It was Jennie who had got him the grudging permission to go in the evening to the village schoolmaster for some book-learning.

But peculiar circumstances had favored her in this matter, for neither the old man nor his sons could read or write, and they had begun to find this, in their changed position, and in the rapid growth of general information, a serious drawback in business matters.
Therefore, as Davie could not be spared in the day, the schoolmaster agreed for a few shillings a quarter to teach him in the evening.

This arrangement altered the lad's whole life.

He soon mastered the simple branches he had been sent to acquire, and then master and pupil far outstepped old Christopher's programme, and in the long snowy nights, and in the balmy summer ones, pored with glowing cheeks over old histories and wonderful lives of great soldiers and sailors.
In fact, David Denton, like most good sons, had a great deal of his mother in him, and she had been the daughter of a long line of brave Westmoreland troopers.

The inherited tendencies which had passed over the elder boys asserted themselves with threefold force in this last child of a dying woman.