I remember, as if it happened this day, how my
heart fairly ached and choked me. Mother put us to bed and tried to
comfort us, telling us that the little birds would be well fed and
grow big, and soon learn to sing in pretty cages; but again and again
we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and their
frightened children, and could not be comforted. Father came into the
room when we were half asleep and still sobbing, and I heard mother
telling him that, "a' the bairns' hearts were broken over the robbing
of the nest in the elm."
After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or six years, very
few of my schooldays passed without a fist fight, and half a dozen was
no uncommon number. When any classmate of our own age questioned our
rank and standing as fighters, we always made haste to settle the
matter at a quiet place on the Davel Brae. To be a "gude fechter" was
our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school. To
be a good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard
to hold high places in our classes and gloried in being Dux.
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