoth: ‘If so be ye want manners e’en read the Bible. For the Bible is no ill-bred book. It will take you unashamed through an earthly court as well as through the courts of the Master of Assemblies, through the Star Chamber as well as through the chamber of the stars.’”