{"product_id":"2940013744943","title":"The Free Fishers","description":"In Which a Young Man is Afraid of His Youth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMr Anthony Lammas, whose long legs had been covering ground at the\u003cbr\u003erate of five miles an hour, slackened his pace, for he felt the\u003cbr\u003eneed of ordering a mind which for some hours had been dancing\u003cbr\u003ewiddershins.  For one thing the night had darkened, since the moon\u003cbr\u003ehad set, and the coast track which he followed craved wary walking.\u003cbr\u003eBut it was the clear dark of a northern April, when, though the\u003cbr\u003edetails are blurred, the large masses of the landscape are\u003cbr\u003eapprehended.  He was still aware of little headlands descending to\u003cbr\u003ea shadowy gulf which was the Firth.  Far out the brazier on the May\u003cbr\u003ewas burning with a steady glow, like some low-swung planet shaming\u003cbr\u003ewith its ardour the cold stars.  He sniffed the sharp clean scent\u003cbr\u003eof the whins above the salt; he could almost detect the brightness\u003cbr\u003eof their flowering.  They should have been thyme, he thought, thyme\u003cbr\u003eand arbutus and tamarisk clothing the capes of the Sicilian sea,\u003cbr\u003efor this was a night of Theocritus. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheocritus!  What had he to do with Theocritus?  It was highly\u003cbr\u003enecessary to come to terms with this mood into which he had fallen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Mr Lammas, a licensed minister of the Kirk and a professor in\u003cbr\u003ethe University of St Andrews, had just come from keeping strange\u003cbr\u003ecompany.  Three years ago, through the good offices of his patron\u003cbr\u003eand friend, Lord Snowdoun, he had been appointed to the Chair of\u003cbr\u003eLogic and Rhetoric, with emoluments which, with diet money and\u003cbr\u003ekain-hens, reached the sum of £309 a year, a fortune for a\u003cbr\u003eprovident bachelor.  His father, merchant and boat-builder in the\u003cbr\u003etown of Dysart, had left him also a small patrimony, so that he was\u003cbr\u003ein no way cumbered with material cares.  His boyhood had been\u003cbr\u003ecrowded with vagrant ambitions.  At the burgh school he had\u003cbr\u003ehankered after the sea; later, the guns in France had drawn him to\u003cbr\u003ea soldier's life, and he had got as far as Burntisland before a\u003cbr\u003escandalised parent reclaimed him.  Then scholarship had laid its\u003cbr\u003espell on him.  He had stridden to the top of his Arts classes in St\u003cbr\u003eAndrews, and at Edinburgh had been well thought of as a theologian.\u003cbr\u003eHis purpose then was the lettered life, and he had hopes of the\u003cbr\u003ecollege living of Tweedsmuir, far off in the southern moorlands,\u003cbr\u003ewhere he might cultivate the Muses and win some such repute as that\u003cbr\u003eof Mr Beattie at Aberdeen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Lord Snowdoun had shown him the way to better things, for to be\u003cbr\u003ea professor at twenty-five was to have a vantage-ground for loftier\u003cbr\u003eascents.  In the Logic part of his duties he had little interest,\u003cbr\u003econtenting himself with an exposition of Mr Reid's Inquiry and some\u003cbr\u003eperfunctory lectures on Descartes, but in the Rhetoric classes,\u003cbr\u003ewhich began after Candlemas, his soul expanded, and he had made\u003cbr\u003ehimself a name for eloquence.  Also he had discovered an aptitude\u003cbr\u003efor affairs, and was already entrusted with the heavy end of\u003cbr\u003ecollege business.  A year ago he had been appointed Questor, a post\u003cbr\u003ewhich carried the management of the small academic revenues.  He\u003cbr\u003estood well with his colleagues, well with the students, and behind\u003cbr\u003ehim was Lord Snowdoun, that potent manager of Scotland.  Some day\u003cbr\u003ehe would be Principal, when he would rival the fame of old\u003cbr\u003eTullidelph, and meantime as a writer he would win repute far beyond\u003cbr\u003ethe narrow shores of Fife.  Had he not in his bureau a manuscript\u003cbr\u003etreatise on the relations of art and morals which, when he re-read\u003cbr\u003eit, astounded him by its acumen and wit, and a manuscript poem on\u003cbr\u003ethe doings of Cardinal Beatoun which he could not honestly deem\u003cbr\u003einferior to the belauded verse of Mr Walter Scott!","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47162671333616,"sku":"2940013744943","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013744943_p0.jpg?v=1763589675","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013744943","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}