Mr Guthrie said that when the boy was old enough to walk so far he would take him into the school. Next day, Adam had crawled to the doorstep. Though he was the youngest child in the class, he was soon at the head of it. In his fifth year he was learning the Hebrew alphabet, and so set on scholarship that in the great snowfall of that winter he cajoled his eldest brother into making him a pair of stilts, and got to school that way. After the snow came a long hard frost. Ice formed on the river. The boys went sliding and played ice hockey. One afternoon when they were tussling together and whacking at each other’s shins, the ice cracked and parted beneath them. It was a shallow reach of the river, and they got off with nothing worse than a wetting, except Jimmie Guthrie, who had measles coming out on him. His mother had forbidden him to go out, and he was afraid to go home and be whipped for disobedience, so he hung about waiting for his clothes to dry. By the time they dried, he was in a fever, and soon after then he was dead.

His schoolmates went to the funeral, Adam among them. Adam’s attention wandered. He was counting the lozenge panes42 in the window when he heard his name spoken by the Minister. ‘For as in Adam all die’ were the words. He was not the only Adam in the village, but he felt sure that the words had been spoken of him. It was as if he had heard an important secret. Thinking it over, he decided he must be the Angel of Death. He had often heard his mother and Ailie say he was not like the others. As they had as often told him not to boast or think himself remarkable, he kept the important secret to himself.

Since he was so quick at his books and so undersized, it seemed meant that he should go into the Ministry. Mr Guthrie began to teach him theology. They soon got to the Fall of Man, and the true sense of the text in First Corinthians43. Adam was glad he had kept his fancy about the Angel of Death to himself. If he had told of it, he would have been laughed at. But the word ‘Death’ had somehow taken root in his mind—as if he might have a special vocation or talent for the subject. As a step in the right direction, he studied epitaphs and watched pig killings. In his heart he thought he would rather be a surgeon than a minister; but it was by his excellence in theology that he won a bursary and was admitted (for all he was under age) to the Dollar Academy.

When he came home for the half-year holiday, the first person he met was Ailie. She was weeping. ‘You should have got here an hour earlier,’ she said. ‘She waited on for you, poor old Pussy! But you’re too late. She’s gone. Pussy Bawdron’s gone.’