To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed, or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his mottled nose—John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs. Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself—to all these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge, among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall suddenly down, and creep patiently again—this he would watch with curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once, "what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"
"They're queer," he said musingly.
Even if he was a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.
But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and then—oh, horror!—his father came up the stair. Would he come into the garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.
The heavy steps came back to the landing.
"Whaur's my gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.
"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."
"Hah!" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he should come in!
But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole drearily; "oo-woo-oo," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it a thin silt of black dust had gathered—the light showed it plainly. All these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.
At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He crept down the stair.
"You were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."
"If ye wud——" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.
The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs. Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy range.
"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"
"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."
The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright, sharp edges.
"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?' says I. 'How do you ken what I want?' I made short work o' him! The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."
Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.
The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man wi't."
"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."
The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John, with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle. Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that," he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim, fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.
"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look here! It's exactly the same size!"
"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie. "You'll be killing folk next."
CHAPTER IX.
"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.
"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart, to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."
"Have the carriers a big load?"
"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."
The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.
"You