They all helped him in their different ways:  Grizel, by declining his company; Corp, by being far away at Look-about-you, adding to the inches of a farm-house; Aaron Latta, by saying nothing but looking “college or the herding;” Mr. McLean, who had settled down with Ailie at the Dovecot, by inquiries about his progress; Elspeth by—­but did Elspeth’s talks with him about how they should live in Aberdeen and afterwards (when they were in the big house) do more than send his mind a-galloping (she holding on behind) along roads that lead not to Aberdeen?  What drove Tommy oftenest to the weary drudgery was, perhaps, the alarm that came over him when he seemed of a sudden to hear the names of the bursars proclaimed and no Thomas Sandys among them.  Then did he shudder, for well he knew that Aaron would keep his threat, and he hastily covered the round table with books and sat for hours sorrowfully pecking at them, every little while to discover that his mind had soared to other things, when he hauled it back, as one draws in a reluctant kite.  On these occasions Aaron seldom troubled him, except by glances that, nevertheless, brought the kite back more quickly than if they had been words of warning.  If Elspeth was present, the warper might sit moodily by the fire, but when the man and the boy were left together, one or other of them soon retired, as if this was the only way of preserving the peace.  Though determined to keep his word to Jean Myles liberally, Aaron had never liked Tommy, and Tommy’s avoidance of him is easily accounted for; he knew that Aaron did not admire him, and unless you admired Tommy he was always a boor in your presence, shy and self-distrustful.  Especially was this so if you were a lady (how amazingly he got on in after years with some of you, what agony others endured till he went away!), and it is the chief reason why there are such contradictory accounts of him to-day.

Sometimes Mr. Cathro had hopes of him other than those that could only be revealed in a shameful whisper with the door shut.  “Not so bad,” he might say to Mr. McLean; “if he keeps it up we may squeeze him through yet, without trusting to—­to what I was fool enough to mention to you.  The mathematics are his weak point, there’s nothing practical about him (except when it’s needed to carry out his devil’s designs) and he cares not a doit about the line A B, nor what it’s doing in the circle K, but there’s whiles he surprises me when we’re at Homer.  He has the spirit o’t, man, even when he bogles at the sense.”

But the next time Ivie called for a report—!

In his great days, so glittering, so brief (the days of the penny Life) Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really tried to work.  But he had.  He did his very best, doggedly, wearily sitting at the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing himself and gave him a melancholy comfort by saying so.  An hour afterwards he might discover that he had been far away from his books, looking on at his affecting death and counting the mourners at the funeral.