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fortunate enough to spend a little time with him before he died, and as fathers will, we discussed our sons.’
    Hew had stiffened. If the lawyer noticed this, he chose to pass it by.
    ‘And we were both proud fathers, I am not ashamed to say. It will embarrass you, no doubt, as it would do my own boy, to hear how we indulged ourselves. Yet you will permit my saying, for tis meant as a kindness, that your father was most touching in his pride for you. He hoped that you might follow in the law.’
    ‘I know it,’ Hew said heavily, ‘and I have tried the law. That much my father knew. I am not disposed to like it.’ He stirred in his chair, setting down his cup.
    ‘I understand. Perhaps I ought not to presume to put my case. No matter, though. The fact is this: If you were to consider the law as your profession, then nothing would please me more than to take you for my pupil and to oversee your coming to the bar. You are, I understand , full learned in the civil laws, and ripe for your probation. None would be more welcome in my house.’
    Hew was silent a moment. His eyes were low, upon the fire. Quietly, he said, ‘You are too kind.’
    ‘Do not speak of kindness. I may not pretend that I am half the man your father was. Yet if I could impart to you, the half I learned from him, I might serve you well. In modesty, I hesitate to mention this, but my regard has influence. The position of king’s advocate is not beyond my reach.’
    Cunningham’s tone was earnest, unaffected, and Hew softened his response. ‘I know your reputation, sir. The honour you impart is undeserved . I would not, for the world, have done you a discourtesy. But I must protest again, I am not suited to the law.’
    The lawyer nodded. ‘Your father thought otherwise. But there again, we may be blind to our children’s predilections. All too often, it would seem, we cast them in our moulds. Now there’s my own boy begged to be a cabin boy,’ (despite himself, Hew smiled), ‘and here I’ve gone and put him to the university.’
    ‘Ah, but then you knew he would not care to be a cabin boy,’ Hew objected shrewdly.
    ‘Did I though? But how? No matter, now. I am resolved, I shall not try to sway you, nor take offence if you decline. Do not make your answer yet awhile. Only, may I ask you, why you are so set against the law? You have spent many years in study. Was it all for nought?’
    ‘I cannot readily explain it, sir, without I prick old wounds. I once had a friend indicted for a crime, a heinous crime, that he did not commit. I knew my friend was innocent, and I had proofs, and knew the law, and yet I could not prove it by the law, wherefore I do hold it in contempt.’
    The lawyer was listening intently. Urgently he asked, ‘Your friend was hanged?’
    Hew shook his head. ‘I set the whole before the king, who pardoned him.’
    The lawyer smiled. ‘Which tells me you have wit, and may well serve the law, when you well understand it. I wish I had had your insight, when I was your age. Yet we are alike. For something of the sort befell me too, some twenty years ago. I was a probationer, working with your father, in the tolbooth of St Giles. I was an arrogant lad, subtle, I confess, and I had learned the law and all its tricks. I could not wait to play them for myself. I saw the law as sport, and took delight in it, like racquets in the caichpule, batting back and forth. Your father had his chamber in the close among the notaries; I work there still, though in those days I shared lodgings in the low shade of the kirk, and now my house looks down upon it from the hill. But then, the world ahead of me, I was proud and eager, and ambitious for success. The first case I defended on completing my probation was almost, I might say, a friend . He was one of the writers who worked in our row, who prepared our papers and made notes for us. And he was privy in this role to rare and secret documents. We knew him as a meek and modest man, whose life