“Not a farthing, sir—­which gives another uncanny glint into his character.  When he wants money there’s none so crafty at getting it, but he did this for the pleasure of the thing, or, as he said to Lewis, ’to feel what it would be like.’  That, I tell you, is the nature of the sacket, he has a devouring desire to try on other folk’s feelings, as if they were so many suits of clothes.”

“And from your account he makes them fit him too.”

“My certie, he does, and a lippie in the bonnet more than that.”

So far the school-master had spoken frankly, even with an occasional grin at his own expense, but his words came reluctantly when he had to speak of Tommy’s prospects at the bursary examinations.  “I would rather say nothing on that head,” he said, almost coaxingly, “for the laddie has a year to reform in yet, and it’s never safe to prophesy.”

“Still I should have thought that you could guess pretty accurately how the boys you mean to send up in a year’s time are likely to do?  You have had a long experience, and, I am told, a glorious one.”

“’Deed, there’s no denying it,” answered the dominie, with a pride he had won the right to wear.  “If all the ministers, for instance, I have turned out in this bit school were to come back together, they could hold the General Assembly in the square.”

He lay back in his big chair, a complacent dominie again.  “Guess the chances of my laddies!” he cried, forgetting what he had just said, and that there was a Tommy to bother him.  “I tell you, sir, that’s a matter on which I’m never deceived, I can tell the results so accurately that a wise Senatus would give my lot the bursaries I say they’ll carry, without setting them down to examination-papers at all.”  And for the next half-hour he was reciting cases in proof of his sagacity.

“Wonderful!” chimed in McLean.  “I see it is evident you can tell me how Tommy Sandys will do,” but at that Cathro’s rush of words again subsided into a dribble.

“He’s the worst Latinist that ever had the impudence to think of bursaries,” he groaned.

“And his Greek—­” asked McLean, helping on the conversation as far as possible.

“His Greek, sir, could be packed in a pill-box.”

“That does not sound promising.  But the best mathematicians are sometimes the worst linguists.”

“His Greek is better than his mathematics,” said Cathro, and he fell into lamentation.  “I have had no luck lately,” he sighed.  “The laddies I have to prepare for college are second-raters, and the vexing thing is, that when a real scholar is reared in Thrums, instead of his being handed over to me for the finishing, they send him to Mr. Ogilvy in Glenquharity.  Did Miss Ailie ever mention Gavin Dishart to you—­the minister’s son?  I just craved to get the teaching of that laddie, he was the kind you can cram with learning till there’s no room left for another spoonful, and they bude send him to Mr. Ogilvy, and you’ll see he’ll stand high above my loons in the bursary list.  And then Ogilvy will put on sic airs that there will be no enduring him.  Ogilvy and I, sir, we are engaged in an everlasting duel; when we send students to the examinations, it is we two who are the real competitors, but what chance have I, when he is represented by a Gavin Dishart and my man is Tommy Sandys?”