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Updated: May 7, 2025
When Andrew Riach went to London, his intention was to become private secretary to a member of the Cabinet. If time permitted, he proposed writing for the Press. "It might be better if you and Clarrie understood each other," the minister said. It was their last night together. They faced each other in the manse-parlour at Wheens, whose low, peeled ceiling had threatened Mr.
A native of Wheens and an orphan, he had been brought up by his uncle, who was a weaver and read Herodotus in the original. The uncle starved himself to buy books and talk about them, until one day he got a good meal, and died of it. Then Andrew apprenticed himself to a tailor. When his time was out, he walked fifty miles to Aberdeen University, and got a bursary.
Course I do shoot a deer once in a while in season; and lots o' pa'tridges, they bein' so tame yuh c'n knock them over as they sit on the lower limb o' a tree after flushin'. I ketch wheens o' trout, too, from time to time; but I give yuh my word I never yet killed anything when the law was on it, never!" When Obed said a thing in his emphatic way, he was to be relied on, Max thought.
Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck. There seemed to be something about it that he liked. It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers. Without the president's presence they had no character.
When Andrew graduated he was known as student of mark. He returned to Wheens, before setting out for London, with the consciousness of his worth. Yet he was only born to follow, and his chance of making a noise in the world rested on his meeting a stronger than himself. During his summer vacations he had weaved sufficient money to keep himself during the winter on porridge and potatoes.
He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the young man's neck. Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
Strictly speaking, gentlemen should not attend these meetings; but in Wheens there was not much difference between the men and the women. That night, as Clarrie bade Andrew farewell at the garden gate, he took her head in his hands and asked what this talk about the banker meant. It was no ignoble curiosity that prompted him.
Some of his phrases have become Parliamentary. Thus "Buckshot" was his. "Mend them End them," "Grand Old Man," and "Legislation by Picnic" may all be traced to the struggling young man from Wheens. He supplied the material for obituary notices.
The first thing Andrew did on reaching Wheens was to write to his London landlady to send on his box with clothes by goods train; also his tobacco pouch, which he had left on the mantelpiece, and two pencils which she would find in the tea-caddy. Then he went around to the manse. The minister had great news for him. The master of the Wheens Grammar School had died.
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