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"Again, bold Robin Hilyard, and in a scholar's garb! Ha! doubtless thou hast learned ere this that peaceful studies do best insure man's weal below, and art come to labour with me in the high craft of mind-work!" "Adam," quoth Hilyard, "ere I answer, tell me this: Thou with thy science wouldst change the world: art thou a jot nearer to thy end?"
Father Hieronymus, who instructed the pupils in religion, fairly raged, when he spoke of the destructive doctrines, that haunted the new scholar's head. When, soon after Ulrich's reception into the school, he had spoken of Christ's work of redemption, and asked the boy: "From what is the world to be delivered by the Saviour's suffering?" the answer was: "From the arrogance of the rich and great."
The scholar's scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity, finds utterance in this meditation upon death: Whither shall I go now? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory! to find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and Julius Cæsar making hair-buttons! Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the elements by scruples, I know not, nor greatly care.
"Christ died on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time had only a relative existence." He was already turning his eyes toward London with a scholar's appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps its own round.
He was a tall, slender man, surprisingly upright for his age, with a delicate, bearded, scholar's face; the little plain ruff round his neck helped to emphasise the fine sensitiveness of his features; and the hands which he stretched out to his daughter were thin and veined. "Well, my daughter," he said, looking down at her with his kindly grey eyes so like her own, and holding her hands.
He read everything that his opponents put forth, replied to nothing, in spite of the continual solicitation of the editor of "The Democrat," and seemed very soon to regard "The Herald's" calumnies merely from the humorous side. Meanwhile his own speeches grew in knowledge and vigour. With a scholar's precision he put before his hearers the inner history and significance of job after job.
He read everything that his opponents put forth, replied to nothing, in spite of the continual solicitation of the editor of "The Democrat," and seemed very soon to regard "The Herald's" calumnies merely from the humorous side. Meanwhile his own speeches grew in knowledge and vigour. With a scholar's precision he put before his hearers the inner history and significance of job after job.
The end for which the man lived was pagan. His hope was earthly fame. Yet his name survives, if this indeed be a survival, not in those winged verses which were to carry him abroad across the earth, but in the marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then by a wandering scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.
Only the older pupils managed to keep their tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks.
The scholar's mind, trained to consider the problems of civilization, and to recognize the dangers of the city, refused to entertain seriously the thought that there, in the peaceful woods, in the dead of night, a company of ruffians was seeking to do him harm. The voices had ceased, and the listeners heard only the sound of the horses' feet, as the party passed the ruined cabin under the bluff.
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