"Into the wide sea--yes!" he answered--"And sea that was pretty rough at first. But one can get accustomed to anything--even to the high rock-a-bye tossing of great billows that really don't want to put you to sleep so much as to knock you to pieces. But I'm galloping along too fast. From the time I made friends with young bulls to the time I began to scrape acquaintance with newspaper editors is a far cry--and in the interim my father died. I should have told you that I lost my mother when I was born--and I don't think that the great wound her death left in my father's heart ever really healed. He never seemed quite at one with the things of life--and his 'bogle tales' of which I was so fond, all turned on the spirits of the dead coming again to visit those whom they had loved, and from whom they had been taken--and he used to tell them with such passionate conviction that sometimes I trembled and wondered if any spirit were standing near us in the light of the peat fire, or if the shriek of the wind over our sheiling were the cry of some unhappy soul in torment. Well! When his time came, he was not allowed to suffer--one day in a great storm he was struck by lightning on the side of the mountain where he was herding in his flocks--and there he was found lying as though he were peacefully asleep. Death must have been swift and painless--and I always thank God for that!" He paused a moment--then went on--"When I found myself quite alone in the world, I hired myself out to a farmer for five years--and worked faithfully for him--worked so well that he raised my wages and would willingly have kept me on--but I had the 'bogle tales' in my head and could not rest. It was in the days before Andrew Carnegie started trying to rub out the memory of his 'Homestead' cruelty by planting 'free' libraries, (for which taxpayers are rated) all over the country--and pauperising Scottish University education by grants of money--I suppose he is a sort of little Pontiff unto himself, and thinks that money can pacify Heaven, and silence the cry of brothers' blood rising from the Homestead ground. In my boyhood a Scottish University education had to be earned by the would-be student himself--earned by hard work, hard living, patience, perseverance and _grit_. That's the one quality I had--grit--and it served me well in all I wanted. I entered at St. Andrews--graduated, and came out an M.A. That helped to give me my first chance with the press. But I'm sure I'm boring you by all this chatter about myself! David, _you_ stop me when you think Miss Deane has had enough!" Helmsley looked at Mary's figure in its pale lilac gown touched here and there by the red sparkle of the fire, and noted the attentive poise of her head, and the passive quietude of her generally busy hands which now lay in her lap loosely folded over her lace work. "Have we had enough, Mary, do you think?" he asked, with the glimmering of a tender little smile under his white moustache.