Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/52

 Soon afterwards he began the study of divinity, and in 1875 was licensed as a minister. His reputation seems to have been excellent, for almost immediately, on September 9, 1875, he was ordained as minister of the Free Church of Evie and Randall, at Orkney.

Up to this point his life reads like a chapter out of the biography of any eminent Scotsman: an orderly progress, through school and college, to the natural and inevitable haven of the church; studious and laborious years leading to the ministry at the age of twenty-nine—a good age, neither so young as to be foolish, nor so old as to feel oneself slipping behind in the battle of life; a position respected and influential, assuring a comfortable livelihood, and thoroughly congenial to one of scholarly tastes. So the future of the Reverend Alexander Macgregor Rose seemed to stretch fair and straight before him, along a predestined and thoroughly Presbyterian path.

But four years later he cast all this aside, changed his name to Gordon, forswore the ministry, and became a wanderer upon the face of the earth.

No one knew why—at least no one in America. In Orkney, of course, the affair created an immense sensation, as any scandal connected with the church was certain to do; but Rose never referred to it, and the friends whom