“I was so sorry for Peter and Mrs. Dinnie,” Tommy answered, a little puzzled himself now.  “I saw them so clear.”

“And yet until Betsy came to you, you had never heard tell of them?”

“No.”

“And on reflection you don’t care a doit about them?”

“N-no.”

“And you care as little for Betsy?”

“No now, but at the time I a kind of thought I was to be married to Andrew.”

“And even while you blubbered you were saying to yourself, ’What a clever billie I am!’”

Mr. Cathro had certainly intended to end the scene with the strap, but as he stretched out his hand for it he had another idea.  “Do you know why Nether Drumgley’s sheep are branded with the letters N.D.?” he asked his pupils, and a dozen replied, “So as all may ken wha they belong to.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Cathro, “and similarly they used to brand a letter on a felon, so that all might know whom he belonged to.”  He crossed to the fireplace, and, picking up a charred stick, wrote with it on the forehead of startled Tommy the letters “S.T.”

“Now,” said the Dominie complacently, “we know to whom Tommy belongs.”

All were so taken aback that for some seconds nothing could be heard save Tommy indignantly wiping his brow; then “Wha is he?” cried one, the mouthpiece of half a hundred.

“He is one of the two proprietors we have just been speaking of,” replied Cathro, dryly, and turning again to Tommy, he said, “Wipe away, Sentimental Tommy, try hot water, try cold water, try a knife, but you will never get those letters off you; you are branded for ever and ever.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

OF FOUR MINISTERS WHO AFTERWARDS BOASTED THAT THEY HAD KNOWN TOMMY SANDYS

Bursary examination time had come, and to the siege of Aberdeen marched a hungry half-dozen—­three of them from Thrums, two from the Glenuharity school.  The sixth was Tod Lindertis, a ploughman from the Dubb of Prosen, his place of study the bothy after lousing time (Do you hear the klink of quoits?) or a one-roomed house near it, his tutor a dogged little woman, who knew not the accusative from the dative, but never tired of holding the book while Tod recited.  Him someone greets with the good-natured jeer, “It’s your fourth try, is it no, Tod?” and he answers cheerily, “It is, my lathie, and I’ll keep kick, kick, kicking away to the nth time.”

“Which means till the door flies open,” says the dogged little woman, who is the gallant Tod’s no less gallant wife, and already the mother of two.  I hope Tod will succeed this time.