Chapter 2 - Page 2

walked very straight, and before both sexes he boasted that any
woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this beard he took
prodigious care, though otherwise thinking little of his
appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I
did, who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be
said that he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women
strangely, that, I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and
so no more to be marvelled at than a stake in a fence. Foreign
oaths were the nails with which he held his talk together, yet I
doubt not they were a curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains
of shells, more for his own pleasure than for others' pain. His
friends gave them no weight, and when he wanted to talk
emphatically he kept them back, though they were then as
troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who has to
speak with his spoil in his mouth.

Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to
leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not
reach the rope his partner flung him. "It's no go, lad," he
shouted; "so long, Jim," and sank.

A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was
all Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She
took Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a
housekeeper, and there mother and son remained until Gavin got his
call to Thrums. During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of
them as completely as Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On
hearing of Adam's death I went back to Harvie to try to trace her,
but she had feared this, and so told no one where she was going.

According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was
still a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed
her from the first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret
herself was no scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at
turning bannocks on the girdle, she decided, when his age was
still counted by months, that the ministry had need of him. In
those days the first question asked of a child was not, "Tell me
your name," but "What are you to be?" and one child in every
family replied, "A minister." He was set apart for the Church as
doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent, and the rule held
good though the family consisted of only one boy. From his
earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the ministry
as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced and
marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An
enthusiastic mother may bend her son's mind as she chooses if she
begins it once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a mother