“ALAN GRAY, come to my desk.”

At the sound of these ominous words, thundered out by the master, every pupil in Glenconan School cast a furtive look at the spot whence the summons came, and another at poor luckless me as I made my way to the dread tribunal, carrying in my hand the tawse which had been flung at my head.

“Is this your book, boy?” he said sternly, holding up gingerly a well-thumbed copy of Scott’s “Monastery.”

“No, sir, it does not belong to me.”

“Yet it was found in your desk. Have you been reading it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Um, just so; and where do you get such books, pray?”

So long as my answers would only involve myself, I was quite prepared to reply; but now I was silent.

“Did you hear my question, Alan Gray? I said—Where did you get such books?”

Not a word came from me to break the dread silence. Many years have flown since that day, but I can yet see the storm of passion that swept over the master’s face as he spoke. A volcano slumbered within him, which he tried to suppress. He was a hard, severe man, was The Reverend Archibald Angus. A Presbyterian of the old school, he had no sympathy with the natural love of a boy for all that was legendary and romantic, and could not brook the idea of any pupil of his daring to read such unhallowed literature, as he believed all novels to be. A strict disciplinarian, he demanded the most abject submission to his authority, and had no mercy for anyone who dared to thwart his will. Theologically and socially he was narrow and crabbed, and his system of teaching, if system it could be called, was tyrannical in the extreme.

During the mid-day recess a tell-tale had volunteered the information that I had been reading a book which was not a class book. Mr. Angus had gone to my desk and, on ransacking it, had found a copy of “The Monastery,” which he had promptly confiscated.

“Have I not forbidden you to read novels? And yet you persist in even bringing your fictitious rubbish here! But you shall not defy my authority. You must be made an example of. Hold up your hand.”

I obeyed. He stood to his feet and rained blow after blow, first on one hand, and then on the other. His face was livid with passion and he went on as if he altogether forgot that it was a thin, white-faced slip of a boy, and not a man, he was punishing. I bore the pain as long as I could; at last I gave one big sob and burst into a fit of weeping. The master ceased and, taking a step or two from his place, he hurled the forbidden book on the peats that were smouldering on the hearthstone.

I watched my chance; when he returned to resume his seat I made a dash for the fireplace, snatched the volume from the flames that were already beginning to curl its boards, made for the door with the fleetness of a deer, and was down the road towards the river ere anyone could intercept me. I made for the “Pinkie” well which had a nice stone seat beside it, rested for a moment to recover my breath and review the situation, and was about to move on when I heard a gruff voice near me exclaim:

“Hallo, ye scoonril, what mischief hae ye been aifter noo?”

The voice was that of old Willie Scott, the stonemason, who was engaged in mending a gap in Miss Milne’s garden wall. He was an “Auld Licht” of the sternest kind, and was disliked by many of the young folks. To those who only knew him casually he was sarcastic and seemingly uncivil; but to his intimates Willie had many redeeming qualities. He and I were good friends, and so I was rather glad to see him at this juncture. I replied:

“Oh, nae very muckle, Willie. The maister gae me a lickin’ for having ane o’ Walter Scott’s novels in my desk. He put it into the fire, but I snapped it out and ran off wi’t. The book wasna mine, Willie, sae I couldna let it burn.”

“Aye, aye, and that’s the set o’t, is it? An’ what business had ye to be readin’ sic’ a book when ye should hae been at your tasks? I sair doot ye’re an ill loon, Alan. What’ll happen to ye the morn, think ye?”

“Oh, I suppose I’ll get anither lickin’, but I can stand that sae lang as he doesna get a hand o’ George Graham’s book. Man, Willie, you should see Mrs. Graham’s library! She has all the Waverley Novels, as well as Dickens and Thackeray. George often let’s me hae a book to read.”

Willie opened his eyes a bit wider and gave a low, prolonged whistle.

“Aye, aye, and sae ye’re takin’ up wi’ that Prelatist, are ye? Ye micht as well turn Papist at ance when ye’re aboot it. I wonder what yer mither’ll think when she kens of her laddie keeping such company.”

“Oh, ye needna complain, at ony rate. My mither kens that I often go to the Hilltown to see George, and she’s well enough pleased. Man, if ye only saw Mrs. Graham’s books! The sicht wad mak yer mooth water.”

“Perfect trash—a lot o’ lees,” burst forth the old man.

“Aye, but just look at some o’ thae pictures in the ‘Monastery,’ Willie.”

The mason, in spite of his narrow views, was really fond of books, and in his own way was a hard student; but his reading was mainly confined to Puritan theology and to such church histories as Calderwood and Wodrow. The perusal of any work of a lighter character he would deem a waste of time. Still, he laid down his trowel, seated himself beside me, wiped his hands on his coarse linen apron, and carefully turned over the leaves of the little volume. The first picture that turned up was the interior of a mediaeval church. I could see that he was impressed with the beauty of the architecture. There was the great east window, filled with stained glass, intersected with delicate stone tracery; below it the altar, surmounted by a stone reredos, with a series of bas-reliefs depicting scenes in our Lord’s ministry. On the super-altar stood a cross, flanked by two tall candlesticks. In the foreground of the picture was the chancel-arch, Norman with dogtooth ornaments, while between that and the Holy Table were the choir stalls with richly carved canopies, on either side of the central passage. To me the whole was a thing of beauty. I could not understand the meaning of it all but, taken along with the narrative, it had cast quite a glamor over me. The old man gazed intently on the picture for a few moments, then pushed it towards me with a gesture which said plainly: “Yes, these old churches are very fine, but I must not admire them too much. The ‘Auld Licht’ notion of a church as plain as a barn, without any pretentions to architectural beauty, must be right. We must not think of these things at all. God can surely be, perhaps better, worshipped in a plain barn than in a magnificent cathedral.” Willie was by no means an unreasonable man, but his attachment to the Seceder Kirk, of which he was an elder, kept him from giving vent to his own personal impressions in this regard.

The reading of Scott may have sometimes interfered with my studies when it should not have done so, but it gave me an idea of the Church’s corporate life, that had never been set before me, at school or in church. Without any intention on Walter Scott’s part, he was doing then, and he certainly is doing still, an excellent work as an exponent of the religious life of the past. The perusal of his works has done for many what it did for me, that is, it has implanted a certain knowledge respecting church matters, and men have felt constrained to study the Book of Common Prayer and to compare its usages with those of the various ages described in the novels and metrical romances.

I could not go to school again that day, and so I slipped home by a back road and found our mother knitting busily, but quite ready for a chat.

“You’ve surely got out sooner this afternoon, Alan,” said she as I entered the cottage. One look at my mother’s face showed me she knew something was wrong. I sat down beside her, showed her the wales on my hands, and told her the whole story. No matter what trouble I might get into, I could always go to her in the full assurance of receiving the sympathy that my case needed, and perhaps more than it deserved. If I was in the wrong, who could point out the fault, so gently and yet so convincingly, as she!

“Preserve me, laddie,” she said, “the master’s been ower sair on ye the day. We’ll say as little aboot it as possible, for ye see ye were in the wrang, and ye ken, Alan, I wad be the last to approve of your disobeying Mr. Angus, even if he is a bit narrow-minded and tyrannical. I’ll call in and see him this evening, and we’ll get a’thing made right.”

And so she did. The harshness and severity of the master could not stand against my mother’s gentle persuasiveness. I never heard what she said to Mr. Angus, but I can remember, many years afterwards when I went to visit him, he asked for my mother and said: “Ye were blessed in a good mother, Alan; I never was in her presence yet but I felt a better man for it. No one could be merrier than she; and yet with it all there was an atmosphere of unconscious saintliness ever about her that had a wonderful influence upon everyone who knew her.”

When I returned to school on the following day nothing was said of my escapade. In the playground there were some who would have liked to lionize me as a bit of a hero, but somehow or other I shrank from any reference to the subject.

I never again took any such books to school, but I continued to read the Waverley Novels—very often aloud for the benefit of others. In the long winter evenings we would sit around a blazing peat fire, in our stone-flagged kitchen, and listen while father and Mr. Lindsay discussed current topics of the day. An old college friend used regularly to send his copy of the Edinburgh “Courant” to the dominie, and the news it contained formed the subject of many a warm discussion. One matter which at this time was causing considerable disturbance, in certain circles, was the movement for the final extinction of the disabilities against Episcopalians. On this the two took opposite sides. Mr. Lindsay, although not actually an Anglican, was fully in sympathy with the movement; my father, on the other hand, had been brought up a rigid Presbyterian and knew nothing of any other faith. He saw no need, he said, for the existence of the “English Kirk” in Scotland. The Reformers had abolished prelacy and all that appertained thereto, root and branch. The voice of Scotland for over three hundred years had been in favor of the Presbyterian faith and the Presbyterian form of worship. Why could not everybody be content to worship as the godly followers of the Covenant had done, without all the outward show and ceremony, and read prayers, that were considered necessary in England? Like many of his fellow-countrymen, my father held in the greatest abhorrence any cringing to English customs. To imitate the people of the south seemed to him a giving up of the independence that Scotland had striven so hard to maintain. In our home I never dared to join in the discussion of my elders, but, when Mr. Lindsay and I were in his study one evening, I broached this subject and asked him to tell me how and when the “English Kirk” came to Scotland.

“Well, you see, Alan,” said he, “what you call the ‘English’ Church is not the English Church at all; the Episcopalians are really and truly the representatives of the Christians of long ago who first brought the gospel into this country. You’ve read in your school history about St. Columba coming over from the north of Ireland in his ‘curragh’ and settling with his followers on the island of Iona, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Lindsay, but the maister told us that he was exactly like oor ain ministers, and that he had nae bishops in his kirk, and nane o’ the forms and ceremonies that the Papists and Prelatists hae nooadays.”

“Weel, I canna juist speak as decidedly and dogmatically as Mr. Angus does; but I am sure o’ one thing—Columba and his Culdees used the same kind o’ prayer book that was used at that time all over Europe, and ony reader of church history kens that it spak’ o’ a three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons; and they used the same kind of forms for baptisms, marriages, burials, and for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; and a’ the records that hae come down frae these Culdees show that they kept Christmas, and Easter, and a’ the rest of the great festivals, just as the Episcopalians do. So you see, the original form of Christianity in this country was the same as in England.”

“Weel, but why do they ca’ the Presbyterian the ‘Auld Kirk’? Surely the kirk which had bishops was the auldest kirk!”

“Aye, noo ye’ve hit the mark—that’s just what it is. For a lang time the Christianity planted by St. Columba and his followers was simple and primitive and pure, but sometime before what we call the ‘Middle Ages’ the church began to get a great deal of power, even in civil matters; abuses crept in. The Bishop of Rome was allowed to usurp authority in this land, which never belonged to him. In the sixteenth century the papal power ruled everywhere—and in Scotland the corruptions in discipline which it brought about were worse than in any other part of the west. The bishops and clergy came actually to be held in contempt among the people, who really tried to be religious. Then came what we call the Protestant ‘Reformation.’ Things were so bad in Scotland that it seemed to the reformers of no use to try and purify the old system; they resolved to bring in a new order of things altogether; and so by an act of parliament passed in Edinburgh in 1560 they destroyed the old church and in its place put an entirely new church, invented by themselves, and established by themselves. The bishops who were put down must have been poor successors of the Apostles, for they submitted with a feeble show of protest. For more than a hundred years those who still clung to the old ways had to do without bishops, and it is to the credit of many that they kept their allegiance to the ways of the Primitive Church, as individuals and small communities, when there was so much to tempt them to go with the crowd.”