My father smiled at all this--but covertly, not believing, I think, that there was any outgate for me into the ministry. And with the state of things in Scotland, indeed, I myself saw none. Nevertheless, I had it in me to try. And if Mr. Linning, Mr. Boyd, Mr. Shields, Mr. Renwick and others had gotten their learning in Holland, why should not I? In return for _Penna_, a pen (_pennae_, of a pen, _et cetera_), Hob taught me the use of arms, the shooting to the dot of an “i” with a gun and a pistol, the broad sword and the small sword, having no mercy on me at all, but abusing me like a sheep-stealer if I failed or grew slack at the practice. “For,” he said, “if ever you are to be a right minister in Scotland, it is as like that ye will need to lead a charge with Richard Cameron, as that ye will spend all your time in the making of sermons and delivering them.” So he taught me also single-stick till I was black and blue all over. He would keep on so long belabouring me that I could only stop him with some verbal quib, which as soon as it pierced his thick skull would make him laugh so long and so loudly that the lesson stopped of itself. Yet for all that he had in after time the mighty assurance to say that it was I who had no true appreciation of humour. One day, when he had basted me most unmercifully, I said to him, “I also would ask you one thing, Hob, and if you tell me without sleeping on it, I will give you the silver buckle of my belt.” “Say on,” said he, casting an eager eye at the waist-leather which Jean Gordon had sent me. “Wherein have I the advantage over the leopard?” I asked him. He thought it over most profoundly. “I give it up,” he said at last. “I do not know.” “Why,” said I, as if it had been the simplest thing, “because when I play back-sword with you I can change my spots and Scripture declares that the leopard cannot.” This he understood not at the time, but the next Sabbath morning it came upon him in the time of worship in the kitchen, and in the midst of the solemnity he laughed aloud, whereat my father, much incensed, asked him what ailed him and if his wits had suddenly taken leave of him. “It was our Quintin,” dithered Hob, tremulously trying to command his midriff; “he told me that when I played back-sword with him he could change his spots and that the leopard could not.” “When said he that?” asked my father, with cold suspicion, for I had been sitting demure as a gib cat at his own elbow. “Last Monday in the gloaming, when we were playing at back-sword in the barn,” said Hob. “Thou great fool,” cried my father, “go to the hill breakfastless, and come not in till ye have learned to behave yourself in the time of worship.” To which Hob responded nothing, but rose and went obediently, smothering his belated laughter in his broad bonnet of blue. He was waiting for me after by the sheep-buchts, when I went out with a bicker of porridge under my coat.