Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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It is too painful for me to tell the rest; but the end of my father was that he was led away from that farm where we had come on summer vacation, taken away like a little child, led by the hand of a man who had come from Renshaw Asylum for him.

Having gone in for the scholarship, and won it, I now continued my studies, still in Glasgow. Home was very subdued and sad. A great gloom hung over it in which my poor mother moved like a withered leaf. I noticed, when I accompanied her to church—which I always did now, never inventing excuses for staying at home as had been my wont of old—that a new petition had come into the parson's prayer: ". . . and for those whose minds have been blinded we pray for light."

I think if I had looked into my heart during these months I should have been by way of flattering myself that I was an ideal son. Indeed, I think at times I did so look and see myself upon the stage of life as something of a heroic figure. Youth is histrionic.

Sheep-farming was over; in another month I would be sitting for a fresh examination; If I came out near the top a Bursary would be mine again, carrying me on from the grammar school to our university; if I came out a little lower I would have at least a scholarship. I was already looked upon by my class-mates as distinctly in the running; and yet a university career was the last thing that my heart desired.