The Right Stuff: Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton

oned our respective tasks and issued forth together. With a little persuasion I prevailed upon my companion to come and lunch with me, an

sent circumstances than the most lengthy explanation could have done. When he was full I gave him a cigar, and he leaned back in

nt now, and the rugged lines of his face were tinged with a more healthy colour. He was a handsom

degree, was on the point of settling down to study for the ministry-the be-all and end-all of the hope of a humble Scottish household-when disaster

altar of family duty. Anyhow, when David returned, marvellously and mercifully restored to health, setting his younger brother free once more, two precious years had flown; so that Robin now found himself, at the age of twenty-three, faced with the alternative of making a fresh start in life or remaining on the farm at h

herrings and a bag of meal; and from that time he ha

reviews; sometimes I get some odd reporting to do; and whiles I just ha

k that, I s

rading. Do you know what I was d

ha

ell of a man they

s a sort of Scottish S

ut them in a book. I was copying a few of them out; and I shall father them on

"'A good story is at present going t

cerning'-

certain well-known but absen

a column of the picture postcards sold in London in a year, and all that. Nobody can check figures of that kind, so the work

vely. "You were busy there this morning yourself. You would

in surpri

earth--?

th yon havering body Wuddiford-I once reported at one of his meetings: he's just a sweetie-wife in pince-nez-and when I saw you busy with an atlas and gazetteer I said to myself:-'He'll be getting up a few salient facts about the place, in

estaurant. I realised that he, being a Scotsman, was endeavouring to pump up the emotional gratitude whic

should like fine," he added suddenly and impetuously, "to make out a précis for you on the

n my slow-moving brain for some t

he matter in your hands. But when you have made the précis, I wonder if

y address, a

subject of Caerulea, the assimilation and ultimate discharge of which enabled me to score a signal victory over Mr Wuddiford of Upper

servility or effusiveness. I handed him a quarter's salary in advance, gave him two days' holiday wherein to "make his

in took from his pock

e a good fire

tched the document into the heart of the f

er to unfold itself, and some of the writin

pital story is at present going

burst into flame, and shot

the face of a man who has gone through deep waters,

y to me, and he

ate and undemonstrative peop