From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

A low large squat building, with an iron-railed quad, a building with two wings in front and two running out behind, abutting on to the grounds of the Gordon Hospital or Sillerton Boys' School, such was the old Grammar School of Aberdeen, which has given literary birth to so many men of eminence, including the great poet Lord Byron himself.

On the top of the main hall this seminary had a little belfry, in which was a little bell, which it was the duty of old John the porter to ring at stated hours every day, in order to call the noisy students to study and to work.

At eight o'clock on a dull September evening Sandie M‘Crae was trudging along one of the best terraces in the west end of the Granite City. The lamps were bright enough surely, and the houses were as white as the driven snow. Yet Sandie had some difficulty in finding a certain number. By the help of a Herculean policeman he was successful at last, however, and trotting up the steps, he knocked modestly at the door. His own heart was beating at that moment far more vehemently than any door-knocker could have done. The next half-hour would be big with his fate.

Was Mr. Geddes,[3] Rector of the Grammar School, in, and could he see him?

These were the questions he put to the neat-fingered Phyllis, who held the door a little open, and peeped round the edge of it.

She would see in a moment. What name?

Alexander M‘Crae of Kilbuie.

Nanny returned in half a minute.

Then Sandie was admitted, and ushered into a room in which he could hear a voice wishing him good evening, but could see nothing save the glimmer of the gas-light and the hazy flicker of the fire. The whole room was filled with tobacco-smoke as with a dense cloud.

"Nanny, show the young gentleman into the drawing-room," said the Rector; and next minute Sandie found himself in a cool and pleasant room indeed, a great portion of whose furniture was books -- poets, novelists, theologians, historians, all sorts and in all tongues apparently.

And now there entered the Rector himself, and Sandie stood up to greet him, but was waved back to his seat. The Rector took a seat very close to him, as if to read his every thought.

"I await your pleasure," said Rector Geddes.

Then Sandie opened fire and told him he desired to take a month or six weeks at the Grammar School, if he might do so previous to the annual competition for bursaries.

The Rector at this time was a young man of probably not more than seven-and-twenty, tall, very dark in hair, and with cheeks as rosy as those of a ploughboy. He looked Sandie up and down before he replied; he even scanned his boots, and doubtless noted that the legs of his well-worn trousers were hardly long enough to meet the boots, thus showing a considerable expanse of blue ribbed stockings.

"No doubt," he said at last, "you have been at the best parish schools?"

"With the exception of a few lessons, sir, given me by the Rev. D. Mackenzie of Belhaven, within the last few months, I am entirely self-taught."

"You are ambitious, young sir. " Geddes was smiling now.

"I am, sir, and I am something else."

"And that is?"

"Hopeful."