Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/43

Rh scholars standing outside the door greatly elated. Some boys had barred the door, and had come out through a back window, thinking all was secure. Soon the master appeared on the street, with his usual alert step, and inquired the cause of the uproar. He was informed that the door was barred. He went round to the rear, and, putting a boy in the window, told him, in a voice that could not be gainsaid, to unbar the door. A more disappointed and crestfallen lot never defiled into school. It was very soon understood that one will there was law, and no appeal.”

To resume the narrative of Robert Carter:—

“After three years’ work in my native village (1825–1828) I walked one Friday afternoon to Melrose to visit a friend who was a student of theology. He received me very kindly, asked me to read to him in Latin and Greek, and then told me he had received a letter from Peebles, where he had taught for two years. The Rector of the Grammar School in which he had taught wanted a young man to fill the place he had occupied, and he urged me to go the following morning and apply for it. I told him I had not been at college, or even at grammar school, and that I was certainly unfit to take that place. He replied, ‘You read the classics more fluently than I do, and if you go I will guarantee you will get it.’ I started the next morning at five, and walked twenty-five miles, and reached Peebles before twelve. The Rector took me into his library, gave me one book and took another for himself, and asked me to read and translate. I did so. Volume after volume we took and read, and then he said, ‘When can you come?' I told him I had a school of seventy scholars, and must dispose of it first, but that I would come on Thursday week. ‘That will do,’ he said, and then invited