About the same
time he was dismissed from the school on the charge of heretical
teaching, founded on certain religious conversations he had had with
some of the fisher people who sought his advice; and thereupon he
had left the place, and gone to London, knowing it would be next
to impossible to find or gather another school in Scotland after
being thus branded. In London he hoped, one way or another, to
avoid dying of cold or hunger, or in debt: that was very nearly
the limit of his earthly ambition.
He had just one acquaintance in the whole mighty city, and no more.
Him he had known in the days of his sojourn at King's College, where
he had grown with him from bejan to magistrand. He was the son of
a linen draper in Aberdeen, and was a decent, good humoured fellow,
who, if he had not distinguished, had never disgraced himself. His
father, having somewhat influential business relations, and finding
in him no leanings to a profession, bespoke the good offices of a
certain large retail house in London, and sent him thither to learn
the business. The result was that he had married a daughter of
one of the partners, and become a partner himself. His old friend
wrote to him at his shop in Oxford Street, and then went to see
him at his house in Haverstock Hill.
He was shown into the library--in which were two mahogany cases
with plate glass doors, full of books, well cared for as to clothing
and condition, and perfectly placid, as if never disturbed from
one week's end to another.
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