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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House with the Green Shutters, by George
+Douglas Brown
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The House with the Green Shutters
+
+
+Author: George Douglas Brown
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2008  [eBook #25876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN
+SHUTTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS
+
+by
+
+GEORGE DOUGLAS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.
+London, Edinburgh, and New York
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The frowsy chambermaid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the
+front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture and, being of
+slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without
+moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water
+glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of
+his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when
+it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness.
+
+The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of
+eight. They were yellow in the sun.
+
+Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay
+within the porch, and carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off
+round the corner of the public-house, her petticoat gaping behind.
+Halfway she met the hostler, with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance.
+He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The silly
+_tee-hee_ echoed up the street.
+
+A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the corner, and floating
+white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against
+the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were
+equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to
+be seen either in the Square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in
+the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work;
+the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their
+household cares.
+
+The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red
+chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy
+clearness of everything beneath the dawn--above all, the quietness and
+peace--made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to
+look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar
+delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect--almost
+an unearthliness--as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. But
+it was not the beauty of the hour that kept Gourlay musing at his gate.
+He was dead to the fairness of the scene, even while the fact of its
+presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in
+silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was
+a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look
+down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his
+being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was
+soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air,
+as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. It was the most
+secret and intimate joy of his life to go out and smoke on summer
+mornings by his big gate, musing over Barbie ere he possessed it with
+his merchandise.
+
+He had growled at the quarry carters for being late in setting out this
+morning (for, like most resolute dullards, he was sternly methodical),
+but in his heart he was secretly pleased. The needs of his business were
+so various that his men could rarely start at the same hour and in the
+same direction. To-day, however, because of the delay, all his carts
+would go streaming through the town together, and that brave pomp would
+be a slap in the face to his enemies. "I'll show them," he thought
+proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what
+a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion,
+Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate
+by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness
+of perfect scorn.
+
+Through the big green gate behind him came the sound of carts being
+loaded for the day. A horse, weary of standing idle between the shafts,
+kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient
+hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye;
+ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of
+an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as
+the horse quivered to the blow.
+
+"Run a white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae
+melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there
+wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for _you_ to
+dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse,
+warning whisper of impatience--loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear
+of being heard. "Hurry up, man--hurry up, or he'll be down on us like
+bleezes for being so late in getting off!"
+
+Gourlay smiled grimly, and a black gleam shot from his eye as he glanced
+round to the gate and caught the words. His men did not know he could
+hear them.
+
+The clock across the Square struck the hour, eight soft, slow strokes,
+that melted away in the beauty of the morning. Five minutes passed.
+Gourlay turned his head to listen, but no further sound came from the
+yard. He walked to the green gate, his slippers making no noise.
+
+"Are ye sleeping, my pretty men?" he said softly.... "_Eih?_"
+
+The "_Eih_" leapt like a sword, with a slicing sharpness in its tone
+that made it a sinister contrast to the first sweet question to his
+"pretty men." "_Eih?_" he said again, and stared with open mouth and
+fierce, dark eyes.
+
+"Hurry up, Peter," whispered the gaffer, "hurry up, for God sake. He has
+the black glower in his een."
+
+"Ready, sir; ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the
+other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy
+fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long,
+slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish
+gray. The bearded red brows, close above the pale blueness of his eyes,
+made them more vivid by contrast; they were like pools of blue light
+amid the brownness of his face. Peter always ran about his work with
+eager alacrity. A simple and willing old man, he affected the quick
+readiness of youth to atone for his insignificance.
+
+"Hup, horse; hup then!" cried courageous Peter, walking backwards with
+curved body through the gate, and tugging at the reins of a horse the
+feet of which struck sparks from the paved ground as they stressed
+painfully on edge to get weigh on the great wagon behind. The cart
+rolled through, then another, and another, till twelve of them had
+passed. Gourlay stood aside to watch them. All the horses were brown;
+"he makes a point of that," the neighbours would have told you. As each
+horse passed the gate the driver left its head, and took his place by
+the wheel, cracking his whip, with many a "Hup, horse; yean, horse; woa,
+lad; steady!"
+
+In a dull little country town the passing of a single cart is an event,
+and a gig is followed with the eye till it disappears. Anything is
+welcome that breaks the long monotony of the hours and suggests a topic
+for the evening's talk. "Any news?" a body will gravely inquire. "Ou
+ay," another will answer with equal gravity: "I saw Kennedy's gig going
+past in the forenoon." "Ay, man; where would _he_ be off till? He's owre
+often in his gig, I'm thinking." And then Kennedy and his affairs will
+last them till bedtime.
+
+Thus the appearance of Gourlay's carts woke Barbie from its morning
+lethargy. The smith came out in his leather apron, shoving back, as he
+gazed, the grimy cap from his white-sweating brow; bowed old men stood
+in front of their doorways, leaning with one hand on short, trembling
+staffs, while the slaver slid unheeded along the cutties which the left
+hand held to their toothless mouths; white-mutched grannies were keeking
+past the jambs; an early urchin, standing wide-legged to stare, waved
+his cap and shouted, "Hooray!"--and all because John Gourlay's carts
+were setting off upon their morning rounds, a brave procession for a
+single town! Gourlay, standing great-shouldered in the middle of the
+road, took in every detail, devoured it grimly as a homage to his pride.
+"Ha, ha, ye dogs!" said the soul within him. Past the pillar of the Red
+Lion door he could see a white peep of the landlord's waistcoat--though
+the rest of the mountainous man was hidden deep within his porch. (On
+summer mornings the vast totality of the landlord was always inferential
+to the town from the tiny white peep of him revealed.) Even fat Simpson
+had waddled to the door to see the carts going past. It was fat
+Simpson--might the Universe blast his adipose--who had once tried to
+infringe Gourlay's monopoly as the sole carrier in Barbie. There had
+been a rush to him at first, but Gourlay set his teeth and drove him off
+the road, carrying stuff for nothing till Simpson had nothing to carry,
+so that the local wit suggested "a wee parcel in a big cart" as a new
+sign for his hotel. The twelve browns prancing past would be a pill to
+Simpson! There was no smile about Gourlay's mouth--a fiercer glower was
+the only sign of his pride--but it put a bloom on his morning, he felt,
+to see the suggestive round of Simpson's waistcoat, down yonder at the
+porch. Simpson, the swine! He had made short work o' _him_!
+
+Ere the last of the carts had issued from the yard at the House with the
+Green Shutters the foremost was already near the Red Lion. Gourlay swore
+beneath his breath when Miss Toddle--described in the local records as
+"a spinster of independent means"--came fluttering out with a silly
+little parcel to accost one of the carriers. Did the auld fool mean to
+stop Andy Gow about _her_ petty affairs, and thus break the line of
+carts on the only morning they had ever been able to go down the brae
+together? But no. Andy tossed her parcel carelessly up among his other
+packages, and left her bawling instructions from the gutter, with a
+portentous shaking of her corkscrew curls. Gourlay's men took their cue
+from their master, and were contemptuous of Barbie, most unchivalrous
+scorners of its old maids.
+
+Gourlay was pleased with Andy for snubbing Sandy Toddle's sister. When
+he and Elshie Hogg reached the Cross they would have to break off from
+the rest to complete their loads; but they had been down Main Street
+over night as usual picking up their commissions, and until they reached
+the Bend o' the Brae it was unlikely that any business should arrest
+them now. Gourlay hoped that it might be so; and he had his desire, for,
+with the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went
+slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly
+down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses
+were unable to go fast--being forced to stell themselves back against
+the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession
+endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it
+disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared
+too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy resumed her reign. The
+street and the Square lay empty to the morning sun. Gourlay alone stood
+idly at his gate, lapped in his own satisfaction.
+
+It had been a big morning, he felt. It was the first time for many a
+year that all his men, quarrymen and carriers, carters of cheese and
+carters of grain, had led their teams down the brae together in the full
+view of his rivals. "I hope they liked it!" he thought, and he nodded
+several times at the town beneath his feet, with a slow up-and-down
+motion of the head, like a man nodding grimly to his beaten enemy. It
+was as if he said, "See what I have done to ye!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Only a man of Gourlay's brute force of character could have kept all the
+carrying trade of Barbie in his own hands. Even in these days of
+railways, nearly every parish has a pair of carriers at the least,
+journeying once or twice a week to the nearest town. In the days when
+Gourlay was the great man of Barbie, railways were only beginning to
+thrust themselves among the quiet hills, and the bulk of inland commerce
+was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was
+the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember
+that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade,
+at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing
+that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did
+it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye
+know?"--meaning thereby that he had so many horses travelling on his own
+business, that he could afford to carry other people's goods at rates
+that must cripple his rivals.
+
+"But that's very stupid, surely," said a visitor once, who thought of
+entering into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face!
+Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries
+stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the
+roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!"
+
+"To be sure is't, to be sure is't! Just the stupeedity o' spite! Oh,
+there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying;
+but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask
+him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh,' he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own
+convenience.' And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of
+late that the pride of him's not to be endured."
+
+It was not the insolence of sudden wealth, however, that made Gourlay
+haughty to his neighbours; it was a repressiveness natural to the man
+and a fierce contempt of their scoffing envy. But it was true that he
+had made large sums of money during recent years. From his father (who
+had risen in the world) he inherited a fine trade in cheese; also the
+carrying to Skeighan on the one side and Fleckie on the other. When he
+married Miss Richmond of Tenshillingland, he started as a corn broker
+with the snug dowry that she brought him. Then, greatly to his own
+benefit, he succeeded in establishing a valuable connection with
+Templandmuir.
+
+It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his
+ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff
+joviality which he--so little cunning in other things--knew to affect
+among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with
+Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed"
+his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?"
+and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the
+big decanter.
+
+More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding
+friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the
+making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a
+circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather.
+When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was
+a great deal of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the
+money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried--he would
+have had to howk down a hill--but he took thousands of loads from it for
+the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was
+ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's
+estate--the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land--and it was
+there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely--once in two
+years, perhaps--that they came into the House with the Green Shutters.
+Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own
+use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the
+Monday following.
+
+It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to
+his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against
+him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his
+weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them
+were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they
+would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt
+it with a sense of personal defeat that he--the donkey, as they thought
+him--should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the
+long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled
+themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept
+increasing between them.
+
+They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when
+Gourlay's "quarriers"--as the quarry horses had been named--came through
+the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets,
+washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping
+at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up,
+their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and
+said nothing.
+
+"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last--"I wouldn't mind if he
+weren't such a demned ess!"
+
+"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked,
+pretending not to understand.
+
+"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.
+
+"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But
+there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned
+ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"
+
+When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he
+was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the
+passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.
+
+"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech,
+large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's
+extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man--for gumption he has noan, noan
+whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go
+down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the
+thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."
+
+"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump
+at the new way of doing."
+
+"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar
+than that--he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. _I_'m talling ye.
+He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who
+approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his
+stupeedity."
+
+"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and
+Gourlay at the same time.
+
+"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character,"
+said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of
+abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of
+no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he
+died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has
+no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's----"
+
+"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned
+from the green gate and entered the yard. Jock Gilmour, the "orra" man,
+was washing down the legs of a horse beside the trough. It was Gourlay's
+own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a
+black--Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for
+sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his
+whim to give it the sanction of a higher law.
+
+Gilmour was in a wild temper because he had been forced to get up at
+five o'clock in order to turn several hundred cheeses, to prevent them
+bulging out of shape owing to the heat, and so becoming cracked and
+spoiled. He did not raise his head at his master's approach. And his
+head being bent, the eye was attracted to a patent leather collar which
+he wore, glazed with black and red stripes. It is a collar much affected
+by ploughmen, because a dip in the horse-trough once a month suffices
+for its washing. Between the striped collar and his hair (as he stooped)
+the sunburnt redness of his neck struck the eye vividly--the cropped
+fair hairs on it showing whitish on the red skin.
+
+The horse quivered as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned
+playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up
+beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its
+head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off
+hind leg was still unwashed.
+
+"Has the horse but the three legs?" said Gourlay suavely.
+
+Gilmour brought the horse back to the trough, muttering sullenly.
+
+"Were ye saying anything?" said Gourlay. "_Eih?_"
+
+Gilmour sulked out and said nothing; and his master smiled grimly at the
+sudden redness that swelled his neck and ears to the verge of bursting.
+
+A boy, standing in his shirt and trousers at an open window of the house
+above, had looked down at the scene with craning interest--big-eyed. He
+had been alive to every turn and phase of it--the horse's quiver of
+delight and fear, his skittishness, the groom's ill-temper, and
+Gourlay's grinding will. Eh, but his father was a caution! How easy he
+had downed Jock Gilmour! The boy was afraid of his father himself, but
+he liked to see him send other folk to the right about. For he was John
+Gourlay, too. Hokey, but his father could down them!
+
+Mr. Gourlay passed on to the inner yard, which was close to the scullery
+door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was
+curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his
+gleaming breast and _rooketty-cooing_ in the sun. Large, clear drops
+fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat
+stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a sense of
+inclusion and peace.
+
+There is a distinct pleasure to the eye in a quiet brick court where
+everything is fresh and prim; in sunny weather you can lounge in a room
+and watch it through an open door, in a kind of lazy dream. The boy,
+standing at the window above to let the fresh air blow round his neck,
+was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon
+swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the
+great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure
+in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it
+was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was
+delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most
+substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was,
+was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was
+thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to
+answer you civilly--which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being,
+physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was
+surcharged with the feeling that the fine buildings around him were his,
+that he had won them by his own effort, and built them large and
+significant before the world. He was lapped in the thought of it.
+
+All men are suffused with that quiet pride in looking at the houses and
+lands which they have won by their endeavours--in looking at the houses
+more than at the lands, for the house which a man has built seems to
+express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of
+his success. It is more personal than cold acres, stamped with an
+individuality. All men know that soothing pride in the contemplation of
+their own property. But in Gourlay's sense of property there was another
+element--an element peculiar to itself, which endowed it with its
+warmest glow. Conscious always that he was at a disadvantage among his
+cleverer neighbours, who could achieve a civic eminence denied to him,
+he felt nevertheless that there was one means, a material means, by
+which he could hold his own and reassert himself--by the bravery of his
+business, namely, and all the appointments thereof, among which his
+dwelling was the chief. That was why he had spent so much money on the
+house. That was why he had such keen delight in surveying it. Every time
+he looked at the place he had a sense of triumph over what he knew in
+his bones to be an adverse public opinion. There was anger in his
+pleasure, and the pleasure that is mixed with anger often gives the
+keenest thrill. It is the delight of triumph in spite of opposition.
+Gourlay's house was a material expression of that delight, stood for it
+in stone and lime.
+
+It was not that he reasoned deliberately when he built the house. But
+every improvement that he made--and he was always spending money on
+improvements--had for its secret motive a more or less vague desire to
+score off his rivals. "_That_'ll be a slap in the face to the Provost!"
+he smiled, when he planted his great mound of shrubs. "There's noathing
+like _that_ about the Provost's! Ha, ha!"
+
+Encased as he was in his hard and insensitive nature, he was not the man
+who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But
+he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen--oh yes,
+he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab,
+and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the
+Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and
+Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if
+they should manage his!)--he, for his part, preferred the substantial
+reality. He could never aspire to the provostship, but a man with a
+house like that, he was fain to think, could afford to do without it. Oh
+yes; he was of opinion he could do without it! It had run him short of
+cash to build the place so big and braw, but, Lord! it was worth it.
+There wasn't a man in the town who had such accommodation!
+
+And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's
+life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it
+would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce,
+trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his
+presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should
+prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"
+
+Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of
+its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and
+gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable
+distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving
+to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron
+railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the
+whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to
+screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls
+went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In
+front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for
+notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square.
+"Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges
+regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its
+aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its
+infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like
+house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts
+its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a
+place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its
+commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay
+himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.
+
+And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of
+constant remark--to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women
+because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. "'Deed, I don't
+wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the
+gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo;
+"whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats _me_! I
+never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every
+item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.
+"What's the news?" asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom
+the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has
+got new rones!" "Ha--ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the
+visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each
+other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between
+them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every
+tongue--and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so
+long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he
+surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy
+neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy
+paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.
+
+"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"
+
+She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in
+her defence, because she was angry at detection.
+
+"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a
+body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just
+sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his
+breakfast!"
+
+"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of
+_him_. _He_'ll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that
+_you_ should neglect your work till _he_ consents to rise."
+
+"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous,
+maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and
+the schooling's owre sore on him."
+
+"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped
+him."
+
+It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him harsher to his wife
+than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order
+in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked
+everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a
+couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay
+across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just
+above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong
+men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately
+defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else
+to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown
+cob in _my_ gig--I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such
+fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for
+want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He
+had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of
+personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence
+the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his
+belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which
+he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his
+hammer, it was sure to be gone--the two bright nails staring at him
+vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to
+break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and
+grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so
+smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of
+these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething
+rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of
+his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and
+span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House
+with the Green Shutters--that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes
+on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the
+sudden sight of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to
+fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after--her husband, her two
+children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken
+Wabster--who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken
+Wabster--came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work.
+Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for
+another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said
+he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had
+to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind
+or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.
+
+As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them
+easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge
+disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner
+of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet
+saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the
+window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a
+basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over
+on the ground.
+
+"It's a tidy house!" said he.
+
+"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that
+did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't
+in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly,
+but ye wouldna hear o't--oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted
+out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning;
+no wonder I'm a little tousy!"
+
+The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been
+widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A
+little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the
+square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime
+in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the
+discomfort of the kitchen.
+
+"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that
+kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was
+terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the
+grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll
+maybe have a clean house _than_."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of
+her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back
+window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her
+first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue,
+her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by
+drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary
+contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and
+wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to
+meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence.
+She scarcely heard them.
+
+Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck.
+Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in
+a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in
+weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in
+unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was
+quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton
+blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her
+withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.
+
+There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and
+abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy helplessness, staring
+in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven,
+even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the
+Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her
+feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady
+and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with
+crude, brief irony.
+
+Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong
+character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked
+the brute in him. He was so dull--only dull is hardly the word for a man
+of his smouldering fire--he was so dour of wit that he could never hope
+to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so
+resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud
+tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold
+his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done
+unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding
+made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a
+thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was
+able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned
+nonsense!"--that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an
+utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to
+John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he
+would have told them so, if he had met them.
+
+The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at
+the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a
+bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is
+rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto
+voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me,
+dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?"
+"Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"--these be
+words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice
+had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he
+despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of
+speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and
+his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab.
+And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck
+life like a black frost.
+
+In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use
+of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material
+well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the
+substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty,
+in his manner--unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close
+corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to
+the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him
+already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate
+foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town--and for his wife, who
+was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long
+that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay,
+where have _you_ been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she
+answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The
+Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your
+Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might
+be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered,
+"It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your
+auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."
+
+"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had
+them laced.
+
+"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window.
+"Wha-at?"
+
+"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."
+
+"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him
+wearily.
+
+"No doubt ye had to send _her_," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye
+couldna send _him_--eh?"
+
+"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang.
+Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her
+to run for a drop milk?"
+
+"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her
+brother should still be abed--oh, it's right that he should get the
+privilege--seeing he's the eldest!"
+
+Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened[1] on her boy." In
+spite of her slack grasp on life--perhaps, because of it--she clung with
+a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a
+thowless[2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And
+Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be
+hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he
+adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son--which became
+permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was
+his own favourite--perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect
+her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a
+pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost
+to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and
+saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though
+he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took
+her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to
+buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when
+she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man
+mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen
+table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in
+his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from
+the outer yard.
+
+When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear
+through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.
+
+He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water
+on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone
+besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in
+front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and
+knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of
+silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the
+feeling: "_My_ father is _your_ master, and ye daurna stand up till
+him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards
+dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.
+
+Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's
+quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood
+there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his
+father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's
+pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate
+malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we
+fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.
+
+John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still
+watching Gilmour with that silent, offensive look. He came into the
+path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a
+vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering
+about the boy's bare legs.
+
+"Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on
+again, I'm telling ye. What are _you_, onyway? Ye're just a servant.
+Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. _He_ can put ye in your
+place."
+
+Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John
+stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been
+washing down the horse's legs.
+
+"Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.
+
+"Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with
+his shoulder.
+
+But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would
+have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what
+would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was
+patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful
+fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.
+
+"Drap the clout," said Gilmour.
+
+"I'll no," said John.
+
+Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that
+its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the
+wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a
+sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!
+
+Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in
+the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed
+her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized
+the weary trollop of the kitchen.
+
+"What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at
+Gilmour.
+
+"Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.
+
+"Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck
+standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump--to strike a
+defenceless wean!--Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle
+ye.--Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But
+I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie _you_ the order to
+travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about _my_
+hoose to ill-use _my_ bairn."
+
+She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's
+enemy.
+
+"_Your_ servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking
+object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and
+burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"
+
+Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man
+of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered
+it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.
+
+"What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the
+ground.
+
+"This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath
+again--"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to
+Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at
+him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"
+
+"He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him,
+at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied
+leather's gaun to trample owre _me_."
+
+Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full
+minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.
+
+"Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.
+
+"Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him
+courage. "Gie me time to get _my_ kist, and I'll walk mighty quick. And
+damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the
+Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi!--the Hoose wi' the Green
+Shutters!"
+
+Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide.
+"You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would
+kill ye wi' a glower!"
+
+Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.
+
+"Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared.
+I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye
+off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."
+
+"Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever
+suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for
+your wor-rds."
+
+"Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o'
+yours. I don't like daft folk about _my_ hoose."
+
+"There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour
+angrily, as he turned away.
+
+He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As
+he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his
+left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.
+
+"Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye.
+Yon was the way to put ye down!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Browdened._ A Scot devoted to his children is said to be "browdened
+on his bairns."
+
+[2] _Thowless_, weak, useless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the
+bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will
+be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does--he's juist a bodie!"
+The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year
+from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he
+may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief
+occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the
+discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld
+residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can
+tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking
+geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for
+the drink--ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of
+whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye
+see, that's the reason o't.
+
+The genus "bodie" is divided into two species--the "harmless bodies" and
+the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second
+variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough
+fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay
+spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure,
+was not an impartial witness.
+
+The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they
+forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And,
+indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it
+was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to
+which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing
+at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left
+and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets
+that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street,
+and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters,
+the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a
+fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned
+to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never
+be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing
+speculation which often lasted half an hour.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the
+yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their
+morning dram.
+
+"Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.
+
+When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you
+felt sure it was going to be good.
+
+"Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam,
+casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft,
+white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds,
+it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."
+
+Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to
+himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in
+accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always
+grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he
+had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.
+
+"Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be
+cheap"--and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr.
+Wylie.
+
+Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.
+
+"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
+be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
+plentiful."
+
+"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
+three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
+and Barbie dances till't."
+
+That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
+clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
+knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
+Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
+about the hay.
+
+"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
+baker.
+
+"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
+the Cross! Where'll _he_ be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
+often up so soon."
+
+"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.
+
+"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
+whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
+the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
+in _him_. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."
+
+T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
+Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
+staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.
+
+"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
+big shoulder to get a look.
+
+"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to
+_her_?"
+
+"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's
+speiring him for bawbees."
+
+"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"
+
+"Or the Fechars?"
+
+"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe
+for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."
+
+"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly
+gowk."
+
+"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur
+than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:--
+
+
+     'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,
+     Till by himsel' he learned to wander,
+     Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
+           And no thick lang;
+     Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder
+           A heartfelt sang.'"
+
+
+Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he
+said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good!--Who's yellow
+doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"
+
+"Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"
+
+"It's like a herd's doag!"
+
+"Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb
+fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."
+
+"He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will
+have lost him."
+
+"Imph, that'll be the way o't."
+
+"I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle,
+who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying
+quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was
+exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.
+
+"The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that
+airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"
+
+"Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"
+
+"Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn
+voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a
+moment every head was turned to the hill.
+
+"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.
+
+"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of
+eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his
+profoundest cogitations to the "boax."
+
+"It _is_ a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."
+
+"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"
+
+At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his
+spine, so that his face was visible.
+
+"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll _he_ be
+doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always
+busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to
+somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."
+
+"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than
+usual in the animation of discovery--"I'll wager ye Gourlay has
+quarrelled him and put him to the door!"
+
+"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay,
+ay--faith ay--and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right,
+Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news _this_
+morning."
+
+They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to
+meet Gilmour coming down.
+
+"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.
+
+"No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down
+the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."
+
+"Ay, man, John. How's that na?"
+
+To be the centre of interest and the object of gracious condescension
+was balm to the wounded feelings of Gilmour. Gourlay had lowered him,
+but this reception restored him to his own good opinion. He was usually
+called "Jock" (except by his mother, to whom, of course, he was "oor
+Johnny"), but the best merchants in the town were addressing him as
+"John." It was a great occasion. Gilmour expanded in gossip beneath its
+influence benign.
+
+He welcomed, too, this first and fine opportunity of venting his wrath
+on the Gourlays.
+
+"Oh, I just telled Gourlay what I thocht of him, and took the door ahint
+me. I let him have it hot and hardy, I can tell ye. He'll no forget _me_
+in a hurry"--Gilmour bawled angrily, and nodded his head significantly,
+and glared fiercely, to show what good cause he had given Gourlay to
+remember him--"he'll no forget _me_ for a month of Sundays."
+
+"Ay, man, John, what did ye say till him?"
+
+"Na, man, what did he say to you?"
+
+"Wath he angry, Dyohn?"
+
+"How did the thing begin?"
+
+"Tell us, man, John."
+
+"What was it a-all about, John?"
+
+"Was Mrs. Gourlay there?"
+
+Bewildered by this pelt of questions, Gilmour answered the last that hit
+his ear. "There, ay; faith, she was there. It was her was the cause
+o't."
+
+"D'ye tell me that, John? Man, you surprise me. I would have thocht the
+thowless trauchle[3] hadna the smeddum left to interfere."
+
+"Oh, it was yon boy of hers. He's aye swaggerin' aboot, interferin' wi'
+folk at their wark--he follows his faither's example in that, for as the
+auld cock craws the young ane learns--and his mither's that daft aboot
+him that ye daurna give a look! He came in my road when I was sweeping
+out the close, and some o' the dirty jaups splashed about his shins. But
+was I to blame for that?--ye maun walk wide o' a whalebone besom if ye
+dinna want to be splashed. Afore I kenned where I was, he up wi' a dirty
+washing-clout and slashed me in the face wi't! I hit him a thud in the
+ear--as wha wadna? Out come his mither like a fury, skirling about _her_
+hoose, and _her_ servants, and _her_ weans. 'Your servant!' says
+I--'your servant! You're a nice-looking trollop to talk aboot servants,'
+says I."
+
+"Did ye really, John?"
+
+"Man, that wath bauld o' ye."
+
+"And what did _she_ say?"
+
+"Oh, she just kept skirling! And then, to be sure, Gourlay must come out
+and interfere! But I telled him to his face what I thocht of _him!_ 'The
+best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather,' says I, ''s no gaun to make
+dirt of me,' says I."
+
+"Ay, man, Dyohn!" lisped Deacon Allardyce, with bright and eagerly
+inquiring eyes. "And what did he thay to that na? _That_ wath a dig for
+him! I'the warrant he wath angry."
+
+"Angry? He foamed at the mouth! But I up and says to him, 'I have had
+enough o' you,' says I, 'you and your Hoose wi' the Green Shutters,'
+says I. 'You're no fit to have a decent servant,' says I. 'Pay _me my_
+wages, and I'll be redd o' ye,' says I. And wi' that I flang my kist on
+my shouther and slapped the gate ahint me."
+
+"And _did_ he pay ye your wages?" Tam Wylie probed him slyly, with a
+sideward glimmer in his eye.
+
+"Ah, well, no--not exactly," said Gilmour, drawing in. "But I'll get
+them right enough for a' that. He'll no get the better o' _me_." Having
+grounded unpleasantly on the question of the wages, he thought it best
+to be off ere the bloom was dashed from his importance, so he
+shouldered his chest and went. The bodies watched him down the street.
+
+"He's a lying brose, that," said the baker. "We a' ken what Gourlay is.
+He would have flung Gilmour out by the scruff o' the neck if he had
+daured to set his tongue against him!"
+
+"Faith, that's so," said Tam Wylie and Johnny Coe together.
+
+But the others were divided between their perception of the fact and
+their wish to believe that Gourlay had received a thrust or two. At
+other times they would have been the first to scoff at Gilmour's
+swagger. Now their animus against Gourlay prompted them to back it up.
+
+"Oh, I'm not so sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false,
+loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound;
+"I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled
+persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied
+Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will do him good."
+
+For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is
+rampant in petty towns such as Barbie. To go back to the beginning, the
+Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone
+is enough to make him so; for it is a scheme of personal salvation
+significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie.
+"At the Day of Judgment, my frehnds," said Mr. Struthers--"at the Day of
+Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!" Self-dependence was
+never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and
+the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the
+Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if
+it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells.
+
+From their individualism, however, comes inevitably a keen spirit of
+competition (the more so because Scotch democracy gives fine chances to
+compete), and from their keen spirit of competition comes, inevitably
+again, an envious belittlement of rivals. If a man's success offends
+your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a
+recognized weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit, and (inversely)
+elevates his rival.
+
+It is in a small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent,
+because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his
+neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example,
+and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin.
+"I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim (and when
+their hearts are big they are big to hypertrophy)--"I have grand news
+the day! Man, Jock Goudie has won the C.B."--"Jock Goudie"--an envious
+bodie will pucker as if he had never heard the name--"Jock Goudie? Wha's
+_he_ for a Goudie? Oh ay, let me see now. He's a brother o'--eh, a
+brother o'--eh" (tit-tit-titting on his brow)--"oh, just a brother o'
+Drucken Will Goudie o' Auchterwheeze! Oo-ooh, I ken _him_ fine. His
+grannie keepit a sweetie-shop in Strathbungo." There you have the
+"nesty" Scotsman.
+
+Even if Gourlay had been a placable and inoffensive man, then, the
+malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village)
+would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them.
+No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot (especially when
+spite wings his intuition), and Gourlay's thickness of wit and pride of
+place would in any case have drawn their sneers. So, too, on lower
+grounds, would his wife's sluttishness. But his repressiveness added a
+hundredfold to their hate of him. That was the particular cause which,
+acting on their general tendency to belittle a too-successful rival,
+made their spite almost monstrous against him. Not a man among them but
+had felt the weight of his tongue--for edge it had none. He walked among
+them like the dirt below his feet. There was no give and take in the
+man; he could be verra jocose with the lairds, to be sure, but he never
+dropped in to the Red Lion for a crack and a dram with the town-folk; he
+just glowered as if he could devour them! And who was he, I should like
+to know? His grandfather had been noathing but a common carrier!
+
+Hate was the greater on both sides because it was often impotent.
+Gourlay frequently suspected offence, and seethed because he had no idea
+how to meet it--except by driving slowly down the brae in his new gig
+and never letting on when the Provost called to him. That was a wipe in
+the eye for the Provost! The "bodies," on their part, could rarely get
+near enough Gourlay to pierce his armour; he kept them off him by his
+brutal dourness. For it was not only pride and arrogance, but a
+consciousness also that he was no match for them at their own game, that
+kept Gourlay away from their society. They were adepts at the under
+stroke, and they would have given him many a dig if he had only come
+amongst them. But, oh no, not he; he was the big man; he never gave a
+body a chance! Or if you did venture a bit jibe when you met him, he
+glowered you off the face of the earth with thae black een of his. Oh,
+how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused
+by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The
+"bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but
+against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an
+insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against
+him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the
+street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was
+absurd for a man in his "poseetion." But it was done with the sole
+desire of hearing something that might tell against Gourlay. Even
+countesses, we are told, gossip with malicious maids about other
+countesses. Spite is a great leveller.
+
+"Shall we adjourn?" said Brodie, when they had watched Jock Gilmour out
+of sight. He pointed across his shoulder to the Red Lion.
+
+"Better noat just now," said the Provost, nodding in slow
+authority--"better noat just now! I'm very anxious to see Gourlay about
+yon matter we were speaking of, doan't ye understa-and? But I'm
+determined not to go to his house! On the other hand, if we go into the
+Red Lion the now, we may miss him on the street. We'll noat have loang
+to wait, though; he'll be down the town directly, to look at the horses
+he has at the gerse out the Fechars Road. But _I'm_ talling ye, I simply
+will noat go to his house--to put up with a wheen damned insults!" he
+puffed in angry recollection.
+
+"To tell the truth," said Wylie, "I don't like to call upon Gourlay
+either. I'm aware of his eyes on my back when I slink beaten through his
+gate, and I feel that my hurdies are wanting in dignity!"
+
+"Huh!" spluttered Brodie, "that never affects me. I come stunting out in
+a bleeze of wrath and slam the yett ahint me!"
+
+"Oh, well," said the Deacon, "that'th one way of being dignified."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Sandy Toddle, "that he won't be in a very good key to
+consider our request this morning, after his quarrel with Gilmour."
+
+"No," said the Provost; "he'll be blazing angry! It's most unfoartunate.
+But we maun try to get his consent, be his temper what it will. It's a
+matter of importance to the town, doan't ye see, and if he refuses we
+simply can-noat proceed wi' the improvement."
+
+"It was Gilmour's jibe at the House wi' the Green Shutters that would
+anger him the most, for it's the perfect god of his idolatry. Eh, sirs,
+he has wasted an awful money upon yon house!"
+
+"Wasted's the word!" said Brodie, with a blatant laugh. "Wasted's the
+word! They say he has verra little lying cash! And I shouldna be
+surprised at all. For, ye see, Gibson the builder diddled him owre the
+building o't."
+
+"Oh, I'se warrant Cunning Johnny would get the better of an ass like
+Gourlay. But how in particular, Mr. Brodie? Have ye heard ainy details?"
+
+"I've been on the track o' the thing for a while back, but it was only
+yestreen I had the proofs o't. It was Robin Wabster that telled me. He's
+a jouking bodie, Robin, and he was ahint a dike up the Skeighan Road
+when Gibson and Gourlay forgathered--they stoppit just forenenst him!
+Gourlay began to curse at the size of Gibson's bill, but Cunning Johnny
+kenned the way to get round him brawly. 'Mr. Gourlay,' says he, 'there's
+not a thing in your house that a man in your poseetion can afford to be
+without, and ye needn't expect the best house in Barbie for an oald
+song!' And Gourlay was pacified at once! It appeared frae their crack,
+however, that Gibson has diddled him tremendous. 'Verra well then,'
+Robin heard Gourlay cry, 'you must allow me a while ere I pay that!' I
+wager, for a' sae muckle as he's made of late, that his balance at the
+bank's a sma' yin."
+
+"More thyow than thubstanth," said the Deacon.
+
+"Well, I'm sure!" said the Provost, "he needn't have built such a
+gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"
+
+"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I
+wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have
+come to her support!"
+
+"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his
+own pride, the brute. He leads the woman the life of a doag. I'm
+surprised that he ever married her!"
+
+"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi'
+her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars--a grand farmer he
+was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees,
+and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was _her_ money, as ye
+ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never
+cared a preen for _her_, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he
+couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And
+yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a
+braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind,
+and--ochonee! ochonee!--as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a
+cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a
+summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the
+gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads
+thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of
+the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan
+(that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and
+he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig
+and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a
+braw lass she----"
+
+"It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing
+aside the reminiscent Coe.
+
+"How can it be that, Provost? It'th _your_ place, surely. You're the
+head of the town!"
+
+When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who
+should be hindmost.
+
+"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look
+of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The
+thing'll gang smash at the outset--_I'm_ talling ye, now--it'll go
+smash at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a
+better way of approaching folk!"
+
+"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to
+see if the Provost was guying him.
+
+"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and Tam Wylie in a
+breath.
+
+"Certainly, it maun be left to the Deacon," assented Johnny Coe, when he
+saw how the others were giving their opinion.
+
+"Tho be it, then," snapped the Deacon.
+
+"Here he comes," said Sandy Toddle.
+
+Gourlay came down the street towards them, his chest big, his thumbs in
+the armholes of his waistcoat. He had the power of staring steadily at
+those whom he approached without the slightest sign of recognition or
+intelligence appearing in his eyes. As he marched down upon the bodies
+he fixed them with a wide-open glower that was devoid of every
+expression but courageous steadiness. It gave a kind of fierce vacancy
+to his look.
+
+The Deacon limped forward on his thin shanks to the middle of the road.
+
+"It'th a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," he simpered.
+
+"There's noathing wrong with the morning," grunted Gourlay, as if there
+was something wrong with the Deacon.
+
+"We wath wanting to thee ye on a very important matter, Mithter
+Gourlay," lisped the Deacon, smiling up at the big man's face, with his
+head on one side, and rubbing his fingers in front of him. "It'th a
+matter of the common good, you thee; and we all agreed that we should
+speak to _you_, ath the foremost merchant of the town!"
+
+Allardyce meant his compliment to fetch Gourlay. But Gourlay knew his
+Allardyce, and was cautious. It was well to be on your guard when the
+Deacon was complimentary. When his language was most flowery there was
+sure to be a serpent hidden in it somewhere. He would lisp out an
+innocent remark and toddle away, and Gourlay would think nothing of the
+matter till a week afterwards, perhaps, when something would flash a
+light; then "Damn him, did he mean '_that_'?" he would seethe, starting
+back and staring at the "_that_" while his fingers strangled the air in
+place of the Deacon.
+
+He glowered at the Deacon now till the Deacon blinked.
+
+"You thee, Mr. Gourlay," Allardyce shuffled uneasily, "it'th for your
+own benefit just ath much ath ourth. We were thinking of you ath well
+ath of ourthelves! Oh yeth, oh yeth!"
+
+"Ay, man!" said Gourlay, "that was kind of ye! I'll be the first man in
+Barbie to get ainy benefit from the fools that mismanage our affairs."
+
+The gravel grated beneath the Provost's foot. The atmosphere was
+becoming electric, and the Deacon hastened to the point.
+
+"You thee, there'th a fine natural supply of water--a perfect reservore
+the Provost sayth--on the brae-face just above _your_ garden, Mr.
+Gourlay. Now, it would be easy to lead that water down and alang through
+all the gardenth on the high side of Main Street--and, 'deed, it might
+feed a pump at the Cross, too, to supply the lower portionth o' the
+town. It would really be a grai-ait convenience. Every man on the high
+side o' Main Street would have a running spout at his own back door! If
+your garden didna run tho far back, Mr. Gourlay, and ye hadna tho muckle
+land about your place"--_that_ should fetch him, thought the Deacon--"if
+it werena for that, Mr. Gourlay, we could easily lead the water round to
+the other gardenth without interfering with your property. But, ath it
+ith, we simply can-noat move without ye. The water must come through
+your garden, if it comes at a-all."
+
+"The most o' you important men live on the high side o' Main Street,"
+birred Gourlay. "Is it the poor folk at the Cross, or your ain bits o'
+back doors that you're thinking o'?"
+
+"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!" protested Allardyce, head flung back, and palms
+in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!
+We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I do assure ye."
+
+"Ay, man! You're dis-in-ter-ested!" said Gourlay, but he stumbled on the
+big word and spoiled the sneer. That angered him, and, "It's likely," he
+rapped out, "that I'll allow the land round _my_ house to be howked and
+trenched and made a mudhole of to oblige a wheen things like you!"
+
+"Oh--oh, but think of the convenience to uth--eh--eh--I mean to the
+common good," said Allardyce.
+
+"I howked wells for myself," snapped Gourlay. "Let others do the like."
+
+"Oh, but we haven't all the enterprithe of you, Mr. Gourlay. You'll
+surely accommodate the town!"
+
+"I'll see the town damned first," said Gourlay, and passed on his steady
+way.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Trauchle_, a poor trollop who trails about; _smeddum_, grit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The bodies watched Gourlay in silence until he was out of earshot. Then,
+"It's monstrous!" the Provost broke out in solemn anger; "I declare it's
+perfectly monstrous! But I believe we could get Pow-ers to compel him.
+Yass; I believe we could get Pow-ers. I do believe we could get
+Pow-ers."
+
+The Provost was fond of talking about "Pow-ers," because it implied that
+he was intimate with the great authorities who might delegate such
+"Pow-ers" to him. To talk of "Pow-ers," mysteriously, was a tribute to
+his own importance. He rolled the word on his tongue as if he enjoyed
+the sound of it.
+
+On the Deacon's cheek bones two red spots flamed, round and big as a
+Scotch penny. His was the hurt silence of the baffled diplomatist, to
+whom a defeat means reflections on his own ability.
+
+"Demn him!" he skirled, following the solid march of his enemy with
+fiery eyes.
+
+Never before had his deaconship been heard to swear. Tam Wylie laughed
+at the shrill oath till his eyes were buried in his merry wrinkles, a
+suppressed snirt, a continuous gurgle in the throat and nose, in beaming
+survey the while of the withered old creature dancing in his rage. (It
+was all a good joke to Tam, because, living on the outskirts of the
+town, he had no spigot of his own to feed.) The Deacon turned the eyes
+of hate on him. Demn Wylie too--what was he laughing at!
+
+"Oh, I dare thay you could have got round him!" he snapped.
+
+"In my opinion, Allardyce," said the baker, "you mismanaged the whole
+affair. Yon wasna the way to approach him!"
+
+"It'th a pity you didna try your hand, then, I'm sure! No doubt a clever
+man like _you_ would have worked wonderth!"
+
+So the bodies wrangled among themselves. Somehow or other Gourlay had
+the knack of setting them by the ears. It was not till they hit on a
+common topic of their spite in railing at him that they became a band of
+brothers and a happy few.
+
+"Whisht!" said Sandy Toddle suddenly; "here's his boy!"
+
+John was coming towards them on his way to school. The bodies watched
+him as he passed, with the fixed look men turn on a boy of whose kinsmen
+they were talking even now. They affect a stony and deliberate regard,
+partly to include the newcomer in their critical survey of his family,
+and partly to banish from their own eyes any sign that they have just
+been running down his people. John, as quick as his mother to feel, knew
+in a moment they were watching _him_. He hung his head sheepishly and
+blushed, and the moment he was past he broke into a nervous trot, the
+bag of books bumping on his back as he ran.
+
+"He's getting a big boy, that son of Gourlay's," said the Provost; "how
+oald will he be?"
+
+"He's approaching twelve," said Johnny Coe, who made a point of being
+able to supply such news because it gained him consideration where he
+was otherwise unheeded. "He was born the day the brig on the Fleckie
+Road gaed down, in the year o' the great flood; and since the great
+flood it's twelve year come Lammas. Rab Tosh o' Fleckie's wife was
+heavy-footed at the time, and Doctor Munn had been a' nicht wi' her, and
+when he cam to Barbie Water in the morning it was roaring wide frae
+bank to brae; where the brig should have been there was naething but the
+swashing of the yellow waves. Munn had to drive a' the way round to the
+Fechars brig, and in parts o' the road the water was so deep that it
+lapped his horse's bellyband. A' this time Mrs. Gourlay was skirling in
+her pains and praying to God she micht dee. Gourlay had been a great
+crony o' Munn's, but he quarrelled him for being late; he had trysted
+him, ye see, for the occasion, and he had been twenty times at the yett
+to look for him. Ye ken how little he would stomach that; he was ready
+to brust wi' anger. Munn, mad for the want of sleep and wat to the bane,
+swüre back at him; and than Gourlay wadna let him near his wife! Ye mind
+what an awful day it was; the thunder roared as if the heavens were
+tumbling on the world, and the lichtnin sent the trees daudin on the
+roads, and folk hid below their beds and prayed--they thocht it was the
+Judgment! But Gourlay rammed his black stepper in the shafts, and drave
+like the devil o' hell to Skeighan Drone, where there was a young
+doctor. The lad was feared to come, but Gourlay swore by God that he
+should, and he garred him. In a' the countryside driving like his that
+day was never kenned or heard tell o'; they were back within the hour! I
+saw them gallop up Main Street; lichtnin struck the ground before them;
+the young doctor covered his face wi' his hands, and the horse nichered
+wi' fear and tried to wheel, but Gourlay stood up in the gig and lashed
+him on through the fire. It was thocht for lang that Mrs. Gourlay would
+die; and she was never the same woman after. Atweel, ay, sirs, Gourlay
+has that morning's work to blame for the poor wife he has now. Him and
+Munn never spoke to each other again, and Munn died within the
+twelvemonth--he got his death that morning on the Fleckie Road. But, for
+a' so pack's they had been, Gourlay never looked near him."
+
+Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well--for
+Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the
+ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew,
+besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was
+lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay
+went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had
+seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in
+spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on
+the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on
+his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the
+sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of
+admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything.
+And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact
+of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller,
+and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them,
+was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but
+he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by
+bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.
+
+"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.
+
+"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
+Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
+Dandy had his place."
+
+"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
+doctor or a minister or wha-at?"
+
+"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
+It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
+again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
+speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"
+
+"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
+Provost.
+
+Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
+flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
+direction of their thoughts.
+
+"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
+his chin.
+
+"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.
+
+"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.
+
+And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
+trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
+There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every
+other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a
+most appropriate _rôle_. If his father was not about he would hang
+round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
+"Bleach-the-boys"--as the master had been christened by his scholars.
+"Mother, I have a pain in _my_ heid," he would whimper, and she would
+condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her--were
+it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
+strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
+really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
+home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
+keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
+his father.
+
+On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
+was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
+slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
+scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now--and the
+Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
+he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
+his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the
+yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
+nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
+Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
+arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
+his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
+attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
+his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
+so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
+the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
+himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
+comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.
+
+As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
+Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
+absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
+forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
+have been much more at his ease.
+
+Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
+John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
+of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
+he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
+became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart--to feel
+it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
+joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of
+odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a
+misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he
+knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop,
+on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression,
+and feeling like a boy slinking into school.
+
+In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that
+morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he
+crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes'
+run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this
+unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the
+pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the
+wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front,
+making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.
+
+He began talking of the new range.
+
+"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this
+morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and
+solemn protest. "It wasna _my_ faut! We're getting in a grand new range,
+and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room
+for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning,
+because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour--and here,
+when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!
+
+"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited
+jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the
+afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"
+
+The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly
+thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys,
+they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only
+grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee.
+It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in
+uncomfortable silence.
+
+"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my
+father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best!
+Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I
+leave the schule--and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't;
+I'll no bide a day longer than I need! I'm to go into the business, and
+then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two
+dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't."
+
+"Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle
+of his brow.
+
+"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with
+delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one
+fit retort to his bouncing.
+
+Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head
+against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he
+brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath
+against Swipey.
+
+"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey
+Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"
+
+In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt
+sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't.
+
+"G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man!
+Don't have _me_ getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your
+duds!"
+
+Now the father of Swipey--so called because he always swiped when
+batting at rounders--the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant
+of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that
+his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated,
+therefore, to sting him to the quick.
+
+The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove
+straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and
+Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.
+
+For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "_Ooh!_"
+with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull
+its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him
+at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his
+knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily
+(from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"
+
+Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey
+jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another
+moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant
+Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!"--Swipey's father was
+an Irishman.
+
+"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie--"let him up, and meet each other
+square!"
+
+"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with
+magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the
+air. "I could fight ten of him!--Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll
+poultice the road wi' your brose."
+
+John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys
+ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and
+shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.
+
+"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he
+ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which
+Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
+sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
+and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
+sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
+anvil.
+
+John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
+unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
+look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
+silent faces.
+
+A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
+a lonely smell, and ran to get away.
+
+"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
+through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"
+
+"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
+simple expression of his wish.
+
+"What for, my sweet?"
+
+"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."
+
+His mother saw his cut mouth.
+
+"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
+Has ainybody been meddling ye?"
+
+"It was Swipey Broon," he said.
+
+"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
+decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
+them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
+It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"
+
+In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
+on which she sank exhausted by her rage.
+
+"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
+fleas off him. The other boys were on _his_ side, or I would have
+walloped him."
+
+"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
+Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
+not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
+intil."
+
+"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"
+
+"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If _he_ saw ye!"
+
+"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
+garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."
+
+She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
+stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
+streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
+centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
+up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every
+now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
+slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
+still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
+started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!
+
+If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
+his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
+snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
+somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
+kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
+earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
+live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
+and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
+there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
+great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
+would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
+thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
+the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good
+jade!--stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
+friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
+mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
+glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
+the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
+mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
+painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
+best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
+picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
+from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
+Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
+the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
+water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
+the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
+roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
+she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
+glaring from the pool.--Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
+kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that _he_ liked. He
+wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
+were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
+waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
+somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
+a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
+beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
+slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
+gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
+they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
+and their love!" quoth he.
+
+To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from
+something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things
+to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of
+the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed,
+or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves
+vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was
+hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his
+mottled nose--John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw
+the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The
+varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs.
+Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself--to all
+these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the
+impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he
+was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that
+was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate
+it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge,
+among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended
+beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall
+suddenly down, and creep patiently again--this he would watch with
+curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once,
+"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"
+
+"They're queer," he said musingly.
+
+Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
+to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.
+
+But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
+moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
+numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
+story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
+world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
+wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
+rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
+from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
+voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
+then--oh, horror!--his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
+garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
+against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
+bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
+room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.
+
+The heavy steps came back to the landing.
+
+"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.
+
+"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
+mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."
+
+"_Hah!_" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
+should come in!
+
+But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
+pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
+kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
+them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
+himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole
+drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
+depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
+fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
+never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
+clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
+paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
+a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All
+these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
+unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But
+it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at
+all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as
+his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing
+his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.
+
+At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He
+crept down the stair.
+
+"_You_ were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in
+accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."
+
+"If ye wud----" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She
+shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.
+
+The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing
+it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs.
+Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a
+faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the
+grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the
+men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy
+range.
+
+"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye
+get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"
+
+"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the
+train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he
+added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."
+
+The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a
+little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright,
+sharp edges.
+
+"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of
+the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I
+happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as
+the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says
+he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?'
+says I. 'How do _you_ ken what _I_ want?' I made short work o' _him!_
+The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."
+
+Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a
+poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in
+Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.
+
+The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's
+an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man
+wi't."
+
+"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."
+
+The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
+the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
+up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
+with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
+laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
+heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
+Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
+he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
+stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
+fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.
+
+"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
+here! It's exactly the same size!"
+
+"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
+"You'll be killing folk next."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart,
+to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."
+
+"Have the carriers a big load?"
+
+"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And
+there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."
+
+The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and
+this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy
+thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky
+of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the
+cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of
+the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.
+
+"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile
+ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the
+ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove
+away!"
+
+Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from
+beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.
+
+"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean--d'ye mean
+the carriers too?"
+
+"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"
+
+Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from his fob, and,
+"It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.
+
+"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.
+
+There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only human
+being with whom he was ever really at his ease. It is only when a mind
+feels secure in itself that it can laugh unconcernedly at others. Peter
+was so simple that in his presence Gourlay felt secure; and he used to
+banter him.
+
+"The folk at the Cross winna expect the carriers till aicht, sir," said
+Peter, "and I doubt their stuff won't be ready."
+
+"Ay, man, Peter," Gourlay joked lazily, as if Peter was a little boy.
+"Ay, man, Peter. You think the folk at the Cross winna be prepared?"
+
+"No, sir," said Peter, opening his eyes very solemnly, "they winna be
+prepared."
+
+"It'll do them good to hurry a little for once," growled Gourlay, humour
+yielding to spite at the thought of his enemies. "It'll do them good to
+hurry a little for once. Be off, the lot of ye!"
+
+After ordering his carriers to start, to back down and postpone their
+departure, just to suit the convenience of his neighbours, would
+derogate from his own importance. His men might think he was afraid of
+Barbie.
+
+He strolled out to the big gate and watched his teams going down the
+brae.
+
+There were only four carts this morning because the two that had gone to
+Fechars yesterday with the cheese would not be back till the afternoon;
+and another had already turned west to Auchterwheeze, to bring slates
+for the flesher's new house. Of the four that went down the street two
+were the usual carriers' carts, the other two were off to Fleckie with
+meal, and Gourlay had started them the sooner since they were to bring
+back the ironwork which Templandmuir needed for his new improvements.
+Though the Templar had reformed greatly since he married his birkie
+wife, he was still far from having his place in proper order, and he had
+often to depend on Gourlay for the carrying of stuff which a man in his
+position should have had horses of his own to bring.
+
+As Gourlay stood at his gate he pondered with heavy cunning how much he
+might charge Templandmuir for bringing the ironwork from Fleckie. He
+decided to charge him for the whole day, though half of it would be
+spent in taking his own meal to Donnerton. In that he was carrying out
+his usual policy--which was to make each side of his business help the
+other.
+
+As he stood puzzling his wits over Templandmuir's account, his lips
+worked in and out, to assist the slow process of his brain. His eyes
+narrowed between peering lids, and their light seemed to turn inward as
+he fixed them abstractedly on a stone in the middle of the road. His
+head was tilted that he might keep his eyes upon the stone; and every
+now and then, as he mused, he rubbed his chin slowly between the thumb
+and fingers of his left hand. Entirely given up to the thought of
+Templandmuir's account, he failed to see the figure advancing up the
+street.
+
+At last the scrunch of a boot on the wet road struck his ear. He turned
+with his best glower on the man who was approaching; more of the
+"Wha-the-bleezes-are-you?" look than ever in his eyes--because he had
+been caught unawares.
+
+The stranger wore a light yellow overcoat, and he had been walking a
+long time in the rain apparently, for the shoulders of the coat were
+quite black with the wet, these black patches showing in strong contrast
+with the dryer, therefore yellower, front of it. Coat and jacket were
+both hanging slightly open, and between was seen the slight bulge of a
+dirty white waistcoat. The newcomer's trousers were turned high at the
+bottom, and the muddy spats he wore looked big and ungainly in
+consequence. In this appearance there was an air of dirty and
+pretentious well-to-do-ness. It was not shabby gentility. It was like
+the gross attempt at dress of your well-to-do publican who looks down on
+his soiled white waistcoat with complacent and approving eye.
+
+"It's a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," simpered the stranger. His air was
+that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on
+the weather with his laird.
+
+Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.
+
+"Is that _your_ opinion?" said he. "I fail to see't mysell."
+
+It was not in Gourlay to see the beauty of that gray, wet dawn. A fine
+morning to him was one that burnt the back of your neck.
+
+The stranger laughed: a little deprecating giggle. "I meant it was fine
+weather for the fields," he explained. He had meant nothing of the kind,
+of course; he had merely been talking at random in his wish to be civil
+to that important man, John Gourlay.
+
+"Imphm," he pondered, looking round on the weather with a wise air;
+"imphm; it's fine weather for the fields."
+
+"Are _you_ a farmer, then?" Gourlay nipped him, with his eye on the
+white waistcoat.
+
+"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi--hi! I'm not a farmer. I dare
+say, now, you have no mind of _me_?"
+
+"No," said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his
+dark eyes. "I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering
+_you_."
+
+"Man, I'm a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee."
+
+"Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!" said contemptuous Gourlay. "What's
+this they christened him now? 'Toddling Johnnie,' was it noat?"
+
+Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the
+remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the
+insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed
+aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure
+might provoke.
+
+But though Wilson was not a hardy man, it was not timidity only that
+caused his tame submission to Gourlay.
+
+He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of
+money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the
+mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the
+most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and
+fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well,"
+he would have swelled with gratified pride. For it is often the
+favourable estimate of their own little village--"What they'll think of
+me at home"--that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way
+in the world. No doubt that is why so many of them go home and cut a
+dash when they have made their fortunes; they want the cronies of their
+youth to see the big men they have become. Wilson was not exempt from
+that weakness. As far back as he remembered Gourlay had been the big man
+of Barbie; as a boy he had viewed him with admiring awe; to be received
+by him now, as one of the well-to-do, were a sweet recognition of his
+greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his
+smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that,
+though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his
+father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had
+been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they
+are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy
+self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to
+divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped
+comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a
+dull man--perhaps because he was a dull man--suspected insult in a
+moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's brain (though he was cleverer
+than most) that the world could find anything to scoff at in such a fine
+fellow as James Wilson. A less ironic brute than Gourlay would never
+have pierced the thickness of his hide. It was because Gourlay succeeded
+in piercing it that morning that Wilson hated him for ever--with a hate
+the more bitter because he was rebuffed so seldom.
+
+"Is business brisk?" he asked, irrepressible.
+
+Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's
+son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him
+setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town
+whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place,
+the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!
+
+For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson's manner that
+offended Gourlay--as if mole-catcher's son and monopolist were
+discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.
+
+"Business!" he said gravely. "Well, I'm not well acquainted with your
+line, but I believe mole traps are cheap--if ye have any idea of taking
+up the oald trade."
+
+Wilson's eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth
+opened--then shut--then he decided to speak after all. "Oh, I was
+thinking Barbie would be very quiet," said he, "compared wi' places
+where they have the railway. I was thinking it would need stirring up a
+bit."
+
+"Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?" birred Gourlay, with a stupid man's
+repetition of his jibe. "Well, I believe there's a grand opening in the
+moleskin line, so _there's_ a chance for ye. My quarrymen wear out their
+breeks in no time."
+
+Wilson's face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white.
+"Good-morning!" he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of
+his stick upon the wet road.
+
+"Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" Gourlay birred after him; "goo-ood
+mor-r-ning, serr!" He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put
+the branks on Wilson!
+
+Wilson was as furious at himself as at Gourlay. Why the devil had he
+said "Good-morning"? It had slipped out of him unawares, and Gourlay had
+taken it up with an ironic birr that rang in his ears now, poisoning his
+blood. He felt equal in fancy to a thousand Gourlays now--so strong was
+he in wrath against him. He had gone forward to pass pleasant remarks
+about the weather, and why should he noat?--he was no disgrace to
+Barbie, but a credit rather. It was not every working-man's son that
+came back with five hundred in the bank. And here Gourlay had treated
+him like a doag! Ah, well, he would maybe be upsides with Gourlay yet,
+so he might!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+"Such a rickle of furniture I never saw!" said the Provost.
+
+"Whose is it?" said Brodie.
+
+"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in
+air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of
+oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for
+a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this
+world's coming to!"
+
+"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at
+Fleckie for the last ten days--my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I
+dare say you have heard--oh yes, we must all go--so, ye see, I'm
+scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I
+thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."
+
+"Noat he! It's _whispered_ indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help
+in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled
+there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to
+understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the
+Cross--for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his
+furniture----"
+
+"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that.
+Will that be a son of his?"
+
+He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying
+chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson
+meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in
+shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically
+near his neck--so short was the space of shirt between the top line of
+his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and
+the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs,
+being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth
+instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a
+"cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek
+kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes,
+so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose.
+He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots--they only
+_looked_ clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so
+thin--skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair
+inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes
+wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and
+sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.
+
+"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.
+
+"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for?
+They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle,
+forgetting his English in surprise.
+
+"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in
+Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe
+wi't."
+
+"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.
+
+"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.
+
+"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.
+
+"It would take a heap to revolutionize _hit_," said the baker, the
+ironic man.
+
+"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's
+gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me
+before."
+
+"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.
+
+But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation,
+and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient
+parable.
+
+"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the
+back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an
+opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a
+body comes to think o't."
+
+"What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind,
+quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt
+of its possibilities.
+
+"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny
+Gibson--it was him had the selling o't--but he couldn't give me ainy
+satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid
+it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place
+for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that.
+'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The
+less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise
+me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"
+
+"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.
+
+"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.
+
+"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said
+Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of
+_that_."
+
+"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be
+at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark
+much loanger!"
+
+Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to
+read the notice here appended:--
+
+
+     "Mr. James Wilson begs to announce to the inhabitants of Barbie
+     and surrounding neighbourhood that he has taken these commodious
+     premises, No. 1 The Cross, which he intends to open shortly as a
+     Grocery, Ironmongery, and General Provision Store. J. W. is
+     apprised that such an Emporium has long been a felt want in the
+     locality. To meet this want is J. W.'s intention. He will try to do
+     so, not by making large profits on a small business, but by making
+     small profits on a large business. Indeed, owing to his long
+     acquaintance with the trade, Mr. Wilson will be able to supply all
+     commodities at a very little over cost price. For J. W. will use
+     those improved methods of business which have been confined
+     hitherto to the larger centres of population. At his Emporium you
+     will be able, as the saying goes, to buy everything from a needle
+     to an anchor. Moreover, to meet the convenience of his customers,
+     J. W. will deliver goods at your own doors, distributing them with
+     his own carts either in the town of Barbie or at any convenient
+     distance from the same. Being a native of the district, his
+     business hopes to secure a due share of your esteemed patronage.
+     Thanking you, in anticipation, for the favour of an early visit,
+
+       "Believe me, Ladies and Gentlemen,
+                             "Yours faithfully,
+                                     "JAMES WILSON."
+
+
+Such was the poster with which "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood"
+were besprinkled within a week of "J. W.'s" appearance on the scene. He
+was known as "J. W." ever after. To be known by your initials is
+sometimes a mark of affection, and sometimes a mark of disrespect. It
+was not a mark of affection in the case of our "J. W." When Donald Scott
+slapped him on the back and cried, "Hullo, J. W., how are the anchors
+selling?" Barbie had found a cue which it was not slow to make use of.
+Wilson even received letters addressed to "J. W., Anchor Merchant, No.
+1 The Cross." Ours is a nippy locality.
+
+But Wilson, cosy and cocky in his own good opinion, was impervious to
+the chilly winds of scorn. His posters, in big blue letters, were on the
+smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five
+miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of
+every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to
+door. The folk could talk of nothing else.
+
+"Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure
+here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in
+the gutter."
+
+"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises
+owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end
+o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest
+man, used to tell the minister."
+
+"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi'
+Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching.
+They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the
+considering eye in his head--yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from
+out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the
+cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And
+look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But
+Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and
+Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a
+great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their
+own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans
+round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like
+was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."
+
+It did.
+
+It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to
+Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long
+time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the
+goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew,
+and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose;
+he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was
+whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and
+that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should
+credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's
+misdemeanour.
+
+Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it
+is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake
+its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the
+larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us.
+Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look
+around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of
+chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phrase of
+Wilson's retired and solitary speculation. "Ay," he said, emerging from
+one of his business reveries, "there's bound to be heaps o' chances for
+a man like me, if I only look about me."
+
+He was "looking about him" in Glasgow when he forgathered with his
+cousin William--the borer he! After many "How are ye, Jims's" and mutual
+speirings over a "bit mouthful of yill"--so they phrased it; but that
+was a meiosis, for they drank five quarts--they fell to a serious
+discussion of the commercial possibilities of Scotland. The borer was of
+the opinion that the Braes of Barbie had a future yet, "for a' the
+gaffer was so keen on keeping his men in the dark about the coal."
+
+Now Wilson knew (as what Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties
+coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now
+is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were
+no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive
+preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In
+one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a
+laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda
+from its impoverished owner, laid the basis of a vast fortune.
+
+"D'ye mean--to tell--_me_, Weelyum Wilson," said James, giving him his
+full name in the solemnity of the moment, "d'ye mean--to tell--_me_,
+sir"--here he sank his voice to a whisper--"that there's joukery-pawkery
+at work?"
+
+"A declare to God A div," said Weelyum, with equal solemnity, and he
+nodded with alarmed sapience across his beer jug.
+
+"You believe there's plenty of coal up Barbie Valley, and that they're
+keeping it dark in the meantime for some purpose of their own?"
+
+"I do," said Weelyum.
+
+"God!" said James, gripping the table with both hands in his
+excitement--"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has
+been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra
+little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a
+puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If
+I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I
+have in't. You're going home the night, are ye not?"
+
+"I was just on my road to the station when I met ye," said Weelyum.
+
+"Send me a scrape of your pen to-morrow, man, if what you see on getting
+back keeps you still in the same mind o't. And directly I get your
+letter I'll run down and look about me."
+
+The letter was encouraging, and Wilson went forth to spy the land and
+initiate the plan of campaign. It was an important day for him. He
+entered on his feud with Gourlay, and bought Rab Jamieson's house and
+barn (with the field behind it) for a trifle. He had five hundred of his
+own, and he knew where more could be had for the asking.
+
+Rab Jamieson's barn was a curious building to be stranded in the midst
+of Barbie. In quaint villages and little towns of England you sometimes
+see a mellow red-tiled barn, with its rich yard, close upon the street;
+it seems to have been hemmed in by the houses round, while dozing, so
+that it could not escape with the fields fleeing from the town. There it
+remains and gives a ripeness to the place, matching fitly with the great
+horse-chestnut yellowing before the door, and the old inn further down,
+mantled in its blood-red creepers. But that autumnal warmth and cosiness
+is rarely seen in the barer streets of the north. How Rab Jamieson's
+barn came to be stuck in Barbie nobody could tell. It was a gaunt, gray
+building with never a window, but a bole high in one corner for the
+sheaves, and a door low in another corner for auld Rab Jamieson. There
+was no mill inside, and the place had not been used for years. But the
+roof was good, and the walls stout and thick, and Wilson soon got to
+work on his new possession. He had seen all that could be made of the
+place the moment he clapped an eye on it, and he knew that he had found
+a good thing, even if the pits should never come near Barbie. The bole
+and door next the street were walled up, and a fine new door opened in
+the middle, flanked on either side by a great window. The interior was
+fitted up with a couple of counters and a wooden floor; and above the
+new wood ceiling there was a long loft for a storeroom, lighted by
+skylights in the roof. That loft above the rafters, thought the
+provident Wilson, will come in braw and handy for storing things, so it
+will. And there, hey presto! the transformation was achieved, and
+Wilson's Emporium stood before you. It was crammed with merchandise. On
+the white flapping slant of a couple of awnings, one over each window,
+you might read in black letters, "JAMES WILSON: EMPORIUM." The letters
+of "James Wilson" made a triumphal arch, to which "Emporium" was the
+base. It seemed symbolical.
+
+Now, the shops of Barbie (the drunken man's shop and the dirty man's
+shop always excepted, of course) had usually been low-browed little
+places with faded black scrolls above the door, on which you might read
+in dim gilt letters (or it might be in white)
+
+
+                "LICENS'D TO SELL TEA & TOBACCO."
+
+
+"Licens'd" was on one corner of the ribboned scroll, "To Sell Tea &"
+occupied the flowing arch above, with "Tobacco" in the other corner.
+When you mounted two steps and opened the door, a bell of some kind went
+"_ping_" in the interior, and an old woman in a mutch, with big specs
+slipping down her nose, would come up a step from a dim little room
+behind, and wiping her sunken mouth with her apron--she had just left
+her tea--would say, "What's your wull the day, sir?" And if you said
+your "wull" was tobacco, she would answer, "Ou, sir, I dinna sell ocht
+now but the tape and sweeties." And then you went away, sadly.
+
+With the exception of the dirty man's shop and the drunken man's shop,
+that kind of shop was the Barbie kind of shop. But Wilson changed all
+that. One side of the Emporium was crammed with pots, pans, pails,
+scythes, gardening implements, and saws, with a big barrel of paraffin
+partitioned off in a corner. The rafters on that side were bristling and
+hoary with brushes of all kinds dependent from the roof, so that the
+minister's wife (who was a six-footer) went off with a brush in her
+bonnet once. Behind the other counter were canisters in goodly rows,
+barrels of flour and bags of meal, and great yellow cheeses in the
+window. The rafters here were heavy with their wealth of hams,
+brown-skinned flitches of bacon interspersed with the white tight-corded
+home-cured--"Barbie's Best," as Wilson christened it. All along the
+back, in glass cases to keep them unsullied, were bales of cloth, layer
+on layer to the roof. It was a pleasure to go into the place, so big and
+bien was it, and to smell it on a frosty night set your teeth watering.
+There was always a big barrel of American apples just inside the door,
+and their homely fragrance wooed you from afar, the mellow savour
+cuddling round you half a mile off. Barbie boys had despised the
+provision trade, heretofore, as a mean and meagre occupation; but now
+the imagination of each gallant youth was fired and radiant--he meant to
+be a grocer.
+
+Mrs. Wilson presided over the Emporium. Wilson had a treasure in his
+wife. She was Aberdeen born and bred, but her manner was the manner of
+the South and West. There is a broad difference of character between the
+peoples of East and West Scotland. The East throws a narrower and a
+nippier breed. In the West they take Burns for their exemplar, and
+affect the jovial and robustious--in some cases it is affectation only,
+and a mighty poor one at that. They claim to be bigger men and bigger
+fools than the Eastern billies. And the Eastern billies are very willing
+to yield one half of the contention.
+
+Mrs. Wilson, though Eastie by nature, had the jovial manner that you
+find in Kyle; more jovial, indeed, than was common in nippy Barbie,
+which, in general character, seems to have been transplanted from some
+sand dune looking out upon the German Ocean. She was big of hip and
+bosom, with sloe-black hair and eyes, and a ruddy cheek, and when she
+flung back her head for the laugh her white teeth flashed splendid on
+the world. That laugh of hers became one of the well-known features of
+Barbie. "Lo'd-sake!" a startled visitor would cry, "whatna skirl's
+tha-at!" "Oh, dinna be alarmed," a native would comfort him, "it's only
+Wilson's wife lauchin at the Cross!"
+
+Her manner had a hearty charm. She had a laugh and a joke for every
+customer, quick as a wink with her answer; her gibe was in you and out
+again before you knew you were wounded. Some, it is true, took exception
+to the loudness of her skirl--the Deacon, for instance, who "gave her a
+good one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a
+mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff
+of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her
+popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the
+penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways.
+She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax
+you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling
+like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he
+had no need to be afraid that things were mismanaging at home. During
+his first year in Barbie Mrs. Wilson was his sole helper. She had the
+brawny arm of a giantess, and could toss a bag of meal like a baby; to
+see her twirl a big ham on the counter was to see a thing done as it
+should be. When Drucken Wabster came in and was offensive once, "Poo-oor
+fellow!" said she (with a wink to a customer), "I declare he's in a high
+fever," and she took him kicking to the pump and cooled him.
+
+With a mate like that at the helm every sail of Wilson's craft was
+trimmed for prosperity. He began to "look about" him to increase the
+fleet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+That the Scot is largely endowed with the commercial imagination his
+foes will be ready to acknowledge. Imagination may consecrate the world
+to a man, or it may merely be a visualizing faculty which sees that as
+already perfect which is still lying in the raw material. The Scot has
+the lower faculty in full degree; he has the forecasting leap of the
+mind which sees what to make of things--more, sees them made and in
+vivid operation. To him there is a railway through the desert where no
+railway exists, and mills along the quiet stream. And his _perfervidum
+ingenium_ is quick to attempt the realizing of his dreams. That is why
+he makes the best of colonists. Galt is his type--Galt, dreaming in
+boyhood of the fine water power a fellow could bring round the hill,
+from the stream where he went a-fishing (they have done it since),
+dreaming in manhood of the cities yet to rise amid Ontario's woods (they
+are there to witness to his foresight). Indeed, so flushed and riotous
+can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it
+sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine
+idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of
+vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not
+so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. But in
+every district almost you may find a poor creature who for thirty years
+has cherished a great scheme by which he means to revolutionize the
+world's commerce, and amass a fortune in monstrous degree. He is
+generally to be seen shivering at the Cross, and (if you are a nippy
+man) you shout carelessly in going by, "Good-morning, Tamson; how's the
+scheme?" And he would be very willing to tell you, if only you would
+wait to listen. "Man," he will cry eagerly behind you, "if I only had
+anither wee wheel in my invention--she would do, the besom! I'll sune
+have her ready noo." Poor Tamson!
+
+But these are the exceptions. Scotsmen, more than other men perhaps,
+have the three great essentials of commercial success--imagination to
+conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them
+through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most
+cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and
+robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes
+the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely
+Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom
+ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always
+detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping
+cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using
+the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has
+expressed his love of _festina lente_ in business in a score of
+proverbs--"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the
+baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;"
+and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling of caution and imagination is
+the cause of his stable prosperity. And its characteristic is a sure
+progressiveness. That sure progressiveness was the characteristic of
+Wilson's prosperity in Barbie. In him, too, imagination and caution were
+equally developed. He was always foreseeing "chances" and using them,
+gripping the good and rejecting the dangerous (had he not gripped the
+chance of auld Rab Jamieson's barn? There was caution in that, for it
+was worth the money whatever happened; and there was imagination in the
+whole scheme, for he had a vision of Barbie as a populous centre and
+streets of houses in his holm). And every "chance" he seized led to a
+better one, till almost every "chance" in Barbie was engrossed by him
+alone. This is how he went to work. Note the "bit-by-bitness" of his
+great career.
+
+When Mrs. Wilson was behind the counter, Wilson was out "distributing."
+He was not always out, of course--his volume of trade at first was not
+big enough for that; but in the mornings, and the long summer dusks, he
+made his way to the many outlying places of which Barbie was the centre.
+There, in one and the same visit, he distributed goods and collected
+orders for the future. Though his bill had spoken of "carts," as if he
+had several, that was only a bit of splurge on his part; his one
+conveyance at the first was a stout spring cart, with a good brown cob
+between the shafts. But with this he did such a trade as had never been
+known in Barbie. The Provost said it was "shtupendous."
+
+When Wilson was jogging homeward in the balmy evenings of his first
+summer at Barbie, no eye had he for the large evening star, tremulous
+above the woods, or for the dreaming sprays against the yellow west. It
+wasn't his business; he had other things to mind. Yet Wilson was a
+dreamer too. His close, musing eye, peering at the dusky-brown nodge of
+his pony's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances,
+opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him
+in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial
+enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine
+bleaching green--pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything
+handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods--water power running to
+waste yonder--surely something could be made of that." He would follow
+his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of the
+passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the
+author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good
+company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging
+thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than
+Wilson was on nights like these.
+
+He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for
+development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to
+buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more
+eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of
+Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for
+merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a
+silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for
+stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his
+hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about
+Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the
+better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on
+the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in
+bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the
+cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it
+wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of
+butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering
+up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to
+dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it
+was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to
+be sure--threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the
+pound of butter--still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and
+hained gear helps weel.[4] And more important than the immediate profit
+was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this way established with
+merchants, in far-off Fechars and Poltandie, a connection for the sale
+of country produce which meant a great deal to him in future, when he
+launched out as cheese-buyer in opposition to Gourlay.
+
+It "occurred" to him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that
+the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and
+surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England.
+The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not
+from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests
+communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit
+system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's
+house (when he is away from home for preference), and laying a swatch of
+cloth across his wife's knee, "What do you think of that, mistress?" you
+inquire, watching the effect keenly. Instantly all her covetous heart is
+in her eye, and, thinks she to herself, "Oh, but John would look well in
+that at the kirk on Sunday!" She has no ready money, and would never
+have the cheek to go into a draper's and order the suit; but when she
+sees it lying there across her knee, she just cannot resist it. (And
+fine you knew that when you clinked it down before her!) Now that the
+goods are in the house, she cannot bear to let them out the door again.
+But she hints a scarcity of cash. "Tut, woman!" quoth you, bounteous and
+kind, "there's no obstacle in _that_! You can pay me in instalments!"
+How much would the instalments be, she inquires. "Oh, a mere
+trifle--half a crown a week, say." She hesitates and hankers. "John's
+Sunday coat's getting quite shabby, so it is, and Tam Macalister has a
+new suit, she was noticing--the Macalisters are always flaunting in
+their braws! And, there's that Paisley shawl for herself, too; eh, but
+they would be the canty pair, cocking down the road on Sunday in _that_
+rig! they would take the licht frae Meg Macalister's een--thae
+Macalisters are always so en-vy-fu'!" Love, vanity, covetousness,
+present opportunity, are all at work upon the poor body. She succumbs.
+But the half-crown weekly payments have a habit of lengthening
+themselves out till the packman has made fifty per cent. by the
+business. And why not? a man must have some interest on his money!
+Then there's the risk of bad debts, too--that falls to be considered.
+But there was little risk of bad debts when Wilson took to
+cloth-distributing. For success in that game depends on pertinacity in
+pursuit of your victim, and Wilson was the man for that.
+
+He was jogging home from Brigabee, where he had been distributing
+groceries at a score of wee houses, when there flashed on his mind a
+whole scheme for cloth-distribution on a large scale; for mining
+villages were clustering in about Barbie by this time, and he saw his
+way to a big thing.
+
+He was thinking of Sandy Toddle, who had been a Scotch cuddy in the
+Midlands, and had retired to Barbie on a snug bit fortune--he was
+thinking of Sandy when the plan rose generous on his mind. He would soon
+have more horses than one on the road; why shouldn't they carry swatches
+of cloth as well as groceries? If he had responsible men under him, it
+would be their own interest, for a small commission on the profits, to
+see that payments were levied correctly every week. And those colliers
+were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to
+buying than the cannier country bodies round. Lord! there was money in
+the scheme. No sooner thought of than put in practice. Wilson gave up
+the cloth-peddling after five or six years--he had other fish to fry by
+that time--but while he was at it he made money hand over fist at the
+job.
+
+But what boots it to tell of all his schemes? He had the lucky eye, and
+everything he looked on prospered.
+
+Before he had been a week in Barbie he met Gourlay, just at the Bend o'
+the Brae, in full presence of the bodies. Remembering their first
+encounter, the grocer tried to outstare him; but Gourlay hardened his
+glower, and the grocer blinked. When the two passed, "I declare!" said
+the bodies, "did ye see yon?--they're not on speaking terms!" And they
+hotched with glee to think that Gourlay had another enemy.
+
+Judge of their delight when they saw one day about a month later, just
+as Gourlay was passing up the street, Wilson come down it with a load of
+coals for a customer! For he was often out Auchterwheeze road in the
+early morning, and what was the use of an empty journey back again,
+especially as he had plenty of time in the middle of the day to attend
+to other folk's affairs? So here he was, started as a carrier, in full
+opposition to Gourlay.
+
+"Did you see Gourlay's face?" chuckled the bodies when the cart went by.
+"Yon was a bash in the eye to him. Ha, ha! he's not to have it all his
+own way now!"
+
+Wilson had slid into the carrying in the natural development of
+business. It was another of the possibilities which he saw and turned to
+his advantage. The two other chief grocers in the place, Cunningham the
+dirty and Calderwood the drunken, having no carts or horses of their
+own, were dependent on Gourlay for conveyance of their goods from
+Skeighan. But Wilson brought his own. Naturally, he was asked by his
+customers to bring a parcel now and then, and naturally, being the man
+he was, he made them pay for the privilege. With that for a start the
+rest was soon accomplished. Gourlay had to pay now for his years of
+insolence and tyranny; all who had irked beneath his domineering ways
+got their carrying done by Wilson. Ere long that prosperous gentleman
+had three carts on the road, and two men under him to help in his
+various affairs.
+
+Carting was only one of several new developments in the business of J.
+W. When the navvies came in about the town and accommodation was ill to
+find, Wilson rigged up an old shed in the corner of his holm as a
+hostelry for ten of them--and they had to pay through the nose for their
+night's lodging. Their food they obtained from the Emporium, and thus
+the Wilsons bled them both ways. Then there was the scheme for supplying
+milk--another of the "possibeelities." Hitherto in winter, Barbie was
+dependent for its milk supply on heavy farm-carts that came lumbering
+down the street, about half-past seven in the morning, jangling bells to
+waken sleepy customers, and carrying lanterns that carved circles of
+fairy yellow out the raw air. But Mrs. Wilson got four cows,
+back-calvers who would be milking strong in December, and supplied milk
+to all the folk about the Cross.
+
+She had a lass to help her in the house now, and the red-headed boy was
+always to be seen, jinking round corners like a weasel, running messages
+hot-foot, errand boy to the "bisness" in general. Yet, though everybody
+was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with
+much disarray. Wilson's yard was the strangest contrast to Gourlay's.
+Gourlay's was a pleasure to the eye, everything of the best and
+everything in order, since the master's pride would not allow it to be
+other. But though Wilson's Emporium was clean, his back yard was
+littered with dirty straw, broken boxes, old barrels, stable refuse, and
+the sky-pointing shafts of carts, uptilted in between. When boxes and
+barrels were flung out of the Emporium they were generally allowed to
+lie on the dunghill until they were converted into firewood. "Mistress,
+you're a trifle mixed," said the Provost in grave reproof, when he went
+round to the back to see Wilson on a matter of business. But "Tut,"
+cried Mrs. Wilson, as she threw down a plank, to make a path for him
+across a dub--"Tut," she laughed, "the clartier the cosier!" And it was
+as true as she said it. The thing went forward splendidly in spite of
+its confusion.
+
+Though trade was brisker in Barbie than it had ever been before, Wilson
+had already done injury to Gourlay's business as general conveyor. But,
+hitherto, he had not infringed on the gurly one's other monopolies. His
+chance came at last.
+
+He appeared on a market-day in front of the Red Lion, a piece of pinky
+brown paper in his hand. That was the first telegram ever seen in
+Barbie, and it had been brought by special messenger from Skeighan. It
+was short and to the point. It ran: "Will buy 300 stone cheese 8
+shillings stone[5] delivery at once," and was signed by a merchant in
+Poltandie.
+
+Gourlay was talking to old Tarmillan of Irrendavie, when Wilson pushed
+in and addressed Tarmillan, without a glance at the grain-merchant.
+
+"Have you a kane o' cheese to sell, Irrendavie?" was his blithe
+salutation.
+
+"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was
+Wilson speiring for? _He_ wasna a cheese-merchant.
+
+"How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson.
+
+"I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said
+Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!"
+
+"_I_'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin
+flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his
+left hand.
+
+"But--but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the
+offer, "_you_ have no means of storing cheese."
+
+"Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay, "there's no
+drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam
+came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country
+merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing--there's
+no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some
+folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not
+one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like
+me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese
+at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that."
+
+"C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain
+with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"
+
+Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign
+wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved
+back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The
+wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that
+no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the
+crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him
+and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a
+rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if
+wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while
+Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face
+that made the folk fall away.
+
+"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was
+gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the
+boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous
+stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!"
+cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt!
+It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and
+never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid
+about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"
+
+"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for
+his thplendid wrath yet."
+
+From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the
+people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each
+other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks,
+taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from
+hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable
+as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin.
+But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's
+tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became
+also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an
+active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into
+a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the
+schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show
+the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the
+wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.
+
+There was a pretty hell-broth brewing in the little town.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _Hained gear_, saved money.
+
+[5] That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time Scotch cheese
+was selling, _roughly_, at from fifty to sixty shillings the
+hundred-weight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+"Ay, man, Templandmuir, it's you!" said Gourlay, coming forward with
+great heartiness. "Ay, man, and how are ye? C'way into the parlour!"
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Gourlay," said the Templar. His manner was curiously
+subdued.
+
+Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen.
+Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with
+the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom
+everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay
+turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by
+the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big
+toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay"
+lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy,"
+he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John
+Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel
+like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of
+Barbie used to cry; "Gourlay both courts and cowes him--first he courts
+and then he cowes--and the Templar hasn't the courage to break it off!"
+The Provost hit the mark.
+
+But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink
+(a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of
+Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good
+Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and the new
+leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened
+housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an
+east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was
+nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good
+husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look
+in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over
+when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl--she made it a
+swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a
+man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her
+husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never
+know the difference! It's been used to swine!"
+
+But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was
+determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged
+her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said,
+and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her
+to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at
+the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter.
+
+"I'll write," he said feebly.
+
+"Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a
+coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made
+out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come
+to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I
+was you I wouldn't miss it for the world--just to let him know of his
+cheatry! Oh, it's very right that _I_"--she sounded the _I_ big and
+brave--"it's very right that _I_ should live in this tumbledown hole
+while _he_ builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that _I_ should
+put up with this"--she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling--"it's
+right that _I_ should put up with this, while yon trollop has a
+splendid mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his
+fortune has come out of you--the fool makes nothing from his other
+business--he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you
+that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience
+with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear
+the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with
+the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of
+his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, _I_ have. Write, indeed! In
+you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't
+show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!"
+
+No wonder the Templar looked subdued.
+
+When Gourlay came forward with his usual calculated heartiness, the
+laird remembered his wife and felt very uncomfortable. It was ill to
+round on a man who always imposed on him a hearty and hardy
+good-fellowship. Gourlay, greeting him so warmly, gave him no excuse for
+an outburst. In his dilemma he turned to the children, to postpone the
+evil hour.
+
+"Ay, man, John!" he said heavily, "you're there!" Heavy Scotsmen are
+fond of telling folk that they are where they are. "You're there!" said
+Templandmuir.
+
+"Ay," said John, the simpleton, "I'm here."
+
+In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the
+eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.
+
+"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.
+
+"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The
+lassie's more smart--she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he
+inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.
+
+"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the
+bottom of the class. Jimmy Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie
+set him to teach John his 'counts the day--after he had thrashed him!"
+
+She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears
+in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.
+
+"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt,
+"have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"
+
+John slunk from the room.
+
+"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll
+be back directly."
+
+He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser.
+He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump
+it up _cold_," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a
+mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by
+Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no--ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't
+lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple
+he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out
+to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.
+
+To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the
+fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the
+intimate of John Gourlay--and then, sober as a judge himself, he would
+drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the
+pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By
+a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for
+years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump
+to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.
+
+But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started
+to his feet.
+
+"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered--and his unusual flutter of
+refusal might have warned Gourlay--"noat to-night, if _you_ please; noat
+to-night, if _you_ please. As a matter of fact--eh--what I really came
+into the town for, doan't you see, was--eh--to attend the meeting the
+Provost has convened about the railway. You'll come down to the meeting,
+will ye noat?"
+
+He wanted to get Gourlay away from the House with the Green Shutters. It
+would be easier to quarrel with him out of doors.
+
+But Gourlay gaped at him across the table, his eyes big with surprise
+and disapproval.
+
+"Huh!" he growled, "I wonder at a man like you giving your head to that!
+It's a wheen damned nonsense."
+
+"Oh, I'm no so sure of that," drawled the Templar. "I think the railway
+means to come."
+
+The whole country was agog about the new railway. The question agitating
+solemn minds was whether it should join the main line at Fechars, thirty
+miles ahead, or pass to the right, through Fleckie and Barbie, to a
+junction up at Skeighan Drone. Many were the reasons spluttered in
+vehement debate for one route or the other. "On the one side, ye see,
+Skeighan was a big place a'readys, and look what a centre it would be if
+it had three lines of rail running out and in! Eh, my, what a centre!
+Then there was Fleckie and Barbie--they would be the big towns! Up the
+valley, too, was the shortest road; it would be a daft-like thing to
+build thirty mile of rail, when fifteen was enough to establish the
+connection! And was it likely--I put it to ainy man of sense--was it
+likely the Coal Company wouldn't do everything in their power to get the
+railway up the valley, seeing that if it didn't come that airt they
+would need to build a line of their own?"--"Ah, but then, ye see,
+Fechars was a big place too, and there was lots of mineral up there as
+well! And though it was a longer road to Fechars and part of it lay
+across the moors, there were several wee towns that airt just waiting
+for a chance of growth! I can tell ye, sirs, this was going to be a
+close question!"
+
+Such was the talk in pot-house and parlour, at kirk and mart and tryst
+and fair, and wherever potentates did gather and abound. The partisans
+on either side began to canvass the country in support of their
+contentions. They might have kept their breath to cool their porridge,
+for these matters, we know, are settled in the great Witenagemot. But
+petitions were prepared and meetings were convened. In those days
+Provost Connal of Barbie was in constant communion with the "Pow-ers."
+"Yass," he nodded gravely--only "nod" is a word too swift for the grave
+inclining of that mighty pow--"yass, ye know, the great thing in matters
+like this is to get at the Pow-ers, doan't you see? Oh yass, yass; we
+must get at the Pow-ers!" and he looked as if none but he were equal to
+the job. He even went to London (to interrogate the "Pow-ers"), and
+simple bodies, gathered at the Cross for their Saturday at e'en, told
+each other with bated breath that the Provost was away to the "seat of
+Goaver'ment to see about the railway." When he came back and shook his
+head, hope drained from his fellows and left them hollow in an empty
+world. But when he smacked his lips on receiving an important letter,
+the heavens were brightened and the landscapes smiled.
+
+The Provost walked about the town nowadays with the air of a man on
+whose shoulders the weight of empires did depend. But for all his airs
+it was not the Head o' the Town who was the ablest advocate of the route
+up the Water of Barbie. It was that public-spirited citizen, Mr. James
+Wilson of the Cross! Wilson championed the cause of Barbie with an
+ardour that did infinite credit to his civic heart. For one thing, it
+was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told
+his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye
+understand?"--for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the
+railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must
+agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything
+they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road
+the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in
+our behalf? Local opinion ought to be expressed! They're sending a
+monster petition from the Fechars side; we'll send the Company a bigger
+one from ours! Look at Skeighan and Fleckie and Barbie--three towns at
+our back, and the new Coal Company forbye! A public opinion of that size
+ought to have a great weight--if put forward properly! We must agitate,
+sirs, we must agitate; we maun scour the country for names in our
+support. Look what a number of things there are to recommend _our_
+route. It's the shortest, and there's no need for heavy cuttings such as
+are needed on the other side; the road's there a'ready--Barbie Water has
+cut it through the hills. It's the manifest design of Providence that
+there should be a line up Barbie Valley! What a position for't!--And,
+oh," thought Wilson, "what a site for building houses in my holm!--Let a
+meeting be convened at wunst!"
+
+The meeting was convened, with Provost Connal in the chair and Wilson as
+general factotum.
+
+"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.
+
+Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another,
+Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him
+condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But
+Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom
+he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He
+had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the
+quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.
+
+"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.
+
+When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid,
+and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was
+a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the
+side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter
+because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a
+hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he
+felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable
+hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same
+time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his
+growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly
+nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then,
+he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay
+was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green
+Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He
+hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such
+irritation between them.
+
+When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were
+knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to
+group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay,
+quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he
+loathed.
+
+Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a
+"bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion
+was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins
+running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the
+whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a
+strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness
+became a certainty--"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and
+never a good rub," thought Gourlay in a clean disgust. Full lips showed
+themselves bright red in the middle between the two wings of a very
+blonde and very symmetrical moustache. The ugly feature of the face was
+the blue calculating eyes. They were tender round the lids, so that the
+white lashes stuck out in little peaks. And in conversation he had a
+habit of peering out of these eyes as if he were constantly spying for
+something to emerge that he might twist to his advantage. As he talked
+to a man close by and glimmered (not at the man beside him, but far away
+in the distance of his mind at some chance of gain suggested by the
+other's words) Gourlay heard him say musingly, "Imphm, imphm, imphm!
+there might be something _in_ that!" nodding his head and stroking his
+moustache as he uttered each meditative "imphm."
+
+It was Wilson's unconscious revelation that his mind was busy with a
+commercial hint which he had stolen from his neighbour's talk. "The
+damned sneck-drawer!" thought Gourlay, enlightened by his hate; "he's
+sucking Tam Finlay's brains, to steal some idea for himsell!" And still
+as Wilson listened he murmured swiftly, "Imphm! I see, Mr. Finlay;
+imphm! imphm! imphm!" nodding his head and pulling his moustache and
+glimmering at his new "opportunity."
+
+Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes
+our thought on them to probe. We cannot keep our minds off them. "Why do
+they do it?" we snarl, and wondering why, we find out their character.
+Gourlay was not an observant man, but every man is in any man somewhere,
+and hate to-night driving his mind into Wilson, helped him to read him
+like an open book. He recognized with a vague uneasiness--not with fear,
+for Gourlay did not know what it meant, but with uneasy anger--the
+superior cunning of his rival. Gourlay, a strong block of a man cut off
+from the world by impotence of speech, could never have got out of
+Finlay what Wilson drew from him in two minutes' easy conversation.
+
+Wilson ignored Gourlay, but he was very blithe with Templandmuir, and
+inveigled him off to a corner. They talked together very briskly, and
+Wilson laughed once with uplifted head, glancing across at Gourlay as he
+laughed. Curse them, were they speaking of him?
+
+The hall was crammed at last, and the important bodies took their seats
+upon the front benches. Gourlay refused to be seated with the rest, but
+stood near the platform, with his back to the wall, by the side of
+Templandmuir.
+
+After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"--they
+lasted half an hour--he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting.
+Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got
+the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull,
+and a pull all together"--a phrase which he repeated many times in the
+course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.
+
+"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the
+Provost.
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.
+
+"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.
+
+"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost,
+"there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we
+were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our
+direction. I had thoat, after the able--I must say the very able--speech
+of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to
+utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to
+elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here
+for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was
+all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken,
+ladies and gentlemen--or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe
+there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be
+there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way
+which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some
+who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of
+tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid
+that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to
+bring."--Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people
+watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The
+Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to
+catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed.--"Now, gentlemen, as
+Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang
+pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will _noat_ do
+to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to
+have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will
+show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one
+opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it
+seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand.
+So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the
+town for mainy years--at least he used to be that--I call upon Mr.
+Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."
+
+Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as
+he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of
+the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson
+and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition
+would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he
+would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of
+the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false
+position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public,
+and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.
+
+Gourlay evaded the question.
+
+"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to
+consider the state of some folk's back doors."--That was a nipper to
+Wilson!--"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"
+
+"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"
+
+A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him,
+with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.
+
+"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said
+Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."
+
+"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary
+loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as
+Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but
+Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he
+yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.
+
+"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but
+myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It
+would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among
+the first, and do everything I can in its support."
+
+"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll
+get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the
+hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as
+they go out."
+
+"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were
+carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and
+one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.
+
+The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and
+glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high
+courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its
+expression. He was smiling as he faced them.
+
+"Let _me_ pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the
+bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.
+
+"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.
+
+He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the
+anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was
+the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to
+complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself
+to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning
+to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had
+laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would
+have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the
+popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the
+brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his
+grievance.
+
+They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said
+between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind.
+Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had
+dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was
+longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.
+
+That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was
+partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage),
+and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the
+louder for its pent fury.
+
+"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came opposite the House
+with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than
+a year."
+
+It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from
+him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.
+
+"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"
+
+"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a
+monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be
+damned if I put up with that!"
+
+And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions
+and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark
+will do for an explosion.
+
+"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he
+should alienate the quarry laird.
+
+"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than
+ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten
+him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day,
+though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and
+your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse
+me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your
+tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."
+
+He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence,
+leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely
+the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life
+he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire
+to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood
+rocked him where he stood.
+
+He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it.
+It was locked--at this early hour!--and the simple inconvenience let
+loose the fury of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist
+till the blood streamed on his knuckles.
+
+It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before
+his awful eyes.
+
+"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"
+
+The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had
+endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his
+night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand
+there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom
+with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.
+
+She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack
+lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful
+frightened child, "what have I been doing?... Man, what did you hit me
+for?"
+
+He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute--knew she had
+done nothing to-night more than she had ever done--knew he had vented on
+her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a
+stick; how could he explain--to _her_? He gaped and glowered for a
+speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour,
+slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.
+
+She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in
+her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking
+it up coarsely--we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony.
+And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro
+in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o'
+me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
+
+The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared
+face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.
+
+The sympathy of children with those who weep is innocently selfish. The
+sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in
+the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief
+would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to
+appreciate the inward agony.
+
+So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet,
+mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."
+
+But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me,
+it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.
+
+Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an
+assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and
+as it happened she was all alone.
+
+"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth
+back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some
+corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything
+perticular?"
+
+She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged
+on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a
+husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him
+in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them;
+come to be done by the husband or to do him--in either case, therefore,
+the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either
+to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about
+it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her
+parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's
+affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face
+be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was
+suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the
+builder. What was _he_ spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up
+to? Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to
+inquire.
+
+"Would I do instead?" she asked.
+
+"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded
+round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham
+that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"
+
+"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye
+had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing
+on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty
+morning"--and her laugh went skelloching up the street.
+
+"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to
+present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."
+
+"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms
+akimbo.--"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot
+from the back premises.
+
+"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack
+wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important
+business."
+
+The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him
+foremost.
+
+While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly.
+Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.
+
+He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as
+a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the
+jovial gleam, or they may be mean things--little and sly and oily.
+Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they
+glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with
+a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow
+teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a
+grin--it was a _rictus_, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady
+eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He
+was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness
+(perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and
+the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long
+ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other
+nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to
+Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act
+against him. They had made advances to each other--birds of a feather,
+in short.
+
+The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a
+perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in
+Barbie, four years ago now.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to
+see me on?"
+
+"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.
+
+"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his
+guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him.
+"James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her,
+leaving Gibson in the yard.
+
+"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for
+nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your
+een."
+
+"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand
+thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a
+little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency--and that
+was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise
+very early that got the better o' a man like him!
+
+"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room
+where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot
+of red earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round
+table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which
+two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed
+miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the
+family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a
+beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green
+mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in
+perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world
+that there was no place like home.
+
+Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he
+said blithely.
+
+"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered
+it for nothing."
+
+"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter
+and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the
+drink ran over on the table.
+
+"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in
+alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the mercies?" He stooped his lips
+to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar
+should escape him.
+
+They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said
+the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed
+glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little
+finger uppermost.
+
+Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his
+uvula.
+
+"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."
+
+"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.
+
+Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his
+hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped
+Wilson's knee in whispering importance.
+
+"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his
+eyes.
+
+"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the
+business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"
+
+"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.
+
+"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two
+forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green
+teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.
+
+"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners
+a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the
+Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to
+say I have nabbed the contract for the building."
+
+"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am
+that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could
+Gibson be wanting with _him_ if it wasna to arrange about the carting?
+"Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're
+drinking nothing at all. Let _me_ help you."
+
+"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's
+not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."
+
+Wilson's mouth forgot to shut, and his eyes were big and round as his
+mouth in staring disappointment. Was it this he was wasting his drink
+for?
+
+"Where do I come in?" he asked blankly.
+
+Gibson tossed off another glassful of the burning heartener of men, and
+leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
+
+"D'ye ken Goudie, the Company's manager? He's worth making up to, I can
+tell ye. He has complete control of the business, and can airt you the
+road of a good thing. I made a point of helping him in everything, ever
+since he came to Barbie, and I'm glad to say that he hasna forgotten't.
+Man, it was through him I got the building contract; they never threw't
+open to the public. But they mean to contract separate for carting the
+material. That means that they'll need the length of a dozen horses on
+the road for a twelvemonth to come; for it's no only the
+building--they're launching out on a big scale, and there's lots of
+other things forbye. Now, Goudie's as close as a whin, and likes to keep
+everything dark till the proper time comes for sploring o't. Not a
+whisper has been heard so far about this village for the miners--there's
+a rumour, to be sure, about a wheen houses going up, but nothing _near_
+the reality. And there's not a soul, either, that kens there's a big
+contract for carting to be had 'ceptna Goudie and mysell. But or a
+month's by they'll be advertising for estimates for a twelvemonth's
+carrying. I thocht a hint aforehand would be worth something to you, and
+that's the reason of my visit."
+
+"I see," said Wilson briskly. "You're verra good, Mr. Gibson. You mean
+you'll give me an inkling in private of the other estimates sent in, and
+help to arrange mine according?"
+
+"Na," said Gibson. "Goudie's owre close to let me ken. I'll speak a word
+in his ear on your behalf, to be sure, if you agree to the proposal I
+mean to put before you. But Gourlay's the man you need to keep your eye
+on. It's you or him for the contract--there's nobody else to compete wi'
+the two o' ye."
+
+"Imphm, I see," said Wilson, and tugged his moustache in meditation. All
+expression died out of his face while his brain churned within. What
+Brodie had christened "the considering keek" was in his eyes; they were
+far away, and saw the distant village in process of erection; busy with
+its chances and occasions. Then an uneasy thought seemed to strike him
+and recall him to the man by his side. He stole a shifty glance at the
+sandy smiler.
+
+"But I thought _you_ were a friend of Gourlay's," he said slowly.
+
+"Friendship!" said Gibson. "We're speaking of business. And there's
+sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I
+sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides,
+there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a
+rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither
+to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the advantage of us
+both. Oom?"
+
+"I hardly see what you're driving at," said Wilson.
+
+"I'm driving at this," said Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him
+for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o'
+sheer spite--yes, out o' sheer spite--rather than be licked by _you_ in
+public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we
+like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the
+estimates sent in, d'ye see? Imphm, it's the partners. Goudie has
+noathing to do wi' that. And if Gourlay once gets round the partners,
+you'll be left out in the cold for a very loang time. Shivering, sir,
+shivering! You will that!"
+
+"Dod, you're right. There's a danger of that. But I fail to see how we
+can prevent it."
+
+"We can put Gourlay on a wrong scent," said Gibson.
+
+"But how, though?"
+
+Gibson met one question by another.
+
+"What was the charge for a man and a horse and a day's carrying when ye
+first came hereaway?" he asked.
+
+"Only four shillings a day," said Wilson promptly. "It has risen to six
+now," he added.
+
+"Exactly," said Gibson; "and with the new works coming in about the town
+it'll rise to eight yet. I have it for a fact that the Company's willing
+to gie that. Now if you and me could procure a job for Gourlay at the
+lower rate, before the news o' this new industry gets scattered--a job
+that would require the whole of his plant, you understand, and prevent
+his competing for the Company's business--we would clear"--he clawed his
+chin to help his arithmetic--"we would clear three hundred and
+seventy-four pounds o' difference on the twelvemonth. At least _you_
+would make that," he added, "but you would allow me a handsome
+commission of course--the odd hundred and seventy, say--for bringing the
+scheme before ye. I don't think there's ocht unreasonable in tha-at. For
+it's not the mere twelvemonth's work that's at stake, you understand;
+it's the valuable connection for the fee-yuture. Now, I have influence
+wi' Goudie; I can help you there. But if Gourlay gets in there's just a
+chance that you'll never be able to oust him."
+
+"I see," said Wilson. "Before he knows what's coming, we're to provide
+work for Gourlay at the lower rate, both to put money in our own pocket
+and prevent him competing for the better business."
+
+"You've summed it to the nines," said Gibson.
+
+"Yes," said Wilson blankly, "but how on earth are _we_ to provide work
+for him?"
+
+Gibson leaned forward a second time and tapped Wilson on the knee.
+
+"Have you never considered what a chance for building there's in that
+holm of yours?" he asked. "You've a fortune there, lying undeveloped."
+
+That was the point to which Cunning Johnny had been leading all the
+time. He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a
+contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good
+commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the
+conspiracy to cripple Gourlay.
+
+Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He
+blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his
+comrade. He tugged his moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his
+eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the
+breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet
+room. Wilson was one of the men whom you hear thinking.
+
+"I see," he said slowly. "You mean to bind Gourlay to cart building
+material to my holm at the present price of work. You'll bind him in
+general terms so that he canna suspect, till the time comes, who in
+particular he's to work for. In the meantime I'll be free to offer for
+the Company's business at the higher price."
+
+"That's the size o't," said Gibson.
+
+Wilson was staggered by the rapid combinations of the scheme. But
+Cunning Johnny had him in the toils. The plan he proposed stole about
+the grocer's every weakness, and tugged his inclinations to consent. It
+was very important, he considered, that he, and no other, should obtain
+this contract, which was both valuable in itself and an earnest of other
+business in the future. And Gibson's scheme got Gourlay, the only
+possible rival, out of the way. For it was not possible for Gourlay to
+put more than twelve horses on the road, and if he thought he had
+secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for
+another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that
+Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling,
+in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for
+him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed
+by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before
+him. Cunning Johnny knew all this when he broached the scheme--he
+foresaw the pull of it on Wilson's nature. Yet Wilson hesitated. He did
+not like to give himself to Gibson quite so rapidly.
+
+"You go fast, Mr. Gibson," said he. "Faith, you go fast. This is a big
+affair, and needs to be looked at for a while."
+
+"Fast!" cried Gibson. "Damn it, we have no time to waste. We maun act on
+the spur of the moment."
+
+"I'll have to borrow money," said Wilson slowly; "and it's verra dear at
+the present time."
+
+"It was never worth more in Barbie than it is at the present time. Man,
+don't ye see the chance you're neglecting? Don't ye see what it means?
+There's thousands lying at your back door if ye'll only reach to pick
+them up. Yes, thousands. Thousands, I'm telling ye--thousands!"
+
+Wilson saw himself provost and plutocrat. Yet was he cautious.
+
+"_You_'ll do well by the scheme," he said tartly, "if you get the sole
+contract for building these premises of mine, and a fat commission on
+the carrying forbye."
+
+"Can you carry the scheme without me?" said Gibson. "A word from me to
+Goudie means a heap." There was a veiled threat in the remark.
+
+"Oh, we'll come to terms," said the other. "But how will you manage
+Gourlay?"
+
+"Aha!" said Gibson, "I'll come in handy for that, you'll discover.
+There's been a backset in Barbie for the last year--things went owre
+quick at the start and were followed by a wee lull; but it's only for a
+time, sir--it's only for a time. Hows'ever, it and you thegither have
+damaged Gourlay: he's both short o' work and scarce o' cash, as I found
+to my cost when I asked him for my siller! So when I offer him a big
+contract for carting stones atween the quarry and the town foot, he'll
+swallow it without question. I'll insert a clause that he must deliver
+the stuff at such places as I direct within four hundred yards of the
+Cross, in ainy direction--for I've several jobs near the Cross, doan't
+ye see, and how's he to know that yours is one o' them? Man, it's easy
+to bamboozle an ass like Gourlay! Besides, he'll think my principals
+have trusted me to let the carrying to ainy one I like, and, as I let it
+to him, he'll fancy I'm on his side, doan't ye see? He'll never jalouse
+that I mean to diddle him. In the meantime we'll spread the news that
+you're meaning to build on a big scale upon your own land; we'll have
+the ground levelled, the foundations dug, and the drains and everything
+seen to. Now, it'll never occur to Gourlay, in the present slackness o'
+trade, that you would contract wi' another man to cart your material,
+and go hunting for other work yoursell. That'll throw him off the scent
+till the time comes to put his nose on't. When the Company advertise for
+estimates he canna compete wi' you, because he's pre-engaged to me; and
+he'll think you're out o't too, because you're busy wi' your own woark.
+You'll be free to nip the eight shillings. Then we'll force him to
+fulfill his bargain and cart for us at six."
+
+"If he refuses?" said Wilson.
+
+"I'll have the contract stamped and signed in the presence of
+witnesses," said Gibson. "Not that that's necessary, I believe, but a
+double knot's aye the safest."
+
+Wilson looked at him with admiration.
+
+"Gosh, Mr. Gibson," he cried, "you're a warmer! Ye deserve your name. Ye
+ken what the folk ca' you?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Gibson complacently. "I'm quite proud o' the
+description."
+
+"I've my ain craw to pick wi' Gourlay," he went on. "He was damned
+ill-bred yestreen when I asked him to settle my account, and talked
+about extortion. But bide a wee, bide a wee! I'll enjoy the look on his
+face when he sees himself forced to carry for you, at a rate lower than
+the market price."
+
+When Gibson approached Gourlay on the following day he was full of
+laments about the poor state of trade.
+
+"Ay," said he, "the grand railway they boasted o' hasna done muckle for
+the town!"
+
+"Atwell ay," quoth Gourlay with pompous wisdom; "they'll maybe find, or
+a's by, that the auld way wasna the warst way. There was to be a great
+boom, as they ca't, but I see few signs o't."
+
+"I see few signs o't either," said Gibson, "it's the slackest time for
+the last twa years."
+
+Gourlay grunted his assent.
+
+"But I've a grand job for ye, for a' that," said Gibson, slapping his
+hands. "What do ye say to the feck of a year's carting tweesht the
+quarry and the town foot?"
+
+"I might consider that," said Gourlay, "if the terms were good."
+
+"Six shillins," said Gibson, and went on in solemn protest: "In the
+present state o' trade, doan't ye see, I couldna give a penny more."
+Gourlay, who had denounced the present state of trade even now, was
+prevented by his own words from asking for a penny more.
+
+"At the town foot, you say?" he asked.
+
+"I've several jobs thereaway," Gibson explained hurriedly, "and you must
+agree to deliver stuff ainy place I want it within four hundred yards o'
+the Cross. It's all one to you, of course," he went on, "seeing you're
+paid by the day."
+
+"Oh, it's all one to me," said Gourlay.
+
+Peter Riney and the new "orra" man were called in to witness the
+agreement. Cunning Johnny had made it as cunning as he could.
+
+"We may as well put a stamp on't," said he. "A stamp costs little, and
+means a heap."
+
+"You're damned particular the day," cried Gourlay in a sudden heat.
+
+"Oh, nothing more than my usual, nothing more than my usual," said
+Gibson blandly. "Good-morning, Mr. Gourlay," and he made for the door,
+buttoning the charter of his dear revenge in the inside pocket of his
+coat. Gourlay ignored him.
+
+When Gibson got out he turned to the House with the Green Shutters, and
+"Curse you!" said he; "you may refuse to answer me the day, but wait
+till this day eight weeks. You'll be roaring than."
+
+On that day eight weeks Gourlay received a letter from Gibson requiring
+him to hold himself in readiness to deliver stone, lime, baulks of
+timber, and iron girders in Mr. Wilson's holm, in terms of his
+agreement, and in accordance with the orders to be given him from day to
+day. He was apprised that a couple of carts of lime and seven loads of
+stone were needed on the morrow.
+
+He went down the street with grinding jaws, the letter crushed to a
+white pellet in his hand. It would have gone ill with Gibson had he met
+him. Gourlay could not tell why, or to what purpose, he marched on and
+on with forward staring eyes. He only knew vaguely that the anger drove
+him.
+
+When he came to the Cross a long string of carts was filing from the
+Skeighan Road, and passing across to the street leading Fleckie-ward. He
+knew them to be Wilson's. The Deacon was there, of course, hobbling on
+his thin shanks, and cocking his eye to see everything that happened.
+
+"What does this mean?" Gourlay asked him, though he loathed the Deacon.
+
+"Oh, haven't ye heard?" quoth the Deacon blithely. "That's the stuff for
+the new mining village out the Fleckie Road. Wilson has nabbed the
+contract for the carting. They're saying it was Gibson's influence wi'
+Goudie that helped him to the getting o't."
+
+Amid his storm of anger at the trick, Gourlay was conscious of a sudden
+pity for himself, as for a man most unfairly worsted. He realized for a
+moment his own inefficiency as a business man, in conflict with
+cleverer rivals, and felt sorry to be thus handicapped by nature. Though
+wrath was uppermost, the other feeling was revealed, showing itself by a
+gulping in the throat and a rapid blinking of the eyes. The Deacon
+marked the signs of his chagrin.
+
+"Man!" he reported to the bodies, "but Gourlay was cut to the quick. His
+face showed how gunkit he was. Oh, but he was chawed. I saw his breist
+give the great heave."
+
+"Were ye no sorry?" cried the baker.
+
+"Thorry, hi!" laughed the Deacon. "Oh, I was thorry, to be sure," he
+lisped, "but I didna thyow't. I'm glad to thay I've a grand control of
+my emotionth. Not like thum folk we know of," he added slyly, giving the
+baker a "good one."
+
+All next day Gibson's masons waited for their building material in
+Wilson's holm. But none came. And all day seven of Gourlay's horses
+champed idly in their stalls.
+
+Barbie had a weekly market now, and, as it happened, that was the day it
+fell on. At two in the afternoon Gourlay was standing on the gravel
+outside the Red Lion, trying to look wise over a sample of grain which a
+farmer had poured upon his great palm. Gibson approached with false
+voice and smile.
+
+"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna
+day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."
+
+To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the
+gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on
+his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed
+gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground
+them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.
+
+"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every other man's son ...
+frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o'
+Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"
+
+Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's
+shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.
+
+"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense
+quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.
+
+But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.
+
+Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles
+of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying
+through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the
+great table where the market-folk were drinking.
+
+For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a
+circle of white faces and startled cries.
+
+Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to
+fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his
+black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game
+John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."
+
+Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window,
+his grin a _rictus_ of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.
+
+"By God, Gourlay," he screamed, "I'll make you pay for this; I'll fight
+you through a' the law courts in Breetain, but you'll implement your
+bond."
+
+"Damn you for a measled swine! would you grunt at me?" cried Gourlay,
+and made to go at him through the window. Though he could not reach him,
+Gibson quailed at his look. He shook his fist in impotent wrath, and
+spat threats of justice through his green teeth.
+
+"To hell wi' your law-wers!" cried Gourlay. "I'd throttle ye like the
+dog you are on the floor o' the House o' Lords."
+
+But that day was to cost him dear. Ere six months passed he was cast in
+damages and costs for a breach of contract aggravated by assault. He
+appealed, of course. He was not to be done; he would show the dogs what
+he thought of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+In those days it came to pass that Wilson sent his son to the High
+School of Skeighan--even James, the red-haired one, with the squint in
+his eye. Whereupon Gourlay sent _his_ son to the High School of Skeighan
+too, of course, to be upsides with Wilson. If Wilson could afford to
+send his boy to a distant and expensive school, then, by the Lord, so
+could he! And it also came to pass that James, the son of James the
+grocer, took many prizes; but John, the son of John, took no prizes.
+Whereat there were ructions in the House of Gourlay.
+
+Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his
+main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he
+saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a
+lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon
+shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with
+delight to helping his father in the business--how grand it would be to
+drive about the country and see things!--and he had irked at being kept
+for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business
+went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay
+was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to
+Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk
+or a mill o't.
+
+But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to
+drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His
+imagination set to work on what he heard of the High School of
+Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could
+_he_ do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in
+public; how could _he_ stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o'
+them?
+
+"I don't want to gang," he whined.
+
+"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what _you_ want? Go you
+shall."
+
+"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.
+
+"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help _you_ would be in
+business."
+
+"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
+support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
+opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
+to be a minister."
+
+Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
+different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
+growled.
+
+So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
+forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
+opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
+he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
+was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
+was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
+important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
+was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
+upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
+and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
+assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
+mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
+still was the home-coming--to board the empty train at Skeighan when
+the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
+cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
+a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
+get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
+Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
+lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
+nights--his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
+ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
+the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
+school days--and are fools for the remainder of their lives.
+
+The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
+over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
+youngster in their ken.
+
+"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
+musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.
+
+"To no good--you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
+regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
+train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
+he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
+swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
+from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
+Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't--he shook like a dog in a wet
+sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
+your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz--it would blind ye
+by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
+his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
+before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
+obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,'
+said he, and he actually bocked himsell."
+
+Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
+his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
+fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
+was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
+classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
+Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
+from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
+off at such times--it was easy to slip out--and playing truant in the
+byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
+the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
+mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.
+
+For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
+cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
+congenital horror of eerie sounds--he was his mother's son for that--and
+he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
+afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
+the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
+oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
+and forgot the world.
+
+He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
+was only the baker--the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
+the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
+wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
+wonderful hearty manner with a boy.
+
+"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The
+storm's at the burstin'!"
+
+"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
+birth.
+
+"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
+see't?"
+
+They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
+thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
+roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
+close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
+vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
+cowering earth. The rain came--a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
+to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
+white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
+open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
+started violently--that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.
+
+The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
+Gourlay screamed in terror.
+
+The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.
+
+"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
+know. You ought to be a hardy man."
+
+"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
+just let on to be."
+
+But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
+vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.
+
+"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
+"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
+hands.
+
+A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
+dagger!" stared Gourlay.
+
+"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash--then jerked
+to the side--then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
+coulter of a plough."
+
+Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
+centre.
+
+"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
+door."
+
+"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.
+
+"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
+much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
+to think them over when they're by."
+
+Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
+the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
+explain.
+
+"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
+"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"--he
+nodded to the warring heavens.
+
+The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.
+
+"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him
+playing truant!
+
+"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten
+train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."
+
+John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.
+
+When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the
+offender; yet his eye seemed to stab--a flash shot from its centre to
+transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and
+you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his
+son.
+
+"I--I--I----" John stammered and choked.
+
+"What are you doing here?" said his father.
+
+John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his
+father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.
+
+"How lang has he been here, baker?"
+
+There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke
+with a firm civility.
+
+"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.
+
+"I see. You want to shield him.--You have been playing the truant, have
+'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on _you_ for this to be the end o't?"
+
+"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy.
+Dinna thrash him."
+
+"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to
+thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I
+don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."
+
+He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down
+High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as
+you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the
+face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground.
+Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the
+old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up
+and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on
+amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.
+
+Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger
+shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a
+moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own
+son.
+
+He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from
+his great hand.
+
+"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.
+
+"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.
+
+"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him--the fellow that runs
+the business."
+
+"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.
+
+"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
+janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a
+classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.
+
+The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
+fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
+brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
+world.
+
+"I believe I pay _you_ to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
+this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
+spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
+huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
+master.
+
+"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.
+
+"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay _you_ to teach that boy, and you allow
+him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"
+
+"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
+deprecating hands.
+
+The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.
+
+"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach
+_you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
+hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
+to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"
+
+He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor.
+
+Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
+forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
+However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
+to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
+Shutters.
+
+He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
+was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
+last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
+smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the
+great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
+he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
+Templandmuir who was speaking.
+
+"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
+said the Templar.
+
+"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have
+lost infernal!"
+
+"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
+enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
+settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
+hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
+Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
+need o' that."
+
+Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
+with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
+entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
+doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
+were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
+a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.
+
+"Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
+evening.
+
+She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
+fondly. He was as tall as herself now.
+
+"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
+grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."
+
+"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
+times!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
+was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days--only a
+few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
+between--the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
+and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
+all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
+telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
+distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
+first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
+too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
+wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
+lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
+Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
+increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
+buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
+security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.
+
+"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
+him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
+the cash.
+
+He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and
+always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you
+thought, as you saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his
+driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which
+he looked down on Barbie for many a day.
+
+A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as
+of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.
+
+"Come in," snapped Gourlay.
+
+Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He
+only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at
+a word.
+
+"Tam's deid!" he blurted.
+
+Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob
+stood out on his cheek.
+
+"Deid!" he stared.
+
+"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his
+feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was
+lying deid in the loose-box. The batts--it's like."
+
+For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise,
+forgetting to take down his razor.
+
+"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.
+
+The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid
+and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly;
+he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He
+had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the
+luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his
+proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of
+quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other
+calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister,
+prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.
+
+"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was
+no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten
+his stock, and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it
+for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for
+one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the
+words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark
+vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."
+
+He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct
+prompted him to lock the door.
+
+He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes,
+slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his
+neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam
+had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put
+Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world
+before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and
+his master netted in a mesh of care.
+
+"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if
+pleading in his own defence.
+
+For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam
+the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam
+the powney," and he turned away.
+
+How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock
+train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited
+till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a
+brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome,
+though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own
+horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went
+by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and
+detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of
+them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from
+nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw
+him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep among them cheek for jowl.
+Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to
+turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a
+public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!
+
+The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross,
+nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and
+elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward;
+but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused,
+was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never
+splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the
+thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty
+brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close
+below the driver.
+
+As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for
+Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to
+mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves
+off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy
+Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so
+thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and
+address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.
+
+The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.
+
+The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the
+crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that
+ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.
+
+Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin.
+"Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife,
+I'm thinking!"
+
+"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty
+trollop."
+
+"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly
+temper."
+
+They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him
+off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not
+their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet
+superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the
+veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now
+the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)--talking
+_to_ each other, indeed, but _at_ him, while he must keep quiet in their
+midst.
+
+At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played
+their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's
+ears, to his comprehension.
+
+The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.
+
+"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.
+
+"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to
+a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who
+throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man
+builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support
+it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he
+took the quarry in his own hand."
+
+"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with
+a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented
+enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the
+game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent
+folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him
+turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his
+enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.
+
+"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
+of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
+houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.--I'm thinking, Mr.
+Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"
+
+"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that _you_ should have
+been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
+and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
+in two or three years!"
+
+"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
+other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
+welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"
+
+Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
+self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
+but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
+his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
+Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
+seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
+said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
+jaw."
+
+But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.
+
+"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
+College at Embro in October?"
+
+"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
+been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
+town."
+
+"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on _him_! It must be a
+terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
+got a prize!"
+
+The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
+very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
+danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
+tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
+hedge.
+
+"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired--a civil enough
+question surely.
+
+"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."
+
+"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"
+
+"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
+It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
+it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
+you're doing--especially if you've little money left to come and go on."
+
+"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he
+had better put him in hith business--if he hath ainy business left to
+thpeak o', that ith!"
+
+The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work,
+past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of
+ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and
+blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the
+world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of
+hate and malice and a petty rage.
+
+"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.
+
+"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.
+
+"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust.
+"Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"
+
+Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But
+don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"--he dwelt on his name in
+ringing pride--"John Gourla can fight for his own hand--if so there need
+to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a
+dirt it spreads the wider!"
+
+"Who was referring to _you_?" bellowed Brodie.
+
+Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the
+wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying
+to stare fiercely the while.
+
+"Maybe ye werena referring to me," said Gourlay slowly. "But if _I_ had
+been in your end o' the brake _ye_ would have been in hell or this!"
+
+He had said enough. There was silence in the brake till it reached
+Skeighan. But the evil was done. Enough had been said to influence
+Gourlay to the most disastrous resolution of his life.
+
+"Get yourself ready for the College in October," he ordered his son that
+evening.
+
+"The College!" cried John aghast.
+
+"Yes! Is there ainything in that to gape at?" snapped his father, in
+sudden irritation at the boy's amaze.
+
+"But I don't want to gang!" John whimpered as before.
+
+"Want! what does it matter what _you_ want? You should be damned glad of
+the chance! I mean to make ye a minister; they have plenty of money and
+little to do--a grand, easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a
+stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every
+qualification!"
+
+"It's against _my_ will," John bawled angrily.
+
+"_Your_ will!" sneered his father.
+
+To John the command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had
+been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too
+contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business
+stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the
+last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from
+which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an
+imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he
+saw two pictures with uncanny vividness--himself in bleak lodgings
+raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home
+to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies,
+laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They
+would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must
+he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he
+still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life
+where everything terrified his mind?
+
+"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave
+Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious
+impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a
+man like his father?
+
+"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand--"not another word!
+You go to College in October!"
+
+"Ay, man, Johnny," said his mother, "think o' the future that's before
+ye!"
+
+"Ay," howled the youth in silly anger, "it's like to be a braw future!"
+
+"It's the best future you can have!" growled his father.
+
+For while rivalry, born of hate, was the propelling influence in
+Gourlay's mind, other reasons whispered that the course suggested by
+hate was a good one on its merits. His judgment, such as it was,
+supported the impulse of his blood. It told him that the old business
+would be a poor heritage for his son, and that it would be well to look
+for another opening. The boy gave no sign of aggressive smartness to
+warrant a belief that he would ever pull the thing together. Better make
+him a minister. Surely there was enough money left about the house for
+tha-at! It was the best that could befall him.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay, for her part, though sorry to lose her son, was so pleased
+at the thought of sending him to college, and making him a minister,
+that she ran on in foolish maternal gabble to the wife of Drucken
+Webster. Mrs. Webster informed the gossips, and they discussed the
+matter at the Cross.
+
+"Dod," said Sandy Toddle, "Gourlay's better off than I supposed!"
+
+"Huts!" said Brodie, "it's just a wheen bluff to blind folk!"
+
+"It would fit him better," said the Doctor, "if he spent some money on
+his daughter. She ought to pass the winter in a warmer locality than
+Barbie. The lassie has a poor chest! I told Gourlay, but he only gave a
+grunt. And 'oh,' said Mrs. Gourlay, 'it would be a daft-like thing to
+send _her_ away, when John maun be weel provided for the College.' D'ye
+know, I'm beginning to think there's something seriously wrong with yon
+woman's health! She seemed anxious to consult me on her own account, but
+when I offered to sound her she wouldn't hear of it. 'Na,' she cried,
+'I'll keep it to mysell!' and put her arm across her breast as if to
+keep me off. I do think she's hiding some complaint! Only a woman whose
+mind was weak with disease could have been so callous as yon about her
+lassie."
+
+"Oh, her mind's weak enough," said Sandy Toddle. "It was always that!
+But it's only because Gourlay has tyraneezed her verra soul. I'm
+surprised, however, that _he_ should be careless of the girl. He was aye
+said to be browdened upon _her_."
+
+"Men-folk are often like that about lassie-weans," said Johnny Coe.
+"They like well enough to pet them when they're wee, but when once
+they're big they never look the road they're on! They're a' very fine
+when they're pets, but they're no sae fine when they're pretty misses.
+And, to tell the truth, Janet Gourlay's ainything but pretty!"
+
+Old Bleach-the-boys, the bitter dominie (who rarely left the studies in
+political economy which he found a solace for his thwarted powers),
+happened to be at the Cross that evening. A brooding and taciturn man,
+he said nothing till others had their say. Then he shook his head.
+
+"They're making a great mistake," he said gravely, "they're making a
+great mistake! Yon boy's the last youngster on earth who should go to
+College."
+
+"Ay, man, dominie, he's an infernal ass, is he noat?" they cried, and
+pressed for his judgment.
+
+At last, partly in real pedantry, partly with humorous intent to puzzle
+them, he delivered his astounding mind.
+
+"The fault of young Gourlay," quoth he, "is a sensory perceptiveness in
+gross excess of his intellectuality."
+
+They blinked and tried to understand.
+
+"Ay, man, dominie!" said Sandy Toddle. "That means he's an infernal
+cuddy, dominie! Does it na, dominie?"
+
+But Bleach-the-boys had said enough. "Ay," he said dryly, "there's a
+wheen gey cuddies in Barbie!" and he went back to his stuffy little room
+to study "The Wealth of Nations."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The scion of the house of Gourlay was a most untravelled sprig when his
+father packed him off to the University. Of the world beyond Skeighan he
+had no idea. Repression of his children's wishes to see something of the
+world was a feature of Gourlay's tyranny, less for the sake of the money
+which a trip might cost (though that counted for something in his
+refusal) than for the sake of asserting his authority. "Wants to gang to
+Fechars, indeed! Let him bide at home," he would growl; and at home the
+youngster had to bide. This had been the more irksome to John since most
+of his companions in the town were beginning to peer out, with their
+mammies and daddies to encourage them. To give their cubs a "cast o' the
+world" was a rule with the potentates of Barbie; once or twice a year
+young Hopeful was allowed to accompany his sire to Fechars or Poltandie,
+or--oh, rare joy!--to the city on the Clyde. To go farther, and get the
+length of Edinburgh, was dangerous, because you came back with a halo of
+glory round your head which banded your fellows together in a common
+attack on your pretensions. It was his lack of pretension to travel,
+however, that banded them against young Gourlay. "Gunk" and "chaw" are
+the Scots for a bitter and envious disappointment which shows itself in
+face and eyes. Young Gourlay could never conceal that envious look when
+he heard of a glory which he did not share; and the youngsters noted his
+weakness with the unerring precision of the urchin to mark simple
+difference of character. Now the boy presses fiendishly on an intimate
+discovery in the nature of his friends, both because it gives him a new
+and delightful feeling of power over them, and also because he has not
+learned charity from a sense of his deficiencies, the brave ruffian
+having none. He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie
+boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young
+Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other
+the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders
+they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and
+they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow
+at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off
+Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of
+his adventures. He had been in fifteen taverns, and one hotel (a
+temperance hotel, where old Brown bashed the proprietor for refusing to
+supply him gin); one Pepper's Ghost; one Wild Beasts' Show; one
+Exhibition of the Fattest Woman on the Earth; also in the precincts of
+one jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the
+floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey
+for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home
+of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for
+the benefit of young Gourlay--for Swipey, though his name was the base
+Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the
+imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink
+home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars,
+though my faither 'ull no allow _me_!" "Never mind, dear," she would
+soothe him; "when once you're in the business, you'll gang a'where. And
+nut wan o' them has sic a business to gang intill!"
+
+But though he longed to go here and there for a day, that he might be
+able to boast of it at home, young Gourlay felt that leaving Barbie for
+good would be a cutting of his heart-strings. Each feature of it, town
+and landward, was a crony of old years. In a land like Barbie, of quick
+hill and dale, of tumbled wood and fell, each facet of nature has an
+individuality so separate and so strong that if you live with it a
+little it becomes your friend, and a memory so dear that you kiss the
+thought of it in absence. The fields are not similar as pancakes; they
+have their difference; each leaps to the eye with a remembered and
+peculiar charm. That is why the heart of the Scot dies in flat southern
+lands; he lives in a vacancy; at dawn there is no Ben Agray to nod
+recognition through the mists. And that is why, when he gets north of
+Carlisle, he shouts with glee as each remembered object sweeps on the
+sight: yonder's the Nith with a fisherman hip-deep jigging at his rod,
+and yonder's Corsoncon with the mist on his brow. It is less the
+totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the
+heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay.
+With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience,
+and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there
+ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie?
+It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it
+was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom
+he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority.
+If a poor workman slouched past him on the road, he set him down in his
+heart as one of that rotten crowd from the Weaver's Vennel or the
+Tinker's Wynd. Barbie was in subjection to the mind of the son of the
+important man. To dash about Barbie in a gig, with a big dog walloping
+behind, his coat-collar high about his ears, and the reek of a
+meerschaum pipe floating white and blue many yards behind him, jovial
+and sordid nonsense about home--that had been his ideal. His father, he
+thought angrily, had encouraged the ideal, and now he forbade it, like
+the brute he was. From the earth in which he was rooted so deeply his
+father tore him, to fling him on a world he had forbidden him to know.
+His heart presaged disaster.
+
+Old Gourlay would have scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from
+the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for
+herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came
+she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the
+platform--a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his
+life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was
+pointed out as "Young Gourlay off to the College." But he had no
+pleasure in the rôle, for his heart was in his boots.
+
+He took the slow train to Skeighan, where he boarded the express. Few
+sensational experiences were unknown to his too-impressionable mind, and
+he knew the animation of railway travelling. Coming back from Skeighan
+in an empty compartment on nights of the past, he had sometimes shouted
+and stamped and banged the cushions till the dust flew, in mere joy of
+his rush through the air; the constant rattle, the quick-repeated noise,
+getting at his nerves, as they get at the nerves of savages and
+Englishmen on Bank Holidays. But any animation of the kind which he felt
+to-day was soon expelled by the slow uneasiness welling through his
+blood. He had no eager delight in the unknown country rushing past; it
+inspired him with fear. He thought with a feeble smile of what Mysie
+Monk said when they took her at the age of sixty (for the first time in
+her life) to the top of Milmannoch Hill. "Eh," said Mysie, looking round
+her in amaze--"eh, sirs, it's a lairge place the world when you see it
+all!" Gourlay smiled because he had the same thought, but feebly,
+because he was cowering at the bigness of the world. Folded nooks in
+the hills swept past, enclosing their lonely farms; then the open
+straths, where autumnal waters gave a pale gleam to the sky. Sodden
+moors stretched away in vast patient loneliness. Then a gray smear of
+rain blotted the world, penning him in with his dejection. He seemed to
+be rushing through unseen space, with no companion but his own
+foreboding. "Where are you going to?" asked his mind, and the wheels of
+the train repeated the question all the way to Edinburgh, jerking it out
+in two short lines and a long one: "Where are you going to? Where are
+you going to? Ha, ha, Mr. Gourlay, where are you going to?"
+
+It was the same sensitiveness to physical impression which won him to
+Barbie that repelled him from the outer world. The scenes round Barbie,
+so vividly impressed, were his friends, because he had known them from
+his birth; he was a somebody in their midst and had mastered their
+familiarity; they were the ministers of his mind. Those other scenes
+were his foes, because, realizing them morbidly in relation to himself,
+he was cowed by their big indifference to him, and felt puny, a nobody
+before them. And he could not pass them like more manly and more callous
+minds; they came burdening in on him whether he would or no. Neither
+could he get above them. Except when lording it at Barbie, he had never
+a quick reaction of the mind on what he saw; it possessed him, not he
+it.
+
+About twilight, when the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with
+a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it
+seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling
+through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But
+in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be
+sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and
+unfamiliar scene--planted in its midst by a miracle of speed, and
+gazing at it closely through a window! Two ploughmen from the farmhouse
+near the line were unyoking at the end of the croft; he could hear the
+muddy noise ("splorroch" is the Scotch of it) made by the big hoofs on
+the squashy head-rig. "Bauldy" was the name of the shorter ploughman, so
+yelled to by his mate; and two of the horses were "Prince and Rab"--just
+like a pair in Loranogie's stable. In the curtainless window of the
+farmhouse shone a leaping flame--not the steady glow of a lamp, but the
+tossing brightness of a fire--and thought he to himself, "They're
+getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring
+in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He
+wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it
+was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago
+should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had
+never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might
+get his vivid impression.
+
+When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the
+world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness
+was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to
+be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of
+which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea
+things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the
+black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His
+spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.
+
+The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.
+
+If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to
+console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when
+entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to
+cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy
+alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors
+are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They
+have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of
+uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon
+forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the
+waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more
+than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace
+in work, was left to prey upon itself.
+
+If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the
+comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions
+it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a
+sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and
+stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.
+
+Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they
+thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed
+with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with
+impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of
+thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he
+observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly
+depressed--the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life,
+though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings
+which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his
+timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street
+in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of
+its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning
+foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen
+fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after
+he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and
+made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and
+manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them
+unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting
+woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an
+unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls
+wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming
+black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground.
+Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of
+gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed.
+He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead
+fire in sullen apathy.
+
+He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no
+means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received
+a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky
+that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient
+chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives
+an idea--which is slightly mistaken--of Jock Allan, and an idea--which
+is very unmistakable--of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place
+of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all
+the honour in one's power.
+
+"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman--so the hearty Allan dubbed
+him--"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a
+grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a
+great how-d'ye-do. 'Come out on Thursday night, and dine with me,' says
+he, in his big way. So here I went out to see him. I can tell you he's a
+warmer! I never saw a man eat so much in all my born days--but I suppose
+he would be having more on his table than usual to show off a bit,
+knowing us Barbie boys would be writing home about it all. And drink!
+D'ye know, he began with a whole half tumbler of whisky, and how many
+more he had I really should _not_ like to say! And he must be used to
+it, too, for it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. And then he
+smoked and smoked--two great big cigars after we had finished eating,
+and then 'Damn it,' says he--he's an awful man to swear--'damn it,' he
+says, 'there's no satisfaction in cigars; I must have a pipe,' and he
+actually smoked _four_ pipes before I came away! I noticed the cigars
+were called 'Estorellas--Best Quality,' and when I was in last Saturday
+night getting an ounce of shag at the wee shoppie round the corner, I
+asked the price of 'these Estorellas.' 'Ninepence a piece!' said the
+bodie. Just imagine Jock Allan smoking eighteen-pence, and not being
+satisfied! He's up in the world since he used to shaw turnips at
+Loranogie for sixpence a day! But he'll come down as quick if he keeps
+on at yon rate. He made a great phrase with me; but though it keeps down
+one's weekly bill to get a meal like yon--I declare I wasn't hungry for
+two days--for all that I'll go very little about him. He'll be the kind
+that borrows money very fast--one of those harum-scarum ones!"
+
+Criticism like that is a boomerang that comes back to hit the emitting
+skull with a hint of its kindred woodenness. It reveals the writer more
+than the written of. Allan was a bigger man than you would gather from
+Wilson's account of his Gargantuan revelry. He had a genius for
+mathematics--a gift which crops up, like music, in the most unexpected
+corners--and from plough-boy and herd he had become an actuary in Auld
+Reekie. Wilson had no need to be afraid, the meagre fool, for his host
+could have bought him and sold him.
+
+Allan had been in love with young Gourlay's mother when she herself was
+a gay young fliskie at Tenshillingland, but his little romance was soon
+ended when Gourlay came and whisked her away. But she remained the one
+romance of his life. Now in his gross and jovial middle age he idealized
+her in memory (a sentimentalist, of course--he was Scotch); he never saw
+her in her scraggy misery to be disillusioned; to him she was still the
+wee bit lairdie's dochter, a vision that had dawned on his wretched
+boyhood, a pleasant and pathetic memory. And for that reason he had a
+curious kindness to her boy. That was why he introduced him to his boon
+companions. He thought he was doing him a good turn.
+
+It was true that Allan made a phrase with a withered wisp of humanity
+like young Wilson. Not that he failed to see through him, for he
+christened him "a dried washing-clout." But Allan, like most
+great-hearted Scots far from their native place, saw it through a veil
+of sentiment; harsher features that would have been ever-present to his
+mind if he had never left it disappeared from view, and left only the
+finer qualities bright within his memory. And idealizing the place he
+idealized its sons. To him they had a value not their own, just because
+they knew the brig and the burn and the brae, and had sat upon the
+school benches. He would have welcomed a dog from Barbie. It was from a
+like generous emotion that he greeted the bodies so warmly on his visits
+home--he thought they were as pleased to see him as he was to see them.
+But they imputed false motives to his hearty greetings. Even as they
+shook his hand the mean ones would think to themselves: "What does he
+mean by this now? What's he up till? No doubt he'll be wanting something
+off me!" They could not understand the gusto with which the returned
+exile cried, "Ay, man, Jock Tamson, and how are ye?" They thought such
+warmth must have a sinister intention.--A Scot revisiting his native
+place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.
+
+There were two things to be said against Allan, and two only--unless, of
+course, you consider drink an objection. Wit with him was less the
+moment's glittering flash than the anecdotal bang; it was a fine old
+crusted blend which he stored in the cellars of his mind to bring forth
+on suitable occasions, as cob-webby as his wine. And it tickled his
+vanity to have a crowd of admiring youngsters round him to whom he might
+retail his anecdotes, and play the brilliant _raconteur_. He had cronies
+of his own years, and he was lordly and jovial amongst them--yet he
+wanted another _entourage_. He was one of those middle-aged bachelors
+who like a train of youngsters behind them, whom they favour in return
+for homage. The wealthy man who had been a peasant lad delighted to act
+the jovial host to sons of petty magnates from his home. Batch after
+batch as they came up to College were drawn around him--partly because
+their homage pleased him, and partly because he loved anything whatever
+that came out of Barbie. There was no harm in Allan--though when his
+face was in repose you saw the look in his eye at times of a man
+defrauding his soul. A robustious young fellow of sense and brains would
+have found in this lover of books and a bottle not a bad comrade. But he
+was the worst of cronies for a weak swaggerer like Gourlay. For Gourlay,
+admiring the older man's jovial power, was led on to imitate his faults,
+to think them virtues and a credit; and he lacked the clear, cool head
+that kept Allan's faults from flying away with him.
+
+At dinner that night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water.
+There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the
+cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan--a guileless and inquiring
+mind--and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of
+the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair.
+Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So they go.
+
+Tarmillan was the last to arrive. He came in sucking his thumb, into
+which he had driven a splinter while conducting an experiment.
+
+"I've a morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from
+a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my
+head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing
+on my navel trying to reduce the curvature."
+
+"Gosh!" said Partan, who was a literal fool, "is that the treatment they
+purshoo?"
+
+"That's the treatment!" said Tarmillan, sizing up his man. "Oh, it's a
+queer thing lockjaw! I remember when I was gold-mining in Tibet, one of
+our carriers who died of lockjaw had such a circumbendibus in his body
+that we froze him and made him the hoop of a bucket to carry our water
+in. You see he was a thin bit man, and iron was scarce."
+
+"Ay, man!" cried Partan, "you've been in Tibet?"
+
+"Often," waved Tarmillan, "often! I used to go there every summer."
+
+Partan, who liked to extend his geographical knowledge, would have
+talked of Tibet for the rest of the evening--and Tarmie would have told
+him news--but Allan broke in.
+
+"How's the book, Tarmillan?" he inquired.
+
+Tarmillan was engaged on a treatise which those who are competent to
+judge consider the best thing of its kind ever written.
+
+"Oh, don't ask me," he writhed. "Man, it's an irksome thing to write,
+and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to
+ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be
+delivered. I'm glad you invited me--to get away from the confounded
+thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a
+monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow
+of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but
+'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a
+big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."
+
+"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."
+
+"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much
+in trying to be small.--Tozer, what do you think?"
+
+"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.
+
+"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.
+
+Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.
+
+"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere
+show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run _at_ him and he
+runs."
+
+He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage
+that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in
+young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a
+hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from
+piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he
+equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A
+bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and
+it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan
+give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.
+
+To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk
+was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard
+ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show
+that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.
+
+"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said
+Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full
+swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the
+invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the
+"good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on,
+"and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a
+dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I
+wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. '_He
+was a great fellow my friend Will_,' he rang out in yon deep voice of
+his. '_The thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him_.' Man,
+it made a quiver go down my spine."
+
+"Oh, Bauldy has been a kenned phrase-maker for the last forty year,"
+said Tarmillan. "But every other Scots peasant has the gift. To hear
+Englishmen talk, you would think Carlyle was unique for the word that
+sends the picture home--they give the man the credit of his race. But
+I've heard fifty things better than 'willowy man' in the stable a-hame
+on a wat day in hairst--fifty things better--from men just sitting on
+the corn-kists and chowing beans."
+
+"I know a better one than that," said Allan. Tarmillan had told no
+story, you observe, but Allan was so accustomed to saying "I know a
+better one than that," that it escaped him before he was aware. "I
+remember when Bauldy went off to Paris on the spree. He kept his mouth
+shut when he came back, for he was rather ashamed o' the outburst. But
+the bodies were keen to hear. 'What's the incense like in Notre Dame?'
+said Johnny Coe, with his een big. '_Burning stink!_' said Bauldy."
+
+"I can cap that with a better one still," said Tarmillan, who wasn't to
+be done by any man. "I was with Bauldy when he quarrelled Tam Gibb of
+Hoochan-doe. Hoochan-doe's a yelling ass, and he threatened Bauldy--oh,
+he would do this, and he would do that, and he would do the other thing.
+'_Damn ye, would ye threaten me?_' cried Bauldy. '_I'll gar your brains
+jaup red to the heavens!_' And I 'clare to God, sirs, a nervous man
+looked up to see if the clouds werena spattered with the gore!"
+
+Tozer cleared a sarcastic windpipe.
+
+"Why do you clear your throat like that?" said Tarmillan--"like a craw
+with the croup, on a bare branch against a gray sky in November! If I
+had a throat like yours, I'd cut it and be done wi't."
+
+"I wonder what's the cause of that extraordinary vividness in the
+speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan--more to keep the blades
+from bickering than from any wish to know.
+
+"It comes from a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said
+a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down the table.
+
+What cockerel was this crowing?
+
+They turned, and beheld the blushing Gourlay.
+
+But Tarmillan and Tozer were at it again, and he was snubbed. Jimmy
+Wilson sniggered, and the other youngsters enjoyed his discomfiture.
+Huh! What right has _he_ to set up his pipe?
+
+His shirt stuck to his back. He would have liked the ground to open and
+swallow him.
+
+He gulped a huge swill of whisky to cover his vexation; and oh, the
+mighty difference! A sudden courage flooded his veins. He turned with a
+scowl on Wilson, and, "What the devil are _you_ sniggering at?" he
+growled. Logan, the only senior who marked the byplay, thought him a
+hardy young spunkie.
+
+The moment the whisky had warmed the cockles of his heart Gourlay ceased
+to care a rap for the sniggerers. Drink deadened his nervous perception
+of the critics on his right and left, and set him free to follow his
+idea undisturbed. It was an idea he had long cherished--being one of the
+few that ever occurred to him. He rarely made phrases himself--though,
+curiously enough, his father often did without knowing it--the harsh
+grind of his character producing a flash. But Gourlay was aware of his
+uncanny gift of visualization--or of "seeing things in the inside of his
+head," as he called it--and vanity prompted the inference, that this was
+the faculty that sprang the metaphor. His theory was now clear and
+eloquent before him. He was realizing for the first time in his life
+(with a sudden joy in the discovery) the effect of whisky to unloose the
+brain; sentences went hurling through his brain with a fluency that
+thrilled. If he had the ear of the company, now he had the drink to
+hearten him, he would show Wilson and the rest that he wasn't such a
+blasted fool! In a room by himself he would have spouted to the empty
+air.
+
+Some such point he had reached in the hurrying jumble of his thoughts
+when Allan addressed him.
+
+Allan did not mean his guest to be snubbed. He was a gentleman at heart,
+not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he
+remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland.
+
+"I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence--he had reached
+that stage--"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted."
+
+Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.
+
+"Metaphor comes from the power of seeing things in the inside of your
+head," said the unconscious disciple of Aristotle--"seeing them so vivid
+that you see the likeness between them. When Bauldy Johnston said 'the
+thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him,' he _saw_ the print
+of a thumb in wet clay, and he _saw_ the Almighty making a man out of
+mud, the way He used to do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy
+flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never
+make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. _I_
+can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily--"anything
+I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before
+me."
+
+"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan.
+"I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."
+
+He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and
+panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while
+airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay
+took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud
+mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed
+it meekly.
+
+Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man,
+with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood
+was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows,
+whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish
+blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the
+Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who
+soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that
+account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready
+for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring
+nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours,
+taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they
+"couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day
+he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had
+heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and
+liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.
+
+He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by
+the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat
+smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing.
+When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the
+door.
+
+"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round
+to the Howff for a while?"
+
+"The Howff?" said Gourlay.
+
+"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where
+some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh,
+nothing to speak of, ye know--just a dram and a joke to pass the time
+now and then!"
+
+"Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts
+smeddum in your blood!"
+
+Logan nipped the guard of his arm in heavy playfulness and led him to
+the Howff.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By
+the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican
+could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their
+wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of
+social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink
+appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive
+nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to
+the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to
+sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a kind of
+prestige since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom
+he met there--Armstrong and Gillespie--became his friends at College and
+the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both
+in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him
+over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie--though they saw through
+him--let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He
+found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave
+a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from
+very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to
+say, but with the nervous antennæ of their minds they feel the attitude
+of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the point
+ahead, they blunder where blunter minds would go forward undismayed.
+That was the experience of young Gourlay. If he tried to talk freely
+when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of
+his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its
+concentration. In plainer language, when he was drunk he was less afraid
+of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He
+was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As
+nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring
+stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him
+"smeddum."
+
+With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to
+his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to
+solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
+each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years.
+But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that
+had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the
+stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the
+gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming,
+"Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have
+expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was
+equally sincere. How sincere is another question.
+
+Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half
+confirmed him in his evil ways.
+
+"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy,
+less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man.
+Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the
+philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that
+matter--himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man,
+whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the
+outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is
+terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of
+man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry
+heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their
+midst."
+
+Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
+through it too!
+
+"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
+in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
+never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and
+depress."
+
+"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest
+because it was "just like him."
+
+"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who
+knew--"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its
+windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the
+world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it
+is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens,
+being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
+away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
+the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the
+most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait,
+sure of their eternal aim. The man to whom the infinite beckons is not
+to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear;
+there is no fear--it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true
+philosophy--if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another,
+but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a
+warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That,
+gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."
+
+"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!"
+
+And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did. He had no conception
+of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think
+that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as
+Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind
+thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny
+mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourlay, though he could not
+understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the
+fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to
+tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched
+street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened
+to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he
+paced onward in a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the
+frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
+street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he
+was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For,
+like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of
+which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in
+reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs
+consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he
+was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him,
+making short work of _him_! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern
+supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had
+become the master of his world, and not its slave.
+
+"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems
+to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"
+
+His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the
+subject for the Raeburn.
+
+The Raeburn was a poor enough prize--a few books for an "essay in the
+picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie.
+Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the
+valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter
+when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be
+asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him
+their perception that he at least had been a failure. A bodie would
+dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused
+awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year?
+Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to
+have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days,
+but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as
+if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway.
+But _he_ was a clever chap."
+
+The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing
+soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the
+"fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give
+him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never
+met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more
+emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the
+tear.
+
+"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.
+
+"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style
+of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy
+hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth
+(so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite
+gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of
+the lady."
+
+Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness
+of mind to bear upon his task (it was not in him to bring), but his
+morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town
+far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a
+darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy
+splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his
+ears the skirl of the man who went overboard--struck dead by the icy
+water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.
+
+He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried
+eagerly, "it would be the _cold_ would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
+would go in!"
+
+A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
+other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
+tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
+the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
+a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
+there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
+of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
+shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
+the helm.
+
+"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
+all--that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
+icicle!"
+
+Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
+small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
+in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
+for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.
+
+"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
+me before the whole class for doing so little o't."
+
+The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
+rated quality higher than quantity.
+
+"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
+the session--"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
+on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"
+
+"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.
+
+"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"
+
+A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
+of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.
+
+"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
+Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
+place to bray in."
+
+The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.
+
+"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
+you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
+but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman--he
+has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
+and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
+Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
+island of South Uist--has sent me in no less than a hundred and
+fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the
+adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and
+dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the
+MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"--he gloomed at them
+humorously--"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of
+laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat
+there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I
+leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why
+tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.
+
+When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with a quiver in his
+voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he
+said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they
+sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"
+
+(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary
+voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite
+ill.")
+
+The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.
+
+"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College
+Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now
+gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of
+the session, but really you must behave more quietly.--So little does
+that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that
+the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short
+pages."
+
+Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his
+ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
+Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.
+
+"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious
+blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in
+some ways, a wonderful imagination."
+
+"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.
+
+"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its
+lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already
+seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures
+something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible
+existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but
+hears--actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and
+entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest
+form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the word, merging
+in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is
+no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion
+for its use."
+
+Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.
+
+"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the
+sketch--no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little
+sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'--'and'--'and,' like a
+schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the
+writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape
+him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the
+thing--faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The
+writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words--lucky if it
+glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch
+there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed,
+too nervous a sense of the external world."
+
+"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by
+Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.
+
+"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of
+his bleating sheep--"I would strongly impress on the writer to set
+himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought.
+That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create
+an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a
+curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on.
+Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."
+
+"Name, name!" cried the fellows.
+
+"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest public-house. The
+occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay
+about Tam's advice.
+
+"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got
+to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard,
+solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."
+
+"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock
+express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew
+them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had
+often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he
+stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was
+nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody
+at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man,
+and the son of a mentioned man--young Mr. Gourlay!
+
+He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were
+mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty
+Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world,
+while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As
+Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of
+distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.
+
+"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one
+of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and
+when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to
+examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light
+another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the
+stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing
+through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his vanity to hear
+Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from
+the Univ-ai-rsity!"
+
+He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too
+eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour
+of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he
+had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late,"
+old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to
+have him home."
+
+He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the
+Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and
+made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country
+round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should
+proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His
+fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the
+long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.
+
+He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room
+for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy
+ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with
+its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one
+peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far
+away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning
+edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a
+circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen;
+there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next
+she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was
+alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was
+softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit
+indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven
+dream. He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all.
+One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn--he had won the
+Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.
+
+Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped
+him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at
+the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden
+pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie
+existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a
+thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him,
+they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their
+midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would
+know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of
+the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would
+surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations.
+Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.
+
+He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger,
+the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and
+cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The
+very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.
+
+The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.
+
+"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.
+
+"It's me, faither," said John.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."
+
+"Faither, I have--I have won the Raeburn!"
+
+"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"--and the window slammed.
+
+Next moment it was up.
+
+"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.
+
+"Nut him!" said John.
+
+"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"
+
+John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his
+life his father had praised him.
+
+He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its
+descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As
+he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
+yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
+on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
+fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
+moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
+the dying embers--the look of one who has gained short respite from a
+task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
+the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
+to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
+apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.
+
+She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
+news, and basked in her adoration.
+
+She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
+big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
+was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.
+
+He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
+I think we might."
+
+He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
+listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
+fine thing!"
+
+"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
+worshipper.
+
+"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
+one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
+grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm
+sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
+ay," she said, and stared at the embers.
+
+It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
+their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
+established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
+to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
+struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
+young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
+almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
+ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
+temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
+purest white.
+
+"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
+many wee clouts for?"
+
+She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out,"
+she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."
+
+"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack
+breast.
+
+She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.
+
+"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.
+
+But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
+man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
+it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
+memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
+results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
+higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
+viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
+thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
+keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
+success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
+unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
+He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
+expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
+is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
+thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
+meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
+world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
+him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
+carries him heavens-high--till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
+that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
+world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
+position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
+And then follows a recital of his faded glories--generally ending with
+a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.
+
+Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
+as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
+destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
+strength of it.
+
+On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
+was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
+dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
+he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
+with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
+they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
+conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
+disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
+tributaries to his new importance--somehow their attitude was different
+from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
+bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
+his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
+could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
+feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
+Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
+father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
+buzzed about the town.
+
+Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
+daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
+Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
+whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
+heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
+aince wud and aye waur[6] wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'
+wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
+browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but----" and
+with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.
+
+When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
+Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
+his thin shanks.
+
+"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"
+
+Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
+rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
+tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.
+
+"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
+before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."
+
+"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."
+
+The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
+tho! Imphm. The weed."
+
+Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
+cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
+doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."
+
+"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
+hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
+from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
+little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
+a twinkling."
+
+"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
+work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
+through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
+to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
+easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
+yourself. But there! what need I be telling _you_ that? A College-bred
+man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
+You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun--a dram now
+and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"
+
+At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
+manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
+pose for more than five minutes at a time.
+
+"You're _right_, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
+sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
+to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."
+
+"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
+the Black Bull?--I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
+gude--thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
+Highland charge."--It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
+thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
+manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.--"But no doubt,"
+the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice--"but
+no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
+favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
+taste in thpirits."
+
+"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
+of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
+so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"
+
+"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
+drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
+him in Embro."
+
+"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."
+
+"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.
+
+It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
+was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to
+the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
+Gourlay was merely boasting--as young blades are apt to do of
+acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
+the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
+failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.
+
+"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
+have the great thprees?"
+
+"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
+should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
+I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there--d'ye know, yon's the finest
+fellow I ever met in my life!--and Bauldy Logan--he's another great
+chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie--great friends of mine, and
+damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
+there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
+talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
+remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
+whistled a jig."
+
+Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
+to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
+pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
+John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
+his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
+management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
+felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
+"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
+never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"
+
+"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
+the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood
+about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
+that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame--jutht
+another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys--Pate Wylie and you
+and a wheen mair--having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."
+
+"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
+Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
+"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."
+
+"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.
+
+"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
+and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
+"Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."
+
+"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
+convenient opportunity."
+
+He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
+talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
+fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
+unpleasant manners.
+
+Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
+Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
+remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
+legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
+spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
+which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
+His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
+rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
+especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
+face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
+projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
+his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
+that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
+times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
+Importance" was one of his nicknames.
+
+Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
+battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
+passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
+wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
+long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
+place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
+through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
+conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
+alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
+a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did
+it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
+system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
+and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
+Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
+them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
+Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
+Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
+He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
+"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
+Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
+criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
+having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
+fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
+Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
+they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
+required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
+Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
+he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
+talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
+way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
+ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
+he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
+of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his
+courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
+and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.
+
+"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
+Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
+mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
+have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"
+
+Gourlay blushed and thanked him.
+
+"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
+three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
+clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
+wasting his time!"
+
+Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
+father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
+years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.
+
+"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
+visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
+application--a strenuous and devoted application--even from the man of
+abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
+ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
+doing?"
+
+Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he
+answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.
+
+"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
+men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
+Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
+it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
+pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
+ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
+prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
+obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
+German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
+added, with solemn and pondering brows--"perhaps he was a little too
+fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
+fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
+wondered if Hegel was a drink.
+
+"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.
+
+"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
+And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
+theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"
+
+Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
+to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
+modestly enough.
+
+"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
+minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
+doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
+of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
+see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
+the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
+good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
+Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
+satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
+promise!"
+
+Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
+Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
+stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
+his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
+eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
+word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
+compliments for _his_ son! The tables were turned at last.
+
+His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
+won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
+sovereign.
+
+"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
+to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
+eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
+spend as much as the rest o' folk."
+
+"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.
+
+That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
+talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
+of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking--that he
+had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
+was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
+confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
+hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
+careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
+the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
+fellow to be mean."
+
+Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered
+by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
+hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie--Lord, but young Gourlay was the
+fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
+had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
+afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
+immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
+ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
+and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
+student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
+answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
+yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
+Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
+to his other occupations--plurality of professions, you observe, being
+one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
+Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
+phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
+what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
+misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
+speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
+shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
+on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
+make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well--he took a
+paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
+instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
+vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
+neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
+welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
+had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
+his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
+Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
+however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
+support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
+disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
+coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
+preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
+ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
+That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
+not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
+Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
+the like without drinking in every howff you came across.
+
+When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was
+able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter
+than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh,"
+he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything
+and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and
+that crowd--I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath
+blowing his trump--which I greatly doubt--they're as thick as thieveth.
+Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling
+oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It
+theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this
+thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I
+mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"
+
+"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad--especially
+the young ministers."
+
+"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are
+just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties.
+They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."
+
+"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already.
+I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."
+
+"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."
+
+"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body
+solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he
+wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.
+
+"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent
+hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of--too disgusted
+to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing
+him up about that prize o' his."
+
+"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.
+
+"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused
+the ex-Provost.
+
+"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think
+at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a
+crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that
+hell gapes for. And owre they flap."
+
+But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of _him_,"
+said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.
+
+Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland)
+young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence
+from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater
+abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother
+(who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed)
+often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in
+the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're
+unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she
+utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine
+moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was
+sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk
+upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he
+could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green
+quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded
+when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at
+the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing
+beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a
+wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a
+circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's
+son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw
+through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and
+threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind
+him.
+
+Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he
+would--who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about
+them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more
+ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him.
+"Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the
+door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the
+fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness--flushed with
+pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a
+compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the
+character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a
+splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree
+to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes."
+"What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the
+nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper
+pose--that of a _grand homme manqué_, of a man who would be a genius
+were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear
+a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which--so he
+wished them to believe--alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It
+was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you
+didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to
+answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do
+them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to
+hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he
+didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made
+him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] "_Aince wud and aye waur_," silly for once and silly for always.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+On a beautiful evening in September, when a new crescent moon was
+pointing through the saffron sky like the lit tip of a finger, the City
+Fathers had assembled at the corner of the Fleckie Road. Though the moon
+was peeping, the dying glory of the day was still upon the town. The
+white smoke rose straight and far in the golden mystery of the heavens,
+and a line of dark roofs, transfigured against the west, wooed the eye
+to musing. But though the bodies felt the fine evening bathe them in a
+sensuous content, as they smoked and dawdled, they gave never a thought
+to its beauty. For there had been a blitheness in the town that day, and
+every other man seemed to have been preeing the demijohn.
+
+Drucken Wabster and Brown the ragman came round the corner, staggering.
+
+"Young Gourlay's drunk!" blurted Wabster--and reeled himself as he
+spoke.
+
+"Is he a wee fou?" said the Deacon eagerly.
+
+"Wee be damned," said Wabster; "he's as fou as the Baltic Sea! If you
+wait here, you'll be sure to see him! He'll be round the corner
+directly."
+
+"De-ar me, is he so bad as that?" said the ex-Provost, raising his hands
+in solemn reprobation. He raised his eyes to heaven at the same time, as
+if it pained them to look on a world that endured the burden of a young
+Gourlay. "In broad daylight, too!" he sighed. "De-ar me, has he come to
+this?"
+
+"Yis, Pravast," hiccupped Brown, "he has! He's as phull of drink as a
+whelk-shell's phull of whelk. He's nearly as phull as meself--and
+begorra, that's mighty phull." He stared suddenly, scratching his head
+solemnly as if the fact had just occurred to him. Then he winked.
+
+"You could set fire to his braith!" cried Wabster. "A match to his mouth
+would send him in a lowe."
+
+"A living gas jet!" said Brown.
+
+They staggered away, sometimes rubbing shoulders as they lurched
+together, sometimes with the road between them.
+
+"I kenned young Gourlay was on the fuddle when I saw him swinging off
+this morning in his greatcoat," cried Sandy Toddle. "There was debauch
+in the flap o' the tails o't."
+
+"Man, have you noticed that too!" cried another eagerly. "He's aye warst
+wi' the coat on!"
+
+"Clothes undoubtedly affect the character," said Johnny Coe. "It takes a
+gentleman to wear a lordly coat without swaggering."
+
+"There's not a doubt o' tha-at!" approved the baker, who was merry with
+his day's carousal; "there's not a doubt o' tha-at! Claes affect the
+disposeetion. I mind when I was a young chap I had a grand pair o'
+breeks--Wull I ca'ed them--unco decent breeks they were, I mind, lang
+and swankie like a ploughman; and I aye thocht I was a tremendous honest
+and hamely fallow when I had them on! And I had a verra disreputable
+hat," he added--"Rab I christened him, for he was a perfect devil--and I
+never cocked him owre my lug on nichts at e'en but 'Baker!' he seemed to
+whisper, 'Baker! Let us go out and do a bash!' And we generally went."
+
+"You're a wonderful man!" piped the Deacon.
+
+"We may as well wait and see young Gourlay going by," said the
+ex-Provost. "He'll likely be a sad spectacle."
+
+"Ith auld Gourlay on the thtreet the nicht?" cried the Deacon eagerly.
+"I wonder will he thee the youngster afore he gets hame! Eh, man"--he
+bent his knees with staring delight--"eh, man, if they would only meet
+forenenst uth! Hoo!"
+
+"He's a regular waster," said Brodie. "When a silly young blood takes a
+fancy to a girl in a public-house he's always done for; I've observed it
+times without number. At first he lets on that he merely gangs in for a
+drink; what he really wants, however, is to see the girl. Even if he's
+no great toper to begin with, he must show himself fond o' the dram, as
+a means of getting to his jo. Then, before he kens where he is, the
+habit has gripped him. That's a gate mony a ane gangs."
+
+"That's verra true, now that ye mention't," gravely assented the
+ex-Provost. His opinion of Brodie's sagacity, high already, was enhanced
+by the remark. "Indeed, that's verra true. But how does't apply to young
+Gourlay in particular, Thomas? Is _he_ after some damsel o' the
+gill-stoup?"
+
+"Ou ay--he's ta'en a fancy to yon bit shilp in the bar-room o' the Red
+Lion. He's always hinging owre the counter talking till her, a cigarette
+dropping from his face, and a half-fu' tumbler at his elbow. When a
+young chap takes to hinging round bars, ae elbow on the counter and a
+hand on his other hip, I have verra bad brows o' him always--verra bad
+brows, indeed. Oh--oh, young Gourlay's just a goner! a goner, sirs--a
+goner!"
+
+"Have ye heard about him at the Skeighan Fair?" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"No, man," said Brodie, bowing down and keeking at Toddle in his
+interest; "I hadna heard about tha-at! Is this a _new_ thing?"
+
+"Oh, just at the fair; the other day, ye know!"
+
+"Ay, man, Sandy!" said big Brodie, stooping down to Toddle to get near
+the news; "and what was it, Sandy?"
+
+"Ou, just drinking, ye know, wi'--wi' Swipey Broon--and, eh, and that
+M'Craw, ye know--and Sandy Hull--and a wheen mair o' that kind--ye ken
+the kind; a verra bad lot!" said Sandy, and wagged a disapproving pow.
+"Here they all got as drunk as drunk could be, and started fighting wi'
+the colliers! Young Gourlay got a bloodied nose! Then nothing would
+serve him but he must drive back wi' young Pin-oe, who was even drunker
+than himsell. They drave at sic a rate that when they dashed from this
+side o' Skeighan Drone the stour o' their career was rising at the far
+end. They roared and sang till it was a perfect affront to God's day,
+and frae sidie to sidie they swung till the splash-brods were skreighing
+on the wheels. At a quick turn o' the road they wintled owre; and there
+they were, sitting on their doups in the atoms o' the gig, and glowering
+frae them! When young Gourlay slid hame at dark he was in such a state
+that his mother had to hide him frae the auld man. She had that, puir
+body! The twa women were obliged to carry the drunk lump to his
+bedroom--and yon lassie far ga'en in consumption, too, they tell me! Ou,
+he was in a perfectly awful condition--perfectly awful!"
+
+"Ay, man," nodded Brodie. "I hadna heard o't. Curious that I didna hear
+o' that!"
+
+"It was Drucken Wabster's wife that telled it. There's not a haet that
+happens at the Gourlays but she clypes. I speired her mysell, and she
+says young Gourlay has a black eye."
+
+"Ay, ay; there'th thmall hope for the Gourlayth in _him_!" said the
+Deacon.
+
+"How do _you_ ken?" cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've
+seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and,
+eh, but he was _this_ waster!--according to their way of it--and, oh,
+but he was the _other_ waster! and, ochonee, but he was the _wild_
+fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his doormat; for it was
+only the fire in the ruffian made him seem sae daft."
+
+"True!" said the ex-Provost, "true! Still there's a decency in daftness.
+And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start
+canny, and you'll steer weel,' my mother used to say; but he has started
+unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin."
+
+"Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And
+never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a
+breenge."
+
+"Well, I like young men to be quiet," said Sandy Toddle. "I would rather
+have them a wee soft than rollickers."
+
+"Not I!" said the baker. "If I had a son, I would rather an ill deil sat
+forenenst me at the table than parratch in a poke. Burns (God rest his
+banes!) struck the he'rt o't. Ye mind what he said o' Prince Geordie:
+
+
+     'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been known
+       To mak a noble aiver;
+     And ye may doucely fill a throne,
+       For a' their clishmaclaver.
+     There him at Agincourt wha shone.
+       Few better were or braver;
+     And yet wi' funny queer Sir John
+       He was an unco shaver
+             For mony a day.'
+
+
+Dam't, but Burns is gude."
+
+"Huts, man, dinna sweer sae muckle!" frowned the old Provost.
+
+"Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like
+spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner
+wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his
+withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial
+gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same
+the bit bodie; so he used to say '_Dim it!_' in a wee, sma voice that
+was clean rideec'lous. He was a lauchable dirt, that."
+
+"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.)
+"Alexander Toddle was his name: '_Dim it!_' he used to squeak, for he
+had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English.
+'_Dim it!_' said he. I like a man that says '_Dahm't._'"
+
+"Ay; but then, you thee, _you_'re an artitht in wordth," said the
+Deacon.
+
+"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.
+
+"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end
+o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the
+throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young
+Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie
+and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my
+opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.
+
+"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a
+possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"
+
+He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out,
+with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she,
+"what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea
+wi' me!"
+
+He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his
+hunkers--for fine he saw through her--and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great
+muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye--I'll gang in and have a dish o'
+tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.
+
+"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
+kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."
+
+"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
+went thae lamb-like!"
+
+"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's
+the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."
+
+"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
+gentleman!"
+
+"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
+if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
+dacent wife, and a bigger field--oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
+possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
+neck till't."
+
+"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.--"Here comes his
+son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."
+
+Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
+they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
+Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
+fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
+they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
+on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
+road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
+went.
+
+"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
+feel the slight, blatant to resent it.
+
+"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.
+
+With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.
+
+"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
+between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
+cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay--just down for a flying visit to see my
+little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again--Barbie's too quiet
+for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"
+
+The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
+as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
+bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
+reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
+in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering
+to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side
+by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was
+letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a
+fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left
+coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the
+Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear
+remembrance!"
+
+The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was
+too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.
+
+"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College
+again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at
+Skeighan Station. Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be
+punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels
+a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is,"
+he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the
+door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."
+
+Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of
+that easy-swinging door.
+
+"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."
+
+"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast
+pocket of his coat.
+
+John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay
+had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The
+young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of
+millions.
+
+The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the
+darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little
+old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already
+mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the
+gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against
+the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from
+the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson
+had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a
+separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay
+stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was.
+His lips parted, and--as they saw in the light from the door--his look
+grew dreamy and far-away.
+
+The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten
+in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto.
+That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go
+splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely
+assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots
+at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh--to those lodgings,
+those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real
+elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he
+forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering
+dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the
+impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and
+the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump,
+so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear
+country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world
+among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was
+fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no
+doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his
+friend; he had known it always.
+
+The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's
+nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn
+wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried;
+"we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."
+
+Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another,
+and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink
+till I light my cigar."
+
+He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on
+purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he
+went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.
+
+He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one
+side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat
+pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his
+brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered up the reins.
+"Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder,
+and they were off with a bound.
+
+"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.
+
+Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks
+to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when
+he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"--for Peter said
+"mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister"
+was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
+in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
+tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
+withered little man.
+
+That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
+session at the University.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
+Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
+simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
+had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
+there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
+Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
+surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
+was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
+a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
+about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
+of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
+clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
+sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
+mester; and hardy, too--infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.
+
+But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day
+after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
+with.
+
+It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day--a day
+when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
+and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
+of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
+tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw--which seemed strange and
+unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
+beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
+among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
+were gurgling and _rookety-cooing_, mating for the coming year. He fell
+to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
+aside--"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
+softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
+waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
+
+Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
+moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who
+would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the
+old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on
+nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and
+occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without
+knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming
+at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger
+and a keener man.
+
+"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."
+
+Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful
+gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few
+yellow tusks.
+
+"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays
+could not penetrate his mind.
+
+"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye
+steadily.
+
+"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful
+gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak
+onything."
+
+"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly--"it's no that. But I'm giving up
+the business."
+
+Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth
+forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld
+servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a
+true ane."
+
+"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."
+
+"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing
+for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.
+
+Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;"
+and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.
+
+Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he
+said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."
+
+"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned
+back to his work--"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about
+the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long
+service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'--to mind you o'----" he
+broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.
+
+Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears;
+others by an angry scowl--hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their
+weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their
+weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that
+Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's
+father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
+submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
+other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
+deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More--the
+going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
+quick. Therefore he scowled.
+
+Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his
+heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away
+across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and
+came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held
+out his hand.
+
+Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"
+
+Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not
+in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi'
+the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't."
+
+"Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.
+
+Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his
+pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so
+bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and
+the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay
+had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He
+stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.
+
+"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."
+
+It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate
+pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several
+speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and
+retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs,
+that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are apt to do when
+despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the
+end of his resources.
+
+Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had
+sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at
+any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay
+attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of
+his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would
+have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at
+least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the
+whole of life to him. For one thing, the son's success would justify the
+father's past and prevent it being quite useless; it would have produced
+a minister, a successful man, one of an esteemed profession. Again, that
+success would be a salve to Gourlay's wounded pride; the Gourlays would
+show Barbie they could flourish yet, in spite of their present downcome.
+Thus, in the collapse of his fortunes, the son grew all-important in the
+father's eyes. Nor did his own poverty seem to him a just bar to his
+son's prosperity. "I have put him through his Arts," thought Gourlay;
+"surely he can do the rest himsell. Lots of young chaps, when they
+warstle through their Arts, teach the sons of swells to get a little
+money to gang through Diveenity. My boy can surely do the like!" Again
+and again, as Gourlay felt himself slipping under in the world of
+Barbie, his hopes turned to John in Edinburgh. If that boy would only
+hurry up and get through, to make a hame for the lassie and the auld
+wife!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Young Gourlay spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as he had spent
+the last. Last winter, however, it was simply a weak need for
+companionship that drew him to the Howff. This winter it was more: it
+was the need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction.
+He had a further impulse to conviviality now. It had become a habit that
+compelled him.
+
+The diversions of some men are merely subsidiary to their lives,
+externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp
+a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other
+occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an
+irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always
+visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never
+gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and
+long for the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his books of
+an evening but he thought to himself, "I wonder what they're doing at
+the Howff to-night?" At once he visualized the scene, imagined every
+detail, saw them in their jovial hours. And, seeing them so happy, he
+longed to be with them. On that night, long ago, when his father ordered
+him to College, his cowardly and too vivid mind thought of the ploys the
+fellows would be having along the Barbie roads, while he was mewed up in
+Edinburgh. He saw the Barbie rollickers in his mind's eye, and the
+student in his lonely rooms, and contrasted them mournfully. So now,
+every night, he saw the cosy companions in their Howff, and shivered at
+his own isolation. He felt a tugging at his heart to be off and join
+them. And his will was so weak that, nine times out of ten, he made no
+resistance to the impulse.
+
+He had always a feeling of depression when he must sit down to his
+books. It was the start that gravelled him. He would look round his room
+and hate it, mutter "Damn it, I must work;" and then, with a heavy sigh,
+would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table, tugging the
+hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression left him, when he
+buckled to his work; as his mind became occupied with other things the
+vision of the Howff was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his
+brains made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the
+sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten
+minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they
+were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is
+Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it
+merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray
+Daylicht'--they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten
+minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came back
+at two in the morning, staggering.
+
+On a bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had
+gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It
+was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the
+air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray
+city, naked and bare. There was light enough, with the lengthening days,
+to see plainly the rawness of the world. There were cold yellow gleams
+in windows fronting a lonely west. Uncertain little puffs of wind came
+swirling round corners, and made dust and pieces of dirty white paper
+gyrate on the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in
+their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses.
+Sometimes they stopped--their trousers legs flapping behind them--and
+trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the
+streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower.
+
+By eight o'clock, however, he was merry with the barley-bree, and making
+a butt of himself to amuse the company. He was not quick-witted enough
+to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to essay it unprovoked; on
+the other hand, his swaggering love of notice impelled him to some form
+of talk that would attract attention. So he made a point of always
+coming with daft stories of things comic that befell him--at least, he
+said they did. But if his efforts were greeted with too loud a roar,
+implying not only appreciation of the stories, but also a contempt for
+the man who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was
+immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger. And the moment
+after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.
+
+"I remember when I was a boy," he hiccupped, "I had a pet goose at
+home."
+
+There was a titter at the queer beginning.
+
+"I was to get the price of it for myself, and so when Christmas drew
+near I went to old MacFarlane, the poulterer in Skeighan. 'Will you buy
+a goose?' said I. 'Are ye for sale, my man?' was his answer."
+
+Armstrong flung back his head and roared, prolonging the loud _ho-ho!_
+through his big nose and open mouth long after the impulse to honest
+laughter was exhausted. He always laughed with false loudness, to
+indicate his own superiority, when he thought a man had been guilty of a
+public silliness. The laugh was meant to show the company how far above
+such folly was Mr. Armstrong.
+
+Gourlay scowled. "Damn Armstrong!" he thought, "what did he yell like
+that for? Does he think I didn't see the point of the joke against
+myself? Would I have told it if I hadn't? This is what comes of being
+sensitive. I'm always too sensitive! I felt there was an awkward
+silence, and I told a story against myself to dispel it in fun, and this
+is what I get for't. Curse the big brute! he thinks I have given myself
+away. But I'll show him!"
+
+He was already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him, as was
+his habit.
+
+"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he
+said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No
+gentleman laughs like that."
+
+"'_Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one
+of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to
+frequent it greatly.
+
+Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the
+great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his
+resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three
+students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster,
+for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind.
+
+"I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a
+diversion.
+
+"Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay.
+
+"Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row
+with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely
+appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the
+thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he
+never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first."
+
+"He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think
+too much of themselves. They wouldn't bully _me_! There's good stuff in
+the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not
+to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man."
+
+"Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?"
+
+"Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too
+far."
+
+He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled
+him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities.
+It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink,
+just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends."
+
+When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and
+after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other
+two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a
+gentleman.
+
+When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to
+monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him?
+The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was
+fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future,
+in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of
+Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought,
+what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into
+Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of
+his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the
+man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten
+the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let
+him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk
+of his dirty soul to him!
+
+The drink was dying in him now, for the trio had walked for more than an
+hour through the open air when they left Gillespie's rooms. The
+stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his brain morbidly alive. He
+was anxious to sleep, but drowsy dullness kept away. His mind began to
+visualize of its own accord, independent of his will; and, one after
+another, a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of his brain. He
+saw them as plainly as you see this page, but with a different
+clearness--for they seemed unnatural, belonging to a morbid world. Nor
+did one suggest the other; there was no connection between them; each
+came vivid of its own accord.
+
+First it was an old pit-frame on a barren moor, gaunt, against the
+yellow west. Gourlay saw bars of iron, left when the pit was abandoned,
+reddened by the rain; and the mounds of rubbish, and the scattered
+bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace, and the melancholy
+shining pools. A four-wheeled old trolley had lost two of its wheels,
+and was tilted at a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.
+
+"Why do I think of an old pit?" he thought angrily; "curse it! why can't
+I sleep?"
+
+Next moment he was gazing at a ruined castle, its mouldering walls
+mounded atop with decaying rubble; from a loose crumb of mortar a long,
+thin film of the spider's weaving stretched bellying away to a tall weed
+waving on the crazy brink. Gourlay saw its glisten in the wind. He saw
+each crack in the wall, each stain of lichen; a myriad details stamped
+themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession of
+figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes. Each figure
+was cowled; but when it came directly opposite, it turned and looked at
+him with a white face. "Stop, stop!" cried his mind; "I don't want to
+think of you, I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of
+you! Go away!" But as they came of themselves, so they went of
+themselves. He could not banish them.
+
+He turned on his side, but a hundred other pictures pursued him. From
+an inland hollow he saw the great dawn flooding up from the sea, over a
+sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging up the
+heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was gray with dew. The inland
+hollow was full of little fields, divided by stone walls, and he could
+not have recalled the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness.
+For a moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his
+vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep
+slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow
+leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air.
+The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness.
+Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the
+boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they
+moved.
+
+He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium
+of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was
+sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was
+only automatic visualization.
+
+Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with
+his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness.
+Ha! that was better.
+
+His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window
+and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep.
+Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; _clank, clank, clank_
+went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his
+street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the
+footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the
+deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath
+him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool
+whistle? What had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one
+man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to
+sleep the whole night long.
+
+He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to
+the world.
+
+He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door.
+By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to
+consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying
+to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
+the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as
+bark.
+
+For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top
+of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold
+gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and
+drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off
+to the University.
+
+It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold
+drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the
+street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to
+an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his
+last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of
+sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a
+fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I
+trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got
+to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!
+
+"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.
+
+He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the
+white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain.
+Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank
+sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to
+his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling in his body he lurched
+off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had
+changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky
+gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That
+stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."
+
+He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear
+garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a
+malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
+university class--which is many most moral individuals--has a similar
+eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It
+will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when
+nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer,
+who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the
+condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly
+every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most
+portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last
+triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to
+account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom--bad cold!"
+Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of
+"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"--which no man seemed
+to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their
+feet.
+
+The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.
+
+Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It
+was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink
+still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his
+morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The
+morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.
+
+At last the lecturer plunged wildly at the door and flung it open.
+"Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.
+
+A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him;
+and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and
+vindictive glower.
+
+He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to
+his mouth and bellowed "_Cock-a-doodle-do_!"
+
+Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the
+rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously--"you
+there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end
+of the hour."
+
+There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the
+stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them
+at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his
+rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate
+silence took the room--the more impressive for the former noise. Every
+eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.
+
+If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been
+cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the
+company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies
+would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by
+surprise and fear.
+
+Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more
+sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery,
+while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they
+were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him
+furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance
+itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other
+rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same
+burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling
+fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the
+mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer,
+he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others--the Snuffler took it
+all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it
+suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the
+lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he
+wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy
+stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let
+him punish all or none, for they had all been kicking up a row--why, big
+Cunningham had been braying like an ass only a minute before.
+
+He spied Armstrong and Gillespie glinting across at him with a curious
+look: they were wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his
+guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look, and resented it.
+He was on his mettle before them, it seemed. The fellow who had
+swaggered at the Howff last night about "what _he_ would do if a
+professor jumped on _him_," mustn't prove wanting in the present trial,
+beneath the eyes of those on whom he had imposed his blatancy.
+
+When we think of what Gourlay did that day, we must remember that he was
+soaked in alcohol--not merely with his morning's potation, but with the
+dregs of previous carousals. And the dregs of drink, a thorough toper
+will tell you, never leave him. He is drunk on Monday with his
+Saturday's debauch. As "Drucken Wabster" of Barbie put it once, "When a
+body's hard up, his braith's a consolation." If that be so--and Wabster,
+remember, was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled to the
+highest credence--if that be so, it proves the strength and persistence
+of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or, as Wabster called it, of "a
+good soak." In young Gourlay's case, at any rate, the impregnation was
+enduring and complete. He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil.
+
+As the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper in his dogged
+sullenness. When the class streamed from the large door on the right, he
+turned aside to the little anteroom on the left, with an insolent swing
+of the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously--he
+felt their eyes upon his back. And, therefore, as he went through the
+little door, he stood for a moment on his right foot, and waggled his
+left, on a level with his hip behind, in a vulgar derision of them, the
+professor, and the whole situation. That was a fine taunt flung back at
+them!
+
+There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets
+a chance he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice forced him
+to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on
+the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the
+wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had
+no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet
+shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at
+once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty
+than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of
+superiority. The class was his master, but here was one of them he could
+cow at any rate.
+
+"Well?" he asked, bringing his thin finger-tips together, and flinging
+one thigh across the other.
+
+Gourlay shuffled his feet uneasily.
+
+"Yes?" inquired the other, enjoying his discomfiture.
+
+Gourlay lowered. "Whatna gate was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a
+blatter out of his thin mouth, and ha' done wi't?"
+
+"I'm waiting!" said the lecturer.
+
+The words "I apologize" rose in Gourlay, but refused to pass his throat.
+No, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't! He would see the lecturer far enough,
+ere he gave an apology before it was expressly required.
+
+"Oh, that's the line you go on, is it?" said the lecturer, nodding his
+head as if he had sized up a curious animal. "I see, I see! You add
+contumacy to insolence, do you?... Imphm."
+
+Gourlay was not quite sure what contumacy meant, and the uncertainty
+added to his anger.
+
+"There were others making a noise besides me," he blurted. "I don't see
+why _I_ should be blamed for it all."
+
+"Oh, you don't see why _you_ should be had up, indeed? I think we'll
+bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so."
+
+Gourlay, being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself
+swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry
+owl--the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful
+rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have
+liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the
+lecturer have it hot and strong; the next, he was quivering in a
+cowardly horror of the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curse
+his tormentor! Why did he keep him here, when his head was aching so
+badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his drunken rage.
+
+"I wonder what you think you came to College for?" said the lecturer. "I
+have been looking at your records in the class. They're the worst I ever
+saw. And you're not content with that, it seems. You add misbehaviour to
+gross stupidity."
+
+"To hell wi' ye!" said Gourlay.
+
+There was a feeling in the room as if the air was stunned. The silence
+throbbed.
+
+The lecturer, who had risen, sat down suddenly as if going at the knees,
+and went white about the gills. Some men would have swept the ruffian
+with a burst of generous wrath, a few might have pitied in their anger;
+but this young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat. Unable to
+cow the insolent in present and full-blooded rage, he fell to thinking
+of the great machine he might set in motion to destroy him. As he sat
+there in silence, his eyes grew ferrety, and a sleek revenge peeped from
+the corners of his mouth. "I'll show him what I'll do to him for this!"
+is a translation of his thought. He was thinking, with great
+satisfaction to himself, of how the Senatus would deal with young
+Gourlay.
+
+Gourlay grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him. They had
+been a thunderclap to his own ears. He had been thinking them, but--as
+he pleaded far within him now--had never meant to utter them; they had
+been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seething up within him,
+longing to burst, but afraid. It was the taunt of stupidity that fired
+his drunken vanity to blurt them forth.
+
+The lecturer eyed him sideways where he shrank in fear. "You may go," he
+said at last. "I will report your conduct to the University."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gourlay was sitting alone in his room when he heard that he had been
+expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober
+now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the
+window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay
+sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid
+his character bare to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not by
+conscious effort; insight was uncanny and apart from will. He saw that
+blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with want of brains; and
+that the results of these, converging to a point, had produced the
+present issue, his expulsion. His mind recognized how logical the issue
+was, assenting wearily as to a problem proved. Given those qualities, in
+those circumstances, what else could have happened? And such a weakling
+as he knew himself to be could never--he thought--make effort sufficient
+to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism came over him, as of one
+doomed. He bowed his head, and let his arms fall by the sides of his
+chair, dropping them like a spent swimmer ready to sink. The sudden
+revelation of himself to himself had taken the heart out of him. "I'm a
+waster!" he said aghast. And then, at the sound of his own voice, a fear
+came over him, a fear of his own nature; and he started to his feet and
+strode feverishly, as if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging
+and inherent ill. It was as if he were trying to run away from himself.
+
+He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image
+with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard
+through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill
+ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"
+
+He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the
+Howff for consolation.
+
+With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character
+at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid
+reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more
+definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to
+go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the
+dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he
+entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that
+he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when
+the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again.
+His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in
+imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.
+
+Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into
+his mood, no less big with destruction. It was all his father's fault
+for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
+serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his
+own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they
+had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in
+forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head.
+Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at
+home by their own foolish scheme--it had punished _him_ enough, for one.
+And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more
+fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical
+father would suffer through his degradation too.
+
+At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had
+ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so,
+free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless
+voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased
+his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor--outside of
+which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to
+somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the
+window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing,
+said, "_Flat white nose!_" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at
+the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose _would_ look flat and
+white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in
+on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to
+think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had
+been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well,
+it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going
+to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said,
+nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist--"none
+of your jaw; d'ye hear?"
+
+He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and
+knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly
+through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He
+nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped
+dead at their words.
+
+"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not
+unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."
+
+John heard the mumble of his father's voice.
+
+"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie
+for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."
+
+"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face
+his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before
+him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green
+Shutters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away
+from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and
+Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused
+the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried,
+"this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy
+fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their
+dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but,
+over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for
+the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple
+expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest--of suspense, yet
+certainty--that had them in its grip. "He's _bound_ to come down," said
+Certainty. "Yes; but _when_, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more
+eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited
+for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if
+they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen
+interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That
+invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a
+small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest
+that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this
+case it was chiefly malevolent--only because Gourlay had been such a
+brute to Barbie.
+
+Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was
+one and the same--a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a
+more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every
+tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with
+the Green Shutters been so much talked of.
+
+"Pride _will_ have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack
+of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common
+proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener
+spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff
+he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes
+are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken
+perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."
+
+Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away
+from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could
+only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the
+gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of
+retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand
+and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.
+
+"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of
+Gourlay's remark--"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean
+Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"
+
+On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old
+Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a
+smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in
+gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly
+John, and the fellow went away.
+
+Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear,
+and he wheeled eagerly.
+
+Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at
+the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had
+stung him.
+
+"My God!" he cried, "had _I_ not enough to thole?"
+
+"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct,
+then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the
+Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son.--Lord!
+what a tit-bit for my rounds."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband
+standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often
+seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this
+bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.
+
+"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"
+
+"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on
+the floor.
+
+"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the
+dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll
+put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't--the lot o' ye."
+
+The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.
+
+"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is
+it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them
+tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter
+with _my_ boy? Is there ainything the matter with _my_ boy?"
+
+The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She
+was a fluttering thing in his grip.
+
+"_Every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy," he sneered slowly,
+"_every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy. And it's your fault too,
+damn you, for you always spoiled him!"
+
+With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the
+letter within the great fender.
+
+"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so
+wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door!
+That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean,
+my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but
+could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion"
+swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to
+hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.
+
+"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was
+thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.
+
+It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest
+due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and
+try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny
+was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.
+
+He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the
+Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the
+gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that
+his life meant was bound up in that house--it had been the pride of the
+Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the
+dust--their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on
+the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors
+flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and
+added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o' _my_ hoose!"
+
+He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life;
+he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he
+might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the
+House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending.
+Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for
+himself--rather the house was himself; there was no division between
+them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his
+character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind,
+unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And
+John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green
+Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a
+prodigal.
+
+As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a
+conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr.
+Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay
+in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine
+stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were
+innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared
+enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson
+addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones
+that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!"
+Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten
+yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour
+surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.
+
+He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped
+to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a
+son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation,
+therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled,
+his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger.
+His voice had a moan of intensity.
+
+"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness....
+"Eh?... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."
+
+He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet
+voice, from the yawing mouth, beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was
+deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.
+
+"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a
+vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must
+grind an answer.
+
+Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful
+man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was
+the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off _my_
+shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion.
+Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.
+
+But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult,
+and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest
+thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the
+additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you
+referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send
+him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson
+was an adept in the art.
+
+"Man," he lied blandly, but his voice was quivering--"ma-a-an, I wasn't
+so much as giving ye a thoat! It's verra strange if I cannot pass a joke
+with my o-old friend Templandmuir without _you_ calling me to book. It's
+a free country, I shuppose! Ye weren't in my mind at a-all. I have more
+important matters to think of," he ventured to add, seeing he had
+baffled Gourlay.
+
+For Gourlay was baffled. For a directer insult, an offensive gesture,
+one fierce word, he would have hammered the road with the Provost. But
+he was helpless before the bland, quivering lie. Maybe they werena
+referring to him; maybe they knew nothing of John in Edinburgh; maybe he
+had been foolishly suspeecious. A subtle yet baffling check was put upon
+his anger. Madman as he was in wrath, he never struck without direct
+provocation; there was none in this pulpy gentleness. And he was too
+dull of wit to get round the common ruse and find a means of getting at
+them.
+
+He let loose a great breath through his nostrils, as if releasing a
+deadly force which he had pent within him, ready should he need to
+spring. His mouth opened again, and he gaped at them with a great,
+round, unseeing stare. Then he swung on his heel.
+
+But wrath clung round him like a garment. His anger fed on its
+uncertainties. For that is the beauty of the Wilson method of insult:
+you leave the poison in your victim's blood, and he torments himself.
+"Was Wilson referring to _me_, after all?" he pondered slowly; and his
+body surged at the thought. "If he was, I have let him get away
+unkilled," and he clutched the hands whence Wilson had escaped. Suddenly
+a flashing thought stopped him dead in the middle of his walk, staring
+hornily before him. He had seen the point at last that a quicker man
+would have seized on at the first. Why had Wilson thrust his damned
+voice on him on this particular morning of all days in the year, if he
+was not gloating over some news which he had just heard about the
+Gourlays? It was as plain as daylight: his son had sent word from
+Edinburgh. That was why he brayed and ho-ho-hoed when Gourlay went by.
+Gourlay felt a great flutter of pulses against his collar; there was a
+pain in his throat, an ache of madness in his breast. He turned once
+more. But Wilson and the Templar had withdrawn discreetly to the Black
+Bull; the street wasna canny. Gourlay resumed his way, his being a dumb
+gowl of rage. His angry thought swept to John. Each insult, and fancied
+insult, he endured that day was another item in the long account of
+vengeance with his son. It was John who had brought all this flaming
+round his ears--John whose colleging he had lippened to so muckle. The
+staff on which he leaned had pierced him. By the eternal heavens he
+would tramp it into atoms. His legs felt John beneath them.
+
+As the market grew busy, Gourlay was the aim of innumerable eyes. He
+would turn his head to find himself the object of a queer, considering
+look; then the eyes of the starer would flutter abashed, as though
+detected spying the forbidden. The most innocent look at him was poison.
+"Do they know?" was his constant thought; "have they heard the news?
+What's Loranogie looking at me like that for?"
+
+Not a man ventured to address him about John--he had cowed them too
+long. One man, however, showed a wish to try. A pretended sympathy, from
+behind the veil of which you probe a man's anguish at your ease, is a
+favourite weapon of human beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon longed to
+try it on Gourlay. But his courage failed him. It was the only time he
+was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a
+recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old
+rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me,
+neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a _terrible_ affair! It'th on
+everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have
+tha-at--my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above
+the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the
+other was writhing at his words.
+
+Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were
+giving him a wide berth; for they knew that he was dangerous. He was no
+longer the man whom they had baited on the way to Skeighan; then he had
+some control, now three years' calamities had fretted his temper to a
+raw wound. To flick it was perilous. Great was the surprise of the
+starers, therefore, when the idle old Deacon was seen to detach himself
+and hail the grain merchant. Gourlay wheeled, and waited with a levelled
+eye. All were agog at the sight--something would be sure to come o'
+this--here would be an encounter worth the speaking o'. But the Deacon,
+having toddled forward a bittock on his thin shanks, stopped half-roads,
+took snuff, trumpeted into his big red handkerchief, and then, feebly
+waving, "I'll thee ye again, Dyohn," clean turned tail and toddled back
+to his cronies.
+
+A roar went up at his expense.
+
+"God!" said Tam Wylie, "did ye see yon? Gourlay stopped him wi' a
+glower."
+
+But the laugh was maddening to Gourlay. Its readiness, its volume,
+showed him that scores of folk had him in their minds, were watching
+him, considering his position, cognizant of where he stood. "They ken,"
+he thought. "They were a' waiting to see what would happen. They wanted
+to watch how Gourlay tholed the mention o' his son's disgrace. I'm a
+kind o' show to them."
+
+Johnny Coe, idle and well-to-pass, though he had no business of his own
+to attend to, was always present where business men assembled. It was a
+gra-and way of getting news. To-day, however, Gourlay could not find
+him. He went into the cattle mart to see if he was there. For two years
+now Barbie had a market for cattle, on the first Tuesday of the month.
+
+The auctioneer, a jovial dog, was in the middle of his roaring game. A
+big red bullock, the coat of which made a rich colour in the ring, came
+bounding in, scared at its surroundings--staring one moment and the next
+careering.
+
+"There's meat for you," said he of the hammer; "see how it runs! How
+much am I offered for _this_ fine bullock?" He sing-songed, always
+saying "_this_ fine bullock" in exactly the same tone of voice.
+"Thirteen pounds for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-five; thirteen-ten;
+thirteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-ten; any further bids on
+thirteen-ten? why, it's worth that for the colour o't; thank ye,
+sir--thirteen-fifteen; fourteen pounds; fourteen pounds for _this_ fine
+bullock; see how the stot stots[7] about the ring; that joke should
+raise him another half-sovereign; ah, I knew it would--fourteen-five;
+fourteen-five for _this_ fine bullock; fourteen-ten; no more than
+fourteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; going at fourteen-ten;
+gone--Irrendavie."
+
+Now that he was in the circle, however, the mad, big, handsome beast
+refused to go out again. When the cattlemen would drive him to the yard,
+he snorted and galloped round, till he had to be driven from the ring
+with blows. When at last he bounded through the door, he flung up his
+heels with a bellow, and sent the sand of his arena showering on the
+people round.
+
+"I seh!" roared Brodie in his coarsest voice, from the side of the ring
+opposite to Gourlay. "I seh, owctioner! That maun be a College-bred
+stot, from the way he behaves. He flung dirt at his masters, and had to
+be expelled."
+
+"Put Brodie in the ring and rowp him!" cried Irrendavie. "He roars like
+a bill, at ony rate."
+
+There was a laugh at Brodie, true; but it was at Gourlay that a hundred
+big red faces turned to look. He did not look at them, though. He sent
+his eyes across the ring at Brodie.
+
+"Lord!" said Irrendavie, "it's weel for Brodie that the ring's acqueesh
+them! Gourlay'll murder somebody yet. Red hell lap out o' his e'en when
+he looked at Brodie."
+
+Gourlay's suspicion that his son's disgrace was a matter of common
+knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that
+everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but
+resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting
+figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round
+for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun
+thole, I suppose. They were under _my_ feet for many a day, and they're
+taking their advantage now."
+
+But though he could thole, his anger against John was none the less. It
+was because they had been under his feet for many a day that John's
+conduct was the more heinous. It was his son's conduct that gave
+Gourlay's enemies their first opportunity against him, that enabled them
+to turn the tables. They might sneer at his trollop of a wife, they
+might sneer at his want of mere cleverness; still he held his head high
+amongst them. They might suspect his poverty; but so far, for anything
+they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in
+Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The
+selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the
+completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was
+invulnerable--so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the
+men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against
+him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the
+conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to
+get their knife into him at last, and they were turning the dagger in
+the wound. All owing to the boy on whom he had staked such hopes of
+keeping up the Gourlay name! His account with John was lengthening
+steadily.
+
+Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out
+and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet,
+big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to
+see him.
+
+It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.
+
+She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On
+her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red
+mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless
+mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her
+round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she
+spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much
+you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring
+at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and
+down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.
+
+"Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad
+pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.
+
+"No-a!" she shrilled--for Miss Coe answered questions with an
+old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great
+surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was
+it ainything particular?"
+
+"No," said Gourlay heavily. "I--I just wanted to see him," and he
+trudged away.
+
+Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's
+wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun
+caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the
+toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute--I'm
+sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"
+
+It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside
+in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.
+
+Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had
+skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"
+
+"It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed,
+"it's hell in _my_ throat to ask from any man."
+
+"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always
+looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take
+the risk."
+
+"Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook
+he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It
+was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk,
+to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were
+not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the
+Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt,
+if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.
+
+"If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye
+not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they
+respected me."
+
+"Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the
+baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another
+half-hour."
+
+A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the
+shadows.
+
+"God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to
+listen to our talk!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide
+himself."
+
+Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man,
+would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would
+not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.
+
+So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with
+shame and anger and foreboding.
+
+The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son--sitting
+muffled in his coat by the great fender.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] _Stot_, a bullock; _to stot_, to bound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and
+glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and
+significance, filling the doorway in his silence.
+
+The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers,
+his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil
+his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return
+for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out
+of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden
+sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap
+on him at once and glut his rage--a madness which only a will like his
+could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.
+
+To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out
+of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it
+is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a
+violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and
+again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking
+beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness.
+Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him,
+till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye.
+Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its
+contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward--and a coward
+had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as
+he slunk away. "_Ha!_" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and
+the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a
+man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he
+lives, send him slinking away _animo castrato_--for that is what it
+comes to--is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape
+of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost--derives from
+it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his
+son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less
+than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a
+loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man
+like a wriggling urchin on the floor.
+
+As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing
+cry of "_John!_" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her
+chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she
+wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers,
+fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not
+remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of
+cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son
+to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and
+inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "_God have
+mercy!_"
+
+For a length of time there was a loaded silence.
+
+Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at
+hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from
+around him. Janet whimpered.
+
+But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his
+voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great,
+shivering breastfuls of air between the words, as if for strength to
+utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by
+his own rage.
+
+"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar
+me!... Im-phm!"
+
+The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing
+anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was
+demoniac, appalling.
+
+John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast
+hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his
+father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going
+to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered
+into it, to get away as far as he could.
+
+"I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness,
+and his eyes never left his son.
+
+And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big
+clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else.
+It smote the ear.
+
+"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer
+seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.
+
+"Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He
+heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.
+
+He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his
+hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother--looking at each other
+with affrighted eyes--could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay,
+man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!...
+Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.
+
+When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in
+a suspended agony.
+
+"Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and nipped her ear as he
+passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"
+
+"Ay, faither," she answered.
+
+"And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"
+
+She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head
+sank low on her breast.
+
+"Nothing!" she said at last.
+
+"Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay
+him?"
+
+"No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."
+
+"When did ye get back?" he asked.
+
+"Just after--just after----" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she
+were afraid of mentioning his name.
+
+"Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at;
+you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after
+him; he aye had the best o't.--I howp _you_ are in good health?" he
+sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down
+at the outset o' a great career!... For ye _are_ at the outset o' a
+great career; are ye na?"
+
+His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a
+cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had
+leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage.
+But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the
+creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.
+
+"Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're
+at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"
+
+Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had
+to be answered.
+
+"No," whimpered John.
+
+"Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"
+
+"Yes," lied John.
+
+"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my
+brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"--he leaned over
+suavely--"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as
+usual? Eh?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"No," gulped the cowerer.
+
+"_Nae_ prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended
+surprise. "_Nae-ae_ prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"
+
+Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who,
+when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at
+her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks--"No," he pants; and "Are
+you sorry for being a bad boy?"--"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good
+boy now, then?"--"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one
+with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own
+nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not
+asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay
+cared--when once he had bye with him.
+
+Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice,
+Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be
+such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt
+at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand
+talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the
+brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung
+mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John
+Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop
+for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my
+dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That!_"
+
+He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.
+
+"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and
+I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he
+sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to
+celebrate the occeesion!"
+
+The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort
+to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of
+the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he
+was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious
+constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression.
+They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in
+a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and
+checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface.
+Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter,
+a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond
+himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the
+escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was
+that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his
+disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a
+desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would
+spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim
+which he would not kill.
+
+"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear.
+"What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits--just to shelebrate the
+joyful occeesion, ye know--ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful
+occeesion!"
+
+Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the
+rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her
+trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.
+
+Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle
+for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the
+jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this
+gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a
+night o't--we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"
+
+"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.
+
+"No," wheezed John.
+
+"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College!
+Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or _this_
+nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."
+
+Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy.
+Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt
+at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins
+of his listeners with a start of fear--it leapt so suddenly.
+
+"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.
+
+John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which
+his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go
+and take it.
+
+"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait
+on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn!
+The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the
+storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but
+_he_ wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "_he_ wasna feared; no,
+by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly
+again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra
+appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?...
+Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just
+as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye
+know--a splurge to attract folk's attention!"
+
+John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.
+
+"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye;
+"take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something
+about that--some poetry or other. Who was it?"
+
+"I dinna ken," whimpered John.
+
+"Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie.
+Come on now--who was it?"
+
+"It was Burns," said John.
+
+"Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject?
+Eh?"
+
+"'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered
+John.
+
+"A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. "'Freedom and whisky gang
+thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were
+savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great
+admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"
+
+"Yes," said John.
+
+"Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine
+free fellow you are!"
+
+It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than
+half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had
+been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had
+taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely
+blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire
+leapt in his throat to get at it.
+
+"Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the
+thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a
+look at that throat o' yours. Stand up!... _Stand up when I tall 'ee!_"
+
+John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating
+in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And
+the fear weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a
+heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing
+from his chalky face.
+
+"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a
+saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"
+
+John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries.
+The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he
+went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment,
+to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was
+enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.
+
+He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in
+insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new
+suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to
+the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal
+smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted
+him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his
+father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear.
+Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration,
+"I'll _kill_ him; I'll _kill_ him; by God, I'll _kill_ him--if he doesna
+stop this--if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material
+self was paralyzed with fear.
+
+"Open your mouth!" came the snarl--"_wider, damn ye! wider!_"
+
+"Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about
+to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's
+the Latin for throat?"
+
+"Guttur," said John.
+
+"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like
+a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in
+very good health, after a-all.... Eh?... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'!
+He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what
+he needs, though.--Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he
+roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the
+last time--it's _your_ turn now, auld wife, it's _your_ turn now! Gang
+for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be
+proud of!"
+
+He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.
+
+"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the
+gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that;
+and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy--though I never
+got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my
+name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that--a great consolation!"
+
+The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to
+pieces on the floor.
+
+"Hurrah!" yelled Gourlay.
+
+He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn
+about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go
+smash--what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so
+careful, seemed to delight in the smashings and the breakings; they
+suited his despair.
+
+He saw that his spirit of destruction frightened them, too, and that was
+another reason to indulge it.
+
+"To hell with everything," he yelled, like a mock-bacchanal. "_We_'re
+the hearty fellows! We'll make a red night now we're at it!" And with
+that he took the heel of a bottle on his toe and sent it flying among
+the dishes on the dresser. A great plate fell, split in two.
+
+"Poor fellow!" he whined, turning to his son; "poo-oor fellow! I fear he
+has lost his pheesic. For that was the last bottle o' brandy in my
+aucht; the last John Gourlay had, the last he'll ever buy. What am I to
+do wi' ye now?... Eh?... I must do something; it's coming to the bit
+now, sir."
+
+As he stood in a heaving silence the sobbing of the two women was heard
+through the room. John was still swaying on the floor.
+
+Sometimes Gourlay would run the full length of the kitchen, and stand
+there glowering on a stoop; then he would come crouching up to his son
+on a vicious little trot, pattering in rage, the broken glass crunching
+and grinding beneath his feet. At any moment he might spring.
+
+"What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?" he moaned.... "Eh?... What
+do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"
+
+As he came grinning in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and
+the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The
+stricture of the lips had squeezed them bloodless.
+
+He went back to the dresser once more and bent low beside it, glancing
+at his son across his left shoulder, with his head flung back sideways,
+his right fist clenched low and ready from a curve of the elbow. It
+swung heavy as a mallet by his thigh. Janet got to her knees and came
+shuffling across the floor on them, though her dress was tripping her,
+clasping her outstretched hands, and sobbing in appeal, "Faither,
+faither; O faither; for God's sake, faither!" She clung to him. He
+unclenched his fist and lifted her away. Then he came crouching and
+quivering across the floor slowly, a gleaming devilry in the eyes that
+devoured his son. His hands were like outstretched claws, and shivered
+with each shiver of the voice that moaned, through set teeth, "What do
+ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?... What do ye think I mean to do wi'
+ye now?... Ye damned sorrow and disgrace that ye are, what do ye think I
+mean to do wi' ye now?"
+
+"Run, John!" screamed Mrs. Gourlay, leaping to her feet. With a hunted
+cry young Gourlay sprang to the door. So great had been the fixity of
+Gourlay's wrath, so tense had he been in one direction, as he moved
+slowly on his prey, that he could not leap to prevent him. As John
+plunged into the cool, soft darkness, his mother's "Thank God!" rang
+past him on the night.
+
+His immediate feeling was of coolness and width and spaciousness, in
+contrast with the hot grinding hostility that had bored so closely in on
+him for the last hour. He felt the benignness of the darkened heavens. A
+tag of some forgotten poem he had read came back to his mind, and,
+"Come, kindly night, and cover me," he muttered, with shaking lips; and
+felt how true it was. My God, what a relief to be free of his father's
+eyes! They had held him till his mother's voice broke the spell. They
+seemed to burn him now.
+
+What a fool he had been to face his father when empty both of food and
+drink! Every man was down-hearted when he was empty. If his mother had
+had time to get the tea, it would have been different; but the fire had
+been out when he went in. "He wouldn't have downed me so easy if I had
+had anything in me," he muttered, and his anger grew as he thought of
+all he had been made to suffer. For he was still the swaggerer. Now that
+the incubus of his father's tyranny no longer pressed on him directly, a
+great hate rose within him for the tyrant. He would go back and have it
+out when he was primed. "It's the only hame I have," he sobbed angrily
+to the darkness; "I have no other place to gang till! Yes, I'll go back
+and have it out with him when once I get something in me, so I will." It
+was no disgrace to suck courage from the bottle for that encounter with
+his father, for nobody could stand up to black Gourlay--nobody. Young
+Gourlay was yielding to a peculiar fatalism of minds diseased: all that
+affects them seems different from all that affects everybody else; they
+are even proud of their separate and peculiar doom. Young Gourlay not
+thought but felt it--he was different from everybody else. The heavens
+had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to
+fill yourself with drink before you faced him.
+
+A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept
+about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a
+coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after
+the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that
+semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them
+now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and
+control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more
+variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of
+time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before
+the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve,
+shaking in terror--indeed he was shaking now. But his vanity came
+uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the
+darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face
+curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had
+started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking
+back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual
+busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping
+lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets,
+and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an
+outshot chest, and entered with a "breenge." But for all his swagger he
+must have had a face like death, for there was a cry among the idlers. A
+man breathed, "My God! What's the matter?" With shaking knees Gourlay
+advanced to the bar, and, "For God's sake, Aggie," he whispered, "give
+me a Kinblythmont!"
+
+It went at a gulp.
+
+"Another!" he gasped, like a man dying of thirst, whom his first sip
+maddens for more. "Another! Another!"
+
+He had tossed the other down his burning throat when Deacon Allardyce
+came in.
+
+He knew his man the moment he set eyes on him, but, standing at the
+door, he arched his hand above his brow, as you do in gazing at a dear
+unexpected friend, whom you pretend not to be quite sure of, so
+surprised and pleased are you to see him there.
+
+"Ith it Dyohn?" he cried. "It _ith_ Dyohn!" And he toddled forward with
+outstretched hand. "Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce
+believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with
+both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that.
+And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?"
+
+"Oh, _I_'m all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a
+wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.
+
+"A wha-at?" said the Deacon, blinking in a puzzled fashion with his
+bleary old eyes.
+
+"A dram--a drink--a drop o' the Auld Kirk," said Gourlay, with a
+stertorous laugh down through his nostrils.
+
+"Hi! hi!" laughed the Deacon in his best falsetto. "Ith that what ye
+call it up in Embro? A wet, ay! Ah, well, maybe I will take a little
+drope, theeing you're tho ready wi' your offer."
+
+They drank together.
+
+"Aggie, fill me a mutchkin when you're at it," said Gourlay to the
+pretty barmaid with the curly hair. He had spent many an hour with her
+last summer in the bar. The four big whiskies he had swallowed in the
+last half-hour were singing in him now, and he blinked at her drunkenly.
+
+There was a scarlet ribbon on her dark curls, coquettish, vivid, and
+Gourlay stared at it dreamily, partly in a drunken daze, and partly
+because a striking colour always brought a musing and self-forgetting
+look within his eyes. All his life he used to stare at things dreamily,
+and come to himself with a start when spoken to. He forgot himself now.
+
+"Aggie," he said, and put his hand out to hers clumsily where it rested
+on the counter--"Aggie, that ribbon's infernal bonny on your dark hair!"
+
+She tossed her head, and perked away from him on her little high heels.
+Him, indeed!--the drunkard! She wanted none of his compliments!
+
+There were half a dozen in the place by this time, and they all stared
+with greedy eyes. "That's young Gourlay--him that was _expelled_," was
+heard, the last an emphatic whisper, with round eyes of awe at the
+offence that must have merited such punishment. "_Expelled_, mind
+ye!"--with a round shake of the head. "Watch Allardyce. We'll see fun."
+
+"What's this 'expelled' is, now?" said John Toodle, with a very
+considering look and tone in his uplifted face--"properly speaking, that
+is," he added, implying that of course he knew the word in its ordinary
+sense, but was not sure of it "properly speaking."
+
+"Flung oot," said Drucken Wabster, speaking from the fullness of his own
+experience.
+
+"Whisht!" said a third. "Here's Tam Brodie. Watch what _he_ does."
+
+The entrance of Brodie spoiled sport for the Deacon. He had nothing of
+that malicious _finesse_ that made Allardyce a genius at nicking men on
+the raw. He went straight to his work, stabbing like an awl.
+
+"Hal-lo!" he cried, pausing with contempt in the middle of the word,
+when he saw young Gourlay. "Hal-lo! _You_ here!--Brig o' the Mains,
+miss, if _you_ please.--Ay, man! God, you've been making a name up in
+Embro. I hear you stood up till him gey weel," and he winked openly to
+those around.
+
+Young Gourlay's maddened nature broke at the insult. "Damn you," he
+screamed, "leave _me_ alone, will you? I have done nothing to _you_,
+have I?"
+
+Brodie stared at him across his suspended whisky glass, an easy and
+assured contempt curling his lip. "Don't greet owre't, my bairn," said
+he, and even as he spoke John's glass shivered on his grinning teeth.
+Brodie leapt on him, lifted him, and sent him flying.
+
+"That's a game of your father's, you damned dog," he roared. "But
+there's mair than him can play the game!"
+
+"Canny, my freendth, canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine
+chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of
+handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had the fine
+stroke.
+
+Gourlay picked himself bleeding from the floor, and holding a
+handkerchief to his mouth, plunged headlong from the room. He heard the
+derisive roar that came after him stop, strangled by the sharp swing-to
+of the door. But it seemed to echo in his burning ears as he strode
+madly on through the darkness. He uncorked his mutchkin and drank it
+like water. His swollen lip smarted at first, but he drank till it was a
+mere dead lump to his tongue, and he could not feel the whisky on the
+wound.
+
+His mind at first was a burning whirl through drink and rage, with
+nothing determined and nothing definite. But thought began to shape
+itself. In a vast vague circle of consciousness his mind seemed to sit
+in the centre and think with preternatural clearness. Though all around
+was whirling and confused, drink had endowed some inner eye of the brain
+with unnatural swift vividness. Far within the humming circle of his
+mind he saw an instant and terrible revenge on Brodie, acted it, and
+lived it now. His desires were murderers, and he let them slip, gloating
+in the cruelties that hot fancy wreaked upon his enemy. Then he suddenly
+remembered his father. A rush of fiery blood seemed to drench all his
+body as he thought of what had passed between them. "But, by Heaven," he
+swore, as he threw away his empty bottle, "he won't use me like that
+another time; I have blood in me now." His maddened fancy began building
+a new scene, with the same actors, the same conditions, as the other,
+but an issue gloriously diverse. With vicious delight he heard his
+father use the same sneers, the same gibes, the same brutalities; then
+he turned suddenly and had him under foot, kicking, bludgeoning,
+stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The
+memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing
+darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and
+he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed
+fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he
+was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready for him!
+
+And his father was ready for him, for he knew what had happened at the
+inn. Mrs. Webster, on her nightly hunt for the man she had sworn to
+honour and obey, having drawn several public-houses blank, ran him to
+earth at last in the bar-room of the Red Lion. "Yes, yes, Kirsty," he
+cried, eager to prevent her tongue, "I know I'm a blagyird; but oh, the
+terrible thing that has happened!" He so possessed her with his graphic
+tale that he was allowed to go chuckling back to his potations, while
+she ran hot-foot to the Green Shutters.
+
+"Eh, poo-oor Mrs. Gourlay; and oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that
+brute Tam Brodie----" Even as she came through the door the voluble
+clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of
+Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath his black glower.
+
+"Go on!" he said, and ground it out of her.
+
+"The damned sumph!" he growled, "to let Brodie hammer him!" For a
+moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even
+dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' _him_!" he thought
+grimly. "When _I_ get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to
+hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was neither
+doubt nor wonder--"I wonder will he fling the father as he flang the
+son!" But that was the instinct of his blood, not enough to make him
+pardon John. On the contrary, here was a new offence of his offspring.
+On the morrow Barbie would be burning with another affront which he had
+put upon the name of Gourlay. He would waste no time when he came back,
+be he drunk or be he sober; he would strip the flesh off him.
+
+"Jenny," he said, "bring me the step-ladder."
+
+He would pass the time till the prodigal came back--and he was almost
+certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie?--he would pass
+the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent
+money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to
+embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out
+a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in
+dark timber, and on the rich brown rafters there were wooden pegs and
+bars, for the hanging of Gourlay's sticks and fishing-rods. His gun was
+up there, too, just above the hearth. It had occurred to him about a
+month ago, however, that a pair of curving steel rests, that would catch
+the glint from the fire, would look better beneath his gun than the dull
+pegs, where it now lay against a joist. He might as well pass the time
+by putting them up.
+
+The bringing of the steps, light though they were, was too much for
+Janet's weak frame, and she stopped in a fit of coughing, clutching the
+ladder for support, while it shook to her spasms.
+
+"Tuts, Jenny, this'll never do," said Gourlay, not unkindly. He took
+the ladder away from her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Away to
+your bed, lass. You maunna sit so late."
+
+But Janet was anxious for her brother, and wanted to sit up till he came
+home. She answered, "Yes," to her father, but idled discreetly, to
+consume the time.
+
+"Where's my hammer?" snarled Gourlay.
+
+"Is it no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I
+remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the
+front doorstep wi'. It'll be lying in the porch."
+
+"Oh, ay, as usual," said Gourlay--"as usual."
+
+"John!" she cried in alarm, "you don't mean to take down the gun, do
+ye?"
+
+"Huts, you auld fule, what are you skirling for? D'ye think I mean to
+shoot the dog? Set back on your creepie and make less noise, will ye?"
+
+Ere he had driven a nail in the rafter John came in, and sat down by the
+fire, taking up the great poker, as if to cover his nervousness. If
+Gourlay had been on the floor he would have grappled with him there and
+then. But the temptation to gloat over his victim from his present
+height was irresistible. He went up another step, and sat down on the
+very summit of the ladder, his feet resting on one of the lower rounds.
+The hammer he had been using was lying on his thigh, his hand clutched
+about its haft.
+
+"Ay, man, you've been taking a bit walk, I hear."
+
+John made no reply, but played with the poker. It was so huge, owing to
+Gourlay's whim, that when it slid through his fingers it came down on
+the muffled hearthstone with a thud like a pavior's hammer.
+
+"I'm told you saw the Deacon on your rounds? Did he compliment you on
+your return?"
+
+At the quiet sneer a lightning-flash showed John that Allardyce had
+quizzed him too. For a moment he was conscious of a vast self-pity.
+"Damn them, they're all down on me," he thought. Then a vindictive rage
+against them all took hold of him, tense, quivering.
+
+"Did you see Thomas Brodie when ye were out?" came the suave inquiry.
+
+"I saw him," said John, raising fierce eyes to his father's. He was
+proud of the sudden firmness in his voice. There was no fear in it, no
+quivering. He was beyond caring what happened to the world or him.
+
+"Oh, you saw him," roared Gourlay, as his anger leapt to meet the anger
+of his son. "And what did he say to you, may I speir?... Or maybe I
+should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.
+
+"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the
+poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay
+screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror.
+As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the
+descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up
+his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone.
+Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.
+
+At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There
+followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place;
+yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to
+another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was
+different now--it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new
+significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy
+spell.
+
+As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.
+
+John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if
+petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair
+stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp
+edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him
+from his stupor--it seemed so monstrous and horrible, sticking all by
+itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring
+vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him,
+he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear
+on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you
+micht get up!"
+
+Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her
+brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have
+killed him!"
+
+Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery
+Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang
+up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.
+
+"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed.--"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs.
+Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the
+ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak
+to me!"
+
+No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being
+close at hand; the girl, intently listening, was alone with her fear.
+All was silent in the room, and the terror deepened. Then the far-off
+sound in the house was heard once more.
+
+"Mother--mother, what's that?"
+
+"What is it, Janet?" came a feebly complaining voice; "what's wrong wi'
+ye, lassie?"
+
+Janet and her mother were sleeping in the big bedroom, Janet in the
+place that had been her father's. He had been buried through the day,
+the second day after his murder. Mrs. Gourlay had shown a feverish
+anxiety to get the corpse out the house as soon as possible; and there
+had been nothing to prevent it. "Oh," said Doctor Dandy to the gossips,
+"it would have killed any man to fall from such a height on to the sharp
+edge of yon fender. No; he was not quite dead when I got to him. He
+opened his eyes on me, once--a terrible look--and then life went out of
+him with a great quiver."
+
+Ere Janet could answer her mother she was seized with a racking cough,
+and her hoarse bark sounded hollow in the silence. At last she sat up
+and gasped fearfully, "I thocht--I thocht I heard something moving!"
+
+"It would be the wind," plained her mother; "it would just be the wind.
+John's asleep this strucken hour and mair. I sat by his bed for a lang
+while, and he prigged and prayed for a dose o' the whisky ere he won
+away. He wouldna let go my hand till he slept, puir fallow. There's an
+unco fear on him--an unco fear. But try and fa' owre," she soothed her
+daughter. "That would just be the wind ye heard."
+
+"There's nae wind!" said Janet.
+
+The stair creaked. The two women clung to each other, gripping tight
+fingers, and their hearts throbbed like big separate beings in their
+breasts. There was a rustle, as of something coming; then the door
+opened, and John flitted to the bedside with a candle in his hand. Above
+his nightshirt his bloodless face looked gray.
+
+"Mother," he panted, "there's something in my room!"
+
+"What is it, John?" said his mother, in surprise and fear.
+
+"I--I thocht it was himsell! O mother, I'm feared, I'm feared! O mother,
+I'm _feared_!" He sang the words in a hysterical chant, his voice rising
+at the end.
+
+The door of the bedroom clicked. It was not a slamming sound, only the
+door went to gently, as if some one closed it. John dropped the candle
+from his shaking hand, and was left standing in the living darkness.
+
+"_Save me!_" he screamed, and leaped into the bed, burrowing down
+between the women till his head was covered by the bedclothes. He
+trembled so violently that the bed shook beneath them.
+
+"Let me bide wi' ye!" he pleaded, with chattering jaws; "oh, let me bide
+wi' ye! I daurna gang back to that room by mysell again."
+
+His mother put her thin arm round him. "Yes, dear," she said; "you may
+bide wi' us. Janet and me wouldna let anything harm you." She placed her
+hand on his brow caressingly. His hair was damp with a cold sweat. He
+reeked of alcohol.
+
+Some one went through the Square playing a concertina. That sound of
+the careless world came strangely in upon their lonely tragedy. By
+contrast the cheerful, silly noise out there seemed to intensify their
+darkness and isolation here. Occasional far-off shouts were heard from
+roisterers going home.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay lay staring at the darkness with intent eyes. What horror
+might assail her she did not know, but she was ready to meet it for the
+sake of John. "Ye brought it on yoursell," she breathed once, as if
+defying an unseen accuser.
+
+It was hours ere he slept, but at last a heavy sough told her he had
+found oblivion. "He's won owre," she murmured thankfully. At times he
+muttered in his sleep, and at times Janet coughed hoarsely at his ear.
+
+"Janet, dinna hoast sae loud, woman! You'll waken your brother."
+
+Janet was silent. Then she choked--trying to stifle another cough.
+
+"Woman," said her mother complainingly, "that's surely an unco hoast ye
+hae!"
+
+"Ay," said Janet, "it's a gey hoast."
+
+Next morning Postie came clattering through the paved yard in his
+tackety boots, and handed in a blue envelope at the back door with a
+business-like air, his ferrety eyes searching Mrs. Gourlay's face as she
+took the letter from his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his
+curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no
+fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the
+missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay,
+Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she
+cried, "what am I to do wi' this?"
+
+She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless
+she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her
+to take an active interest in their common life (indeed he never had)
+that she was as helpless as a child.
+
+"It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?"
+
+"No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look
+at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll
+open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never
+had a heid for business."
+
+She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to
+her slower mind:--
+
+
+                                            "GLASGOW, _March 12, 18--._
+
+     "SIR,--We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that
+     the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been
+     paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless
+     you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take
+     the necessary steps to safeguard his interests.--Yours faithfully,
+
+                                       BRODIE, GURNEY, & YARROWBY."
+
+
+Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned
+palm, lying slack upon her knee.
+
+"Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does
+the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to
+us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell
+ye of the bond?"
+
+"He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden
+passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark--to be keepit in
+the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet--and us
+was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk,
+and brought him a gey pickle bawbees--am I to be on the parish in my
+auld age? Oh, _my_ faither, _my_ faither!"
+
+Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been
+but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should
+come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet
+was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of
+her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For
+her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield
+the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief--felt but not
+considered--at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It
+seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly,
+deadened now by these quick calamities. But that _she_, that
+Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common
+charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in
+agony.
+
+"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.
+
+"Waken John," said her mother feverishly--"waken John, and we'll gang
+through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his
+papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there
+may be something gude! In the desk--in the desk--there may be something
+gude in the desk!"
+
+John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table
+where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay
+with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites
+showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was
+recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the
+great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever
+dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top
+of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said
+he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account
+was overdrawn.
+
+"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began to whimper. John
+slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the
+women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of
+his departure.
+
+He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door,
+looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was
+remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the
+hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The
+contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing,
+and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the
+heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized,
+however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the
+surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And
+that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to
+escape it.
+
+The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain.
+Damn the thing, why didn't it stop--with its monotonous tick-tack,
+tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed
+to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on
+snapping.
+
+He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to
+listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was
+a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with
+desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle
+greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like
+cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.
+
+"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at
+that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he
+had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass
+noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision
+possible only to drink-steadied nerves--a steadiness like the humming
+top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the
+courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken
+triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty
+straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of
+darkness.
+
+An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to
+ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that
+had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in
+drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting
+into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world
+seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there
+was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes
+had actually been here--and were here with him still--where he was
+locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare
+at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he
+looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air
+had become his enemy--pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To
+breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a
+shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly
+enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the
+baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock,
+frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where
+his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing,
+with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.
+
+"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes
+seeming to follow something in the room.
+
+"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.
+
+"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look,
+look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there--coming
+round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would
+ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing
+unseen.
+
+The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on
+the floor.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her
+Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and
+murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a
+child! When will Ye be satisfied?"
+
+Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it
+went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and
+was throwing tumblers at his mother!
+
+"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite
+compassion--"puir body!"
+
+"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to _her_ next,
+after killing his faither."
+
+"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you
+mean?"
+
+"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the
+drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and
+felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled
+at the sharp question.
+
+"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer
+Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy
+man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny,
+though, it seems uncanny."
+
+"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent
+wonder.
+
+"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie--"about the horrors, I
+mean. _Did_ he throw the tumbler at his mother?"
+
+"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into the kitchen on
+purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted
+to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his
+orders--his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid
+for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I
+wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The
+tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o'
+that--I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)--the
+tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the
+eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had
+stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."
+
+"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith
+day!"
+
+"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. "_He_ would have sorted him; _he_ would have
+trimmed the young ruffian!"
+
+"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely--"no doubt. But it wath scarcely
+that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a
+thlap in the face till him!"
+
+Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He
+wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires
+within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon
+grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.
+
+"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.
+
+The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no
+appeal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into
+our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company
+to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way? When
+you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything
+coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would
+restore your mind."
+
+"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with
+the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall
+in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.
+
+"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would
+calm your mind for ye."
+
+"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had
+detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me--no sleep
+for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een,
+coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"--he nodded, staring at
+her and breathing the word--"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is
+the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as
+if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness
+is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the
+lobby," he whispered hoarsely--"in the lobby when it was dark--in the
+lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither,
+though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because
+I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so
+feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered--"they're red--they're
+red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.
+
+He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in
+his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld
+against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He
+was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
+no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.
+
+"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's
+een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."
+
+"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
+And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, _my_
+faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
+throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at _me_
+frae beyond the grave."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
+snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
+colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
+across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
+to save.
+
+"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
+drink gars you think sae."
+
+"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
+drink--it helps a body."
+
+"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
+you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
+nonsense!"
+
+"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
+House with the Green Shutters."
+
+"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"
+
+She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
+gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
+of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
+murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
+feet, his head resting on her knee.
+
+They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
+from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
+town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
+in the street.
+
+Gradually all other sounds died away.
+
+"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
+neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."
+
+"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.
+
+Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift--a
+gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
+sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
+a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
+and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.
+
+"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring
+at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark
+of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert
+Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"
+
+"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't
+it?--Oh, what's that?"
+
+It was John talking in his sleep.
+
+"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every
+phrase--"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the
+voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if
+the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist--and een
+like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ...
+they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite
+distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.
+
+The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far
+away.
+
+That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond
+the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it
+all demoniac. The women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their
+own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth.
+But hell seemed with them in the room.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something
+monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support,
+and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no,
+he was her son.
+
+"Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring
+from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear--"mother,
+suppose--suppose he said that before anybody else!"
+
+"Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye?
+how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so
+they would! They would hang _my_ boy--they would take and hang _my_
+boy!"
+
+They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on
+his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.
+
+"Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."
+
+"I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put
+her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten
+her.
+
+"Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something.
+And you and me can aye thole."
+
+In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and
+placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off
+his drunken madness through the night.
+
+"John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie.
+Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away--will ye na?--and then thae een
+ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see
+the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she pleaded, "if
+there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will
+ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a
+teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye
+wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of
+Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk
+would stand in their doors to look at me, man--they would that--they
+would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun
+slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon
+the brae it would be"--and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future
+which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that
+roused her.
+
+Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his
+leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat,
+as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his
+bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.
+
+"Where's _he_ off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom
+o' this, if a body could find it out!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry.
+Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her
+home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would
+take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it
+through the room, but stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor,
+would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long
+afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for?... Janet, lassie, what
+was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same
+reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something
+to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything
+she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at
+an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with
+the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork
+quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she
+spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the
+quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her
+head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she
+would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to
+tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often
+she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room,
+open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became
+afraid of her mother.
+
+Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was
+watching her--an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her
+breast--a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude
+them too.
+
+"What can _she_ have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.
+
+At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would
+be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her
+son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that
+was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in
+a restless vacancy.
+
+She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on
+the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere--on the table,
+and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the
+autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink
+was wafted from the door.
+
+"John!" she panted, in surprise--"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"
+
+"Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."
+
+"And the bond, John--did ye speir about the bond?"
+
+"Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so
+weak did she feel through her limbs.
+
+"John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do,
+that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"
+
+"No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me
+a'where--nicht and day."
+
+"Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward
+seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he
+said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?"
+she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.
+
+"Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting redder and redder. It's
+not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the
+curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they
+wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle
+went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the
+room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were
+there too--glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering
+at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes;
+but they followed me--they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and
+stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I
+was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother;
+I wa-as _not_. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye
+keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses
+opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky
+has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.
+
+"Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een
+should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody
+but me," he said dully--"never to onybody but me."
+
+His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both
+hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and
+kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's
+gey queer; it's gey queer."
+
+She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was
+trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld
+her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth,
+with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together
+in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over
+with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the
+aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.
+
+For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the
+room above.
+
+"There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three
+shillings."
+
+It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a
+need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of
+his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this
+was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him
+greater than himself.
+
+"There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and
+flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.
+
+She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the
+fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was,
+"Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a
+flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last
+few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of
+it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling
+flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.
+
+John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she
+sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did
+not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was
+callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was
+ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and
+older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them
+apart to dree a separate weird.
+
+In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their
+dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end;
+they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall
+asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of
+herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate--as was he--and
+could think of nothing.
+
+Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of
+whisky.
+
+It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and
+dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance.
+There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the
+earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence.
+John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a
+tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like
+a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At
+word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads,
+keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste,
+not waiting till he passed ere they peeped--which was their usual way.
+Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him
+advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind
+him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not
+see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and
+through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round
+him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.
+
+He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle
+openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked
+her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in
+her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for
+himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the
+puckers in her seam.
+
+John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp _plunk_ of a
+cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy
+thud like a fall.
+
+To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear,
+not her mind. The world around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so
+that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to
+burst beside her.
+
+In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down
+and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had
+bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.
+
+"I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too
+ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"
+
+"John?" questioned her mother--"John?... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely
+recalling, "ou ay. I think--I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."
+
+"The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna
+thole the darkness!"
+
+"John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"
+
+There was a silence of the grave.
+
+She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal
+like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the
+wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead
+across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a
+smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that
+whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the
+poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was
+lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly
+up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear,
+as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.
+
+"There's twa thirds of the poison left," commented Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+"Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's
+deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"
+
+"Ay, he's deid," said Mrs. Gourlay, staring. "He winna be hanged now!"
+
+"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do?
+what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"
+
+"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly--"the
+neebours! What have _we_ to do with the neebours? We are by
+ourselves--the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours.
+Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly.
+"Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something
+... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.
+
+Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother
+killed sorrow with a new fear.
+
+"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye
+mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in
+his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely,
+staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what
+it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what
+it was for."
+
+"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't."
+
+"Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed--I kenna weel what it was, but it
+gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten
+awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head
+flung back in horror and disgust.
+
+"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"
+
+"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and
+mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But
+I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let
+onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi'
+its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe
+awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.'
+I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it seemed to whisper I had
+a freend that nane o' them kenned o'--a freend that would deliver me!
+The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was
+br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't."
+
+"O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes
+raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered
+and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect
+her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her
+own.
+
+But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and
+was staring fixedly.
+
+"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should
+sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John
+gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what
+was it I was thinking of?"
+
+"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.
+
+"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through
+was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're
+young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew,
+or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was
+that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now--eh, Jenny?
+I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she
+said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss
+Richmond o' Tenshillingland."
+
+She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had
+flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble
+recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten
+what she said.
+
+"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my
+fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I
+canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled
+me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was
+hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she
+added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame
+trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi'
+John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints
+enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna
+want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither
+came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after
+that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist
+wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me;
+it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected
+my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll
+be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would
+be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken
+_you_ were just the same; I didna ken _you_ were just the same." She
+looked. Her mother was not listening.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed
+with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was
+regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o'
+the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"
+
+There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs.
+Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac--the skirl of a
+human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet
+stared at her in speechless fear.
+
+"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"
+
+"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+"Mother!" cried Janet.
+
+"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife
+never will. _You_ may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the
+poorhouse, but _I_'ll follow my boy."
+
+The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers,
+when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet
+that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be
+left alone.
+
+"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"
+
+"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First
+Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from
+the pulpit, "the thirteent'--o' the First Corinthians:"--
+
+"_'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
+charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal._
+
+"_'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
+and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
+mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.'_"
+
+Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of
+madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom
+that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no
+more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become
+one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function
+to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her
+feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded
+entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac
+power.
+
+"_'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
+vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,_
+
+"_'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
+provoked, thinketh no evil;_
+
+"_'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;_
+
+"_'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
+all things._
+
+"_'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
+fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
+knowledge, it shall vanish away._
+
+"_'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part._
+
+"_'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
+shall be done away.'_"
+
+Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large
+blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more
+than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from
+beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death,
+but her mother's inspiration held her.
+
+"_'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest
+of these is charity.'_"
+
+Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen"
+rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling
+Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before
+death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as
+sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.
+
+They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed
+it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was
+her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked
+at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the
+parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the
+poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give
+themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as
+if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs.
+Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.
+
+She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she
+ceased to be above humanity.
+
+"Janet," she said wistfully, "_I_ have had a heap to thole! Maybe the
+Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."
+
+"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother
+weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"
+
+"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went
+into the parlour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of
+grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an
+ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in
+him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow--the
+shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling
+temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got
+by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further.
+Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie
+complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the
+other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my
+face. And that was his only answer!"
+
+Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard
+every morning, right up to the back door.
+
+"A heap o' correspondence _thir_ mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy
+little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they
+took the letters from his hand.
+
+On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie
+was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the
+Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and
+yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except
+where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling
+off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and
+left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.
+
+From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the
+pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no
+smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.
+
+Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green
+Shutters.
+
+"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.
+
+"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment,
+"sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.
+
+"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel
+acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."
+
+"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.
+
+"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the
+clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie
+and blabbed it--he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his
+mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."
+
+Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the
+House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace,
+beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.
+
+"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"
+
+"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.
+
+"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.
+
+"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the
+country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts.
+Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant;
+"it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should
+get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news.
+
+"_Nut_ me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his head as who should
+conduct of that kind a thousand miles off--"_nut_ me, Post! I'll no
+breathe it to a living soul."
+
+The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy
+under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick
+up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.
+
+He knocked, but there was no answer.
+
+"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their
+backs, it seems."
+
+He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out
+hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited
+he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled
+little place was curiously still.
+
+At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the
+door opened, and let him enter.
+
+The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large
+lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the
+sunshine.
+
+"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder
+everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left
+the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now,
+I'm thinking!"
+
+A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie
+crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot
+would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women
+must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an
+uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot
+till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.
+
+"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"
+
+They did not hear, it seemed.
+
+"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"
+
+At last--partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry--he opened
+the door of the parlour. "_Oh, my God!_" he screamed, leaping back, and
+with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry
+to be gone.
+
+He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was
+informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were
+"sequestered."
+
+"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes?
+What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"
+
+The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and
+covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.
+
+"Speak!" said a man solemnly.
+
+"They have--they have--they have a' killed themselves," stammered the
+postman, pointing to the Gourlays.
+
+Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the
+road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man
+dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the
+Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch
+of the dawn.
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS***
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House with the Green Shutters, by George Douglas Brown</title>
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House with the Green Shutters, by George
+Douglas Brown</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The House with the Green Shutters</p>
+<p>Author: George Douglas Brown</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 22, 2008  [eBook #25876]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>GEORGE DOUGLAS</h2>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='169' height='200' alt="Publishers logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.<br />LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/fdj.jpg" width='472' height='700' alt="Cover - The House with the Green Shutters 2/- net" /></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS.</h1>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p>The frowsy chambermaid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the
+front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture and, being of
+slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without
+moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water
+glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of
+his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when
+it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness.</p>
+
+<p>The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of
+eight. They were yellow in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay
+within the porch, and carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off
+round the corner of the public-house, her petticoat gaping behind.
+Halfway she met the hostler, with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance.
+He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The silly
+<i>tee-hee</i> echoed up the street.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> corner, and floating
+white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against
+the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were
+equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to
+be seen either in the Square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in
+the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work;
+the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their
+household cares.</p>
+
+<p>The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red
+chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy
+clearness of everything beneath the dawn&mdash;above all, the quietness and
+peace&mdash;made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to
+look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar
+delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect&mdash;almost
+an unearthliness&mdash;as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. But
+it was not the beauty of the hour that kept Gourlay musing at his gate.
+He was dead to the fairness of the scene, even while the fact of its
+presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in
+silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was
+a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look
+down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his
+being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was
+soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air,
+as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. It was the most
+secret and intimate joy of his life to go out and smoke on summer
+mornings by his big gate, musing over Barbie ere he possessed it with
+his merchandise.</p>
+
+<p>He had growled at the quarry carters for being late in setting out this
+morning (for, like most resolute dullards, he was sternly methodical),
+but in his heart he was secretly pleased. The needs of his business were
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> various that his men could rarely start at the same hour and in the
+same direction. To-day, however, because of the delay, all his carts
+would go streaming through the town together, and that brave pomp would
+be a slap in the face to his enemies. "I'll show them," he thought
+proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what
+a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion,
+Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate
+by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness
+of perfect scorn.</p>
+
+<p>Through the big green gate behind him came the sound of carts being
+loaded for the day. A horse, weary of standing idle between the shafts,
+kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient
+hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye;
+ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of
+an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as
+the horse quivered to the blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Run a white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae
+melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there
+wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for <i>you</i> to
+dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse,
+warning whisper of impatience&mdash;loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear
+of being heard. "Hurry up, man&mdash;hurry up, or he'll be down on us like
+bleezes for being so late in getting off!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay smiled grimly, and a black gleam shot from his eye as he glanced
+round to the gate and caught the words. His men did not know he could
+hear them.</p>
+
+<p>The clock across the Square struck the hour, eight soft, slow strokes,
+that melted away in the beauty of the morning. Five minutes passed.
+Gourlay turned his head to listen, but no further sound came from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+yard. He walked to the green gate, his slippers making no noise.</p>
+
+<p>"Are ye sleeping, my pretty men?" he said softly.... "<i>Eih?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The "<i>Eih</i>" leapt like a sword, with a slicing sharpness in its tone
+that made it a sinister contrast to the first sweet question to his
+"pretty men." "<i>Eih?</i>" he said again, and stared with open mouth and
+fierce, dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up, Peter," whispered the gaffer, "hurry up, for God sake. He has
+the black glower in his een."</p>
+
+<p>"Ready, sir; ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the
+other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy
+fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long,
+slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish
+gray. The bearded red brows, close above the pale blueness of his eyes,
+made them more vivid by contrast; they were like pools of blue light
+amid the brownness of his face. Peter always ran about his work with
+eager alacrity. A simple and willing old man, he affected the quick
+readiness of youth to atone for his insignificance.</p>
+
+<p>"Hup, horse; hup then!" cried courageous Peter, walking backwards with
+curved body through the gate, and tugging at the reins of a horse the
+feet of which struck sparks from the paved ground as they stressed
+painfully on edge to get weigh on the great wagon behind. The cart
+rolled through, then another, and another, till twelve of them had
+passed. Gourlay stood aside to watch them. All the horses were brown;
+"he makes a point of that," the neighbours would have told you. As each
+horse passed the gate the driver left its head, and took his place by
+the wheel, cracking his whip, with many a "Hup, horse; yean, horse; woa,
+lad; steady!"</p>
+
+<p>In a dull little country town the passing of a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> cart is an event,
+and a gig is followed with the eye till it disappears. Anything is
+welcome that breaks the long monotony of the hours and suggests a topic
+for the evening's talk. "Any news?" a body will gravely inquire. "Ou
+ay," another will answer with equal gravity: "I saw Kennedy's gig going
+past in the forenoon." "Ay, man; where would <i>he</i> be off till? He's owre
+often in his gig, I'm thinking." And then Kennedy and his affairs will
+last them till bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the appearance of Gourlay's carts woke Barbie from its morning
+lethargy. The smith came out in his leather apron, shoving back, as he
+gazed, the grimy cap from his white-sweating brow; bowed old men stood
+in front of their doorways, leaning with one hand on short, trembling
+staffs, while the slaver slid unheeded along the cutties which the left
+hand held to their toothless mouths; white-mutched grannies were keeking
+past the jambs; an early urchin, standing wide-legged to stare, waved
+his cap and shouted, "Hooray!"&mdash;and all because John Gourlay's carts
+were setting off upon their morning rounds, a brave procession for a
+single town! Gourlay, standing great-shouldered in the middle of the
+road, took in every detail, devoured it grimly as a homage to his pride.
+"Ha, ha, ye dogs!" said the soul within him. Past the pillar of the Red
+Lion door he could see a white peep of the landlord's waistcoat&mdash;though
+the rest of the mountainous man was hidden deep within his porch. (On
+summer mornings the vast totality of the landlord was always inferential
+to the town from the tiny white peep of him revealed.) Even fat Simpson
+had waddled to the door to see the carts going past. It was fat
+Simpson&mdash;might the Universe blast his adipose&mdash;who had once tried to
+infringe Gourlay's monopoly as the sole carrier in Barbie. There had
+been a rush to him at first, but Gourlay set his teeth and drove him off
+the road, carrying stuff for nothing till Simpson had nothing to carry,
+so that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> local wit suggested "a wee parcel in a big cart" as a new
+sign for his hotel. The twelve browns prancing past would be a pill to
+Simpson! There was no smile about Gourlay's mouth&mdash;a fiercer glower was
+the only sign of his pride&mdash;but it put a bloom on his morning, he felt,
+to see the suggestive round of Simpson's waistcoat, down yonder at the
+porch. Simpson, the swine! He had made short work o' <i>him</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Ere the last of the carts had issued from the yard at the House with the
+Green Shutters the foremost was already near the Red Lion. Gourlay swore
+beneath his breath when Miss Toddle&mdash;described in the local records as
+"a spinster of independent means"&mdash;came fluttering out with a silly
+little parcel to accost one of the carriers. Did the auld fool mean to
+stop Andy Gow about <i>her</i> petty affairs, and thus break the line of
+carts on the only morning they had ever been able to go down the brae
+together? But no. Andy tossed her parcel carelessly up among his other
+packages, and left her bawling instructions from the gutter, with a
+portentous shaking of her corkscrew curls. Gourlay's men took their cue
+from their master, and were contemptuous of Barbie, most unchivalrous
+scorners of its old maids.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay was pleased with Andy for snubbing Sandy Toddle's sister. When
+he and Elshie Hogg reached the Cross they would have to break off from
+the rest to complete their loads; but they had been down Main Street
+over night as usual picking up their commissions, and until they reached
+the Bend o' the Brae it was unlikely that any business should arrest
+them now. Gourlay hoped that it might be so; and he had his desire, for,
+with the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went
+slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly
+down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses
+were unable to go fast&mdash;being forced to stell themselves back against
+the heavy propulsion of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> carts behind; and thus the procession
+endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it
+disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared
+too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy resumed her reign. The
+street and the Square lay empty to the morning sun. Gourlay alone stood
+idly at his gate, lapped in his own satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a big morning, he felt. It was the first time for many a
+year that all his men, quarrymen and carriers, carters of cheese and
+carters of grain, had led their teams down the brae together in the full
+view of his rivals. "I hope they liked it!" he thought, and he nodded
+several times at the town beneath his feet, with a slow up-and-down
+motion of the head, like a man nodding grimly to his beaten enemy. It
+was as if he said, "See what I have done to ye!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<p>Only a man of Gourlay's brute force of character could have kept all the
+carrying trade of Barbie in his own hands. Even in these days of
+railways, nearly every parish has a pair of carriers at the least,
+journeying once or twice a week to the nearest town. In the days when
+Gourlay was the great man of Barbie, railways were only beginning to
+thrust themselves among the quiet hills, and the bulk of inland commerce
+was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was
+the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember
+that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade,
+at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing
+that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did
+it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye
+know?"&mdash;meaning thereby that he had so many horses travelling on his own
+business, that he could afford to carry other people's goods at rates
+that must cripple his rivals.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's very stupid, surely," said a visitor once, who thought of
+entering into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face!
+Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries
+stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the
+roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure is't, to be sure is't! Just the stupeedity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> o' spite! Oh,
+there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying;
+but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask
+him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh,' he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own
+convenience.' And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of
+late that the pride of him's not to be endured."</p>
+
+<p>It was not the insolence of sudden wealth, however, that made Gourlay
+haughty to his neighbours; it was a repressiveness natural to the man
+and a fierce contempt of their scoffing envy. But it was true that he
+had made large sums of money during recent years. From his father (who
+had risen in the world) he inherited a fine trade in cheese; also the
+carrying to Skeighan on the one side and Fleckie on the other. When he
+married Miss Richmond of Tenshillingland, he started as a corn broker
+with the snug dowry that she brought him. Then, greatly to his own
+benefit, he succeeded in establishing a valuable connection with
+Templandmuir.</p>
+
+<p>It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his
+ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff
+joviality which he&mdash;so little cunning in other things&mdash;knew to affect
+among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with
+Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed"
+his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?"
+and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the
+big decanter.</p>
+
+<p>More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding
+friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the
+making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a
+circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather.
+When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was
+a great deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the
+money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried&mdash;he would
+have had to howk down a hill&mdash;but he took thousands of loads from it for
+the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was
+ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's
+estate&mdash;the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land&mdash;and it was
+there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely&mdash;once in two
+years, perhaps&mdash;that they came into the House with the Green Shutters.
+Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own
+use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the
+Monday following.</p>
+
+<p>It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to
+his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against
+him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his
+weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them
+were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they
+would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt
+it with a sense of personal defeat that he&mdash;the donkey, as they thought
+him&mdash;should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the
+long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled
+themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept
+increasing between them.</p>
+
+<p>They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when
+Gourlay's "quarriers"&mdash;as the quarry horses had been named&mdash;came through
+the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets,
+washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping
+at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up,
+their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and
+said nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last&mdash;"I wouldn't mind if he
+weren't such a demned ess!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked,
+pretending not to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.</p>
+
+<p>"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But
+there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned
+ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"</p>
+
+<p>When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he
+was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the
+passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech,
+large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's
+extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man&mdash;for gumption he has noan, noan
+whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go
+down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the
+thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."</p>
+
+<p>"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump
+at the new way of doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar
+than that&mdash;he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. <i>I</i>'m talling ye.
+He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who
+approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his
+stupeedity."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and
+Gourlay at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character,"
+said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of
+abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> that's of
+no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he
+died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has
+no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<p>With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned
+from the green gate and entered the yard. Jock Gilmour, the "orra" man,
+was washing down the legs of a horse beside the trough. It was Gourlay's
+own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a
+black&mdash;Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for
+sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his
+whim to give it the sanction of a higher law.</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour was in a wild temper because he had been forced to get up at
+five o'clock in order to turn several hundred cheeses, to prevent them
+bulging out of shape owing to the heat, and so becoming cracked and
+spoiled. He did not raise his head at his master's approach. And his
+head being bent, the eye was attracted to a patent leather collar which
+he wore, glazed with black and red stripes. It is a collar much affected
+by ploughmen, because a dip in the horse-trough once a month suffices
+for its washing. Between the striped collar and his hair (as he stooped)
+the sunburnt redness of his neck struck the eye vividly&mdash;the cropped
+fair hairs on it showing whitish on the red skin.</p>
+
+<p>The horse quivered as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned
+playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up
+beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its
+head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off
+hind leg was still unwashed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>"Has the horse but the three legs?" said Gourlay suavely.</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour brought the horse back to the trough, muttering sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Were ye saying anything?" said Gourlay. "<i>Eih?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour sulked out and said nothing; and his master smiled grimly at the
+sudden redness that swelled his neck and ears to the verge of bursting.</p>
+
+<p>A boy, standing in his shirt and trousers at an open window of the house
+above, had looked down at the scene with craning interest&mdash;big-eyed. He
+had been alive to every turn and phase of it&mdash;the horse's quiver of
+delight and fear, his skittishness, the groom's ill-temper, and
+Gourlay's grinding will. Eh, but his father was a caution! How easy he
+had downed Jock Gilmour! The boy was afraid of his father himself, but
+he liked to see him send other folk to the right about. For he was John
+Gourlay, too. Hokey, but his father could down them!</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gourlay passed on to the inner yard, which was close to the scullery
+door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was
+curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his
+gleaming breast and <i>rooketty-cooing</i> in the sun. Large, clear drops
+fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat
+stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a sense of
+inclusion and peace.</p>
+
+<p>There is a distinct pleasure to the eye in a quiet brick court where
+everything is fresh and prim; in sunny weather you can lounge in a room
+and watch it through an open door, in a kind of lazy dream. The boy,
+standing at the window above to let the fresh air blow round his neck,
+was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon
+swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the
+great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure
+in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> round him too, but it
+was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was
+delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most
+substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was,
+was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was
+thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to
+answer you civilly&mdash;which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being,
+physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was
+surcharged with the feeling that the fine buildings around him were his,
+that he had won them by his own effort, and built them large and
+significant before the world. He was lapped in the thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>All men are suffused with that quiet pride in looking at the houses and
+lands which they have won by their endeavours&mdash;in looking at the houses
+more than at the lands, for the house which a man has built seems to
+express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of
+his success. It is more personal than cold acres, stamped with an
+individuality. All men know that soothing pride in the contemplation of
+their own property. But in Gourlay's sense of property there was another
+element&mdash;an element peculiar to itself, which endowed it with its
+warmest glow. Conscious always that he was at a disadvantage among his
+cleverer neighbours, who could achieve a civic eminence denied to him,
+he felt nevertheless that there was one means, a material means, by
+which he could hold his own and reassert himself&mdash;by the bravery of his
+business, namely, and all the appointments thereof, among which his
+dwelling was the chief. That was why he had spent so much money on the
+house. That was why he had such keen delight in surveying it. Every time
+he looked at the place he had a sense of triumph over what he knew in
+his bones to be an adverse public opinion. There was anger in his
+pleasure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> and the pleasure that is mixed with anger often gives the
+keenest thrill. It is the delight of triumph in spite of opposition.
+Gourlay's house was a material expression of that delight, stood for it
+in stone and lime.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that he reasoned deliberately when he built the house. But
+every improvement that he made&mdash;and he was always spending money on
+improvements&mdash;had for its secret motive a more or less vague desire to
+score off his rivals. "<i>That</i>'ll be a slap in the face to the Provost!"
+he smiled, when he planted his great mound of shrubs. "There's noathing
+like <i>that</i> about the Provost's! Ha, ha!"</p>
+
+<p>Encased as he was in his hard and insensitive nature, he was not the man
+who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But
+he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen&mdash;oh yes,
+he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab,
+and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the
+Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and
+Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if
+they should manage his!)&mdash;he, for his part, preferred the substantial
+reality. He could never aspire to the provostship, but a man with a
+house like that, he was fain to think, could afford to do without it. Oh
+yes; he was of opinion he could do without it! It had run him short of
+cash to build the place so big and braw, but, Lord! it was worth it.
+There wasn't a man in the town who had such accommodation!</p>
+
+<p>And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's
+life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it
+would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce,
+trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his
+presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should
+prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p><p>Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of
+its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and
+gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable
+distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving
+to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron
+railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the
+whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to
+screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls
+went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In
+front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for
+notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square.
+"Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges
+regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its
+aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its
+infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like
+house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts
+its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a
+place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its
+commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay
+himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.</p>
+
+<p>And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of
+constant remark&mdash;to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women
+because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. "'Deed, I don't
+wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the
+gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo;
+"whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats <i>me</i>! I
+never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every
+item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.
+"What's the news?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom
+the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has
+got new rones!" "Ha&mdash;ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the
+visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each
+other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between
+them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every
+tongue&mdash;and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<p>Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so
+long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he
+surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy
+neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy
+paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.</p>
+
+<p>"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"</p>
+
+<p>She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in
+her defence, because she was angry at detection.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a
+body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just
+sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his
+breakfast!"</p>
+
+<p>"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of
+<i>him</i>. <i>He</i>'ll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that
+<i>you</i> should neglect your work till <i>he</i> consents to rise."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous,
+maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and
+the schooling's owre sore on him."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped
+him."</p>
+
+<p>It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> harsher to his wife
+than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order
+in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked
+everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a
+couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay
+across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just
+above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong
+men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately
+defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else
+to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown
+cob in <i>my</i> gig&mdash;I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such
+fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for
+want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He
+had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of
+personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence
+the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his
+belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which
+he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his
+hammer, it was sure to be gone&mdash;the two bright nails staring at him
+vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to
+break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and
+grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so
+smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of
+these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething
+rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of
+his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and
+span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House
+with the Green Shutters&mdash;that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes
+on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the
+sudden sight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to
+fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after&mdash;her husband, her two
+children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken
+Wabster&mdash;who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken
+Wabster&mdash;came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work.
+Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for
+another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said
+he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had
+to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind
+or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.</p>
+
+<p>As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them
+easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge
+disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner
+of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet
+saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the
+window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a
+basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over
+on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a tidy house!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that
+did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't
+in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly,
+but ye wouldna hear o't&mdash;oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted
+out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning;
+no wonder I'm a little tousy!"</p>
+
+<p>The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been
+widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A
+little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime
+in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the
+discomfort of the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that
+kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was
+terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the
+grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll
+maybe have a clean house <i>than</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of
+her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back
+window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her
+first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue,
+her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by
+drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary
+contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and
+wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to
+meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence.
+She scarcely heard them.</p>
+
+<p>Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck.
+Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in
+a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in
+weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in
+unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was
+quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton
+blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her
+withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.</p>
+
+<p>There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and
+abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> helplessness, staring
+in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven,
+even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the
+Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her
+feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady
+and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with
+crude, brief irony.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong
+character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked
+the brute in him. He was so dull&mdash;only dull is hardly the word for a man
+of his smouldering fire&mdash;he was so dour of wit that he could never hope
+to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so
+resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud
+tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold
+his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done
+unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding
+made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a
+thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was
+able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned
+nonsense!"&mdash;that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an
+utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to
+John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he
+would have told them so, if he had met them.</p>
+
+<p>The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at
+the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a
+bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is
+rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto
+voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me,
+dee-ee-ar me;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?"
+"Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"&mdash;these be
+words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice
+had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he
+despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of
+speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and
+his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab.
+And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck
+life like a black frost.</p>
+
+<p>In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use
+of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material
+well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the
+substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty,
+in his manner&mdash;unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close
+corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to
+the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him
+already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate
+foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town&mdash;and for his wife, who
+was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long
+that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay,
+where have <i>you</i> been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she
+answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The
+Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your
+Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might
+be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered,
+"It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your
+auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had
+them laced.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window.
+"Wha-at?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."</p>
+
+<p>"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him
+wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt ye had to send <i>her</i>," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye
+couldna send <i>him</i>&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang.
+Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her
+to run for a drop milk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her
+brother should still be abed&mdash;oh, it's right that he should get the
+privilege&mdash;seeing he's the eldest!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> on her boy." In
+spite of her slack grasp on life&mdash;perhaps, because of it&mdash;she clung with
+a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a
+thowless<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And
+Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be
+hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he
+adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son&mdash;which became
+permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was
+his own favourite&mdash;perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect
+her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a
+pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost
+to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and
+saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though
+he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> He took
+her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to
+buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when
+she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man
+mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen
+table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in
+his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from
+the outer yard.</p>
+
+<p>When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear
+through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.</p>
+
+<p>He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water
+on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone
+besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in
+front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and
+knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of
+silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the
+feeling: "<i>My</i> father is <i>your</i> master, and ye daurna stand up till
+him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards
+dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's
+quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood
+there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his
+father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's
+pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate
+malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we
+fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.</p>
+
+<p>John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still
+watching Gilmour with that silent, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>offensive look. He came into the
+path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a
+vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering
+about the boy's bare legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on
+again, I'm telling ye. What are <i>you</i>, onyway? Ye're just a servant.
+Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. <i>He</i> can put ye in your
+place."</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John
+stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been
+washing down the horse's legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would
+have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what
+would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was
+patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful
+fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.</p>
+
+<p>"Drap the clout," said Gilmour.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll no," said John.</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that
+its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the
+wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a
+sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!</p>
+
+<p>Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in
+the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed
+her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized
+the weary trollop of the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at
+Gilmour.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p><p>"Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck
+standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump&mdash;to strike a
+defenceless wean!&mdash;Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle
+ye.&mdash;Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But
+I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie <i>you</i> the order to
+travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about <i>my</i>
+hoose to ill-use <i>my</i> bairn."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Your</i> servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking
+object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and
+burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man
+of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered
+it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath
+again&mdash;"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to
+Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at
+him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"</p>
+
+<p>"He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him,
+at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied
+leather's gaun to trample owre <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full
+minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.</p>
+
+<p>"Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him
+courage. "Gie me time to get <i>my</i> kist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> and I'll walk mighty quick. And
+damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the
+Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi!&mdash;the Hoose wi' the Green
+Shutters!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide.
+"You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would
+kill ye wi' a glower!"</p>
+
+<p>Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared.
+I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye
+off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."</p>
+
+<p>"Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever
+suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for
+your wor-rds."</p>
+
+<p>"Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o'
+yours. I don't like daft folk about <i>my</i> hoose."</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour
+angrily, as he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As
+he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his
+left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye.
+Yon was the way to put ye down!"</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Browdened.</i> A Scot devoted to his children is said to be
+"browdened on his bairns."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Thowless</i>, weak, useless.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<p>In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the
+bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will
+be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does&mdash;he's juist a bodie!"
+The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year
+from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he
+may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief
+occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the
+discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld
+residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can
+tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking
+geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for
+the drink&mdash;ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of
+whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye
+see, that's the reason o't.</p>
+
+<p>The genus "bodie" is divided into two species&mdash;the "harmless bodies" and
+the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second
+variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough
+fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay
+spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure,
+was not an impartial witness.</p>
+
+<p>The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they
+forgathered every day to pass <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>judgment on the town's affairs. And,
+indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it
+was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to
+which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing
+at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left
+and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets
+that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street,
+and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters,
+the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a
+fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned
+to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never
+be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing
+speculation which often lasted half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the
+yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their
+morning dram.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.</p>
+
+<p>When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you
+felt sure it was going to be good.</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam,
+casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft,
+white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds,
+it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."</p>
+
+<p>Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to
+himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in
+accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always
+grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he
+had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be
+cheap"&mdash;and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr.
+Wylie.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
+be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
+plentiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
+three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
+and Barbie dances till't."</p>
+
+<p>That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
+clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
+knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
+Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
+about the hay.</p>
+
+<p>"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
+baker.</p>
+
+<p>"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
+the Cross! Where'll <i>he</i> be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
+often up so soon."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.</p>
+
+<p>"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
+whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
+the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
+in <i>him</i>. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."</p>
+
+<p>T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
+Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
+staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.</p>
+
+<p>"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
+big shoulder to get a look.</p>
+
+<p>"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to
+<i>her</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's
+speiring him for bawbees."</p>
+
+<p>"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>"Or the Fechars?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe
+for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly
+gowk."</p>
+
+<p>"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur
+than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,</div>
+<div>Till by himsel' he learned to wander,</div>
+<div>Adown some trottin' burn's meander,</div>
+<div class="i3">And no thick lang;</div>
+<div>Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder</div>
+<div class="i3">A heartfelt sang.'"</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he
+said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good!&mdash;Who's yellow
+doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's like a herd's doag!"</p>
+
+<p>"Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb
+fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will
+have lost him."</p>
+
+<p>"Imph, that'll be the way o't."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle,
+who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying
+quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was
+exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.</p>
+
+<p>"The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that
+airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn
+voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a
+moment every head was turned to the hill.</p>
+
+<p>"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of
+eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his
+profoundest cogitations to the "boax."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."</p>
+
+<p>"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"</p>
+
+<p>At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his
+spine, so that his face was visible.</p>
+
+<p>"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll <i>he</i> be
+doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always
+busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to
+somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than
+usual in the animation of discovery&mdash;"I'll wager ye Gourlay has
+quarrelled him and put him to the door!"</p>
+
+<p>"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay,
+ay&mdash;faith ay&mdash;and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right,
+Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news <i>this</i>
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to
+meet Gilmour coming down.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down
+the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>"Ay, man, John. How's that na?"</p>
+
+<p>To be the centre of interest and the object of gracious condescension
+was balm to the wounded feelings of Gilmour. Gourlay had lowered him,
+but this reception restored him to his own good opinion. He was usually
+called "Jock" (except by his mother, to whom, of course, he was "oor
+Johnny"), but the best merchants in the town were addressing him as
+"John." It was a great occasion. Gilmour expanded in gossip beneath its
+influence benign.</p>
+
+<p>He welcomed, too, this first and fine opportunity of venting his wrath
+on the Gourlays.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I just telled Gourlay what I thocht of him, and took the door ahint
+me. I let him have it hot and hardy, I can tell ye. He'll no forget <i>me</i>
+in a hurry"&mdash;Gilmour bawled angrily, and nodded his head significantly,
+and glared fiercely, to show what good cause he had given Gourlay to
+remember him&mdash;"he'll no forget <i>me</i> for a month of Sundays."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, John, what did ye say till him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Na, man, what did he say to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wath he angry, Dyohn?"</p>
+
+<p>"How did the thing begin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us, man, John."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it a-all about, John?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was Mrs. Gourlay there?"</p>
+
+<p>Bewildered by this pelt of questions, Gilmour answered the last that hit
+his ear. "There, ay; faith, she was there. It was her was the cause
+o't."</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye tell me that, John? Man, you surprise me. I would have thocht the
+thowless trauchle<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> hadna the smeddum left to interfere."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was yon boy of hers. He's aye swaggerin' aboot, interferin' wi'
+folk at their wark&mdash;he follows his faither's example in that, for as the
+auld cock craws the young ane learns&mdash;and his mither's that daft aboot
+him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> that ye daurna give a look! He came in my road when I was sweeping
+out the close, and some o' the dirty jaups splashed about his shins. But
+was I to blame for that?&mdash;ye maun walk wide o' a whalebone besom if ye
+dinna want to be splashed. Afore I kenned where I was, he up wi' a dirty
+washing-clout and slashed me in the face wi't! I hit him a thud in the
+ear&mdash;as wha wadna? Out come his mither like a fury, skirling about <i>her</i>
+hoose, and <i>her</i> servants, and <i>her</i> weans. 'Your servant!' says
+I&mdash;'your servant! You're a nice-looking trollop to talk aboot servants,'
+says I."</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye really, John?"</p>
+
+<p>"Man, that wath bauld o' ye."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did <i>she</i> say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she just kept skirling! And then, to be sure, Gourlay must come out
+and interfere! But I telled him to his face what I thocht of <i>him!</i> 'The
+best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather,' says I, ''s no gaun to make
+dirt of me,' says I."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Dyohn!" lisped Deacon Allardyce, with bright and eagerly
+inquiring eyes. "And what did he thay to that na? <i>That</i> wath a dig for
+him! I'the warrant he wath angry."</p>
+
+<p>"Angry? He foamed at the mouth! But I up and says to him, 'I have had
+enough o' you,' says I, 'you and your Hoose wi' the Green Shutters,'
+says I. 'You're no fit to have a decent servant,' says I. 'Pay <i>me my</i>
+wages, and I'll be redd o' ye,' says I. And wi' that I flang my kist on
+my shouther and slapped the gate ahint me."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>did</i> he pay ye your wages?" Tam Wylie probed him slyly, with a
+sideward glimmer in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, no&mdash;not exactly," said Gilmour, drawing in. "But I'll get
+them right enough for a' that. He'll no get the better o' <i>me</i>." Having
+grounded unpleasantly on the question of the wages, he thought it best
+to be off ere the bloom was dashed from his importance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> so he
+shouldered his chest and went. The bodies watched him down the street.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a lying brose, that," said the baker. "We a' ken what Gourlay is.
+He would have flung Gilmour out by the scruff o' the neck if he had
+daured to set his tongue against him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, that's so," said Tam Wylie and Johnny Coe together.</p>
+
+<p>But the others were divided between their perception of the fact and
+their wish to believe that Gourlay had received a thrust or two. At
+other times they would have been the first to scoff at Gilmour's
+swagger. Now their animus against Gourlay prompted them to back it up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not so sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false,
+loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound;
+"I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled
+persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied
+Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will do him good."</p>
+
+<p>For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is
+rampant in petty towns such as Barbie. To go back to the beginning, the
+Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone
+is enough to make him so; for it is a scheme of personal salvation
+significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie.
+"At the Day of Judgment, my frehnds," said Mr. Struthers&mdash;"at the Day of
+Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!" Self-dependence was
+never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and
+the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the
+Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if
+it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells.</p>
+
+<p>From their individualism, however, comes inevitably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> a keen spirit of
+competition (the more so because Scotch democracy gives fine chances to
+compete), and from their keen spirit of competition comes, inevitably
+again, an envious belittlement of rivals. If a man's success offends
+your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a
+recognized weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit, and (inversely)
+elevates his rival.</p>
+
+<p>It is in a small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent,
+because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his
+neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example,
+and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin.
+"I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim (and when
+their hearts are big they are big to hypertrophy)&mdash;"I have grand news
+the day! Man, Jock Goudie has won the C.B."&mdash;"Jock Goudie"&mdash;an envious
+bodie will pucker as if he had never heard the name&mdash;"Jock Goudie? Wha's
+<i>he</i> for a Goudie? Oh ay, let me see now. He's a brother o'&mdash;eh, a
+brother o'&mdash;eh" (tit-tit-titting on his brow)&mdash;"oh, just a brother o'
+Drucken Will Goudie o' Auchterwheeze! Oo-ooh, I ken <i>him</i> fine. His
+grannie keepit a sweetie-shop in Strathbungo." There you have the
+"nesty" Scotsman.</p>
+
+<p>Even if Gourlay had been a placable and inoffensive man, then, the
+malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village)
+would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them.
+No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot (especially when
+spite wings his intuition), and Gourlay's thickness of wit and pride of
+place would in any case have drawn their sneers. So, too, on lower
+grounds, would his wife's sluttishness. But his repressiveness added a
+hundredfold to their hate of him. That was the particular cause which,
+acting on their general tendency to belittle a too-successful rival,
+made their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> spite almost monstrous against him. Not a man among them but
+had felt the weight of his tongue&mdash;for edge it had none. He walked among
+them like the dirt below his feet. There was no give and take in the
+man; he could be verra jocose with the lairds, to be sure, but he never
+dropped in to the Red Lion for a crack and a dram with the town-folk; he
+just glowered as if he could devour them! And who was he, I should like
+to know? His grandfather had been noathing but a common carrier!</p>
+
+<p>Hate was the greater on both sides because it was often impotent.
+Gourlay frequently suspected offence, and seethed because he had no idea
+how to meet it&mdash;except by driving slowly down the brae in his new gig
+and never letting on when the Provost called to him. That was a wipe in
+the eye for the Provost! The "bodies," on their part, could rarely get
+near enough Gourlay to pierce his armour; he kept them off him by his
+brutal dourness. For it was not only pride and arrogance, but a
+consciousness also that he was no match for them at their own game, that
+kept Gourlay away from their society. They were adepts at the under
+stroke, and they would have given him many a dig if he had only come
+amongst them. But, oh no, not he; he was the big man; he never gave a
+body a chance! Or if you did venture a bit jibe when you met him, he
+glowered you off the face of the earth with thae black een of his. Oh,
+how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused
+by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The
+"bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but
+against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an
+insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against
+him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the
+street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was
+absurd for a man in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> "poseetion." But it was done with the sole
+desire of hearing something that might tell against Gourlay. Even
+countesses, we are told, gossip with malicious maids about other
+countesses. Spite is a great leveller.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we adjourn?" said Brodie, when they had watched Jock Gilmour out
+of sight. He pointed across his shoulder to the Red Lion.</p>
+
+<p>"Better noat just now," said the Provost, nodding in slow
+authority&mdash;"better noat just now! I'm very anxious to see Gourlay about
+yon matter we were speaking of, doan't ye understa-and? But I'm
+determined not to go to his house! On the other hand, if we go into the
+Red Lion the now, we may miss him on the street. We'll noat have loang
+to wait, though; he'll be down the town directly, to look at the horses
+he has at the gerse out the Fechars Road. But <i>I'm</i> talling ye, I simply
+will noat go to his house&mdash;to put up with a wheen damned insults!" he
+puffed in angry recollection.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell the truth," said Wylie, "I don't like to call upon Gourlay
+either. I'm aware of his eyes on my back when I slink beaten through his
+gate, and I feel that my hurdies are wanting in dignity!"</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" spluttered Brodie, "that never affects me. I come stunting out in
+a bleeze of wrath and slam the yett ahint me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," said the Deacon, "that'th one way of being dignified."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid," said Sandy Toddle, "that he won't be in a very good key to
+consider our request this morning, after his quarrel with Gilmour."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Provost; "he'll be blazing angry! It's most unfoartunate.
+But we maun try to get his consent, be his temper what it will. It's a
+matter of importance to the town, doan't ye see, and if he refuses we
+simply can-noat proceed wi' the improvement."</p>
+
+<p>"It was Gilmour's jibe at the House wi' the Green Shutters that would
+anger him the most, for it's the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> perfect god of his idolatry. Eh, sirs,
+he has wasted an awful money upon yon house!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wasted's the word!" said Brodie, with a blatant laugh. "Wasted's the
+word! They say he has verra little lying cash! And I shouldna be
+surprised at all. For, ye see, Gibson the builder diddled him owre the
+building o't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'se warrant Cunning Johnny would get the better of an ass like
+Gourlay. But how in particular, Mr. Brodie? Have ye heard ainy details?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been on the track o' the thing for a while back, but it was only
+yestreen I had the proofs o't. It was Robin Wabster that telled me. He's
+a jouking bodie, Robin, and he was ahint a dike up the Skeighan Road
+when Gibson and Gourlay forgathered&mdash;they stoppit just forenenst him!
+Gourlay began to curse at the size of Gibson's bill, but Cunning Johnny
+kenned the way to get round him brawly. 'Mr. Gourlay,' says he, 'there's
+not a thing in your house that a man in your poseetion can afford to be
+without, and ye needn't expect the best house in Barbie for an oald
+song!' And Gourlay was pacified at once! It appeared frae their crack,
+however, that Gibson has diddled him tremendous. 'Verra well then,'
+Robin heard Gourlay cry, 'you must allow me a while ere I pay that!' I
+wager, for a' sae muckle as he's made of late, that his balance at the
+bank's a sma' yin."</p>
+
+<p>"More thyow than thubstanth," said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure!" said the Provost, "he needn't have built such a
+gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I
+wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have
+come to her support!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his
+own pride, the brute. He leads the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> woman the life of a doag. I'm
+surprised that he ever married her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi'
+her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars&mdash;a grand farmer he
+was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees,
+and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was <i>her</i> money, as ye
+ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never
+cared a preen for <i>her</i>, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he
+couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And
+yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a
+braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind,
+and&mdash;ochonee! ochonee!&mdash;as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a
+cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a
+summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the
+gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads
+thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of
+the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan
+(that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and
+he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig
+and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a
+braw lass she&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing
+aside the reminiscent Coe.</p>
+
+<p>"How can it be that, Provost? It'th <i>your</i> place, surely. You're the
+head of the town!"</p>
+
+<p>When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who
+should be hindmost.</p>
+
+<p>"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look
+of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The
+thing'll gang smash at the outset&mdash;<i>I'm</i> talling ye, now&mdash;it'll go
+smash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a
+better way of approaching folk!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to
+see if the Provost was guying him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and Tam Wylie in a
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, it maun be left to the Deacon," assented Johnny Coe, when he
+saw how the others were giving their opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"Tho be it, then," snapped the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Here he comes," said Sandy Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay came down the street towards them, his chest big, his thumbs in
+the armholes of his waistcoat. He had the power of staring steadily at
+those whom he approached without the slightest sign of recognition or
+intelligence appearing in his eyes. As he marched down upon the bodies
+he fixed them with a wide-open glower that was devoid of every
+expression but courageous steadiness. It gave a kind of fierce vacancy
+to his look.</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon limped forward on his thin shanks to the middle of the road.</p>
+
+<p>"It'th a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," he simpered.</p>
+
+<p>"There's noathing wrong with the morning," grunted Gourlay, as if there
+was something wrong with the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"We wath wanting to thee ye on a very important matter, Mithter
+Gourlay," lisped the Deacon, smiling up at the big man's face, with his
+head on one side, and rubbing his fingers in front of him. "It'th a
+matter of the common good, you thee; and we all agreed that we should
+speak to <i>you</i>, ath the foremost merchant of the town!"</p>
+
+<p>Allardyce meant his compliment to fetch Gourlay. But Gourlay knew his
+Allardyce, and was cautious. It was well to be on your guard when the
+Deacon was complimentary. When his language was most flowery there was
+sure to be a serpent hidden in it somewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> He would lisp out an
+innocent remark and toddle away, and Gourlay would think nothing of the
+matter till a week afterwards, perhaps, when something would flash a
+light; then "Damn him, did he mean '<i>that</i>'?" he would seethe, starting
+back and staring at the "<i>that</i>" while his fingers strangled the air in
+place of the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>He glowered at the Deacon now till the Deacon blinked.</p>
+
+<p>"You thee, Mr. Gourlay," Allardyce shuffled uneasily, "it'th for your
+own benefit just ath much ath ourth. We were thinking of you ath well
+ath of ourthelves! Oh yeth, oh yeth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man!" said Gourlay, "that was kind of ye! I'll be the first man in
+Barbie to get ainy benefit from the fools that mismanage our affairs."</p>
+
+<p>The gravel grated beneath the Provost's foot. The atmosphere was
+becoming electric, and the Deacon hastened to the point.</p>
+
+<p>"You thee, there'th a fine natural supply of water&mdash;a perfect reservore
+the Provost sayth&mdash;on the brae-face just above <i>your</i> garden, Mr.
+Gourlay. Now, it would be easy to lead that water down and alang through
+all the gardenth on the high side of Main Street&mdash;and, 'deed, it might
+feed a pump at the Cross, too, to supply the lower portionth o' the
+town. It would really be a grai-ait convenience. Every man on the high
+side o' Main Street would have a running spout at his own back door! If
+your garden didna run tho far back, Mr. Gourlay, and ye hadna tho muckle
+land about your place"&mdash;<i>that</i> should fetch him, thought the Deacon&mdash;"if
+it werena for that, Mr. Gourlay, we could easily lead the water round to
+the other gardenth without interfering with your property. But, ath it
+ith, we simply can-noat move without ye. The water must come through
+your garden, if it comes at a-all."</p>
+
+<p>"The most o' you important men live on the high side o' Main Street,"
+birred Gourlay. "Is it the poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> folk at the Cross, or your ain bits o'
+back doors that you're thinking o'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh, Mr. Gourlay!" protested Allardyce, head flung back, and palms
+in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh&mdash;oh, Mr. Gourlay!
+We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I do assure ye."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man! You're dis-in-ter-ested!" said Gourlay, but he stumbled on the
+big word and spoiled the sneer. That angered him, and, "It's likely," he
+rapped out, "that I'll allow the land round <i>my</i> house to be howked and
+trenched and made a mudhole of to oblige a wheen things like you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh, but think of the convenience to uth&mdash;eh&mdash;eh&mdash;I mean to the
+common good," said Allardyce.</p>
+
+<p>"I howked wells for myself," snapped Gourlay. "Let others do the like."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we haven't all the enterprithe of you, Mr. Gourlay. You'll
+surely accommodate the town!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see the town damned first," said Gourlay, and passed on his steady
+way.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Trauchle</i>, a poor trollop who trails about; <i>smeddum</i>,
+grit.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<p>The bodies watched Gourlay in silence until he was out of earshot. Then,
+"It's monstrous!" the Provost broke out in solemn anger; "I declare it's
+perfectly monstrous! But I believe we could get Pow-ers to compel him.
+Yass; I believe we could get Pow-ers. I do believe we could get
+Pow-ers."</p>
+
+<p>The Provost was fond of talking about "Pow-ers," because it implied that
+he was intimate with the great authorities who might delegate such
+"Pow-ers" to him. To talk of "Pow-ers," mysteriously, was a tribute to
+his own importance. He rolled the word on his tongue as if he enjoyed
+the sound of it.</p>
+
+<p>On the Deacon's cheek bones two red spots flamed, round and big as a
+Scotch penny. His was the hurt silence of the baffled diplomatist, to
+whom a defeat means reflections on his own ability.</p>
+
+<p>"Demn him!" he skirled, following the solid march of his enemy with
+fiery eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had his deaconship been heard to swear. Tam Wylie laughed
+at the shrill oath till his eyes were buried in his merry wrinkles, a
+suppressed snirt, a continuous gurgle in the throat and nose, in beaming
+survey the while of the withered old creature dancing in his rage. (It
+was all a good joke to Tam, because, living on the outskirts of the
+town, he had no spigot of his own to feed.) The Deacon turned the eyes
+of hate on him. Demn Wylie too&mdash;what was he laughing at!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I dare thay you could have got round him!" he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"In my opinion, Allardyce," said the baker, "you mismanaged the whole
+affair. Yon wasna the way to approach him!"</p>
+
+<p>"It'th a pity you didna try your hand, then, I'm sure! No doubt a clever
+man like <i>you</i> would have worked wonderth!"</p>
+
+<p>So the bodies wrangled among themselves. Somehow or other Gourlay had
+the knack of setting them by the ears. It was not till they hit on a
+common topic of their spite in railing at him that they became a band of
+brothers and a happy few.</p>
+
+<p>"Whisht!" said Sandy Toddle suddenly; "here's his boy!"</p>
+
+<p>John was coming towards them on his way to school. The bodies watched
+him as he passed, with the fixed look men turn on a boy of whose kinsmen
+they were talking even now. They affect a stony and deliberate regard,
+partly to include the newcomer in their critical survey of his family,
+and partly to banish from their own eyes any sign that they have just
+been running down his people. John, as quick as his mother to feel, knew
+in a moment they were watching <i>him</i>. He hung his head sheepishly and
+blushed, and the moment he was past he broke into a nervous trot, the
+bag of books bumping on his back as he ran.</p>
+
+<p>"He's getting a big boy, that son of Gourlay's," said the Provost; "how
+oald will he be?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's approaching twelve," said Johnny Coe, who made a point of being
+able to supply such news because it gained him consideration where he
+was otherwise unheeded. "He was born the day the brig on the Fleckie
+Road gaed down, in the year o' the great flood; and since the great
+flood it's twelve year come Lammas. Rab Tosh o' Fleckie's wife was
+heavy-footed at the time, and Doctor Munn had been a' nicht wi' her, and
+when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> he cam to Barbie Water in the morning it was roaring wide frae
+bank to brae; where the brig should have been there was naething but the
+swashing of the yellow waves. Munn had to drive a' the way round to the
+Fechars brig, and in parts o' the road the water was so deep that it
+lapped his horse's bellyband. A' this time Mrs. Gourlay was skirling in
+her pains and praying to God she micht dee. Gourlay had been a great
+crony o' Munn's, but he quarrelled him for being late; he had trysted
+him, ye see, for the occasion, and he had been twenty times at the yett
+to look for him. Ye ken how little he would stomach that; he was ready
+to brust wi' anger. Munn, mad for the want of sleep and wat to the bane,
+sw&uuml;re back at him; and than Gourlay wadna let him near his wife! Ye mind
+what an awful day it was; the thunder roared as if the heavens were
+tumbling on the world, and the lichtnin sent the trees daudin on the
+roads, and folk hid below their beds and prayed&mdash;they thocht it was the
+Judgment! But Gourlay rammed his black stepper in the shafts, and drave
+like the devil o' hell to Skeighan Drone, where there was a young
+doctor. The lad was feared to come, but Gourlay swore by God that he
+should, and he garred him. In a' the countryside driving like his that
+day was never kenned or heard tell o'; they were back within the hour! I
+saw them gallop up Main Street; lichtnin struck the ground before them;
+the young doctor covered his face wi' his hands, and the horse nichered
+wi' fear and tried to wheel, but Gourlay stood up in the gig and lashed
+him on through the fire. It was thocht for lang that Mrs. Gourlay would
+die; and she was never the same woman after. Atweel, ay, sirs, Gourlay
+has that morning's work to blame for the poor wife he has now. Him and
+Munn never spoke to each other again, and Munn died within the
+twelvemonth&mdash;he got his death that morning on the Fleckie Road. But, for
+a' so pack's they had been, Gourlay never looked near him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well&mdash;for
+Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the
+ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew,
+besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was
+lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay
+went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had
+seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in
+spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on
+the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on
+his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the
+sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of
+admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything.
+And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact
+of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller,
+and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them,
+was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but
+he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by
+bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.</p>
+
+<p>"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
+Doctor Dandy brocht <i>her</i> hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
+Dandy had his place."</p>
+
+<p>"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
+doctor or a minister or wha-at?"</p>
+
+<p>"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
+It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
+again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
+speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
+Provost.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
+flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
+direction of their thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
+his chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.</p>
+
+<p>"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<p>John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
+trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
+There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every other
+day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a most
+appropriate <i>r&ocirc;le</i>. If his father was not about he would hang round his
+mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
+"Bleach-the-boys"&mdash;as the master had been christened by his scholars.
+"Mother, I have a pain in <i>my</i> heid," he would whimper, and she would
+condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her&mdash;were
+it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
+strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
+really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
+home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
+keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
+his father.</p>
+
+<p>On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
+was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
+slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
+scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now&mdash;and the
+Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
+he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
+his return, never failing to note with delight the clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> smell of the
+yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
+nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
+Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
+arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
+his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
+attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
+his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
+so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
+the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
+himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
+comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
+Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
+absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
+forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
+have been much more at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
+John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
+of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
+he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
+became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart&mdash;to feel
+it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
+joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of
+odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a
+misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he
+knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop,
+on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression,
+and feeling like a boy slinking into school.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that
+morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he
+crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes'
+run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this
+unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the
+pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the
+wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front,
+making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.</p>
+
+<p>He began talking of the new range.</p>
+
+<p>"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this
+morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and
+solemn protest. "It wasna <i>my</i> faut! We're getting in a grand new range,
+and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room
+for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning,
+because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour&mdash;and here,
+when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!</p>
+
+<p>"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited
+jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the
+afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"</p>
+
+<p>The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly
+thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys,
+they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only
+grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee.
+It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in
+uncomfortable silence.</p>
+
+<p>"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my
+father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best!
+Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I
+leave the schule&mdash;and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't;
+I'll no bide a day longer than I need!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> I'm to go into the business, and
+then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two
+dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't."</p>
+
+<p>"Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle
+of his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with
+delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one
+fit retort to his bouncing.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head
+against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he
+brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath
+against Swipey.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey
+Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"</p>
+
+<p>In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt
+sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't.</p>
+
+<p>"G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man!
+Don't have <i>me</i> getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your
+duds!"</p>
+
+<p>Now the father of Swipey&mdash;so called because he always swiped when
+batting at rounders&mdash;the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant
+of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that
+his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated,
+therefore, to sting him to the quick.</p>
+
+<p>The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove
+straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and
+Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "<i>Ooh!</i>"
+with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull
+its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his
+knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily
+(from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"</p>
+
+<p>Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey
+jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another
+moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant
+Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!"&mdash;Swipey's father was
+an Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie&mdash;"let him up, and meet each other
+square!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with
+magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the
+air. "I could fight ten of him!&mdash;Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll
+poultice the road wi' your brose."</p>
+
+<p>John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys
+ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and
+shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he
+ran.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which
+Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<p>All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
+sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
+and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
+sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
+anvil.</p>
+
+<p>John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
+unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
+look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
+silent faces.</p>
+
+<p>A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
+a lonely smell, and ran to get away.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
+through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
+simple expression of his wish.</p>
+
+<p>"What for, my sweet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."</p>
+
+<p>His mother saw his cut mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
+Has ainybody been meddling ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Swipey Broon," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
+decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
+them! But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
+It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"</p>
+
+<p>In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
+on which she sank exhausted by her rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
+fleas off him. The other boys were on <i>his</i> side, or I would have
+walloped him."</p>
+
+<p>"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
+Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
+not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
+intil."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If <i>he</i> saw ye!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
+garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
+stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
+streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
+centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
+up. He could hear the pigeons <i>rooketty-cooing</i> on the roof, and every
+now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
+slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
+still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
+started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!</p>
+
+<p>If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
+his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
+snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
+somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
+kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
+earth, but a skylight looks to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> heavens. (That is why so many poets
+live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
+and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
+there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
+great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
+would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
+thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
+the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess&mdash;good
+jade!&mdash;stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
+friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
+mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
+glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
+the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
+mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
+painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
+best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
+picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
+from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
+Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
+the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
+water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
+the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
+roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
+she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
+glaring from the pool.&mdash;Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
+kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that <i>he</i> liked. He
+wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
+were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
+waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
+somewhat too florid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
+a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
+beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
+slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
+gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
+they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
+and their love!" quoth he.</p>
+
+<p>To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from
+something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things
+to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of
+the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed,
+or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves
+vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was
+hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his
+mottled nose&mdash;John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw
+the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The
+varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs.
+Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself&mdash;to all
+these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the
+impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he
+was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that
+was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate
+it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge,
+among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended
+beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall
+suddenly down, and creep patiently again&mdash;this he would watch with
+curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once,
+"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p><p>"They're queer," he said musingly.</p>
+
+<p>Even if he <i>was</i> a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
+to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
+moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
+numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
+story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
+world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
+wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
+rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
+from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
+voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
+then&mdash;oh, horror!&mdash;his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
+garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
+against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
+bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
+room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy steps came back to the landing.</p>
+
+<p>"Whaur's <i>my</i> gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
+mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hah!</i>" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
+should come in!</p>
+
+<p>But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
+pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
+kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
+them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
+himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> through the keyhole
+drearily; "<i>oo-woo-oo</i>," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
+depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
+fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
+never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
+clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
+paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
+a thin silt of black dust had gathered&mdash;the light showed it plainly. All
+these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
+unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But
+it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at
+all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as
+his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing
+his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.</p>
+
+<p>At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He
+crept down the stair.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in
+accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."</p>
+
+<p>"If ye wud&mdash;&mdash;" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She
+shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.</p>
+
+<p>The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing
+it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs.
+Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a
+faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the
+grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the
+men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy
+range.</p>
+
+<p>"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye
+get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p><p>"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the
+train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he
+added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."</p>
+
+<p>The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a
+little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright,
+sharp edges.</p>
+
+<p>"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of
+the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I
+happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as
+the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says
+he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?'
+says I. 'How do <i>you</i> ken what <i>I</i> want?' I made short work o' <i>him!</i>
+The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."</p>
+
+<p>Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a
+poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in
+Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.</p>
+
+<p>The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's
+an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man
+wi't."</p>
+
+<p>"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."</p>
+
+<p>The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
+the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
+up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
+with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
+laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
+heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
+Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
+he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
+stared and shuddered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
+fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
+here! It's exactly the same size!"</p>
+
+<p>"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
+"You'll be killing folk next."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<p>"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart,
+to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Have the carriers a big load?"</p>
+
+<p>"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And
+there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."</p>
+
+<p>The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and
+this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy
+thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky
+of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the
+cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of
+the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile
+ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the
+ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove
+away!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from
+beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean&mdash;d'ye mean
+the carriers too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> his fob, and,
+"It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only human
+being with whom he was ever really at his ease. It is only when a mind
+feels secure in itself that it can laugh unconcernedly at others. Peter
+was so simple that in his presence Gourlay felt secure; and he used to
+banter him.</p>
+
+<p>"The folk at the Cross winna expect the carriers till aicht, sir," said
+Peter, "and I doubt their stuff won't be ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Peter," Gourlay joked lazily, as if Peter was a little boy.
+"Ay, man, Peter. You think the folk at the Cross winna be prepared?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Peter, opening his eyes very solemnly, "they winna be
+prepared."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll do them good to hurry a little for once," growled Gourlay, humour
+yielding to spite at the thought of his enemies. "It'll do them good to
+hurry a little for once. Be off, the lot of ye!"</p>
+
+<p>After ordering his carriers to start, to back down and postpone their
+departure, just to suit the convenience of his neighbours, would
+derogate from his own importance. His men might think he was afraid of
+Barbie.</p>
+
+<p>He strolled out to the big gate and watched his teams going down the
+brae.</p>
+
+<p>There were only four carts this morning because the two that had gone to
+Fechars yesterday with the cheese would not be back till the afternoon;
+and another had already turned west to Auchterwheeze, to bring slates
+for the flesher's new house. Of the four that went down the street two
+were the usual carriers' carts, the other two were off to Fleckie with
+meal, and Gourlay had started them the sooner since they were to bring
+back the ironwork which Templandmuir needed for his new improvements.
+Though the Templar had reformed greatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> since he married his birkie
+wife, he was still far from having his place in proper order, and he had
+often to depend on Gourlay for the carrying of stuff which a man in his
+position should have had horses of his own to bring.</p>
+
+<p>As Gourlay stood at his gate he pondered with heavy cunning how much he
+might charge Templandmuir for bringing the ironwork from Fleckie. He
+decided to charge him for the whole day, though half of it would be
+spent in taking his own meal to Donnerton. In that he was carrying out
+his usual policy&mdash;which was to make each side of his business help the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood puzzling his wits over Templandmuir's account, his lips
+worked in and out, to assist the slow process of his brain. His eyes
+narrowed between peering lids, and their light seemed to turn inward as
+he fixed them abstractedly on a stone in the middle of the road. His
+head was tilted that he might keep his eyes upon the stone; and every
+now and then, as he mused, he rubbed his chin slowly between the thumb
+and fingers of his left hand. Entirely given up to the thought of
+Templandmuir's account, he failed to see the figure advancing up the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>At last the scrunch of a boot on the wet road struck his ear. He turned
+with his best glower on the man who was approaching; more of the
+"Wha-the-bleezes-are-you?" look than ever in his eyes&mdash;because he had
+been caught unawares.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger wore a light yellow overcoat, and he had been walking a
+long time in the rain apparently, for the shoulders of the coat were
+quite black with the wet, these black patches showing in strong contrast
+with the dryer, therefore yellower, front of it. Coat and jacket were
+both hanging slightly open, and between was seen the slight bulge of a
+dirty white waistcoat. The newcomer's trousers were turned high at the
+bottom, and the muddy spats he wore looked big and ungainly in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+consequence. In this appearance there was an air of dirty and
+pretentious well-to-do-ness. It was not shabby gentility. It was like
+the gross attempt at dress of your well-to-do publican who looks down on
+his soiled white waistcoat with complacent and approving eye.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," simpered the stranger. His air was
+that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on
+the weather with his laird.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that <i>your</i> opinion?" said he. "I fail to see't mysell."</p>
+
+<p>It was not in Gourlay to see the beauty of that gray, wet dawn. A fine
+morning to him was one that burnt the back of your neck.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger laughed: a little deprecating giggle. "I meant it was fine
+weather for the fields," he explained. He had meant nothing of the kind,
+of course; he had merely been talking at random in his wish to be civil
+to that important man, John Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Imphm," he pondered, looking round on the weather with a wise air;
+"imphm; it's fine weather for the fields."</p>
+
+<p>"Are <i>you</i> a farmer, then?" Gourlay nipped him, with his eye on the
+white waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi&mdash;hi! I'm not a farmer. I dare
+say, now, you have no mind of <i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his
+dark eyes. "I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering
+<i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, I'm a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!" said contemptuous Gourlay. "What's
+this they christened him now? 'Toddling Johnnie,' was it noat?"</p>
+
+<p>Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> awkwardness of the
+remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the
+insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed
+aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure
+might provoke.</p>
+
+<p>But though Wilson was not a hardy man, it was not timidity only that
+caused his tame submission to Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of
+money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the
+mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the
+most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and
+fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well,"
+he would have swelled with gratified pride. For it is often the
+favourable estimate of their own little village&mdash;"What they'll think of
+me at home"&mdash;that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way
+in the world. No doubt that is why so many of them go home and cut a
+dash when they have made their fortunes; they want the cronies of their
+youth to see the big men they have become. Wilson was not exempt from
+that weakness. As far back as he remembered Gourlay had been the big man
+of Barbie; as a boy he had viewed him with admiring awe; to be received
+by him now, as one of the well-to-do, were a sweet recognition of his
+greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his
+smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that,
+though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his
+father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had
+been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they
+are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy
+self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to
+divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped
+comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> though a
+dull man&mdash;perhaps because he was a dull man&mdash;suspected insult in a
+moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's brain (though he was cleverer
+than most) that the world could find anything to scoff at in such a fine
+fellow as James Wilson. A less ironic brute than Gourlay would never
+have pierced the thickness of his hide. It was because Gourlay succeeded
+in piercing it that morning that Wilson hated him for ever&mdash;with a hate
+the more bitter because he was rebuffed so seldom.</p>
+
+<p>"Is business brisk?" he asked, irrepressible.</p>
+
+<p>Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's
+son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him
+setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town
+whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place,
+the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!</p>
+
+<p>For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson's manner that
+offended Gourlay&mdash;as if mole-catcher's son and monopolist were
+discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Business!" he said gravely. "Well, I'm not well acquainted with your
+line, but I believe mole traps are cheap&mdash;if ye have any idea of taking
+up the oald trade."</p>
+
+<p>Wilson's eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth
+opened&mdash;then shut&mdash;then he decided to speak after all. "Oh, I was
+thinking Barbie would be very quiet," said he, "compared wi' places
+where they have the railway. I was thinking it would need stirring up a
+bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?" birred Gourlay, with a stupid man's
+repetition of his jibe. "Well, I believe there's a grand opening in the
+moleskin line, so <i>there's</i> a chance for ye. My quarrymen wear out their
+breeks in no time."</p>
+
+<p>Wilson's face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white.
+"Good-morning!" he said, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> started rapidly away with a vicious dig of
+his stick upon the wet road.</p>
+
+<p>"Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" Gourlay birred after him; "goo-ood
+mor-r-ning, serr!" He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put
+the branks on Wilson!</p>
+
+<p>Wilson was as furious at himself as at Gourlay. Why the devil had he
+said "Good-morning"? It had slipped out of him unawares, and Gourlay had
+taken it up with an ironic birr that rang in his ears now, poisoning his
+blood. He felt equal in fancy to a thousand Gourlays now&mdash;so strong was
+he in wrath against him. He had gone forward to pass pleasant remarks
+about the weather, and why should he noat?&mdash;he was no disgrace to
+Barbie, but a credit rather. It was not every working-man's son that
+came back with five hundred in the bank. And here Gourlay had treated
+him like a doag! Ah, well, he would maybe be upsides with Gourlay yet,
+so he might!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<p>"Such a rickle of furniture I never saw!" said the Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose is it?" said Brodie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in
+air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of
+oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for
+a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this
+world's coming to!"</p>
+
+<p>"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at
+Fleckie for the last ten days&mdash;my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I
+dare say you have heard&mdash;oh yes, we must all go&mdash;so, ye see, I'm
+scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I
+thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."</p>
+
+<p>"Noat he! It's <i>whispered</i> indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help
+in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled
+there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to
+understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the
+Cross&mdash;for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his
+furniture&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that.
+Will that be a son of his?"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying
+chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson
+meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in
+shirt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically
+near his neck&mdash;so short was the space of shirt between the top line of
+his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and
+the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs,
+being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth
+instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a
+"cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek
+kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes,
+so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose.
+He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots&mdash;they only
+<i>looked</i> clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so
+thin&mdash;skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair
+inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes
+wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and
+sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for?
+They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle,
+forgetting his English in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in
+Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe
+wi't."</p>
+
+<p>"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.</p>
+
+<p>"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"It would take a heap to revolutionize <i>hit</i>," said the baker, the
+ironic man.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's
+gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me
+before."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p><p>"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation,
+and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient
+parable.</p>
+
+<p>"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the
+back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an
+opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a
+body comes to think o't."</p>
+
+<p>"What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind,
+quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt
+of its possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny
+Gibson&mdash;it was him had the selling o't&mdash;but he couldn't give me ainy
+satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid
+it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place
+for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that.
+'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The
+less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise
+me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said
+Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of
+<i>that</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be
+at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark
+much loanger!"</p>
+
+<p>Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to
+read the notice here appended:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Mr. James Wilson begs to announce to the inhabitants of Barbie
+and surrounding neighbourhood that he has taken these commodious
+premises, No. 1 The Cross, which he intends to open shortly as a
+Grocery, Ironmongery, and General Provision Store. J. W. is
+apprised that such an Emporium has long been a felt want in the
+locality. To meet this want is J. W.'s intention. He will try to do
+so, not by making large profits on a small business, but by making
+small profits on a large business. Indeed, owing to his long
+acquaintance with the trade, Mr. Wilson will be able to supply all
+commodities at a very little over cost price. For J. W. will use
+those improved methods of business which have been confined
+hitherto to the larger centres of population. At his Emporium you
+will be able, as the saying goes, to buy everything from a needle
+to an anchor. Moreover, to meet the convenience of his customers,
+J. W. will deliver goods at your own doors, distributing them with
+his own carts either in the town of Barbie or at any convenient
+distance from the same. Being a native of the district, his
+business hopes to secure a due share of your esteemed patronage.
+Thanking you, in anticipation, for the favour of an early visit,</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; "Believe me, Ladies and Gentlemen,</p>
+
+<p class="center">"Yours faithfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">James Wilson</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Such was the poster with which "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood"
+were besprinkled within a week of "J. W.'s" appearance on the scene. He
+was known as "J. W." ever after. To be known by your initials is
+sometimes a mark of affection, and sometimes a mark of disrespect. It
+was not a mark of affection in the case of our "J. W." When Donald Scott
+slapped him on the back and cried, "Hullo, J. W., how are the anchors
+selling?" Barbie had found a cue which it was not slow to make use of.
+Wilson even received letters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> addressed to "J. W., Anchor Merchant, No.
+1 The Cross." Ours is a nippy locality.</p>
+
+<p>But Wilson, cosy and cocky in his own good opinion, was impervious to
+the chilly winds of scorn. His posters, in big blue letters, were on the
+smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five
+miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of
+every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to
+door. The folk could talk of nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>"Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure
+here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in
+the gutter."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises
+owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end
+o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest
+man, used to tell the minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi'
+Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching.
+They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the
+considering eye in his head&mdash;yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from
+out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the
+cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And
+look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But
+Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and
+Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a
+great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their
+own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans
+round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like
+was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."</p>
+
+<p>It did.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to
+Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long
+time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the
+goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew,
+and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose;
+he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was
+whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and
+that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should
+credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's
+misdemeanour.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it
+is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake
+its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the
+larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us.
+Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look
+around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of
+chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phrase of
+Wilson's retired and solitary speculation. "Ay," he said, emerging from
+one of his business reveries, "there's bound to be heaps o' chances for
+a man like me, if I only look about me."</p>
+
+<p>He was "looking about him" in Glasgow when he forgathered with his
+cousin William&mdash;the borer he! After many "How are ye, Jims's" and mutual
+speirings over a "bit mouthful of yill"&mdash;so they phrased it; but that
+was a meiosis, for they drank five quarts&mdash;they fell to a serious
+discussion of the commercial possibilities of Scotland. The borer was of
+the opinion that the Braes of Barbie had a future yet, "for a' the
+gaffer was so keen on keeping his men in the dark about the coal."</p>
+
+<p>Now Wilson knew (as what Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties
+coal-boring in Scotland was not the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> honourable profession that it now
+is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were
+no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive
+preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In
+one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a
+laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda
+from its impoverished owner, laid the basis of a vast fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye mean&mdash;to tell&mdash;<i>me</i>, Weelyum Wilson," said James, giving him his
+full name in the solemnity of the moment, "d'ye mean&mdash;to tell&mdash;<i>me</i>,
+sir"&mdash;here he sank his voice to a whisper&mdash;"that there's joukery-pawkery
+at work?"</p>
+
+<p>"A declare to God A div," said Weelyum, with equal solemnity, and he
+nodded with alarmed sapience across his beer jug.</p>
+
+<p>"You believe there's plenty of coal up Barbie Valley, and that they're
+keeping it dark in the meantime for some purpose of their own?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," said Weelyum.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" said James, gripping the table with both hands in his
+excitement&mdash;"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has
+been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra
+little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a
+puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If
+I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I
+have in't. You're going home the night, are ye not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was just on my road to the station when I met ye," said Weelyum.</p>
+
+<p>"Send me a scrape of your pen to-morrow, man, if what you see on getting
+back keeps you still in the same mind o't. And directly I get your
+letter I'll run down and look about me."</p>
+
+<p>The letter was encouraging, and Wilson went forth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> to spy the land and
+initiate the plan of campaign. It was an important day for him. He
+entered on his feud with Gourlay, and bought Rab Jamieson's house and
+barn (with the field behind it) for a trifle. He had five hundred of his
+own, and he knew where more could be had for the asking.</p>
+
+<p>Rab Jamieson's barn was a curious building to be stranded in the midst
+of Barbie. In quaint villages and little towns of England you sometimes
+see a mellow red-tiled barn, with its rich yard, close upon the street;
+it seems to have been hemmed in by the houses round, while dozing, so
+that it could not escape with the fields fleeing from the town. There it
+remains and gives a ripeness to the place, matching fitly with the great
+horse-chestnut yellowing before the door, and the old inn further down,
+mantled in its blood-red creepers. But that autumnal warmth and cosiness
+is rarely seen in the barer streets of the north. How Rab Jamieson's
+barn came to be stuck in Barbie nobody could tell. It was a gaunt, gray
+building with never a window, but a bole high in one corner for the
+sheaves, and a door low in another corner for auld Rab Jamieson. There
+was no mill inside, and the place had not been used for years. But the
+roof was good, and the walls stout and thick, and Wilson soon got to
+work on his new possession. He had seen all that could be made of the
+place the moment he clapped an eye on it, and he knew that he had found
+a good thing, even if the pits should never come near Barbie. The bole
+and door next the street were walled up, and a fine new door opened in
+the middle, flanked on either side by a great window. The interior was
+fitted up with a couple of counters and a wooden floor; and above the
+new wood ceiling there was a long loft for a storeroom, lighted by
+skylights in the roof. That loft above the rafters, thought the
+provident Wilson, will come in braw and handy for storing things, so it
+will. And there, hey presto! the transformation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> was achieved, and
+Wilson's Emporium stood before you. It was crammed with merchandise. On
+the white flapping slant of a couple of awnings, one over each window,
+you might read in black letters, "JAMES WILSON: EMPORIUM." The letters
+of "James Wilson" made a triumphal arch, to which "Emporium" was the
+base. It seemed symbolical.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the shops of Barbie (the drunken man's shop and the dirty man's
+shop always excepted, of course) had usually been low-browed little
+places with faded black scrolls above the door, on which you might read
+in dim gilt letters (or it might be in white)</p>
+
+<p class="center">"<span class="smcap">Licens'd To Sell Tea &amp; Tobacco.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"Licens'd" was on one corner of the ribboned scroll, "To Sell Tea &amp;"
+occupied the flowing arch above, with "Tobacco" in the other corner.
+When you mounted two steps and opened the door, a bell of some kind went
+"<i>ping</i>" in the interior, and an old woman in a mutch, with big specs
+slipping down her nose, would come up a step from a dim little room
+behind, and wiping her sunken mouth with her apron&mdash;she had just left
+her tea&mdash;would say, "What's your wull the day, sir?" And if you said
+your "wull" was tobacco, she would answer, "Ou, sir, I dinna sell ocht
+now but the tape and sweeties." And then you went away, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the dirty man's shop and the drunken man's shop,
+that kind of shop was the Barbie kind of shop. But Wilson changed all
+that. One side of the Emporium was crammed with pots, pans, pails,
+scythes, gardening implements, and saws, with a big barrel of paraffin
+partitioned off in a corner. The rafters on that side were bristling and
+hoary with brushes of all kinds dependent from the roof, so that the
+minister's wife (who was a six-footer) went off with a brush in her
+bonnet once. Behind the other counter were canisters in goodly rows,
+barrels of flour and bags of meal, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> great yellow cheeses in the
+window. The rafters here were heavy with their wealth of hams,
+brown-skinned flitches of bacon interspersed with the white tight-corded
+home-cured&mdash;"Barbie's Best," as Wilson christened it. All along the
+back, in glass cases to keep them unsullied, were bales of cloth, layer
+on layer to the roof. It was a pleasure to go into the place, so big and
+bien was it, and to smell it on a frosty night set your teeth watering.
+There was always a big barrel of American apples just inside the door,
+and their homely fragrance wooed you from afar, the mellow savour
+cuddling round you half a mile off. Barbie boys had despised the
+provision trade, heretofore, as a mean and meagre occupation; but now
+the imagination of each gallant youth was fired and radiant&mdash;he meant to
+be a grocer.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson presided over the Emporium. Wilson had a treasure in his
+wife. She was Aberdeen born and bred, but her manner was the manner of
+the South and West. There is a broad difference of character between the
+peoples of East and West Scotland. The East throws a narrower and a
+nippier breed. In the West they take Burns for their exemplar, and
+affect the jovial and robustious&mdash;in some cases it is affectation only,
+and a mighty poor one at that. They claim to be bigger men and bigger
+fools than the Eastern billies. And the Eastern billies are very willing
+to yield one half of the contention.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson, though Eastie by nature, had the jovial manner that you
+find in Kyle; more jovial, indeed, than was common in nippy Barbie,
+which, in general character, seems to have been transplanted from some
+sand dune looking out upon the German Ocean. She was big of hip and
+bosom, with sloe-black hair and eyes, and a ruddy cheek, and when she
+flung back her head for the laugh her white teeth flashed splendid on
+the world. That laugh of hers became one of the well-known features of
+Barbie. "Lo'd-sake!" a startled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> visitor would cry, "whatna skirl's
+tha-at!" "Oh, dinna be alarmed," a native would comfort him, "it's only
+Wilson's wife lauchin at the Cross!"</p>
+
+<p>Her manner had a hearty charm. She had a laugh and a joke for every
+customer, quick as a wink with her answer; her gibe was in you and out
+again before you knew you were wounded. Some, it is true, took exception
+to the loudness of her skirl&mdash;the Deacon, for instance, who "gave her a
+good one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a
+mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff
+of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her
+popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the
+penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways.
+She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax
+you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling
+like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he
+had no need to be afraid that things were mismanaging at home. During
+his first year in Barbie Mrs. Wilson was his sole helper. She had the
+brawny arm of a giantess, and could toss a bag of meal like a baby; to
+see her twirl a big ham on the counter was to see a thing done as it
+should be. When Drucken Wabster came in and was offensive once, "Poo-oor
+fellow!" said she (with a wink to a customer), "I declare he's in a high
+fever," and she took him kicking to the pump and cooled him.</p>
+
+<p>With a mate like that at the helm every sail of Wilson's craft was
+trimmed for prosperity. He began to "look about" him to increase the
+fleet.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<p>That the Scot is largely endowed with the commercial imagination his
+foes will be ready to acknowledge. Imagination may consecrate the world
+to a man, or it may merely be a visualizing faculty which sees that as
+already perfect which is still lying in the raw material. The Scot has
+the lower faculty in full degree; he has the forecasting leap of the
+mind which sees what to make of things&mdash;more, sees them made and in
+vivid operation. To him there is a railway through the desert where no
+railway exists, and mills along the quiet stream. And his <i>perfervidum
+ingenium</i> is quick to attempt the realizing of his dreams. That is why
+he makes the best of colonists. Galt is his type&mdash;Galt, dreaming in
+boyhood of the fine water power a fellow could bring round the hill,
+from the stream where he went a-fishing (they have done it since),
+dreaming in manhood of the cities yet to rise amid Ontario's woods (they
+are there to witness to his foresight). Indeed, so flushed and riotous
+can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it
+sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine
+idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of
+vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not
+so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. But in
+every district almost you may find a poor creature who for thirty years
+has cherished a great scheme by which he means to revolutionize the
+world's commerce, and amass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> a fortune in monstrous degree. He is
+generally to be seen shivering at the Cross, and (if you are a nippy
+man) you shout carelessly in going by, "Good-morning, Tamson; how's the
+scheme?" And he would be very willing to tell you, if only you would
+wait to listen. "Man," he will cry eagerly behind you, "if I only had
+anither wee wheel in my invention&mdash;she would do, the besom! I'll sune
+have her ready noo." Poor Tamson!</p>
+
+<p>But these are the exceptions. Scotsmen, more than other men perhaps,
+have the three great essentials of commercial success&mdash;imagination to
+conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them
+through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most
+cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and
+robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes
+the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely
+Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom
+ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always
+detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping
+cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using
+the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has
+expressed his love of <i>festina lente</i> in business in a score of
+proverbs&mdash;"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the
+baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;"
+and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling of caution and imagination is
+the cause of his stable prosperity. And its characteristic is a sure
+progressiveness. That sure progressiveness was the characteristic of
+Wilson's prosperity in Barbie. In him, too, imagination and caution were
+equally developed. He was always foreseeing "chances" and using them,
+gripping the good and rejecting the dangerous (had he not gripped the
+chance of auld Rab Jamieson's barn? There was caution in that, for it
+was worth the money whatever happened;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> and there was imagination in the
+whole scheme, for he had a vision of Barbie as a populous centre and
+streets of houses in his holm). And every "chance" he seized led to a
+better one, till almost every "chance" in Barbie was engrossed by him
+alone. This is how he went to work. Note the "bit-by-bitness" of his
+great career.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Wilson was behind the counter, Wilson was out "distributing."
+He was not always out, of course&mdash;his volume of trade at first was not
+big enough for that; but in the mornings, and the long summer dusks, he
+made his way to the many outlying places of which Barbie was the centre.
+There, in one and the same visit, he distributed goods and collected
+orders for the future. Though his bill had spoken of "carts," as if he
+had several, that was only a bit of splurge on his part; his one
+conveyance at the first was a stout spring cart, with a good brown cob
+between the shafts. But with this he did such a trade as had never been
+known in Barbie. The Provost said it was "shtupendous."</p>
+
+<p>When Wilson was jogging homeward in the balmy evenings of his first
+summer at Barbie, no eye had he for the large evening star, tremulous
+above the woods, or for the dreaming sprays against the yellow west. It
+wasn't his business; he had other things to mind. Yet Wilson was a
+dreamer too. His close, musing eye, peering at the dusky-brown nodge of
+his pony's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances,
+opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him
+in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial
+enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine
+bleaching green&mdash;pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything
+handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods&mdash;water power running to
+waste yonder&mdash;surely something could be made of that." He would follow
+his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> the
+passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the
+author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good
+company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging
+thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than
+Wilson was on nights like these.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for
+development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to
+buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more
+eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of
+Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for
+merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a
+silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for
+stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his
+hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about
+Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the
+better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on
+the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in
+bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the
+cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it
+wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of
+butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering
+up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to
+dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it
+was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to
+be sure&mdash;threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the
+pound of butter&mdash;still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and
+hained gear helps weel.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> And more important than the immediate profit
+was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> way established with
+merchants, in far-off Fechars and Poltandie, a connection for the sale
+of country produce which meant a great deal to him in future, when he
+launched out as cheese-buyer in opposition to Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>It "occurred" to him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that
+the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and
+surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England.
+The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not
+from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests
+communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit
+system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's
+house (when he is away from home for preference), and laying a swatch of
+cloth across his wife's knee, "What do you think of that, mistress?" you
+inquire, watching the effect keenly. Instantly all her covetous heart is
+in her eye, and, thinks she to herself, "Oh, but John would look well in
+that at the kirk on Sunday!" She has no ready money, and would never
+have the cheek to go into a draper's and order the suit; but when she
+sees it lying there across her knee, she just cannot resist it. (And
+fine you knew that when you clinked it down before her!) Now that the
+goods are in the house, she cannot bear to let them out the door again.
+But she hints a scarcity of cash. "Tut, woman!" quoth you, bounteous and
+kind, "there's no obstacle in <i>that</i>! You can pay me in instalments!"
+How much would the instalments be, she inquires. "Oh, a mere
+trifle&mdash;half a crown a week, say." She hesitates and hankers. "John's
+Sunday coat's getting quite shabby, so it is, and Tam Macalister has a
+new suit, she was noticing&mdash;the Macalisters are always flaunting in
+their braws! And, there's that Paisley shawl for herself, too; eh, but
+they would be the canty pair, cocking down the road on Sunday in <i>that</i>
+rig! they would take the licht frae Meg Macalister's een&mdash;thae
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>Macalisters are always so en-vy-fu'!" Love, vanity, covetousness,
+present opportunity, are all at work upon the poor body. She succumbs.
+But the half-crown weekly payments have a habit of lengthening
+themselves out till the packman has made fifty per cent. by the
+business. And why not? a man must have some interest on his money! Then
+there's the risk of bad debts, too&mdash;that falls to be considered. But
+there was little risk of bad debts when Wilson took to
+cloth-distributing. For success in that game depends on pertinacity in
+pursuit of your victim, and Wilson was the man for that.</p>
+
+<p>He was jogging home from Brigabee, where he had been distributing
+groceries at a score of wee houses, when there flashed on his mind a
+whole scheme for cloth-distribution on a large scale; for mining
+villages were clustering in about Barbie by this time, and he saw his
+way to a big thing.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of Sandy Toddle, who had been a Scotch cuddy in the
+Midlands, and had retired to Barbie on a snug bit fortune&mdash;he was
+thinking of Sandy when the plan rose generous on his mind. He would soon
+have more horses than one on the road; why shouldn't they carry swatches
+of cloth as well as groceries? If he had responsible men under him, it
+would be their own interest, for a small commission on the profits, to
+see that payments were levied correctly every week. And those colliers
+were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to
+buying than the cannier country bodies round. Lord! there was money in
+the scheme. No sooner thought of than put in practice. Wilson gave up
+the cloth-peddling after five or six years&mdash;he had other fish to fry by
+that time&mdash;but while he was at it he made money hand over fist at the
+job.</p>
+
+<p>But what boots it to tell of all his schemes? He had the lucky eye, and
+everything he looked on prospered.</p>
+
+<p>Before he had been a week in Barbie he met Gourlay, just at the Bend o'
+the Brae, in full presence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> bodies. Remembering their first
+encounter, the grocer tried to outstare him; but Gourlay hardened his
+glower, and the grocer blinked. When the two passed, "I declare!" said
+the bodies, "did ye see yon?&mdash;they're not on speaking terms!" And they
+hotched with glee to think that Gourlay had another enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Judge of their delight when they saw one day about a month later, just
+as Gourlay was passing up the street, Wilson come down it with a load of
+coals for a customer! For he was often out Auchterwheeze road in the
+early morning, and what was the use of an empty journey back again,
+especially as he had plenty of time in the middle of the day to attend
+to other folk's affairs? So here he was, started as a carrier, in full
+opposition to Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see Gourlay's face?" chuckled the bodies when the cart went by.
+"Yon was a bash in the eye to him. Ha, ha! he's not to have it all his
+own way now!"</p>
+
+<p>Wilson had slid into the carrying in the natural development of
+business. It was another of the possibilities which he saw and turned to
+his advantage. The two other chief grocers in the place, Cunningham the
+dirty and Calderwood the drunken, having no carts or horses of their
+own, were dependent on Gourlay for conveyance of their goods from
+Skeighan. But Wilson brought his own. Naturally, he was asked by his
+customers to bring a parcel now and then, and naturally, being the man
+he was, he made them pay for the privilege. With that for a start the
+rest was soon accomplished. Gourlay had to pay now for his years of
+insolence and tyranny; all who had irked beneath his domineering ways
+got their carrying done by Wilson. Ere long that prosperous gentleman
+had three carts on the road, and two men under him to help in his
+various affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Carting was only one of several new developments in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> the business of J.
+W. When the navvies came in about the town and accommodation was ill to
+find, Wilson rigged up an old shed in the corner of his holm as a
+hostelry for ten of them&mdash;and they had to pay through the nose for their
+night's lodging. Their food they obtained from the Emporium, and thus
+the Wilsons bled them both ways. Then there was the scheme for supplying
+milk&mdash;another of the "possibeelities." Hitherto in winter, Barbie was
+dependent for its milk supply on heavy farm-carts that came lumbering
+down the street, about half-past seven in the morning, jangling bells to
+waken sleepy customers, and carrying lanterns that carved circles of
+fairy yellow out the raw air. But Mrs. Wilson got four cows,
+back-calvers who would be milking strong in December, and supplied milk
+to all the folk about the Cross.</p>
+
+<p>She had a lass to help her in the house now, and the red-headed boy was
+always to be seen, jinking round corners like a weasel, running messages
+hot-foot, errand boy to the "bisness" in general. Yet, though everybody
+was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with
+much disarray. Wilson's yard was the strangest contrast to Gourlay's.
+Gourlay's was a pleasure to the eye, everything of the best and
+everything in order, since the master's pride would not allow it to be
+other. But though Wilson's Emporium was clean, his back yard was
+littered with dirty straw, broken boxes, old barrels, stable refuse, and
+the sky-pointing shafts of carts, uptilted in between. When boxes and
+barrels were flung out of the Emporium they were generally allowed to
+lie on the dunghill until they were converted into firewood. "Mistress,
+you're a trifle mixed," said the Provost in grave reproof, when he went
+round to the back to see Wilson on a matter of business. But "Tut,"
+cried Mrs. Wilson, as she threw down a plank, to make a path for him
+across a dub&mdash;"Tut," she laughed, "the clartier the cosier!" And it was
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> true as she said it. The thing went forward splendidly in spite of
+its confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Though trade was brisker in Barbie than it had ever been before, Wilson
+had already done injury to Gourlay's business as general conveyor. But,
+hitherto, he had not infringed on the gurly one's other monopolies. His
+chance came at last.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared on a market-day in front of the Red Lion, a piece of pinky
+brown paper in his hand. That was the first telegram ever seen in
+Barbie, and it had been brought by special messenger from Skeighan. It
+was short and to the point. It ran: "Will buy 300 stone cheese 8
+shillings stone<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> delivery at once," and was signed by a merchant in
+Poltandie.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay was talking to old Tarmillan of Irrendavie, when Wilson pushed
+in and addressed Tarmillan, without a glance at the grain-merchant.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a kane o' cheese to sell, Irrendavie?" was his blithe
+salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was
+Wilson speiring for? <i>He</i> wasna a cheese-merchant.</p>
+
+<p>"How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said
+Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i>'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin
+flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his
+left hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the
+offer, "<i>you</i> have no means of storing cheese."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> "there's no
+drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam
+came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country
+merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing&mdash;there's
+no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some
+folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not
+one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like
+me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese
+at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that."</p>
+
+<p>"C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain
+with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"</p>
+
+<p>Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign
+wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved
+back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The
+wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that
+no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the
+crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him
+and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a
+rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if
+wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while
+Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode&mdash;with a look on his face
+that made the folk fall away.</p>
+
+<p>"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was
+gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the
+boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous
+stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!"
+cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt!
+It's been tried by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and
+never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid
+about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for
+his thplendid wrath yet."</p>
+
+<p>From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the
+people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each
+other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks,
+taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from
+hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable
+as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin.
+But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's
+tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became
+also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an
+active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into
+a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the
+schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show
+the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the
+wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pretty hell-broth brewing in the little town.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Hained gear</i>, saved money.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time
+Scotch cheese was selling, <i>roughly</i>, at from fifty to sixty shillings
+the hundred-weight.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Templandmuir, it's you!" said Gourlay, coming forward with
+great heartiness. "Ay, man, and how are ye? C'way into the parlour!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-evening, Mr. Gourlay," said the Templar. His manner was curiously
+subdued.</p>
+
+<p>Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen.
+Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with
+the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom
+everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay
+turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by
+the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big
+toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay"
+lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy,"
+he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John
+Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel
+like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of
+Barbie used to cry; "Gourlay both courts and cowes him&mdash;first he courts
+and then he cowes&mdash;and the Templar hasn't the courage to break it off!"
+The Provost hit the mark.</p>
+
+<p>But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink
+(a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of
+Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good
+Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> the new
+leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened
+housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an
+east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was
+nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good
+husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look
+in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over
+when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl&mdash;she made it a
+swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a
+man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her
+husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never
+know the difference! It's been used to swine!"</p>
+
+<p>But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was
+determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged
+her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said,
+and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her
+to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at
+the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll write," he said feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a
+coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made
+out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come
+to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I
+was you I wouldn't miss it for the world&mdash;just to let him know of his
+cheatry! Oh, it's very right that <i>I</i>"&mdash;she sounded the <i>I</i> big and
+brave&mdash;"it's very right that <i>I</i> should live in this tumbledown hole
+while <i>he</i> builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that <i>I</i> should
+put up with this"&mdash;she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling&mdash;"it's
+right that <i>I</i> should put up with this, while yon trollop has a
+splendid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his
+fortune has come out of you&mdash;the fool makes nothing from his other
+business&mdash;he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you
+that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience
+with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear
+the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with
+the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of
+his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, <i>I</i> have. Write, indeed! In
+you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't
+show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!"</p>
+
+<p>No wonder the Templar looked subdued.</p>
+
+<p>When Gourlay came forward with his usual calculated heartiness, the
+laird remembered his wife and felt very uncomfortable. It was ill to
+round on a man who always imposed on him a hearty and hardy
+good-fellowship. Gourlay, greeting him so warmly, gave him no excuse for
+an outburst. In his dilemma he turned to the children, to postpone the
+evil hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, John!" he said heavily, "you're there!" Heavy Scotsmen are
+fond of telling folk that they are where they are. "You're there!" said
+Templandmuir.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said John, the simpleton, "I'm here."</p>
+
+<p>In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the
+eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The
+lassie's more smart&mdash;she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he
+inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the
+bottom of the class. Jimmy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie
+set him to teach John his 'counts the day&mdash;after he had thrashed him!"</p>
+
+<p>She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears
+in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.</p>
+
+<p>"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt,
+"have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"</p>
+
+<p>John slunk from the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll
+be back directly."</p>
+
+<p>He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser.
+He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump
+it up <i>cold</i>," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a
+mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by
+Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no&mdash;ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't
+lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple
+he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out
+to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.</p>
+
+<p>To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the
+fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the
+intimate of John Gourlay&mdash;and then, sober as a judge himself, he would
+drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the
+pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By
+a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for
+years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump
+to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.</p>
+
+<p>But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started
+to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> his unusual flutter of
+refusal might have warned Gourlay&mdash;"noat to-night, if <i>you</i> please; noat
+to-night, if <i>you</i> please. As a matter of fact&mdash;eh&mdash;what I really came
+into the town for, doan't you see, was&mdash;eh&mdash;to attend the meeting the
+Provost has convened about the railway. You'll come down to the meeting,
+will ye noat?"</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to get Gourlay away from the House with the Green Shutters. It
+would be easier to quarrel with him out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>But Gourlay gaped at him across the table, his eyes big with surprise
+and disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" he growled, "I wonder at a man like you giving your head to that!
+It's a wheen damned nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm no so sure of that," drawled the Templar. "I think the railway
+means to come."</p>
+
+<p>The whole country was agog about the new railway. The question agitating
+solemn minds was whether it should join the main line at Fechars, thirty
+miles ahead, or pass to the right, through Fleckie and Barbie, to a
+junction up at Skeighan Drone. Many were the reasons spluttered in
+vehement debate for one route or the other. "On the one side, ye see,
+Skeighan was a big place a'readys, and look what a centre it would be if
+it had three lines of rail running out and in! Eh, my, what a centre!
+Then there was Fleckie and Barbie&mdash;they would be the big towns! Up the
+valley, too, was the shortest road; it would be a daft-like thing to
+build thirty mile of rail, when fifteen was enough to establish the
+connection! And was it likely&mdash;I put it to ainy man of sense&mdash;was it
+likely the Coal Company wouldn't do everything in their power to get the
+railway up the valley, seeing that if it didn't come that airt they
+would need to build a line of their own?"&mdash;"Ah, but then, ye see,
+Fechars was a big place too, and there was lots of mineral up there as
+well! And though it was a longer road to Fechars and part of it lay
+across the moors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> there were several wee towns that airt just waiting
+for a chance of growth! I can tell ye, sirs, this was going to be a
+close question!"</p>
+
+<p>Such was the talk in pot-house and parlour, at kirk and mart and tryst
+and fair, and wherever potentates did gather and abound. The partisans
+on either side began to canvass the country in support of their
+contentions. They might have kept their breath to cool their porridge,
+for these matters, we know, are settled in the great Witenagemot. But
+petitions were prepared and meetings were convened. In those days
+Provost Connal of Barbie was in constant communion with the "Pow-ers."
+"Yass," he nodded gravely&mdash;only "nod" is a word too swift for the grave
+inclining of that mighty pow&mdash;"yass, ye know, the great thing in matters
+like this is to get at the Pow-ers, doan't you see? Oh yass, yass; we
+must get at the Pow-ers!" and he looked as if none but he were equal to
+the job. He even went to London (to interrogate the "Pow-ers"), and
+simple bodies, gathered at the Cross for their Saturday at e'en, told
+each other with bated breath that the Provost was away to the "seat of
+Goaver'ment to see about the railway." When he came back and shook his
+head, hope drained from his fellows and left them hollow in an empty
+world. But when he smacked his lips on receiving an important letter,
+the heavens were brightened and the landscapes smiled.</p>
+
+<p>The Provost walked about the town nowadays with the air of a man on
+whose shoulders the weight of empires did depend. But for all his airs
+it was not the Head o' the Town who was the ablest advocate of the route
+up the Water of Barbie. It was that public-spirited citizen, Mr. James
+Wilson of the Cross! Wilson championed the cause of Barbie with an
+ardour that did infinite credit to his civic heart. For one thing, it
+was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told
+his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> trade, don't ye
+understand?"&mdash;for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the
+railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must
+agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything
+they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road
+the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in
+our behalf? Local opinion ought to be expressed! They're sending a
+monster petition from the Fechars side; we'll send the Company a bigger
+one from ours! Look at Skeighan and Fleckie and Barbie&mdash;three towns at
+our back, and the new Coal Company forbye! A public opinion of that size
+ought to have a great weight&mdash;if put forward properly! We must agitate,
+sirs, we must agitate; we maun scour the country for names in our
+support. Look what a number of things there are to recommend <i>our</i>
+route. It's the shortest, and there's no need for heavy cuttings such as
+are needed on the other side; the road's there a'ready&mdash;Barbie Water has
+cut it through the hills. It's the manifest design of Providence that
+there should be a line up Barbie Valley! What a position for't!&mdash;And,
+oh," thought Wilson, "what a site for building houses in my holm!&mdash;Let a
+meeting be convened at wunst!"</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was convened, with Provost Connal in the chair and Wilson as
+general factotum.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another,
+Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him
+condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But
+Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom
+he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He
+had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the
+quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.</p>
+
+<p>When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid,
+and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was
+a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the
+side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter
+because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a
+hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he
+felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable
+hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same
+time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his
+growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly
+nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then,
+he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay
+was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green
+Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He
+hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such
+irritation between them.</p>
+
+<p>When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were
+knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to
+group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay,
+quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he
+loathed.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a
+"bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion
+was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins
+running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the
+whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a
+strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness
+became a certainty&mdash;"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and
+never a good rub," thought Gourlay in a clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> disgust. Full lips showed
+themselves bright red in the middle between the two wings of a very
+blonde and very symmetrical moustache. The ugly feature of the face was
+the blue calculating eyes. They were tender round the lids, so that the
+white lashes stuck out in little peaks. And in conversation he had a
+habit of peering out of these eyes as if he were constantly spying for
+something to emerge that he might twist to his advantage. As he talked
+to a man close by and glimmered (not at the man beside him, but far away
+in the distance of his mind at some chance of gain suggested by the
+other's words) Gourlay heard him say musingly, "Imphm, imphm, imphm!
+there might be something <i>in</i> that!" nodding his head and stroking his
+moustache as he uttered each meditative "imphm."</p>
+
+<p>It was Wilson's unconscious revelation that his mind was busy with a
+commercial hint which he had stolen from his neighbour's talk. "The
+damned sneck-drawer!" thought Gourlay, enlightened by his hate; "he's
+sucking Tam Finlay's brains, to steal some idea for himsell!" And still
+as Wilson listened he murmured swiftly, "Imphm! I see, Mr. Finlay;
+imphm! imphm! imphm!" nodding his head and pulling his moustache and
+glimmering at his new "opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes
+our thought on them to probe. We cannot keep our minds off them. "Why do
+they do it?" we snarl, and wondering why, we find out their character.
+Gourlay was not an observant man, but every man is in any man somewhere,
+and hate to-night driving his mind into Wilson, helped him to read him
+like an open book. He recognized with a vague uneasiness&mdash;not with fear,
+for Gourlay did not know what it meant, but with uneasy anger&mdash;the
+superior cunning of his rival. Gourlay, a strong block of a man cut off
+from the world by impotence of speech, could never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> have got out of
+Finlay what Wilson drew from him in two minutes' easy conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson ignored Gourlay, but he was very blithe with Templandmuir, and
+inveigled him off to a corner. They talked together very briskly, and
+Wilson laughed once with uplifted head, glancing across at Gourlay as he
+laughed. Curse them, were they speaking of him?</p>
+
+<p>The hall was crammed at last, and the important bodies took their seats
+upon the front benches. Gourlay refused to be seated with the rest, but
+stood near the platform, with his back to the wall, by the side of
+Templandmuir.</p>
+
+<p>After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"&mdash;they
+lasted half an hour&mdash;he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting.
+Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got
+the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull,
+and a pull all together"&mdash;a phrase which he repeated many times in the
+course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the
+Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.</p>
+
+<p>"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost,
+"there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we
+were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our
+direction. I had thoat, after the able&mdash;I must say the very able&mdash;speech
+of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to
+utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to
+elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here
+for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was
+all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken,
+ladies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> and gentlemen&mdash;or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe
+there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be
+there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way
+which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some
+who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of
+tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid
+that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to
+bring."&mdash;Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people
+watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The
+Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to
+catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed.&mdash;"Now, gentlemen, as
+Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang
+pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will <i>noat</i> do
+to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to
+have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will
+show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one
+opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it
+seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand.
+So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the
+town for mainy years&mdash;at least he used to be that&mdash;I call upon Mr.
+Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."</p>
+
+<p>Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as
+he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of
+the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson
+and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition
+would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he
+would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of
+the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public,
+and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay evaded the question.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to
+consider the state of some folk's back doors."&mdash;That was a nipper to
+Wilson!&mdash;"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"</p>
+
+<p>A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him,
+with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said
+Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary
+loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as
+Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but
+Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he
+yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but
+myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It
+would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among
+the first, and do everything I can in its support."</p>
+
+<p>"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll
+get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the
+hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as
+they go out."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were
+carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and
+one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and
+glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high
+courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its
+expression. He was smiling as he faced them.</p>
+
+<p>"Let <i>me</i> pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the
+bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.</p>
+
+<p>He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the
+anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was
+the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to
+complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself
+to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning
+to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had
+laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would
+have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the
+popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the
+brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his
+grievance.</p>
+
+<p>They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said
+between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind.
+Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had
+dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was
+longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.</p>
+
+<p>That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was
+partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage),
+and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the
+louder for its pent fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> opposite the House
+with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than
+a year."</p>
+
+<p>It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from
+him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a
+monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be
+damned if I put up with that!"</p>
+
+<p>And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions
+and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark
+will do for an explosion.</p>
+
+<p>"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he
+should alienate the quarry laird.</p>
+
+<p>"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than
+ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten
+him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day,
+though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and
+your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse
+me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your
+tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."</p>
+
+<p>He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence,
+leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely
+the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life
+he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire
+to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood
+rocked him where he stood.</p>
+
+<p>He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it.
+It was locked&mdash;at this early hour!&mdash;and the simple inconvenience let
+loose the fury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist
+till the blood streamed on his knuckles.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before
+his awful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had
+endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his
+night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand
+there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom
+with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.</p>
+
+<p>She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack
+lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful
+frightened child, "what have I been doing?... Man, what did you hit me
+for?"</p>
+
+<p>He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute&mdash;knew she had
+done nothing to-night more than she had ever done&mdash;knew he had vented on
+her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a
+stick; how could he explain&mdash;to <i>her</i>? He gaped and glowered for a
+speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour,
+slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.</p>
+
+<p>She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in
+her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking
+it up coarsely&mdash;we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony.
+And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro
+in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o'
+me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"</p>
+
+<p>The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared
+face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.</p>
+
+<p>The sympathy of children with those who weep is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> innocently selfish. The
+sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in
+the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief
+would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to
+appreciate the inward agony.</p>
+
+<p>So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet,
+mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me,
+it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<p>"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an
+assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and
+as it happened she was all alone.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth
+back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some
+corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything
+perticular?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged
+on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a
+husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him
+in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them;
+come to be done by the husband or to do him&mdash;in either case, therefore,
+the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either
+to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about
+it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her
+parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's
+affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face
+be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was
+suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the
+builder. What was <i>he</i> spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up
+to?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to
+inquire.</p>
+
+<p>"Would I do instead?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded
+round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham
+that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye
+had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing
+on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty
+morning"&mdash;and her laugh went skelloching up the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to
+present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."</p>
+
+<p>"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms
+akimbo.&mdash;"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot
+from the back premises.</p>
+
+<p>"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack
+wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important
+business."</p>
+
+<p>The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him
+foremost.</p>
+
+<p>While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly.
+Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.</p>
+
+<p>He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as
+a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the
+jovial gleam, or they may be mean things&mdash;little and sly and oily.
+Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they
+glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with
+a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow
+teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> more than a
+grin&mdash;it was a <i>rictus</i>, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady
+eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He
+was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness
+(perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and
+the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long
+ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other
+nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to
+Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act
+against him. They had made advances to each other&mdash;birds of a feather,
+in short.</p>
+
+<p>The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a
+perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in
+Barbie, four years ago now.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to
+see me on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his
+guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him.
+"James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her,
+leaving Gibson in the yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for
+nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your
+een."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand
+thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a
+little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency&mdash;and that
+was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise
+very early that got the better o' a man like him!</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room
+where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot
+of red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round
+table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which
+two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed
+miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the
+family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a
+beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green
+mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in
+perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world
+that there was no place like home.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he
+said blithely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered
+it for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter
+and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the
+drink ran over on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in
+alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the mercies?" He stooped his lips
+to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar
+should escape him.</p>
+
+<p>They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said
+the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed
+glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little
+finger uppermost.</p>
+
+<p>Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his
+uvula.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.</p>
+
+<p>Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his
+hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped
+Wilson's knee in whispering importance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p><p>"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the
+business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two
+forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green
+teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.</p>
+
+<p>"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners
+a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the
+Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to
+say I have nabbed the contract for the building."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am
+that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could
+Gibson be wanting with <i>him</i> if it wasna to arrange about the carting?
+"Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're
+drinking nothing at all. Let <i>me</i> help you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's
+not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."</p>
+
+<p>Wilson's mouth forgot to shut, and his eyes were big and round as his
+mouth in staring disappointment. Was it this he was wasting his drink
+for?</p>
+
+<p>"Where do I come in?" he asked blankly.</p>
+
+<p>Gibson tossed off another glassful of the burning heartener of men, and
+leaned forward with his elbows on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye ken Goudie, the Company's manager? He's worth making up to, I can
+tell ye. He has complete control of the business, and can airt you the
+road of a good thing. I made a point of helping him in everything, ever
+since he came to Barbie, and I'm glad to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> that he hasna forgotten't.
+Man, it was through him I got the building contract; they never threw't
+open to the public. But they mean to contract separate for carting the
+material. That means that they'll need the length of a dozen horses on
+the road for a twelvemonth to come; for it's no only the
+building&mdash;they're launching out on a big scale, and there's lots of
+other things forbye. Now, Goudie's as close as a whin, and likes to keep
+everything dark till the proper time comes for sploring o't. Not a
+whisper has been heard so far about this village for the miners&mdash;there's
+a rumour, to be sure, about a wheen houses going up, but nothing <i>near</i>
+the reality. And there's not a soul, either, that kens there's a big
+contract for carting to be had 'ceptna Goudie and mysell. But or a
+month's by they'll be advertising for estimates for a twelvemonth's
+carrying. I thocht a hint aforehand would be worth something to you, and
+that's the reason of my visit."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Wilson briskly. "You're verra good, Mr. Gibson. You mean
+you'll give me an inkling in private of the other estimates sent in, and
+help to arrange mine according?"</p>
+
+<p>"Na," said Gibson. "Goudie's owre close to let me ken. I'll speak a word
+in his ear on your behalf, to be sure, if you agree to the proposal I
+mean to put before you. But Gourlay's the man you need to keep your eye
+on. It's you or him for the contract&mdash;there's nobody else to compete wi'
+the two o' ye."</p>
+
+<p>"Imphm, I see," said Wilson, and tugged his moustache in meditation. All
+expression died out of his face while his brain churned within. What
+Brodie had christened "the considering keek" was in his eyes; they were
+far away, and saw the distant village in process of erection; busy with
+its chances and occasions. Then an uneasy thought seemed to strike him
+and recall him to the man by his side. He stole a shifty glance at the
+sandy smiler.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>"But I thought <i>you</i> were a friend of Gourlay's," he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Friendship!" said Gibson. "We're speaking of business. And there's
+sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I
+sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides,
+there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a
+rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither
+to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the advantage of us
+both. Oom?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly see what you're driving at," said Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm driving at this," said Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him
+for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o'
+sheer spite&mdash;yes, out o' sheer spite&mdash;rather than be licked by <i>you</i> in
+public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we
+like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the
+estimates sent in, d'ye see? Imphm, it's the partners. Goudie has
+noathing to do wi' that. And if Gourlay once gets round the partners,
+you'll be left out in the cold for a very loang time. Shivering, sir,
+shivering! You will that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dod, you're right. There's a danger of that. But I fail to see how we
+can prevent it."</p>
+
+<p>"We can put Gourlay on a wrong scent," said Gibson.</p>
+
+<p>"But how, though?"</p>
+
+<p>Gibson met one question by another.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the charge for a man and a horse and a day's carrying when ye
+first came hereaway?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Only four shillings a day," said Wilson promptly. "It has risen to six
+now," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Gibson; "and with the new works coming in about the town
+it'll rise to eight yet. I have it for a fact that the Company's willing
+to gie that. Now if you and me could procure a job for Gourlay at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> the
+lower rate, before the news o' this new industry gets scattered&mdash;a job
+that would require the whole of his plant, you understand, and prevent
+his competing for the Company's business&mdash;we would clear"&mdash;he clawed his
+chin to help his arithmetic&mdash;"we would clear three hundred and
+seventy-four pounds o' difference on the twelvemonth. At least <i>you</i>
+would make that," he added, "but you would allow me a handsome
+commission of course&mdash;the odd hundred and seventy, say&mdash;for bringing the
+scheme before ye. I don't think there's ocht unreasonable in tha-at. For
+it's not the mere twelvemonth's work that's at stake, you understand;
+it's the valuable connection for the fee-yuture. Now, I have influence
+wi' Goudie; I can help you there. But if Gourlay gets in there's just a
+chance that you'll never be able to oust him."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Wilson. "Before he knows what's coming, we're to provide
+work for Gourlay at the lower rate, both to put money in our own pocket
+and prevent him competing for the better business."</p>
+
+<p>"You've summed it to the nines," said Gibson.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Wilson blankly, "but how on earth are <i>we</i> to provide work
+for him?"</p>
+
+<p>Gibson leaned forward a second time and tapped Wilson on the knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never considered what a chance for building there's in that
+holm of yours?" he asked. "You've a fortune there, lying undeveloped."</p>
+
+<p>That was the point to which Cunning Johnny had been leading all the
+time. He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a
+contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good
+commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the
+conspiracy to cripple Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He
+blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his
+comrade. He tugged his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his
+eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the
+breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet
+room. Wilson was one of the men whom you hear thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," he said slowly. "You mean to bind Gourlay to cart building
+material to my holm at the present price of work. You'll bind him in
+general terms so that he canna suspect, till the time comes, who in
+particular he's to work for. In the meantime I'll be free to offer for
+the Company's business at the higher price."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the size o't," said Gibson.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson was staggered by the rapid combinations of the scheme. But
+Cunning Johnny had him in the toils. The plan he proposed stole about
+the grocer's every weakness, and tugged his inclinations to consent. It
+was very important, he considered, that he, and no other, should obtain
+this contract, which was both valuable in itself and an earnest of other
+business in the future. And Gibson's scheme got Gourlay, the only
+possible rival, out of the way. For it was not possible for Gourlay to
+put more than twelve horses on the road, and if he thought he had
+secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for
+another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that
+Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling,
+in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for
+him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed
+by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before
+him. Cunning Johnny knew all this when he broached the scheme&mdash;he
+foresaw the pull of it on Wilson's nature. Yet Wilson hesitated. He did
+not like to give himself to Gibson quite so rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"You go fast, Mr. Gibson," said he. "Faith, you go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> fast. This is a big
+affair, and needs to be looked at for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"Fast!" cried Gibson. "Damn it, we have no time to waste. We maun act on
+the spur of the moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to borrow money," said Wilson slowly; "and it's verra dear at
+the present time."</p>
+
+<p>"It was never worth more in Barbie than it is at the present time. Man,
+don't ye see the chance you're neglecting? Don't ye see what it means?
+There's thousands lying at your back door if ye'll only reach to pick
+them up. Yes, thousands. Thousands, I'm telling ye&mdash;thousands!"</p>
+
+<p>Wilson saw himself provost and plutocrat. Yet was he cautious.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i>'ll do well by the scheme," he said tartly, "if you get the sole
+contract for building these premises of mine, and a fat commission on
+the carrying forbye."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you carry the scheme without me?" said Gibson. "A word from me to
+Goudie means a heap." There was a veiled threat in the remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll come to terms," said the other. "But how will you manage
+Gourlay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aha!" said Gibson, "I'll come in handy for that, you'll discover.
+There's been a backset in Barbie for the last year&mdash;things went owre
+quick at the start and were followed by a wee lull; but it's only for a
+time, sir&mdash;it's only for a time. Hows'ever, it and you thegither have
+damaged Gourlay: he's both short o' work and scarce o' cash, as I found
+to my cost when I asked him for my siller! So when I offer him a big
+contract for carting stones atween the quarry and the town foot, he'll
+swallow it without question. I'll insert a clause that he must deliver
+the stuff at such places as I direct within four hundred yards of the
+Cross, in ainy direction&mdash;for I've several jobs near the Cross, doan't
+ye see, and how's he to know that yours is one o' them? Man, it's easy
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> bamboozle an ass like Gourlay! Besides, he'll think my principals
+have trusted me to let the carrying to ainy one I like, and, as I let it
+to him, he'll fancy I'm on his side, doan't ye see? He'll never jalouse
+that I mean to diddle him. In the meantime we'll spread the news that
+you're meaning to build on a big scale upon your own land; we'll have
+the ground levelled, the foundations dug, and the drains and everything
+seen to. Now, it'll never occur to Gourlay, in the present slackness o'
+trade, that you would contract wi' another man to cart your material,
+and go hunting for other work yoursell. That'll throw him off the scent
+till the time comes to put his nose on't. When the Company advertise for
+estimates he canna compete wi' you, because he's pre-engaged to me; and
+he'll think you're out o't too, because you're busy wi' your own woark.
+You'll be free to nip the eight shillings. Then we'll force him to
+fulfill his bargain and cart for us at six."</p>
+
+<p>"If he refuses?" said Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have the contract stamped and signed in the presence of
+witnesses," said Gibson. "Not that that's necessary, I believe, but a
+double knot's aye the safest."</p>
+
+<p>Wilson looked at him with admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh, Mr. Gibson," he cried, "you're a warmer! Ye deserve your name. Ye
+ken what the folk ca' you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Gibson complacently. "I'm quite proud o' the
+description."</p>
+
+<p>"I've my ain craw to pick wi' Gourlay," he went on. "He was damned
+ill-bred yestreen when I asked him to settle my account, and talked
+about extortion. But bide a wee, bide a wee! I'll enjoy the look on his
+face when he sees himself forced to carry for you, at a rate lower than
+the market price."</p>
+
+<p>When Gibson approached Gourlay on the following day he was full of
+laments about the poor state of trade.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><p>"Ay," said he, "the grand railway they boasted o' hasna done muckle for
+the town!"</p>
+
+<p>"Atwell ay," quoth Gourlay with pompous wisdom; "they'll maybe find, or
+a's by, that the auld way wasna the warst way. There was to be a great
+boom, as they ca't, but I see few signs o't."</p>
+
+<p>"I see few signs o't either," said Gibson, "it's the slackest time for
+the last twa years."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay grunted his assent.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've a grand job for ye, for a' that," said Gibson, slapping his
+hands. "What do ye say to the feck of a year's carting tweesht the
+quarry and the town foot?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might consider that," said Gourlay, "if the terms were good."</p>
+
+<p>"Six shillins," said Gibson, and went on in solemn protest: "In the
+present state o' trade, doan't ye see, I couldna give a penny more."
+Gourlay, who had denounced the present state of trade even now, was
+prevented by his own words from asking for a penny more.</p>
+
+<p>"At the town foot, you say?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I've several jobs thereaway," Gibson explained hurriedly, "and you must
+agree to deliver stuff ainy place I want it within four hundred yards o'
+the Cross. It's all one to you, of course," he went on, "seeing you're
+paid by the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's all one to me," said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Riney and the new "orra" man were called in to witness the
+agreement. Cunning Johnny had made it as cunning as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"We may as well put a stamp on't," said he. "A stamp costs little, and
+means a heap."</p>
+
+<p>"You're damned particular the day," cried Gourlay in a sudden heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing more than my usual, nothing more than my usual," said
+Gibson blandly. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>"Good-morning, Mr. Gourlay," and he made for the door,
+buttoning the charter of his dear revenge in the inside pocket of his
+coat. Gourlay ignored him.</p>
+
+<p>When Gibson got out he turned to the House with the Green Shutters, and
+"Curse you!" said he; "you may refuse to answer me the day, but wait
+till this day eight weeks. You'll be roaring than."</p>
+
+<p>On that day eight weeks Gourlay received a letter from Gibson requiring
+him to hold himself in readiness to deliver stone, lime, baulks of
+timber, and iron girders in Mr. Wilson's holm, in terms of his
+agreement, and in accordance with the orders to be given him from day to
+day. He was apprised that a couple of carts of lime and seven loads of
+stone were needed on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>He went down the street with grinding jaws, the letter crushed to a
+white pellet in his hand. It would have gone ill with Gibson had he met
+him. Gourlay could not tell why, or to what purpose, he marched on and
+on with forward staring eyes. He only knew vaguely that the anger drove
+him.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to the Cross a long string of carts was filing from the
+Skeighan Road, and passing across to the street leading Fleckie-ward. He
+knew them to be Wilson's. The Deacon was there, of course, hobbling on
+his thin shanks, and cocking his eye to see everything that happened.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this mean?" Gourlay asked him, though he loathed the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, haven't ye heard?" quoth the Deacon blithely. "That's the stuff for
+the new mining village out the Fleckie Road. Wilson has nabbed the
+contract for the carting. They're saying it was Gibson's influence wi'
+Goudie that helped him to the getting o't."</p>
+
+<p>Amid his storm of anger at the trick, Gourlay was conscious of a sudden
+pity for himself, as for a man most unfairly worsted. He realized for a
+moment his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> inefficiency as a business man, in conflict with
+cleverer rivals, and felt sorry to be thus handicapped by nature. Though
+wrath was uppermost, the other feeling was revealed, showing itself by a
+gulping in the throat and a rapid blinking of the eyes. The Deacon
+marked the signs of his chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>"Man!" he reported to the bodies, "but Gourlay was cut to the quick. His
+face showed how gunkit he was. Oh, but he was chawed. I saw his breist
+give the great heave."</p>
+
+<p>"Were ye no sorry?" cried the baker.</p>
+
+<p>"Thorry, hi!" laughed the Deacon. "Oh, I was thorry, to be sure," he
+lisped, "but I didna thyow't. I'm glad to thay I've a grand control of
+my emotionth. Not like thum folk we know of," he added slyly, giving the
+baker a "good one."</p>
+
+<p>All next day Gibson's masons waited for their building material in
+Wilson's holm. But none came. And all day seven of Gourlay's horses
+champed idly in their stalls.</p>
+
+<p>Barbie had a weekly market now, and, as it happened, that was the day it
+fell on. At two in the afternoon Gourlay was standing on the gravel
+outside the Red Lion, trying to look wise over a sample of grain which a
+farmer had poured upon his great palm. Gibson approached with false
+voice and smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna
+day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."</p>
+
+<p>To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the
+gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on
+his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed
+gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground
+them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> other man's son ...
+frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o'
+Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"</p>
+
+<p>Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's
+shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense
+quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.</p>
+
+<p>But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles
+of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying
+through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the
+great table where the market-folk were drinking.</p>
+
+<p>For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a
+circle of white faces and startled cries.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to
+fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his
+black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game
+John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."</p>
+
+<p>Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window,
+his grin a <i>rictus</i> of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"By God, Gourlay," he screamed, "I'll make you pay for this; I'll fight
+you through a' the law courts in Breetain, but you'll implement your
+bond."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you for a measled swine! would you grunt at me?" cried Gourlay,
+and made to go at him through the window. Though he could not reach him,
+Gibson quailed at his look. He shook his fist in impotent wrath, and
+spat threats of justice through his green teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"To hell wi' your law-wers!" cried Gourlay. "I'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> throttle ye like the
+dog you are on the floor o' the House o' Lords."</p>
+
+<p>But that day was to cost him dear. Ere six months passed he was cast in
+damages and costs for a breach of contract aggravated by assault. He
+appealed, of course. He was not to be done; he would show the dogs what
+he thought of them.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<p>In those days it came to pass that Wilson sent his son to the High
+School of Skeighan&mdash;even James, the red-haired one, with the squint in
+his eye. Whereupon Gourlay sent <i>his</i> son to the High School of Skeighan
+too, of course, to be upsides with Wilson. If Wilson could afford to
+send his boy to a distant and expensive school, then, by the Lord, so
+could he! And it also came to pass that James, the son of James the
+grocer, took many prizes; but John, the son of John, took no prizes.
+Whereat there were ructions in the House of Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his
+main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he
+saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a
+lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon
+shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with
+delight to helping his father in the business&mdash;how grand it would be to
+drive about the country and see things!&mdash;and he had irked at being kept
+for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business
+went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay
+was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to
+Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk
+or a mill o't.</p>
+
+<p>But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to
+drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His
+imagination<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> set to work on what he heard of the High School of
+Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could
+<i>he</i> do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in
+public; how could <i>he</i> stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o'
+them?</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to gang," he whined.</p>
+
+<p>"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what <i>you</i> want? Go you
+shall."</p>
+
+<p>"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.</p>
+
+<p>"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help <i>you</i> would be in
+business."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
+support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
+opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
+to be a minister."</p>
+
+<p>Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
+different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
+growled.</p>
+
+<p>So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
+forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
+opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
+he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
+was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
+was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
+important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
+was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
+upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
+and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
+assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
+mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
+still was the home-coming&mdash;to board the empty train at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> Skeighan when
+the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
+cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
+a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
+get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
+Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
+lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
+nights&mdash;his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
+ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
+the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
+school days&mdash;and are fools for the remainder of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
+over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
+youngster in their ken.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
+musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.</p>
+
+<p>"To no good&mdash;you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
+regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
+train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
+he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
+swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
+from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
+Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't&mdash;he shook like a dog in a wet
+sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
+your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz&mdash;it would blind ye
+by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
+his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
+before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
+obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> the dizziness,'
+said he, and he actually bocked himsell."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
+his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
+fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
+was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
+classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
+Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
+from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
+off at such times&mdash;it was easy to slip out&mdash;and playing truant in the
+byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
+the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
+mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.</p>
+
+<p>For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
+cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
+congenital horror of eerie sounds&mdash;he was his mother's son for that&mdash;and
+he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
+afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
+the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
+oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
+and forgot the world.</p>
+
+<p>He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
+was only the baker&mdash;the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
+the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
+wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
+wonderful hearty manner with a boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The
+storm's at the burstin'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
+birth.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
+see't?"</p>
+
+<p>They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
+thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
+roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
+close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
+vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
+cowering earth. The rain came&mdash;a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
+to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
+white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
+open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
+started violently&mdash;that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.</p>
+
+<p>The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
+Gourlay screamed in terror.</p>
+
+<p>The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.</p>
+
+<p>"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
+know. You ought to be a hardy man."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
+just let on to be."</p>
+
+<p>But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
+vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.</p>
+
+<p>"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
+"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
+dagger!" stared Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash&mdash;then jerked
+to the side&mdash;then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
+coulter of a plough."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
+centre.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
+door."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
+much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
+to think them over when they're by."</p>
+
+<p>Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
+the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
+explain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
+"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"&mdash;he
+nodded to the warring heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him
+playing truant!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten
+train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."</p>
+
+<p>John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.</p>
+
+<p>When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the
+offender; yet his eye seemed to stab&mdash;a flash shot from its centre to
+transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and
+you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his
+son.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;" John stammered and choked.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" said his father.</p>
+
+<p>John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his
+father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.</p>
+
+<p>"How lang has he been here, baker?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke
+with a firm civility.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.</p>
+
+<p>"I see. You want to shield him.&mdash;You have been playing the truant, have
+'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on <i>you</i> for this to be the end o't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy.
+Dinna thrash him."</p>
+
+<p>"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to
+thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I
+don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."</p>
+
+<p>He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down
+High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as
+you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the
+face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground.
+Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the
+old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up
+and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on
+amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger
+shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a
+moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own
+son.</p>
+
+<p>He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from
+his great hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him&mdash;the fellow that runs
+the business."</p>
+
+<p>"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
+janitor down a long wooden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> corridor. A door was flung open showing a
+classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
+fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
+brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I pay <i>you</i> to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
+this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
+spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
+huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
+master.</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay <i>you</i> to teach that boy, and you allow
+him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"</p>
+
+<p>"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
+deprecating hands.</p>
+
+<p>The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>"Do&mdash;do? Damn it, sir, am <i>I</i> to be <i>your</i> dominie? Am <i>I</i> to teach
+<i>you</i> your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
+hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
+to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"</p>
+
+<p>He was gone&mdash;they heard him go clumping along the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
+forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
+However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
+to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
+Shutters.</p>
+
+<p>He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
+was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
+last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
+smoke down his nostrils&mdash;his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> called the
+great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
+he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
+Templandmuir who was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
+said the Templar.</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then&mdash;"Gosh, he must have
+lost infernal!"</p>
+
+<p>"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
+enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
+settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
+hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
+Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
+need o' that."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
+with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
+entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
+doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
+were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
+a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, are <i>we</i> ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
+fondly. He was as tall as herself now.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
+grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
+times!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<p>Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
+was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days&mdash;only a
+few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
+between&mdash;the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
+and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
+all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
+telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
+distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
+first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
+too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
+wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
+lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
+Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
+increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
+buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
+security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.</p>
+
+<p>"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
+him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
+the cash.</p>
+
+<p>He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and
+always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you
+thought, as you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his
+driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which
+he looked down on Barbie for many a day.</p>
+
+<p>A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as
+of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," snapped Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He
+only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at
+a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Tam's deid!" he blurted.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob
+stood out on his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Deid!" he stared.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his
+feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was
+lying deid in the loose-box. The batts&mdash;it's like."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise,
+forgetting to take down his razor.</p>
+
+<p>"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid
+and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly;
+he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He
+had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the
+luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his
+proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of
+quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other
+calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister,
+prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was
+no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten
+his stock,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it
+for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for
+one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the
+words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark
+vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct
+prompted him to lock the door.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes,
+slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his
+neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam
+had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put
+Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world
+before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and
+his master netted in a mesh of care.</p>
+
+<p>"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if
+pleading in his own defence.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam
+the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam
+the powney," and he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock
+train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited
+till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a
+brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome,
+though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own
+horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went
+by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and
+detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of
+them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from
+nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw
+him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> among them cheek for jowl.
+Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to
+turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a
+public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!</p>
+
+<p>The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross,
+nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and
+elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward;
+but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused,
+was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never
+splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the
+thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty
+brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close
+below the driver.</p>
+
+<p>As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for
+Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to
+mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves
+off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy
+Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so
+thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and
+address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.</p>
+
+<p>The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the
+crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that
+ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.</p>
+
+<p>Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin.
+"Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife,
+I'm thinking!"</p>
+
+<p>"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty
+trollop."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly
+temper."</p>
+
+<p>They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him
+off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not
+their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet
+superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the
+veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now
+the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)&mdash;talking
+<i>to</i> each other, indeed, but <i>at</i> him, while he must keep quiet in their
+midst.</p>
+
+<p>At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played
+their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's
+ears, to his comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to
+a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who
+throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man
+builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support
+it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he
+took the quarry in his own hand."</p>
+
+<p>"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with
+a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented
+enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the
+game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent
+folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him
+turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his
+enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
+of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
+houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.&mdash;I'm thinking, Mr.
+Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"</p>
+
+<p>"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that <i>you</i> should have
+been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
+and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
+in two or three years!"</p>
+
+<p>"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
+other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
+welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
+self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
+but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
+his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
+Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
+seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
+said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
+jaw."</p>
+
+<p>But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
+College at Embro in October?"</p>
+
+<p>"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
+been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
+town."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on <i>him</i>! It must be a
+terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
+got a prize!"</p>
+
+<p>The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
+very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
+danger; but if he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
+tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
+hedge.</p>
+
+<p>"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired&mdash;a civil enough
+question surely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
+It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
+it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
+you're doing&mdash;especially if you've little money left to come and go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he
+had better put him in hith business&mdash;if he hath ainy business left to
+thpeak o', that ith!"</p>
+
+<p>The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work,
+past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of
+ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and
+blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the
+world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of
+hate and malice and a petty rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.</p>
+
+<p>"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust.
+"Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But
+don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"&mdash;he dwelt on his name in
+ringing pride&mdash;"John Gourla can fight for his own hand&mdash;if so there need
+to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a
+dirt it spreads the wider!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who was referring to <i>you</i>?" bellowed Brodie.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p><p>Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the
+wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying
+to stare fiercely the while.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe ye werena referring to me," said Gourlay slowly. "But if <i>I</i> had
+been in your end o' the brake <i>ye</i> would have been in hell or this!"</p>
+
+<p>He had said enough. There was silence in the brake till it reached
+Skeighan. But the evil was done. Enough had been said to influence
+Gourlay to the most disastrous resolution of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Get yourself ready for the College in October," he ordered his son that
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>"The College!" cried John aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Is there ainything in that to gape at?" snapped his father, in
+sudden irritation at the boy's amaze.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to gang!" John whimpered as before.</p>
+
+<p>"Want! what does it matter what <i>you</i> want? You should be damned glad of
+the chance! I mean to make ye a minister; they have plenty of money and
+little to do&mdash;a grand, easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a
+stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every
+qualification!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's against <i>my</i> will," John bawled angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Your</i> will!" sneered his father.</p>
+
+<p>To John the command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had
+been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too
+contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business
+stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the
+last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from
+which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an
+imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he
+saw two pictures with uncanny vividness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>&mdash;himself in bleak lodgings
+raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home
+to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies,
+laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They
+would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must
+he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he
+still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life
+where everything terrified his mind?</p>
+
+<p>"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave
+Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious
+impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a
+man like his father?</p>
+
+<p>"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand&mdash;"not another word!
+You go to College in October!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Johnny," said his mother, "think o' the future that's before
+ye!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," howled the youth in silly anger, "it's like to be a braw future!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the best future you can have!" growled his father.</p>
+
+<p>For while rivalry, born of hate, was the propelling influence in
+Gourlay's mind, other reasons whispered that the course suggested by
+hate was a good one on its merits. His judgment, such as it was,
+supported the impulse of his blood. It told him that the old business
+would be a poor heritage for his son, and that it would be well to look
+for another opening. The boy gave no sign of aggressive smartness to
+warrant a belief that he would ever pull the thing together. Better make
+him a minister. Surely there was enough money left about the house for
+tha-at! It was the best that could befall him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay, for her part, though sorry to lose her son, was so pleased
+at the thought of sending him to college, and making him a minister,
+that she ran on in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> foolish maternal gabble to the wife of Drucken
+Webster. Mrs. Webster informed the gossips, and they discussed the
+matter at the Cross.</p>
+
+<p>"Dod," said Sandy Toddle, "Gourlay's better off than I supposed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Huts!" said Brodie, "it's just a wheen bluff to blind folk!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would fit him better," said the Doctor, "if he spent some money on
+his daughter. She ought to pass the winter in a warmer locality than
+Barbie. The lassie has a poor chest! I told Gourlay, but he only gave a
+grunt. And 'oh,' said Mrs. Gourlay, 'it would be a daft-like thing to
+send <i>her</i> away, when John maun be weel provided for the College.' D'ye
+know, I'm beginning to think there's something seriously wrong with yon
+woman's health! She seemed anxious to consult me on her own account, but
+when I offered to sound her she wouldn't hear of it. 'Na,' she cried,
+'I'll keep it to mysell!' and put her arm across her breast as if to
+keep me off. I do think she's hiding some complaint! Only a woman whose
+mind was weak with disease could have been so callous as yon about her
+lassie."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, her mind's weak enough," said Sandy Toddle. "It was always that!
+But it's only because Gourlay has tyraneezed her verra soul. I'm
+surprised, however, that <i>he</i> should be careless of the girl. He was aye
+said to be browdened upon <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Men-folk are often like that about lassie-weans," said Johnny Coe.
+"They like well enough to pet them when they're wee, but when once
+they're big they never look the road they're on! They're a' very fine
+when they're pets, but they're no sae fine when they're pretty misses.
+And, to tell the truth, Janet Gourlay's ainything but pretty!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Bleach-the-boys, the bitter dominie (who rarely left the studies in
+political economy which he found a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> solace for his thwarted powers),
+happened to be at the Cross that evening. A brooding and taciturn man,
+he said nothing till others had their say. Then he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"They're making a great mistake," he said gravely, "they're making a
+great mistake! Yon boy's the last youngster on earth who should go to
+College."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, dominie, he's an infernal ass, is he noat?" they cried, and
+pressed for his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>At last, partly in real pedantry, partly with humorous intent to puzzle
+them, he delivered his astounding mind.</p>
+
+<p>"The fault of young Gourlay," quoth he, "is a sensory perceptiveness in
+gross excess of his intellectuality."</p>
+
+<p>They blinked and tried to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, dominie!" said Sandy Toddle. "That means he's an infernal
+cuddy, dominie! Does it na, dominie?"</p>
+
+<p>But Bleach-the-boys had said enough. "Ay," he said dryly, "there's a
+wheen gey cuddies in Barbie!" and he went back to his stuffy little room
+to study "The Wealth of Nations."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<p>The scion of the house of Gourlay was a most untravelled sprig when his
+father packed him off to the University. Of the world beyond Skeighan he
+had no idea. Repression of his children's wishes to see something of the
+world was a feature of Gourlay's tyranny, less for the sake of the money
+which a trip might cost (though that counted for something in his
+refusal) than for the sake of asserting his authority. "Wants to gang to
+Fechars, indeed! Let him bide at home," he would growl; and at home the
+youngster had to bide. This had been the more irksome to John since most
+of his companions in the town were beginning to peer out, with their
+mammies and daddies to encourage them. To give their cubs a "cast o' the
+world" was a rule with the potentates of Barbie; once or twice a year
+young Hopeful was allowed to accompany his sire to Fechars or Poltandie,
+or&mdash;oh, rare joy!&mdash;to the city on the Clyde. To go farther, and get the
+length of Edinburgh, was dangerous, because you came back with a halo of
+glory round your head which banded your fellows together in a common
+attack on your pretensions. It was his lack of pretension to travel,
+however, that banded them against young Gourlay. "Gunk" and "chaw" are
+the Scots for a bitter and envious disappointment which shows itself in
+face and eyes. Young Gourlay could never conceal that envious look when
+he heard of a glory which he did not share; and the youngsters noted his
+weakness with the unerring precision of the urchin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> to mark simple
+difference of character. Now the boy presses fiendishly on an intimate
+discovery in the nature of his friends, both because it gives him a new
+and delightful feeling of power over them, and also because he has not
+learned charity from a sense of his deficiencies, the brave ruffian
+having none. He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie
+boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young
+Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other
+the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders
+they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and
+they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow
+at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off
+Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of
+his adventures. He had been in fifteen taverns, and one hotel (a
+temperance hotel, where old Brown bashed the proprietor for refusing to
+supply him gin); one Pepper's Ghost; one Wild Beasts' Show; one
+Exhibition of the Fattest Woman on the Earth; also in the precincts of
+one jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the
+floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey
+for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home
+of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for
+the benefit of young Gourlay&mdash;for Swipey, though his name was the base
+Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the
+imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink
+home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars,
+though my faither 'ull no allow <i>me</i>!" "Never mind, dear," she would
+soothe him; "when once you're in the business, you'll gang a'where. And
+nut wan o' them has sic a business to gang intill!"</p>
+
+<p>But though he longed to go here and there for a day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> that he might be
+able to boast of it at home, young Gourlay felt that leaving Barbie for
+good would be a cutting of his heart-strings. Each feature of it, town
+and landward, was a crony of old years. In a land like Barbie, of quick
+hill and dale, of tumbled wood and fell, each facet of nature has an
+individuality so separate and so strong that if you live with it a
+little it becomes your friend, and a memory so dear that you kiss the
+thought of it in absence. The fields are not similar as pancakes; they
+have their difference; each leaps to the eye with a remembered and
+peculiar charm. That is why the heart of the Scot dies in flat southern
+lands; he lives in a vacancy; at dawn there is no Ben Agray to nod
+recognition through the mists. And that is why, when he gets north of
+Carlisle, he shouts with glee as each remembered object sweeps on the
+sight: yonder's the Nith with a fisherman hip-deep jigging at his rod,
+and yonder's Corsoncon with the mist on his brow. It is less the
+totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the
+heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay.
+With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience,
+and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there
+ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie?
+It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it
+was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom
+he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority.
+If a poor workman slouched past him on the road, he set him down in his
+heart as one of that rotten crowd from the Weaver's Vennel or the
+Tinker's Wynd. Barbie was in subjection to the mind of the son of the
+important man. To dash about Barbie in a gig, with a big dog walloping
+behind, his coat-collar high about his ears, and the reek of a
+meerschaum pipe floating white and blue many yards behind him, jovial
+and sordid nonsense about home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>&mdash;that had been his ideal. His father, he
+thought angrily, had encouraged the ideal, and now he forbade it, like
+the brute he was. From the earth in which he was rooted so deeply his
+father tore him, to fling him on a world he had forbidden him to know.
+His heart presaged disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Old Gourlay would have scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from
+the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for
+herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came
+she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the
+platform&mdash;a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his
+life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was
+pointed out as "Young Gourlay off to the College." But he had no
+pleasure in the r&ocirc;le, for his heart was in his boots.</p>
+
+<p>He took the slow train to Skeighan, where he boarded the express. Few
+sensational experiences were unknown to his too-impressionable mind, and
+he knew the animation of railway travelling. Coming back from Skeighan
+in an empty compartment on nights of the past, he had sometimes shouted
+and stamped and banged the cushions till the dust flew, in mere joy of
+his rush through the air; the constant rattle, the quick-repeated noise,
+getting at his nerves, as they get at the nerves of savages and
+Englishmen on Bank Holidays. But any animation of the kind which he felt
+to-day was soon expelled by the slow uneasiness welling through his
+blood. He had no eager delight in the unknown country rushing past; it
+inspired him with fear. He thought with a feeble smile of what Mysie
+Monk said when they took her at the age of sixty (for the first time in
+her life) to the top of Milmannoch Hill. "Eh," said Mysie, looking round
+her in amaze&mdash;"eh, sirs, it's a lairge place the world when you see it
+all!" Gourlay smiled because he had the same thought, but feebly,
+because he was cowering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> at the bigness of the world. Folded nooks in
+the hills swept past, enclosing their lonely farms; then the open
+straths, where autumnal waters gave a pale gleam to the sky. Sodden
+moors stretched away in vast patient loneliness. Then a gray smear of
+rain blotted the world, penning him in with his dejection. He seemed to
+be rushing through unseen space, with no companion but his own
+foreboding. "Where are you going to?" asked his mind, and the wheels of
+the train repeated the question all the way to Edinburgh, jerking it out
+in two short lines and a long one: "Where are you going to? Where are
+you going to? Ha, ha, Mr. Gourlay, where are you going to?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the same sensitiveness to physical impression which won him to
+Barbie that repelled him from the outer world. The scenes round Barbie,
+so vividly impressed, were his friends, because he had known them from
+his birth; he was a somebody in their midst and had mastered their
+familiarity; they were the ministers of his mind. Those other scenes
+were his foes, because, realizing them morbidly in relation to himself,
+he was cowed by their big indifference to him, and felt puny, a nobody
+before them. And he could not pass them like more manly and more callous
+minds; they came burdening in on him whether he would or no. Neither
+could he get above them. Except when lording it at Barbie, he had never
+a quick reaction of the mind on what he saw; it possessed him, not he
+it.</p>
+
+<p>About twilight, when the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with
+a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it
+seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling
+through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But
+in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be
+sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and
+unfamiliar scene&mdash;planted in its midst by a miracle of speed, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+gazing at it closely through a window! Two ploughmen from the farmhouse
+near the line were unyoking at the end of the croft; he could hear the
+muddy noise ("splorroch" is the Scotch of it) made by the big hoofs on
+the squashy head-rig. "Bauldy" was the name of the shorter ploughman, so
+yelled to by his mate; and two of the horses were "Prince and Rab"&mdash;just
+like a pair in Loranogie's stable. In the curtainless window of the
+farmhouse shone a leaping flame&mdash;not the steady glow of a lamp, but the
+tossing brightness of a fire&mdash;and thought he to himself, "They're
+getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring
+in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He
+wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it
+was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago
+should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had
+never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might
+get his vivid impression.</p>
+
+<p>When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the
+world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness
+was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to
+be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of
+which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea
+things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the
+black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His
+spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.</p>
+
+<p>The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.</p>
+
+<p>If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to
+console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when
+entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to
+cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy
+alike the smiling sureness of the genial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> charlatan (to whom professors
+are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They
+have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of
+uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon
+forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the
+waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more
+than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace
+in work, was left to prey upon itself.</p>
+
+<p>If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the
+comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions
+it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a
+sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and
+stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they
+thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed
+with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with
+impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of
+thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he
+observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly
+depressed&mdash;the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life,
+though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings
+which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his
+timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street
+in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of
+its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning
+foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen
+fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after
+he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and
+made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and
+manly;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> he could not see them in their due relation, and think them
+unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting
+woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an
+unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls
+wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming
+black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground.
+Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of
+gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed.
+He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead
+fire in sullen apathy.</p>
+
+<p>He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no
+means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received
+a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<p>That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky
+that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient
+chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives
+an idea&mdash;which is slightly mistaken&mdash;of Jock Allan, and an idea&mdash;which
+is very unmistakable&mdash;of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place
+of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all
+the honour in one's power.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman&mdash;so the hearty Allan dubbed
+him&mdash;"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a
+grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a
+great how-d'ye-do. 'Come out on Thursday night, and dine with me,' says
+he, in his big way. So here I went out to see him. I can tell you he's a
+warmer! I never saw a man eat so much in all my born days&mdash;but I suppose
+he would be having more on his table than usual to show off a bit,
+knowing us Barbie boys would be writing home about it all. And drink!
+D'ye know, he began with a whole half tumbler of whisky, and how many
+more he had I really should <i>not</i> like to say! And he must be used to
+it, too, for it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. And then he
+smoked and smoked&mdash;two great big cigars after we had finished eating,
+and then 'Damn it,' says he&mdash;he's an awful man to swear&mdash;'damn it,' he
+says, 'there's no satisfaction in cigars; I must have a pipe,' and he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>actually smoked <i>four</i> pipes before I came away! I noticed the cigars
+were called 'Estorellas&mdash;Best Quality,' and when I was in last Saturday
+night getting an ounce of shag at the wee shoppie round the corner, I
+asked the price of 'these Estorellas.' 'Ninepence a piece!' said the
+bodie. Just imagine Jock Allan smoking eighteen-pence, and not being
+satisfied! He's up in the world since he used to shaw turnips at
+Loranogie for sixpence a day! But he'll come down as quick if he keeps
+on at yon rate. He made a great phrase with me; but though it keeps down
+one's weekly bill to get a meal like yon&mdash;I declare I wasn't hungry for
+two days&mdash;for all that I'll go very little about him. He'll be the kind
+that borrows money very fast&mdash;one of those harum-scarum ones!"</p>
+
+<p>Criticism like that is a boomerang that comes back to hit the emitting
+skull with a hint of its kindred woodenness. It reveals the writer more
+than the written of. Allan was a bigger man than you would gather from
+Wilson's account of his Gargantuan revelry. He had a genius for
+mathematics&mdash;a gift which crops up, like music, in the most unexpected
+corners&mdash;and from plough-boy and herd he had become an actuary in Auld
+Reekie. Wilson had no need to be afraid, the meagre fool, for his host
+could have bought him and sold him.</p>
+
+<p>Allan had been in love with young Gourlay's mother when she herself was
+a gay young fliskie at Tenshillingland, but his little romance was soon
+ended when Gourlay came and whisked her away. But she remained the one
+romance of his life. Now in his gross and jovial middle age he idealized
+her in memory (a sentimentalist, of course&mdash;he was Scotch); he never saw
+her in her scraggy misery to be disillusioned; to him she was still the
+wee bit lairdie's dochter, a vision that had dawned on his wretched
+boyhood, a pleasant and pathetic memory. And for that reason he had a
+curious kindness to her boy. That was why he introduced him to his boon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+companions. He thought he was doing him a good turn.</p>
+
+<p>It was true that Allan made a phrase with a withered wisp of humanity
+like young Wilson. Not that he failed to see through him, for he
+christened him "a dried washing-clout." But Allan, like most
+great-hearted Scots far from their native place, saw it through a veil
+of sentiment; harsher features that would have been ever-present to his
+mind if he had never left it disappeared from view, and left only the
+finer qualities bright within his memory. And idealizing the place he
+idealized its sons. To him they had a value not their own, just because
+they knew the brig and the burn and the brae, and had sat upon the
+school benches. He would have welcomed a dog from Barbie. It was from a
+like generous emotion that he greeted the bodies so warmly on his visits
+home&mdash;he thought they were as pleased to see him as he was to see them.
+But they imputed false motives to his hearty greetings. Even as they
+shook his hand the mean ones would think to themselves: "What does he
+mean by this now? What's he up till? No doubt he'll be wanting something
+off me!" They could not understand the gusto with which the returned
+exile cried, "Ay, man, Jock Tamson, and how are ye?" They thought such
+warmth must have a sinister intention.&mdash;A Scot revisiting his native
+place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.</p>
+
+<p>There were two things to be said against Allan, and two only&mdash;unless, of
+course, you consider drink an objection. Wit with him was less the
+moment's glittering flash than the anecdotal bang; it was a fine old
+crusted blend which he stored in the cellars of his mind to bring forth
+on suitable occasions, as cob-webby as his wine. And it tickled his
+vanity to have a crowd of admiring youngsters round him to whom he might
+retail his anecdotes, and play the brilliant <i>raconteur</i>. He had cronies
+of his own years, and he was lordly and jovial amongst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> them&mdash;yet he
+wanted another <i>entourage</i>. He was one of those middle-aged bachelors
+who like a train of youngsters behind them, whom they favour in return
+for homage. The wealthy man who had been a peasant lad delighted to act
+the jovial host to sons of petty magnates from his home. Batch after
+batch as they came up to College were drawn around him&mdash;partly because
+their homage pleased him, and partly because he loved anything whatever
+that came out of Barbie. There was no harm in Allan&mdash;though when his
+face was in repose you saw the look in his eye at times of a man
+defrauding his soul. A robustious young fellow of sense and brains would
+have found in this lover of books and a bottle not a bad comrade. But he
+was the worst of cronies for a weak swaggerer like Gourlay. For Gourlay,
+admiring the older man's jovial power, was led on to imitate his faults,
+to think them virtues and a credit; and he lacked the clear, cool head
+that kept Allan's faults from flying away with him.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner that night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water.
+There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the
+cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan&mdash;a guileless and inquiring
+mind&mdash;and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of
+the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair.
+Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So they go.</p>
+
+<p>Tarmillan was the last to arrive. He came in sucking his thumb, into
+which he had driven a splinter while conducting an experiment.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from
+a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my
+head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing
+on my navel trying to reduce the curvature."</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh!" said Partan, who was a literal fool, "is that the treatment they
+purshoo?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>"That's the treatment!" said Tarmillan, sizing up his man. "Oh, it's a
+queer thing lockjaw! I remember when I was gold-mining in Tibet, one of
+our carriers who died of lockjaw had such a circumbendibus in his body
+that we froze him and made him the hoop of a bucket to carry our water
+in. You see he was a thin bit man, and iron was scarce."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man!" cried Partan, "you've been in Tibet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Often," waved Tarmillan, "often! I used to go there every summer."</p>
+
+<p>Partan, who liked to extend his geographical knowledge, would have
+talked of Tibet for the rest of the evening&mdash;and Tarmie would have told
+him news&mdash;but Allan broke in.</p>
+
+<p>"How's the book, Tarmillan?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Tarmillan was engaged on a treatise which those who are competent to
+judge consider the best thing of its kind ever written.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't ask me," he writhed. "Man, it's an irksome thing to write,
+and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to
+ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be
+delivered. I'm glad you invited me&mdash;to get away from the confounded
+thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a
+monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow
+of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but
+'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a
+big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much
+in trying to be small.&mdash;Tozer, what do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.</p>
+
+<p>"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p><p>Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere
+show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run <i>at</i> him and he
+runs."</p>
+
+<p>He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage
+that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in
+young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a
+hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from
+piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he
+equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A
+bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and
+it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan
+give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.</p>
+
+<p>To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk
+was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard
+ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show
+that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said
+Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full
+swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the
+invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the
+"good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on,
+"and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a
+dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I
+wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. '<i>He
+was a great fellow my friend Will</i>,' he rang out in yon deep voice of
+his. '<i>The thumb-mark of his Maker was</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> <i>wet in the clay of him</i>.' Man,
+it made a quiver go down my spine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bauldy has been a kenned phrase-maker for the last forty year,"
+said Tarmillan. "But every other Scots peasant has the gift. To hear
+Englishmen talk, you would think Carlyle was unique for the word that
+sends the picture home&mdash;they give the man the credit of his race. But
+I've heard fifty things better than 'willowy man' in the stable a-hame
+on a wat day in hairst&mdash;fifty things better&mdash;from men just sitting on
+the corn-kists and chowing beans."</p>
+
+<p>"I know a better one than that," said Allan. Tarmillan had told no
+story, you observe, but Allan was so accustomed to saying "I know a
+better one than that," that it escaped him before he was aware. "I
+remember when Bauldy went off to Paris on the spree. He kept his mouth
+shut when he came back, for he was rather ashamed o' the outburst. But
+the bodies were keen to hear. 'What's the incense like in Notre Dame?'
+said Johnny Coe, with his een big. '<i>Burning stink!</i>' said Bauldy."</p>
+
+<p>"I can cap that with a better one still," said Tarmillan, who wasn't to
+be done by any man. "I was with Bauldy when he quarrelled Tam Gibb of
+Hoochan-doe. Hoochan-doe's a yelling ass, and he threatened Bauldy&mdash;oh,
+he would do this, and he would do that, and he would do the other thing.
+'<i>Damn ye, would ye threaten me?</i>' cried Bauldy. '<i>I'll gar your brains
+jaup red to the heavens!</i>' And I 'clare to God, sirs, a nervous man
+looked up to see if the clouds werena spattered with the gore!"</p>
+
+<p>Tozer cleared a sarcastic windpipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you clear your throat like that?" said Tarmillan&mdash;"like a craw
+with the croup, on a bare branch against a gray sky in November! If I
+had a throat like yours, I'd cut it and be done wi't."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what's the cause of that extraordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> vividness in the
+speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan&mdash;more to keep the blades
+from bickering than from any wish to know.</p>
+
+<p>"It comes from a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said
+a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down the table.</p>
+
+<p>What cockerel was this crowing?</p>
+
+<p>They turned, and beheld the blushing Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>But Tarmillan and Tozer were at it again, and he was snubbed. Jimmy
+Wilson sniggered, and the other youngsters enjoyed his discomfiture.
+Huh! What right has <i>he</i> to set up his pipe?</p>
+
+<p>His shirt stuck to his back. He would have liked the ground to open and
+swallow him.</p>
+
+<p>He gulped a huge swill of whisky to cover his vexation; and oh, the
+mighty difference! A sudden courage flooded his veins. He turned with a
+scowl on Wilson, and, "What the devil are <i>you</i> sniggering at?" he
+growled. Logan, the only senior who marked the byplay, thought him a
+hardy young spunkie.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the whisky had warmed the cockles of his heart Gourlay ceased
+to care a rap for the sniggerers. Drink deadened his nervous perception
+of the critics on his right and left, and set him free to follow his
+idea undisturbed. It was an idea he had long cherished&mdash;being one of the
+few that ever occurred to him. He rarely made phrases himself&mdash;though,
+curiously enough, his father often did without knowing it&mdash;the harsh
+grind of his character producing a flash. But Gourlay was aware of his
+uncanny gift of visualization&mdash;or of "seeing things in the inside of his
+head," as he called it&mdash;and vanity prompted the inference, that this was
+the faculty that sprang the metaphor. His theory was now clear and
+eloquent before him. He was realizing for the first time in his life
+(with a sudden joy in the discovery) the effect of whisky to unloose the
+brain; sentences went hurling through his brain with a fluency that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+thrilled. If he had the ear of the company, now he had the drink to
+hearten him, he would show Wilson and the rest that he wasn't such a
+blasted fool! In a room by himself he would have spouted to the empty
+air.</p>
+
+<p>Some such point he had reached in the hurrying jumble of his thoughts
+when Allan addressed him.</p>
+
+<p>Allan did not mean his guest to be snubbed. He was a gentleman at heart,
+not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he
+remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence&mdash;he had reached
+that stage&mdash;"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Metaphor comes from the power of seeing things in the inside of your
+head," said the unconscious disciple of Aristotle&mdash;"seeing them so vivid
+that you see the likeness between them. When Bauldy Johnston said 'the
+thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him,' he <i>saw</i> the print
+of a thumb in wet clay, and he <i>saw</i> the Almighty making a man out of
+mud, the way He used to do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy
+flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never
+make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. <i>I</i>
+can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily&mdash;"anything
+I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan.
+"I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and
+panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while
+airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud
+mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed
+it meekly.</p>
+
+<p>Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man,
+with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood
+was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows,
+whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish
+blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the
+Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who
+soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that
+account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready
+for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring
+nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours,
+taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they
+"couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day
+he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had
+heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and
+liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.</p>
+
+<p>He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by
+the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat
+smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing.
+When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round
+to the Howff for a while?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Howff?" said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where
+some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh,
+nothing to speak of,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> ye know&mdash;just a dram and a joke to pass the time
+now and then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts
+smeddum in your blood!"</p>
+
+<p>Logan nipped the guard of his arm in heavy playfulness and led him to
+the Howff.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By
+the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican
+could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their
+wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of
+social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink
+appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive
+nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to
+the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to
+sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a kind of
+prestige since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom
+he met there&mdash;Armstrong and Gillespie&mdash;became his friends at College and
+the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both
+in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him
+over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie&mdash;though they saw through
+him&mdash;let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He
+found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave
+a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from
+very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to
+say, but with the nervous antenn&aelig; of their minds they feel the attitude
+of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the point
+ahead, they blunder where blunter minds would go forward undismayed.
+That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> was the experience of young Gourlay. If he tried to talk freely
+when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of
+his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its
+concentration. In plainer language, when he was drunk he was less afraid
+of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He
+was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As
+nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring
+stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him
+"smeddum."</p>
+
+<p>With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to
+his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to
+solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
+each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years.
+But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that
+had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the
+stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the
+gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming,
+"Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have
+expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was
+equally sincere. How sincere is another question.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half
+confirmed him in his evil ways.</p>
+
+<p>"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy,
+less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man.
+Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the
+philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that
+matter&mdash;himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man,
+whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the
+outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is
+terrified by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of
+man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry
+heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their
+midst."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
+through it too!</p>
+
+<p>"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
+in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
+never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and
+depress."</p>
+
+<p>"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest
+because it was "just like him."</p>
+
+<p>"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who
+knew&mdash;"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its
+windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the
+world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it
+is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens,
+being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
+away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
+the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the
+most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait,
+sure of their eternal aim. The man to whom the infinite beckons is not
+to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear;
+there is no fear&mdash;it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true
+philosophy&mdash;if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another,
+but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a
+warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That,
+gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!"</p>
+
+<p>And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> He had no conception
+of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think
+that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as
+Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind
+thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny
+mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourlay, though he could not
+understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the
+fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to
+tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched
+street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened
+to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he
+paced onward in a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the
+frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
+street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he
+was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For,
+like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of
+which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in
+reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs
+consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he
+was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him,
+making short work of <i>him</i>! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern
+supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had
+become the master of his world, and not its slave.</p>
+
+<p>"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems
+to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"</p>
+
+<p>His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the
+subject for the Raeburn.</p>
+
+<p>The Raeburn was a poor enough prize&mdash;a few books for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> an "essay in the
+picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie.
+Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the
+valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter
+when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be
+asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him
+their perception that he at least had been a failure. A bodie would
+dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused
+awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year?
+Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to
+have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days,
+but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as
+if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway.
+But <i>he</i> was a clever chap."</p>
+
+<p>The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing
+soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the
+"fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give
+him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never
+met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more
+emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the
+tear.</p>
+
+<p>"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.</p>
+
+<p>"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style
+of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy
+hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth
+(so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite
+gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of
+the lady."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness
+of mind to bear upon his task<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> (it was not in him to bring), but his
+morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town
+far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a
+darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy
+splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his
+ears the skirl of the man who went overboard&mdash;struck dead by the icy
+water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried
+eagerly, "it would be the <i>cold</i> would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
+would go in!"</p>
+
+<p>A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
+other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
+tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
+the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
+a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
+there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
+of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
+shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
+the helm.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
+all&mdash;that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
+icicle!"</p>
+
+<p>Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
+small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
+in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
+for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
+me before the whole class for doing so little o't."</p>
+
+<p>The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
+rated quality higher than quantity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><p>"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
+the session&mdash;"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
+on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.</p>
+
+<p>"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
+of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.</p>
+
+<p>"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
+Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
+place to bray in."</p>
+
+<p>The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
+you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
+but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman&mdash;he
+has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
+and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
+Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
+island of South Uist&mdash;has sent me in no less than a hundred and
+fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the
+adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and
+dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the
+MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"&mdash;he gloomed at them
+humorously&mdash;"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of
+laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat
+there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I
+leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why
+tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.</p>
+
+<p>When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> with a quiver in his
+voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he
+said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they
+sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"</p>
+
+<p>(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary
+voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite
+ill.")</p>
+
+<p>The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College
+Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now
+gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of
+the session, but really you must behave more quietly.&mdash;So little does
+that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that
+the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short
+pages."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his
+ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
+Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious
+blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in
+some ways, a wonderful imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its
+lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already
+seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures
+something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible
+existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but
+hears&mdash;actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and
+entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest
+form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> word, merging
+in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is
+no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion
+for its use."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the
+sketch&mdash;no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little
+sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'&mdash;'and'&mdash;'and,' like a
+schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the
+writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape
+him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the
+thing&mdash;faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The
+writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words&mdash;lucky if it
+glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch
+there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed,
+too nervous a sense of the external world."</p>
+
+<p>"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by
+Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of
+his bleating sheep&mdash;"I would strongly impress on the writer to set
+himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought.
+That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create
+an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a
+curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on.
+Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Name, name!" cried the fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>public-house. The
+occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay
+about Tam's advice.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got
+to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard,
+solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<p>There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock
+express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew
+them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had
+often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he
+stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was
+nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody
+at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man,
+and the son of a mentioned man&mdash;young Mr. Gourlay!</p>
+
+<p>He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were
+mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty
+Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world,
+while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As
+Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of
+distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one
+of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and
+when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to
+examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light
+another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the
+stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing
+through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> vanity to hear
+Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from
+the Univ-ai-rsity!"</p>
+
+<p>He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too
+eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour
+of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he
+had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late,"
+old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to
+have him home."</p>
+
+<p>He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the
+Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and
+made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country
+round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should
+proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His
+fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the
+long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room
+for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy
+ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with
+its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one
+peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far
+away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning
+edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a
+circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen;
+there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next
+she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was
+alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was
+softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit
+indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven
+dream.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all.
+One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn&mdash;he had won the
+Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped
+him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at
+the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden
+pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie
+existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a
+thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him,
+they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their
+midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would
+know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of
+the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would
+surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations.
+Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.</p>
+
+<p>He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger,
+the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and
+cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The
+very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.</p>
+
+<p>The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me, faither," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."</p>
+
+<p>"Faither, I have&mdash;I have won the Raeburn!"</p>
+
+<p>"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"&mdash;and the window slammed.</p>
+
+<p>Next moment it was up.</p>
+
+<p>"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>"Nut him!" said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"</p>
+
+<p>John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his
+life his father had praised him.</p>
+
+<p>He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its
+descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As
+he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
+yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
+on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
+fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
+moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
+the dying embers&mdash;the look of one who has gained short respite from a
+task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
+the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
+to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
+apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.</p>
+
+<p>She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
+news, and basked in her adoration.</p>
+
+<p>She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
+big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
+was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
+I think we might."</p>
+
+<p>He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
+listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
+fine thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
+worshipper.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
+one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
+grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> I'm
+sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
+ay," she said, and stared at the embers.</p>
+
+<p>It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
+their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
+established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
+to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
+struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
+young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
+almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
+ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
+temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
+purest white.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
+many wee clouts for?"</p>
+
+<p>She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out,"
+she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."</p>
+
+<p>"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<p>There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
+man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
+it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
+memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
+results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
+higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
+viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
+thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
+keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
+success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
+unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
+He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
+expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
+is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
+thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
+meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
+world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
+him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
+carries him heavens-high&mdash;till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
+that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
+world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
+position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
+And then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> follows a recital of his faded glories&mdash;generally ending with
+a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.</p>
+
+<p>Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
+as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
+destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
+strength of it.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
+was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
+dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
+he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
+with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
+they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
+conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
+disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
+tributaries to his new importance&mdash;somehow their attitude was different
+from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
+bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
+his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
+could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
+feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
+Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
+father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
+buzzed about the town.</p>
+
+<p>Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
+daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
+Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
+whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
+heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
+aince wud and aye waur<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
+browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but&mdash;&mdash;" and
+with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.</p>
+
+<p>When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
+Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
+his thin shanks.</p>
+
+<p>"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
+rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
+tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
+before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
+tho! Imphm. The weed."</p>
+
+<p>Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
+cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
+doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
+hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
+from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
+little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
+a twinkling."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
+work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
+through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
+to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
+easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
+yourself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> But there! what need I be telling <i>you</i> that? A College-bred
+man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
+You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun&mdash;a dram now
+and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"</p>
+
+<p>At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
+manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
+pose for more than five minutes at a time.</p>
+
+<p>"You're <i>right</i>, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
+sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
+to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."</p>
+
+<p>"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
+the Black Bull?&mdash;I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
+gude&mdash;thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
+Highland charge."&mdash;It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
+thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
+manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.&mdash;"But no doubt,"
+the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice&mdash;"but
+no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
+favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
+taste in thpirits."</p>
+
+<p>"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
+of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
+so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
+drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
+him in Embro."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."</p>
+
+<p>"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
+was kind to Jean Richmond's son<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> (in his own ruinous way), but not to
+the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
+Gourlay was merely boasting&mdash;as young blades are apt to do of
+acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
+the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
+failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
+have the great thprees?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
+should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
+I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there&mdash;d'ye know, yon's the finest
+fellow I ever met in my life!&mdash;and Bauldy Logan&mdash;he's another great
+chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie&mdash;great friends of mine, and
+damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
+there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
+talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
+remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
+whistled a jig."</p>
+
+<p>Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
+to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
+pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
+John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
+his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
+management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
+felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
+"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
+never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
+the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
+that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame&mdash;jutht
+another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys&mdash;Pate Wylie and you
+and a wheen mair&mdash;having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
+Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
+"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."</p>
+
+<p>"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
+and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
+"Eh&mdash;eh&mdash;Deacon&mdash;I&mdash;I'll see you again about the nip."</p>
+
+<p>"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
+convenient opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
+talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
+fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
+unpleasant manners.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
+Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
+remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
+legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
+spoon&mdash;which were many&mdash;were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
+which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
+His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
+rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
+especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
+face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
+projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
+his redness revealed more plainly, in turn,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> the short gleaming stubble
+that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
+times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
+Importance" was one of his nicknames.</p>
+
+<p>Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
+battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
+passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
+wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
+long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
+place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
+through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
+conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
+alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
+a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance&mdash;did
+it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
+system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
+and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
+Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
+them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
+Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
+Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
+He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
+"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
+Univairsity&mdash;the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
+criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
+having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
+fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
+Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
+they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
+required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
+he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
+talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
+way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
+ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
+he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
+of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses&mdash;dear me, ay&mdash;of his
+courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
+and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
+Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
+mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
+have indeed. Ex-cellently well&mdash;ex-cellently well!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay blushed and thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
+three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
+clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
+wasting his time!"</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
+father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
+years&mdash;without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
+visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
+application&mdash;a strenuous and devoted application&mdash;even from the man of
+abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
+ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
+doing?"</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> of Exegesis, but he
+answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
+men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
+Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
+it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
+pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
+ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
+prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
+obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
+German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
+added, with solemn and pondering brows&mdash;"perhaps he was a little too
+fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
+fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
+wondered if Hegel was a drink.</p>
+
+<p>"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
+And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
+theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
+to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
+modestly enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
+minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
+doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
+of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
+see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
+the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
+good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
+Church.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
+satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
+promise!"</p>
+
+<p>Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
+Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
+stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
+his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
+eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
+word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
+compliments for <i>his</i> son! The tables were turned at last.</p>
+
+<p>His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
+won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
+sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
+to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
+eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
+spend as much as the rest o' folk."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.</p>
+
+<p>That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
+talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
+of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking&mdash;that he
+had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
+was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
+confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
+hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
+careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
+the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
+fellow to be mean."</p>
+
+<p>Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered by the
+minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
+hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie&mdash;Lord,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> but young Gourlay was the
+fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
+had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
+afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
+immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
+ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
+and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
+student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
+answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
+yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
+Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
+to his other occupations&mdash;plurality of professions, you observe, being
+one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
+Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
+phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
+what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
+misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
+speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
+shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
+on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
+make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well&mdash;he took a
+paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
+instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
+vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
+neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
+welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
+had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
+his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
+Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
+support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
+disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
+coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
+preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
+ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
+That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
+not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
+Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
+the like without drinking in every howff you came across.</p>
+
+<p>When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was
+able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter
+than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh,"
+he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything
+and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and
+that crowd&mdash;I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath
+blowing his trump&mdash;which I greatly doubt&mdash;they're as thick as thieveth.
+Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling
+oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It
+theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this
+thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I
+mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad&mdash;especially
+the young ministers."</p>
+
+<p>"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are
+just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties.
+They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already.
+I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p><p>"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body
+solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he
+wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent
+hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of&mdash;too disgusted
+to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing
+him up about that prize o' his."</p>
+
+<p>"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused
+the ex-Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think
+at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a
+crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that
+hell gapes for. And owre they flap."</p>
+
+<p>But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of <i>him</i>,"
+said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland)
+young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence
+from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater
+abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother
+(who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed)
+often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in
+the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're
+unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she
+utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine
+moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was
+sometimes tempted to seek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk
+upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he
+could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green
+quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded
+when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at
+the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing
+beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a
+wise quiescence. His success&mdash;such as it was&mdash;had gained him a
+circle&mdash;such as it was&mdash;and the assertive nature proper to his father's
+son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw
+through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and
+threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he
+would&mdash;who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about
+them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more
+ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him.
+"Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the
+door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the
+fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness&mdash;flushed with
+pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a
+compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the
+character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a
+splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree
+to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes."
+"What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the
+nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper
+pose&mdash;that of a <i>grand homme manqu&eacute;</i>, of a man who would be a genius
+were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear
+a genius, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> he must continue to display that excess which&mdash;so he
+wished them to believe&mdash;alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It
+was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you
+didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to
+answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do
+them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to
+hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he
+didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made
+him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> "<i>Aince wud and aye waur</i>," silly for once and silly for
+always.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<p>On a beautiful evening in September, when a new crescent moon was
+pointing through the saffron sky like the lit tip of a finger, the City
+Fathers had assembled at the corner of the Fleckie Road. Though the moon
+was peeping, the dying glory of the day was still upon the town. The
+white smoke rose straight and far in the golden mystery of the heavens,
+and a line of dark roofs, transfigured against the west, wooed the eye
+to musing. But though the bodies felt the fine evening bathe them in a
+sensuous content, as they smoked and dawdled, they gave never a thought
+to its beauty. For there had been a blitheness in the town that day, and
+every other man seemed to have been preeing the demijohn.</p>
+
+<p>Drucken Wabster and Brown the ragman came round the corner, staggering.</p>
+
+<p>"Young Gourlay's drunk!" blurted Wabster&mdash;and reeled himself as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a wee fou?" said the Deacon eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Wee be damned," said Wabster; "he's as fou as the Baltic Sea! If you
+wait here, you'll be sure to see him! He'll be round the corner
+directly."</p>
+
+<p>"De-ar me, is he so bad as that?" said the ex-Provost, raising his hands
+in solemn reprobation. He raised his eyes to heaven at the same time, as
+if it pained them to look on a world that endured the burden of a young
+Gourlay. "In broad daylight, too!" he sighed. "De-ar me, has he come to
+this?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>"Yis, Pravast," hiccupped Brown, "he has! He's as phull of drink as a
+whelk-shell's phull of whelk. He's nearly as phull as meself&mdash;and
+begorra, that's mighty phull." He stared suddenly, scratching his head
+solemnly as if the fact had just occurred to him. Then he winked.</p>
+
+<p>"You could set fire to his braith!" cried Wabster. "A match to his mouth
+would send him in a lowe."</p>
+
+<p>"A living gas jet!" said Brown.</p>
+
+<p>They staggered away, sometimes rubbing shoulders as they lurched
+together, sometimes with the road between them.</p>
+
+<p>"I kenned young Gourlay was on the fuddle when I saw him swinging off
+this morning in his greatcoat," cried Sandy Toddle. "There was debauch
+in the flap o' the tails o't."</p>
+
+<p>"Man, have you noticed that too!" cried another eagerly. "He's aye warst
+wi' the coat on!"</p>
+
+<p>"Clothes undoubtedly affect the character," said Johnny Coe. "It takes a
+gentleman to wear a lordly coat without swaggering."</p>
+
+<p>"There's not a doubt o' tha-at!" approved the baker, who was merry with
+his day's carousal; "there's not a doubt o' tha-at! Claes affect the
+disposeetion. I mind when I was a young chap I had a grand pair o'
+breeks&mdash;Wull I ca'ed them&mdash;unco decent breeks they were, I mind, lang
+and swankie like a ploughman; and I aye thocht I was a tremendous honest
+and hamely fallow when I had them on! And I had a verra disreputable
+hat," he added&mdash;"Rab I christened him, for he was a perfect devil&mdash;and I
+never cocked him owre my lug on nichts at e'en but 'Baker!' he seemed to
+whisper, 'Baker! Let us go out and do a bash!' And we generally went."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a wonderful man!" piped the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"We may as well wait and see young Gourlay going by," said the
+ex-Provost. "He'll likely be a sad spectacle."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p><p>"Ith auld Gourlay on the thtreet the nicht?" cried the Deacon eagerly.
+"I wonder will he thee the youngster afore he gets hame! Eh, man"&mdash;he
+bent his knees with staring delight&mdash;"eh, man, if they would only meet
+forenenst uth! Hoo!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's a regular waster," said Brodie. "When a silly young blood takes a
+fancy to a girl in a public-house he's always done for; I've observed it
+times without number. At first he lets on that he merely gangs in for a
+drink; what he really wants, however, is to see the girl. Even if he's
+no great toper to begin with, he must show himself fond o' the dram, as
+a means of getting to his jo. Then, before he kens where he is, the
+habit has gripped him. That's a gate mony a ane gangs."</p>
+
+<p>"That's verra true, now that ye mention't," gravely assented the
+ex-Provost. His opinion of Brodie's sagacity, high already, was enhanced
+by the remark. "Indeed, that's verra true. But how does't apply to young
+Gourlay in particular, Thomas? Is <i>he</i> after some damsel o' the
+gill-stoup?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ou ay&mdash;he's ta'en a fancy to yon bit shilp in the bar-room o' the Red
+Lion. He's always hinging owre the counter talking till her, a cigarette
+dropping from his face, and a half-fu' tumbler at his elbow. When a
+young chap takes to hinging round bars, ae elbow on the counter and a
+hand on his other hip, I have verra bad brows o' him always&mdash;verra bad
+brows, indeed. Oh&mdash;oh, young Gourlay's just a goner! a goner, sirs&mdash;a
+goner!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have ye heard about him at the Skeighan Fair?" said Sandy Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"No, man," said Brodie, bowing down and keeking at Toddle in his
+interest; "I hadna heard about tha-at! Is this a <i>new</i> thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just at the fair; the other day, ye know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, Sandy!" said big Brodie, stooping down to Toddle to get near
+the news; "and what was it, Sandy?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p><p>"Ou, just drinking, ye know, wi'&mdash;wi' Swipey Broon&mdash;and, eh, and that
+M'Craw, ye know&mdash;and Sandy Hull&mdash;and a wheen mair o' that kind&mdash;ye ken
+the kind; a verra bad lot!" said Sandy, and wagged a disapproving pow.
+"Here they all got as drunk as drunk could be, and started fighting wi'
+the colliers! Young Gourlay got a bloodied nose! Then nothing would
+serve him but he must drive back wi' young Pin-oe, who was even drunker
+than himsell. They drave at sic a rate that when they dashed from this
+side o' Skeighan Drone the stour o' their career was rising at the far
+end. They roared and sang till it was a perfect affront to God's day,
+and frae sidie to sidie they swung till the splash-brods were skreighing
+on the wheels. At a quick turn o' the road they wintled owre; and there
+they were, sitting on their doups in the atoms o' the gig, and glowering
+frae them! When young Gourlay slid hame at dark he was in such a state
+that his mother had to hide him frae the auld man. She had that, puir
+body! The twa women were obliged to carry the drunk lump to his
+bedroom&mdash;and yon lassie far ga'en in consumption, too, they tell me! Ou,
+he was in a perfectly awful condition&mdash;perfectly awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man," nodded Brodie. "I hadna heard o't. Curious that I didna hear
+o' that!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Drucken Wabster's wife that telled it. There's not a haet that
+happens at the Gourlays but she clypes. I speired her mysell, and she
+says young Gourlay has a black eye."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay; there'th thmall hope for the Gourlayth in <i>him</i>!" said the
+Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"How do <i>you</i> ken?" cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've
+seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and,
+eh, but he was <i>this</i> waster!&mdash;according to their way of it&mdash;and, oh,
+but he was the <i>other</i> waster! and, ochonee, but he was the <i>wild</i>
+fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>doormat; for it was
+only the fire in the ruffian made him seem sae daft."</p>
+
+<p>"True!" said the ex-Provost, "true! Still there's a decency in daftness.
+And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start
+canny, and you'll steer weel,' my mother used to say; but he has started
+unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin."</p>
+
+<p>"Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And
+never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a
+breenge."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I like young men to be quiet," said Sandy Toddle. "I would rather
+have them a wee soft than rollickers."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I!" said the baker. "If I had a son, I would rather an ill deil sat
+forenenst me at the table than parratch in a poke. Burns (God rest his
+banes!) struck the he'rt o't. Ye mind what he said o' Prince Geordie:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been known</div>
+<div class="i1">To mak a noble aiver;</div>
+<div>And ye may doucely fill a throne,</div>
+<div class="i1">For a' their clishmaclaver.</div>
+<div>There him at Agincourt wha shone.</div>
+<div class="i1">Few better were or braver;</div>
+<div>And yet wi' funny queer Sir John</div>
+<div class="i1">He was an unco shaver</div>
+<div class="i4">For mony a day.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dam't, but Burns is gude."</p>
+
+<p>"Huts, man, dinna sweer sae muckle!" frowned the old Provost.</p>
+
+<p>"Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like
+spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner
+wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his
+withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial
+gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same
+the bit bodie; so he used to say '<i>Dim it!</i>' in a wee, sma voice that
+was clean rideec'lous. He was a lauchable dirt, that."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.)
+"Alexander Toddle was his name: '<i>Dim it!</i>' he used to squeak, for he
+had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English.
+'<i>Dim it!</i>' said he. I like a man that says '<i>Dahm't.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; but then, you thee, <i>you</i>'re an artitht in wordth," said the
+Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end
+o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the
+throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young
+Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie
+and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my
+opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.</p>
+
+<p>"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a
+possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"</p>
+
+<p>He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out,
+with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she,
+"what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea
+wi' me!"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his
+hunkers&mdash;for fine he saw through her&mdash;and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great
+muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye&mdash;I'll gang in and have a dish o'
+tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
+kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
+went thae lamb-like!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> drinking too. "He's
+the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
+gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
+if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
+dacent wife, and a bigger field&mdash;oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
+possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
+neck till't."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.&mdash;"Here comes his
+son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
+they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
+Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
+fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
+they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
+on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
+road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
+went.</p>
+
+<p>"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
+feel the slight, blatant to resent it.</p>
+
+<p>"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.</p>
+
+<p>With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<p>"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
+between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
+cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay&mdash;just down for a flying visit to see my
+little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again&mdash;Barbie's too quiet
+for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"</p>
+
+<p>The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
+as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
+bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
+reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
+in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering
+to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side
+by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was
+letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a
+fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left
+coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the
+Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear
+remembrance!"</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was
+too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College
+again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at
+Skeighan Station.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be
+punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels
+a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is,"
+he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the
+door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of
+that easy-swinging door.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."</p>
+
+<p>"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast
+pocket of his coat.</p>
+
+<p>John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay
+had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The
+young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of
+millions.</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the
+darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little
+old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already
+mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the
+gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against
+the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from
+the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson
+had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a
+separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay
+stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was.
+His lips parted, and&mdash;as they saw in the light from the door&mdash;his look
+grew dreamy and far-away.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten
+in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto.
+That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely
+assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots
+at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh&mdash;to those lodgings,
+those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real
+elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he
+forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering
+dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the
+impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and
+the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump,
+so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear
+country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world
+among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was
+fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no
+doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his
+friend; he had known it always.</p>
+
+<p>The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's
+nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn
+wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried;
+"we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another,
+and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink
+till I light my cigar."</p>
+
+<p>He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on
+purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he
+went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.</p>
+
+<p>He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one
+side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat
+pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his
+brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> up the reins.
+"Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder,
+and they were off with a bound.</p>
+
+<p>"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks
+to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when
+he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"&mdash;for Peter said
+"mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister"
+was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
+in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
+tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
+withered little man.</p>
+
+<p>That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
+session at the University.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
+Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
+simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
+had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
+there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
+Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
+surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
+was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
+a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
+about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
+of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
+clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
+sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
+mester; and hardy, too&mdash;infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.</p>
+
+<p>But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> It was on the day
+after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
+with.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day&mdash;a day
+when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
+and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
+of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
+tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw&mdash;which seemed strange and
+unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
+beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
+among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
+were gurgling and <i>rookety-cooing</i>, mating for the coming year. He fell
+to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
+aside&mdash;"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
+softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
+waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
+moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who
+would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the
+old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on
+nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and
+occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without
+knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming
+at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger
+and a keener man.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."</p>
+
+<p>Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful
+gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few
+yellow tusks.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays
+could not penetrate his mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p><p>"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful
+gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak
+onything."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly&mdash;"it's no that. But I'm giving up
+the business."</p>
+
+<p>Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth
+forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld
+servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a
+true ane."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing
+for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;"
+and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.</p>
+
+<p>Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he
+said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned
+back to his work&mdash;"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about
+the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long
+service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'&mdash;to mind you o'&mdash;&mdash;" he
+broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears;
+others by an angry scowl&mdash;hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their
+weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their
+weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that
+Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's
+father in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
+submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
+other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
+deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More&mdash;the
+going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
+quick. Therefore he scowled.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his
+heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away
+across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and
+came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held
+out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not
+in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi'
+the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his
+pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so
+bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and
+the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay
+had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He
+stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."</p>
+
+<p>It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate
+pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several
+speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and
+retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs,
+that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> apt to do when
+despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the
+end of his resources.</p>
+
+<p>Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had
+sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at
+any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay
+attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of
+his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would
+have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at
+least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the
+whole of life to him. For one thing, the son's success would justify the
+father's past and prevent it being quite useless; it would have produced
+a minister, a successful man, one of an esteemed profession. Again, that
+success would be a salve to Gourlay's wounded pride; the Gourlays would
+show Barbie they could flourish yet, in spite of their present downcome.
+Thus, in the collapse of his fortunes, the son grew all-important in the
+father's eyes. Nor did his own poverty seem to him a just bar to his
+son's prosperity. "I have put him through his Arts," thought Gourlay;
+"surely he can do the rest himsell. Lots of young chaps, when they
+warstle through their Arts, teach the sons of swells to get a little
+money to gang through Diveenity. My boy can surely do the like!" Again
+and again, as Gourlay felt himself slipping under in the world of
+Barbie, his hopes turned to John in Edinburgh. If that boy would only
+hurry up and get through, to make a hame for the lassie and the auld
+wife!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as he had spent
+the last. Last winter, however, it was simply a weak need for
+companionship that drew him to the Howff. This winter it was more: it
+was the need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction.
+He had a further impulse to conviviality now. It had become a habit that
+compelled him.</p>
+
+<p>The diversions of some men are merely subsidiary to their lives,
+externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp
+a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other
+occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an
+irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always
+visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never
+gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and
+long for the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his books of
+an evening but he thought to himself, "I wonder what they're doing at
+the Howff to-night?" At once he visualized the scene, imagined every
+detail, saw them in their jovial hours. And, seeing them so happy, he
+longed to be with them. On that night, long ago, when his father ordered
+him to College, his cowardly and too vivid mind thought of the ploys the
+fellows would be having along the Barbie roads, while he was mewed up in
+Edinburgh. He saw the Barbie rollickers in his mind's eye, and the
+student in his lonely rooms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> and contrasted them mournfully. So now,
+every night, he saw the cosy companions in their Howff, and shivered at
+his own isolation. He felt a tugging at his heart to be off and join
+them. And his will was so weak that, nine times out of ten, he made no
+resistance to the impulse.</p>
+
+<p>He had always a feeling of depression when he must sit down to his
+books. It was the start that gravelled him. He would look round his room
+and hate it, mutter "Damn it, I must work;" and then, with a heavy sigh,
+would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table, tugging the
+hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression left him, when he
+buckled to his work; as his mind became occupied with other things the
+vision of the Howff was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his
+brains made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the
+sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten
+minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they
+were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is
+Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it
+merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray
+Daylicht'&mdash;they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten
+minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came back
+at two in the morning, staggering.</p>
+
+<p>On a bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had
+gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It
+was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the
+air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray
+city, naked and bare. There was light enough, with the lengthening days,
+to see plainly the rawness of the world. There were cold yellow gleams
+in windows fronting a lonely west. Uncertain little puffs of wind came
+swirling round corners, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> made dust and pieces of dirty white paper
+gyrate on the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in
+their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses.
+Sometimes they stopped&mdash;their trousers legs flapping behind them&mdash;and
+trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the
+streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower.</p>
+
+<p>By eight o'clock, however, he was merry with the barley-bree, and making
+a butt of himself to amuse the company. He was not quick-witted enough
+to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to essay it unprovoked; on
+the other hand, his swaggering love of notice impelled him to some form
+of talk that would attract attention. So he made a point of always
+coming with daft stories of things comic that befell him&mdash;at least, he
+said they did. But if his efforts were greeted with too loud a roar,
+implying not only appreciation of the stories, but also a contempt for
+the man who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was
+immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger. And the moment
+after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember when I was a boy," he hiccupped, "I had a pet goose at
+home."</p>
+
+<p>There was a titter at the queer beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"I was to get the price of it for myself, and so when Christmas drew
+near I went to old MacFarlane, the poulterer in Skeighan. 'Will you buy
+a goose?' said I. 'Are ye for sale, my man?' was his answer."</p>
+
+<p>Armstrong flung back his head and roared, prolonging the loud <i>ho-ho!</i>
+through his big nose and open mouth long after the impulse to honest
+laughter was exhausted. He always laughed with false loudness, to
+indicate his own superiority, when he thought a man had been guilty of a
+public silliness. The laugh was meant to show the company how far above
+such folly was Mr. Armstrong.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p><p>Gourlay scowled. "Damn Armstrong!" he thought, "what did he yell like
+that for? Does he think I didn't see the point of the joke against
+myself? Would I have told it if I hadn't? This is what comes of being
+sensitive. I'm always too sensitive! I felt there was an awkward
+silence, and I told a story against myself to dispel it in fun, and this
+is what I get for't. Curse the big brute! he thinks I have given myself
+away. But I'll show him!"</p>
+
+<p>He was already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him, as was
+his habit.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he
+said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No
+gentleman laughs like that."</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est</i>,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one
+of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to
+frequent it greatly.</p>
+
+<p>Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the
+great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his
+resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three
+students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster,
+for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a
+diversion.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row
+with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely
+appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the
+thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he
+never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first."</p>
+
+<p>"He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think
+too much of themselves. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> wouldn't bully <i>me</i>! There's good stuff in
+the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not
+to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too
+far."</p>
+
+<p>He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled
+him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities.
+It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink,
+just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends."</p>
+
+<p>When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and
+after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other
+two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to
+monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him?
+The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was
+fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future,
+in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of
+Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought,
+what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into
+Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of
+his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the
+man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten
+the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let
+him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk
+of his dirty soul to him!</p>
+
+<p>The drink was dying in him now, for the trio had walked for more than an
+hour through the open air<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> when they left Gillespie's rooms. The
+stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his brain morbidly alive. He
+was anxious to sleep, but drowsy dullness kept away. His mind began to
+visualize of its own accord, independent of his will; and, one after
+another, a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of his brain. He
+saw them as plainly as you see this page, but with a different
+clearness&mdash;for they seemed unnatural, belonging to a morbid world. Nor
+did one suggest the other; there was no connection between them; each
+came vivid of its own accord.</p>
+
+<p>First it was an old pit-frame on a barren moor, gaunt, against the
+yellow west. Gourlay saw bars of iron, left when the pit was abandoned,
+reddened by the rain; and the mounds of rubbish, and the scattered
+bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace, and the melancholy
+shining pools. A four-wheeled old trolley had lost two of its wheels,
+and was tilted at a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do I think of an old pit?" he thought angrily; "curse it! why can't
+I sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>Next moment he was gazing at a ruined castle, its mouldering walls
+mounded atop with decaying rubble; from a loose crumb of mortar a long,
+thin film of the spider's weaving stretched bellying away to a tall weed
+waving on the crazy brink. Gourlay saw its glisten in the wind. He saw
+each crack in the wall, each stain of lichen; a myriad details stamped
+themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession of
+figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes. Each figure
+was cowled; but when it came directly opposite, it turned and looked at
+him with a white face. "Stop, stop!" cried his mind; "I don't want to
+think of you, I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of
+you! Go away!" But as they came of themselves, so they went of
+themselves. He could not banish them.</p>
+
+<p>He turned on his side, but a hundred other pictures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> pursued him. From
+an inland hollow he saw the great dawn flooding up from the sea, over a
+sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging up the
+heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was gray with dew. The inland
+hollow was full of little fields, divided by stone walls, and he could
+not have recalled the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness.
+For a moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his
+vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep
+slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow
+leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air.
+The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness.
+Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the
+boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they
+moved.</p>
+
+<p>He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium
+of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was
+sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was
+only automatic visualization.</p>
+
+<p>Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with
+his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness.
+Ha! that was better.</p>
+
+<p>His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window
+and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep.
+Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; <i>clank, clank, clank</i>
+went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his
+street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the
+footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the
+deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath
+him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool
+whistle? What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one
+man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to
+sleep the whole night long.</p>
+
+<p>He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door.
+By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to
+consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying
+to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
+the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top
+of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold
+gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and
+drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off
+to the University.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold
+drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the
+street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to
+an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his
+last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of
+sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a
+fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I
+trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got
+to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!</p>
+
+<p>"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the
+white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain.
+Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank
+sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to
+his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> in his body he lurched
+off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had
+changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky
+gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That
+stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."</p>
+
+<p>He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear
+garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a
+malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
+university class&mdash;which is many most moral individuals&mdash;has a similar
+eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It
+will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when
+nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer,
+who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the
+condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly
+every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most
+portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last
+triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to
+account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom&mdash;bad cold!"
+Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of
+"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"&mdash;which no man seemed
+to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It
+was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink
+still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his
+morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The
+morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>At last the lecturer plunged wildly at the door and flung it open.
+"Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him;
+and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and
+vindictive glower.</p>
+
+<p>He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to
+his mouth and bellowed "<i>Cock-a-doodle-do</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the
+rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously&mdash;"you
+there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end
+of the hour."</p>
+
+<p>There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the
+stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them
+at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his
+rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate
+silence took the room&mdash;the more impressive for the former noise. Every
+eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.</p>
+
+<p>If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been
+cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the
+company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies
+would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by
+surprise and fear.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more
+sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery,
+while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they
+were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him
+furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance
+itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other
+rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling
+fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the
+mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer,
+he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others&mdash;the Snuffler took it
+all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it
+suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the
+lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he
+wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy
+stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let
+him punish all or none, for they had all been kicking up a row&mdash;why, big
+Cunningham had been braying like an ass only a minute before.</p>
+
+<p>He spied Armstrong and Gillespie glinting across at him with a curious
+look: they were wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his
+guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look, and resented it.
+He was on his mettle before them, it seemed. The fellow who had
+swaggered at the Howff last night about "what <i>he</i> would do if a
+professor jumped on <i>him</i>," mustn't prove wanting in the present trial,
+beneath the eyes of those on whom he had imposed his blatancy.</p>
+
+<p>When we think of what Gourlay did that day, we must remember that he was
+soaked in alcohol&mdash;not merely with his morning's potation, but with the
+dregs of previous carousals. And the dregs of drink, a thorough toper
+will tell you, never leave him. He is drunk on Monday with his
+Saturday's debauch. As "Drucken Wabster" of Barbie put it once, "When a
+body's hard up, his braith's a consolation." If that be so&mdash;and Wabster,
+remember, was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled to the
+highest credence&mdash;if that be so, it proves the strength and persistence
+of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or, as Wabster called it, of "a
+good soak." In young Gourlay's case, at any rate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the impregnation was
+enduring and complete. He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil.</p>
+
+<p>As the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper in his dogged
+sullenness. When the class streamed from the large door on the right, he
+turned aside to the little anteroom on the left, with an insolent swing
+of the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously&mdash;he
+felt their eyes upon his back. And, therefore, as he went through the
+little door, he stood for a moment on his right foot, and waggled his
+left, on a level with his hip behind, in a vulgar derision of them, the
+professor, and the whole situation. That was a fine taunt flung back at
+them!</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets
+a chance he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice forced him
+to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on
+the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the
+wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had
+no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet
+shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at
+once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty
+than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of
+superiority. The class was his master, but here was one of them he could
+cow at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he asked, bringing his thin finger-tips together, and flinging
+one thigh across the other.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay shuffled his feet uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" inquired the other, enjoying his discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay lowered. "Whatna gate was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a
+blatter out of his thin mouth, and ha' done wi't?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm waiting!" said the lecturer.</p>
+
+<p>The words "I apologize" rose in Gourlay, but refused to pass his throat.
+No, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> He would see the lecturer far enough,
+ere he gave an apology before it was expressly required.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's the line you go on, is it?" said the lecturer, nodding his
+head as if he had sized up a curious animal. "I see, I see! You add
+contumacy to insolence, do you?... Imphm."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay was not quite sure what contumacy meant, and the uncertainty
+added to his anger.</p>
+
+<p>"There were others making a noise besides me," he blurted. "I don't see
+why <i>I</i> should be blamed for it all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't see why <i>you</i> should be had up, indeed? I think we'll
+bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay, being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself
+swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry
+owl&mdash;the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful
+rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have
+liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the
+lecturer have it hot and strong; the next, he was quivering in a
+cowardly horror of the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curse
+his tormentor! Why did he keep him here, when his head was aching so
+badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his drunken rage.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what you think you came to College for?" said the lecturer. "I
+have been looking at your records in the class. They're the worst I ever
+saw. And you're not content with that, it seems. You add misbehaviour to
+gross stupidity."</p>
+
+<p>"To hell wi' ye!" said Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>There was a feeling in the room as if the air was stunned. The silence
+throbbed.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer, who had risen, sat down suddenly as if going at the knees,
+and went white about the gills. Some men would have swept the ruffian
+with a burst of generous wrath, a few might have pitied in their anger;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+but this young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat. Unable to
+cow the insolent in present and full-blooded rage, he fell to thinking
+of the great machine he might set in motion to destroy him. As he sat
+there in silence, his eyes grew ferrety, and a sleek revenge peeped from
+the corners of his mouth. "I'll show him what I'll do to him for this!"
+is a translation of his thought. He was thinking, with great
+satisfaction to himself, of how the Senatus would deal with young
+Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him. They had
+been a thunderclap to his own ears. He had been thinking them, but&mdash;as
+he pleaded far within him now&mdash;had never meant to utter them; they had
+been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seething up within him,
+longing to burst, but afraid. It was the taunt of stupidity that fired
+his drunken vanity to blurt them forth.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer eyed him sideways where he shrank in fear. "You may go," he
+said at last. "I will report your conduct to the University."</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay was sitting alone in his room when he heard that he had been
+expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober
+now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the
+window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay
+sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid
+his character bare to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not by
+conscious effort; insight was uncanny and apart from will. He saw that
+blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with want of brains; and
+that the results of these, converging to a point, had produced the
+present issue, his expulsion. His mind recognized how logical the issue
+was, assenting wearily as to a problem proved. Given those qualities, in
+those circumstances, what else could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> have happened? And such a weakling
+as he knew himself to be could never&mdash;he thought&mdash;make effort sufficient
+to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism came over him, as of one
+doomed. He bowed his head, and let his arms fall by the sides of his
+chair, dropping them like a spent swimmer ready to sink. The sudden
+revelation of himself to himself had taken the heart out of him. "I'm a
+waster!" he said aghast. And then, at the sound of his own voice, a fear
+came over him, a fear of his own nature; and he started to his feet and
+strode feverishly, as if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging
+and inherent ill. It was as if he were trying to run away from himself.</p>
+
+<p>He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image
+with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard
+through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill
+ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the
+Howff for consolation.</p>
+
+<p>With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character
+at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid
+reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more
+definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to
+go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the
+dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he
+entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that
+he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when
+the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again.
+His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in
+imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into
+his mood, no less big with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>destruction. It was all his father's fault
+for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
+serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his
+own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they
+had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in
+forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head.
+Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at
+home by their own foolish scheme&mdash;it had punished <i>him</i> enough, for one.
+And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more
+fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical
+father would suffer through his degradation too.</p>
+
+<p>At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had
+ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so,
+free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless
+voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased
+his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor&mdash;outside of
+which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to
+somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the
+window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing,
+said, "<i>Flat white nose!</i>" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at
+the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose <i>would</i> look flat and
+white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in
+on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to
+think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had
+been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well,
+it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going
+to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said,
+nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist&mdash;"none
+of your jaw; d'ye hear?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and
+knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly
+through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He
+nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped
+dead at their words.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not
+unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."</p>
+
+<p>John heard the mumble of his father's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie
+for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face
+his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before
+him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green Shutters.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<p>There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away
+from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and
+Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused
+the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried,
+"this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy
+fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their
+dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but,
+over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for
+the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple
+expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest&mdash;of suspense, yet
+certainty&mdash;that had them in its grip. "He's <i>bound</i> to come down," said
+Certainty. "Yes; but <i>when</i>, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more
+eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited
+for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if
+they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen
+interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That
+invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a
+small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest
+that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this
+case it was chiefly malevolent&mdash;only because Gourlay had been such a
+brute to Barbie.</p>
+
+<p>Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was
+one and the same&mdash;a constant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a
+more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every
+tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with
+the Green Shutters been so much talked of.</p>
+
+<p>"Pride <i>will</i> have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack
+of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common
+proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener
+spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff
+he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes
+are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken
+perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."</p>
+
+<p>Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away
+from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could
+only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the
+gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of
+retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand
+and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of
+Gourlay's remark&mdash;"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean
+Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old
+Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a
+smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in
+gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly
+John, and the fellow went away.</p>
+
+<p>Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear,
+and he wheeled eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at
+the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had
+stung him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>"My God!" he cried, "had <i>I</i> not enough to thole?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct,
+then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the
+Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son.&mdash;Lord!
+what a tit-bit for my rounds."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband
+standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often
+seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this
+bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the
+dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll
+put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't&mdash;the lot o' ye."</p>
+
+<p>The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is
+it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them
+tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter
+with <i>my</i> boy? Is there ainything the matter with <i>my</i> boy?"</p>
+
+<p>The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She
+was a fluttering thing in his grip.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Every</i> thing's the matter with <i>your</i> boy," he sneered slowly,
+"<i>every</i> thing's the matter with <i>your</i> boy. And it's your fault too,
+damn you, for you always spoiled him!"</p>
+
+<p>With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the
+letter within the great fender.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so
+wild about sending to College<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> has been flung in disgrace from its door!
+That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean,
+my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but
+could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion"
+swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to
+hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was
+thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.</p>
+
+<p>It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest
+due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and
+try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny
+was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.</p>
+
+<p>He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the
+Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the
+gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that
+his life meant was bound up in that house&mdash;it had been the pride of the
+Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the
+dust&mdash;their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on
+the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors
+flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and
+added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o' <i>my</i> hoose!"</p>
+
+<p>He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life;
+he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he
+might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the
+House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending.
+Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for
+himself&mdash;rather the house was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>himself; there was no division between
+them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his
+character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind,
+unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And
+John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green
+Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a
+prodigal.</p>
+
+<p>As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a
+conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr.
+Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay
+in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine
+stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were
+innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared
+enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson
+addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones
+that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!"
+Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten
+yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour
+surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped
+to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a
+son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation,
+therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled,
+his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger.
+His voice had a moan of intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness....
+"Eh?... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."</p>
+
+<p>He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet
+voice, from the yawing mouth, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was
+deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a
+vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must
+grind an answer.</p>
+
+<p>Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful
+man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was
+the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off <i>my</i>
+shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion.
+Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.</p>
+
+<p>But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult,
+and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest
+thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the
+additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you
+referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send
+him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson
+was an adept in the art.</p>
+
+<p>"Man," he lied blandly, but his voice was quivering&mdash;"ma-a-an, I wasn't
+so much as giving ye a thoat! It's verra strange if I cannot pass a joke
+with my o-old friend Templandmuir without <i>you</i> calling me to book. It's
+a free country, I shuppose! Ye weren't in my mind at a-all. I have more
+important matters to think of," he ventured to add, seeing he had
+baffled Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>For Gourlay was baffled. For a directer insult, an offensive gesture,
+one fierce word, he would have hammered the road with the Provost. But
+he was helpless before the bland, quivering lie. Maybe they werena
+referring to him; maybe they knew nothing of John in Edinburgh; maybe he
+had been foolishly suspeecious. A subtle yet baffling check was put upon
+his anger. Madman as he was in wrath, he never struck without direct
+provocation; there was none in this pulpy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>gentleness. And he was too
+dull of wit to get round the common ruse and find a means of getting at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>He let loose a great breath through his nostrils, as if releasing a
+deadly force which he had pent within him, ready should he need to
+spring. His mouth opened again, and he gaped at them with a great,
+round, unseeing stare. Then he swung on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>But wrath clung round him like a garment. His anger fed on its
+uncertainties. For that is the beauty of the Wilson method of insult:
+you leave the poison in your victim's blood, and he torments himself.
+"Was Wilson referring to <i>me</i>, after all?" he pondered slowly; and his
+body surged at the thought. "If he was, I have let him get away
+unkilled," and he clutched the hands whence Wilson had escaped. Suddenly
+a flashing thought stopped him dead in the middle of his walk, staring
+hornily before him. He had seen the point at last that a quicker man
+would have seized on at the first. Why had Wilson thrust his damned
+voice on him on this particular morning of all days in the year, if he
+was not gloating over some news which he had just heard about the
+Gourlays? It was as plain as daylight: his son had sent word from
+Edinburgh. That was why he brayed and ho-ho-hoed when Gourlay went by.
+Gourlay felt a great flutter of pulses against his collar; there was a
+pain in his throat, an ache of madness in his breast. He turned once
+more. But Wilson and the Templar had withdrawn discreetly to the Black
+Bull; the street wasna canny. Gourlay resumed his way, his being a dumb
+gowl of rage. His angry thought swept to John. Each insult, and fancied
+insult, he endured that day was another item in the long account of
+vengeance with his son. It was John who had brought all this flaming
+round his ears&mdash;John whose colleging he had lippened to so muckle. The
+staff on which he leaned had pierced him. By the eternal heavens he
+would tramp it into atoms. His legs felt John beneath them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p><p>As the market grew busy, Gourlay was the aim of innumerable eyes. He
+would turn his head to find himself the object of a queer, considering
+look; then the eyes of the starer would flutter abashed, as though
+detected spying the forbidden. The most innocent look at him was poison.
+"Do they know?" was his constant thought; "have they heard the news?
+What's Loranogie looking at me like that for?"</p>
+
+<p>Not a man ventured to address him about John&mdash;he had cowed them too
+long. One man, however, showed a wish to try. A pretended sympathy, from
+behind the veil of which you probe a man's anguish at your ease, is a
+favourite weapon of human beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon longed to
+try it on Gourlay. But his courage failed him. It was the only time he
+was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a
+recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old
+rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me,
+neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a <i>terrible</i> affair! It'th on
+everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have
+tha-at&mdash;my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above
+the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the
+other was writhing at his words.</p>
+
+<p>Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were
+giving him a wide berth; for they knew that he was dangerous. He was no
+longer the man whom they had baited on the way to Skeighan; then he had
+some control, now three years' calamities had fretted his temper to a
+raw wound. To flick it was perilous. Great was the surprise of the
+starers, therefore, when the idle old Deacon was seen to detach himself
+and hail the grain merchant. Gourlay wheeled, and waited with a levelled
+eye. All were agog at the sight&mdash;something would be sure to come o'
+this&mdash;here would be an encounter worth the speaking o'. But the Deacon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+having toddled forward a bittock on his thin shanks, stopped half-roads,
+took snuff, trumpeted into his big red handkerchief, and then, feebly
+waving, "I'll thee ye again, Dyohn," clean turned tail and toddled back
+to his cronies.</p>
+
+<p>A roar went up at his expense.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" said Tam Wylie, "did ye see yon? Gourlay stopped him wi' a
+glower."</p>
+
+<p>But the laugh was maddening to Gourlay. Its readiness, its volume,
+showed him that scores of folk had him in their minds, were watching
+him, considering his position, cognizant of where he stood. "They ken,"
+he thought. "They were a' waiting to see what would happen. They wanted
+to watch how Gourlay tholed the mention o' his son's disgrace. I'm a
+kind o' show to them."</p>
+
+<p>Johnny Coe, idle and well-to-pass, though he had no business of his own
+to attend to, was always present where business men assembled. It was a
+gra-and way of getting news. To-day, however, Gourlay could not find
+him. He went into the cattle mart to see if he was there. For two years
+now Barbie had a market for cattle, on the first Tuesday of the month.</p>
+
+<p>The auctioneer, a jovial dog, was in the middle of his roaring game. A
+big red bullock, the coat of which made a rich colour in the ring, came
+bounding in, scared at its surroundings&mdash;staring one moment and the next
+careering.</p>
+
+<p>"There's meat for you," said he of the hammer; "see how it runs! How
+much am I offered for <i>this</i> fine bullock?" He sing-songed, always
+saying "<i>this</i> fine bullock" in exactly the same tone of voice.
+"Thirteen pounds for <i>this</i> fine bullock; thirteen-five; thirteen-ten;
+thirteen-ten for <i>this</i> fine bullock; thirteen-ten; any further bids on
+thirteen-ten? why, it's worth that for the colour o't; thank ye,
+sir&mdash;thirteen-fifteen; fourteen pounds; fourteen pounds for <i>this</i> fine
+bullock; see how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> the stot stots<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> about the ring; that joke should
+raise him another half-sovereign; ah, I knew it would&mdash;fourteen-five;
+fourteen-five for <i>this</i> fine bullock; fourteen-ten; no more than
+fourteen-ten for <i>this</i> fine bullock; going at fourteen-ten;
+gone&mdash;Irrendavie."</p>
+
+<p>Now that he was in the circle, however, the mad, big, handsome beast
+refused to go out again. When the cattlemen would drive him to the yard,
+he snorted and galloped round, till he had to be driven from the ring
+with blows. When at last he bounded through the door, he flung up his
+heels with a bellow, and sent the sand of his arena showering on the
+people round.</p>
+
+<p>"I seh!" roared Brodie in his coarsest voice, from the side of the ring
+opposite to Gourlay. "I seh, owctioner! That maun be a College-bred
+stot, from the way he behaves. He flung dirt at his masters, and had to
+be expelled."</p>
+
+<p>"Put Brodie in the ring and rowp him!" cried Irrendavie. "He roars like
+a bill, at ony rate."</p>
+
+<p>There was a laugh at Brodie, true; but it was at Gourlay that a hundred
+big red faces turned to look. He did not look at them, though. He sent
+his eyes across the ring at Brodie.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord!" said Irrendavie, "it's weel for Brodie that the ring's acqueesh
+them! Gourlay'll murder somebody yet. Red hell lap out o' his e'en when
+he looked at Brodie."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay's suspicion that his son's disgrace was a matter of common
+knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that
+everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but
+resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting
+figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round
+for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun
+thole, I suppose. They were under <i>my</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> feet for many a day, and they're
+taking their advantage now."</p>
+
+<p>But though he could thole, his anger against John was none the less. It
+was because they had been under his feet for many a day that John's
+conduct was the more heinous. It was his son's conduct that gave
+Gourlay's enemies their first opportunity against him, that enabled them
+to turn the tables. They might sneer at his trollop of a wife, they
+might sneer at his want of mere cleverness; still he held his head high
+amongst them. They might suspect his poverty; but so far, for anything
+they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in
+Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The
+selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the
+completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was
+invulnerable&mdash;so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the
+men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against
+him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the
+conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to
+get their knife into him at last, and they were turning the dagger in
+the wound. All owing to the boy on whom he had staked such hopes of
+keeping up the Gourlay name! His account with John was lengthening
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out
+and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet,
+big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to
+see him.</p>
+
+<p>It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On
+her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red
+mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her
+round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she
+spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much
+you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring
+at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and
+down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad
+pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"No-a!" she shrilled&mdash;for Miss Coe answered questions with an
+old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great
+surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was
+it ainything particular?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Gourlay heavily. "I&mdash;I just wanted to see him," and he
+trudged away.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's
+wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun
+caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the
+toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute&mdash;I'm
+sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"</p>
+
+<p>It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside
+in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had
+skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed,
+"it's hell in <i>my</i> throat to ask from any man."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always
+looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take
+the risk."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p><p>"Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook
+he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It
+was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk,
+to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were
+not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the
+Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt,
+if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye
+not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they
+respected me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the
+baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another
+half-hour."</p>
+
+<p>A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to
+listen to our talk!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man,
+would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would
+not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.</p>
+
+<p>So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with
+shame and anger and foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son&mdash;sitting
+muffled in his coat by the great fender.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Stot</i>, a bullock; <i>to stot</i>, to bound.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<p>Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and
+glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and
+significance, filling the doorway in his silence.</p>
+
+<p>The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers,
+his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil
+his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return
+for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out
+of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden
+sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap
+on him at once and glut his rage&mdash;a madness which only a will like his
+could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.</p>
+
+<p>To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out
+of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it
+is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a
+violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and
+again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking
+beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness.
+Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him,
+till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye.
+Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its
+contrasting colour showed the white face of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> coward&mdash;and a coward
+had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as
+he slunk away. "<i>Ha!</i>" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and
+the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a
+man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he
+lives, send him slinking away <i>animo castrato</i>&mdash;for that is what it
+comes to&mdash;is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape
+of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost&mdash;derives from
+it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his
+son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less
+than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a
+loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man
+like a wriggling urchin on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing
+cry of "<i>John!</i>" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her
+chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she
+wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers,
+fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not
+remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of
+cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son
+to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and
+inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "<i>God have
+mercy!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>For a length of time there was a loaded silence.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at
+hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from
+around him. Janet whimpered.</p>
+
+<p>But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his
+voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great,
+shivering breastfuls of air<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> between the words, as if for strength to
+utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by
+his own rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar
+me!... Im-phm!"</p>
+
+<p>The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing
+anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was
+demoniac, appalling.</p>
+
+<p>John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast
+hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his
+father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going
+to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered
+into it, to get away as far as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness,
+and his eyes never left his son.</p>
+
+<p>And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big
+clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else.
+It smote the ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer
+seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He
+heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.</p>
+
+<p>He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his
+hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother&mdash;looking at each other
+with affrighted eyes&mdash;could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay,
+man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!...
+Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in
+a suspended agony.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> nipped her ear as he
+passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, faither," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head
+sank low on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!" she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."</p>
+
+<p>"When did ye get back?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Just after&mdash;just after&mdash;&mdash;" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she
+were afraid of mentioning his name.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at;
+you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after
+him; he aye had the best o't.&mdash;I howp <i>you</i> are in good health?" he
+sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down
+at the outset o' a great career!... For ye <i>are</i> at the outset o' a
+great career; are ye na?"</p>
+
+<p>His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a
+cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had
+leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage.
+But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the
+creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're
+at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had
+to be answered.</p>
+
+<p>"No," whimpered John.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," lied John.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my
+brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"&mdash;he leaned over
+suavely&mdash;"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as
+usual? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," gulped the cowerer.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Nae</i> prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended
+surprise. "<i>Nae-ae</i> prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"</p>
+
+<p>Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who,
+when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at
+her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks&mdash;"No," he pants; and "Are
+you sorry for being a bad boy?"&mdash;"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good
+boy now, then?"&mdash;"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one
+with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own
+nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not
+asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay
+cared&mdash;when once he had bye with him.</p>
+
+<p>Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice,
+Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be
+such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt
+at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand
+talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the
+brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung
+mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John
+Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of <i>my</i> life I've made&mdash;that auld trollop
+for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my
+dochter! Was it I that bred him? <i>That!</i>"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p><p>He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and
+I must have a drink together&mdash;to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he
+sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to
+celebrate the occeesion!"</p>
+
+<p>The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort
+to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of
+the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he
+was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious
+constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression.
+They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in
+a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and
+checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface.
+Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter,
+a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond
+himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the
+escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was
+that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his
+disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a
+desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would
+spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim
+which he would not kill.</p>
+
+<p>"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear.
+"What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits&mdash;just to shelebrate the
+joyful occeesion, ye know&mdash;ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful
+occeesion!"</p>
+
+<p>Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the
+rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her
+trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p><p>Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle
+for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the
+jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this
+gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a
+night o't&mdash;we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.</p>
+
+<p>"No," wheezed John.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College!
+Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or <i>this</i>
+nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."</p>
+
+<p>Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy.
+Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt
+at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins
+of his listeners with a start of fear&mdash;it leapt so suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which
+his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go
+and take it.</p>
+
+<p>"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait
+on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn!
+The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the
+storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but
+<i>he</i> wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "<i>he</i> wasna feared; no,
+by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly
+again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra
+appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?...
+Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just
+as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye
+know&mdash;a splurge to attract folk's attention!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p><p>John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye;
+"take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something
+about that&mdash;some poetry or other. Who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dinna ken," whimpered John.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie.
+Come on now&mdash;who was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Burns," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject?
+Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered
+John.</p>
+
+<p>"A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. "'Freedom and whisky gang
+thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were
+savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great
+admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine
+free fellow you are!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than
+half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had
+been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had
+taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely
+blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire
+leapt in his throat to get at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the
+thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a
+look at that throat o' yours. Stand up!... <i>Stand up when I tall 'ee!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating
+in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And
+the fear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a
+heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing
+from his chalky face.</p>
+
+<p>"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a
+saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"</p>
+
+<p>John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries.
+The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he
+went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment,
+to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was
+enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in
+insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new
+suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to
+the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal
+smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted
+him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his
+father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear.
+Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration,
+"I'll <i>kill</i> him; I'll <i>kill</i> him; by God, I'll <i>kill</i> him&mdash;if he doesna
+stop this&mdash;if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material
+self was paralyzed with fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Open your mouth!" came the snarl&mdash;"<i>wider, damn ye! wider!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about
+to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's
+the Latin for throat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Guttur," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like
+a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in
+very good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> health, after a-all.... Eh?... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'!
+He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what
+he needs, though.&mdash;Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he
+roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the
+last time&mdash;it's <i>your</i> turn now, auld wife, it's <i>your</i> turn now! Gang
+for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be
+proud of!"</p>
+
+<p>He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the
+gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that;
+and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy&mdash;though I never
+got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my
+name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that&mdash;a great consolation!"</p>
+
+<p>The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to
+pieces on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah!" yelled Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn
+about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go
+smash&mdash;what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so
+careful, seemed to delight in the smashings and the breakings; they
+suited his despair.</p>
+
+<p>He saw that his spirit of destruction frightened them, too, and that was
+another reason to indulge it.</p>
+
+<p>"To hell with everything," he yelled, like a mock-bacchanal. "<i>We</i>'re
+the hearty fellows! We'll make a red night now we're at it!" And with
+that he took the heel of a bottle on his toe and sent it flying among
+the dishes on the dresser. A great plate fell, split in two.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow!" he whined, turning to his son; "poo-oor fellow! I fear he
+has lost his pheesic. For that was the last bottle o' brandy in my
+aucht; the last John Gourlay had, the last he'll ever buy. What am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> I to
+do wi' ye now?... Eh?... I must do something; it's coming to the bit
+now, sir."</p>
+
+<p>As he stood in a heaving silence the sobbing of the two women was heard
+through the room. John was still swaying on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Gourlay would run the full length of the kitchen, and stand
+there glowering on a stoop; then he would come crouching up to his son
+on a vicious little trot, pattering in rage, the broken glass crunching
+and grinding beneath his feet. At any moment he might spring.</p>
+
+<p>"What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?" he moaned.... "Eh?... What
+do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"</p>
+
+<p>As he came grinning in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and
+the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The
+stricture of the lips had squeezed them bloodless.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the dresser once more and bent low beside it, glancing
+at his son across his left shoulder, with his head flung back sideways,
+his right fist clenched low and ready from a curve of the elbow. It
+swung heavy as a mallet by his thigh. Janet got to her knees and came
+shuffling across the floor on them, though her dress was tripping her,
+clasping her outstretched hands, and sobbing in appeal, "Faither,
+faither; O faither; for God's sake, faither!" She clung to him. He
+unclenched his fist and lifted her away. Then he came crouching and
+quivering across the floor slowly, a gleaming devilry in the eyes that
+devoured his son. His hands were like outstretched claws, and shivered
+with each shiver of the voice that moaned, through set teeth, "What do
+ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?... What do ye think I mean to do wi'
+ye now?... Ye damned sorrow and disgrace that ye are, what do ye think I
+mean to do wi' ye now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Run, John!" screamed Mrs. Gourlay, leaping to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> feet. With a hunted
+cry young Gourlay sprang to the door. So great had been the fixity of
+Gourlay's wrath, so tense had he been in one direction, as he moved
+slowly on his prey, that he could not leap to prevent him. As John
+plunged into the cool, soft darkness, his mother's "Thank God!" rang
+past him on the night.</p>
+
+<p>His immediate feeling was of coolness and width and spaciousness, in
+contrast with the hot grinding hostility that had bored so closely in on
+him for the last hour. He felt the benignness of the darkened heavens. A
+tag of some forgotten poem he had read came back to his mind, and,
+"Come, kindly night, and cover me," he muttered, with shaking lips; and
+felt how true it was. My God, what a relief to be free of his father's
+eyes! They had held him till his mother's voice broke the spell. They
+seemed to burn him now.</p>
+
+<p>What a fool he had been to face his father when empty both of food and
+drink! Every man was down-hearted when he was empty. If his mother had
+had time to get the tea, it would have been different; but the fire had
+been out when he went in. "He wouldn't have downed me so easy if I had
+had anything in me," he muttered, and his anger grew as he thought of
+all he had been made to suffer. For he was still the swaggerer. Now that
+the incubus of his father's tyranny no longer pressed on him directly, a
+great hate rose within him for the tyrant. He would go back and have it
+out when he was primed. "It's the only hame I have," he sobbed angrily
+to the darkness; "I have no other place to gang till! Yes, I'll go back
+and have it out with him when once I get something in me, so I will." It
+was no disgrace to suck courage from the bottle for that encounter with
+his father, for nobody could stand up to black Gourlay&mdash;nobody. Young
+Gourlay was yielding to a peculiar fatalism of minds diseased: all that
+affects them seems different from all that affects everybody else; they
+are even proud of their separate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> and peculiar doom. Young Gourlay not
+thought but felt it&mdash;he was different from everybody else. The heavens
+had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to
+fill yourself with drink before you faced him.</p>
+
+<p>A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept
+about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a
+coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after
+the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that
+semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them
+now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and
+control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more
+variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of
+time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before
+the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve,
+shaking in terror&mdash;indeed he was shaking now. But his vanity came
+uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the
+darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face
+curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had
+started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking
+back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual
+busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping
+lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets,
+and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an
+outshot chest, and entered with a "breenge." But for all his swagger he
+must have had a face like death, for there was a cry among the idlers. A
+man breathed, "My God! What's the matter?" With shaking knees Gourlay
+advanced to the bar, and, "For God's sake, Aggie," he whispered, "give
+me a Kinblythmont!"</p>
+
+<p>It went at a gulp.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p><p>"Another!" he gasped, like a man dying of thirst, whom his first sip
+maddens for more. "Another! Another!"</p>
+
+<p>He had tossed the other down his burning throat when Deacon Allardyce
+came in.</p>
+
+<p>He knew his man the moment he set eyes on him, but, standing at the
+door, he arched his hand above his brow, as you do in gazing at a dear
+unexpected friend, whom you pretend not to be quite sure of, so
+surprised and pleased are you to see him there.</p>
+
+<p>"Ith it Dyohn?" he cried. "It <i>ith</i> Dyohn!" And he toddled forward with
+outstretched hand. "Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce
+believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with
+both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that.
+And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>I</i>'m all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a
+wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.</p>
+
+<p>"A wha-at?" said the Deacon, blinking in a puzzled fashion with his
+bleary old eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"A dram&mdash;a drink&mdash;a drop o' the Auld Kirk," said Gourlay, with a
+stertorous laugh down through his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! hi!" laughed the Deacon in his best falsetto. "Ith that what ye
+call it up in Embro? A wet, ay! Ah, well, maybe I will take a little
+drope, theeing you're tho ready wi' your offer."</p>
+
+<p>They drank together.</p>
+
+<p>"Aggie, fill me a mutchkin when you're at it," said Gourlay to the
+pretty barmaid with the curly hair. He had spent many an hour with her
+last summer in the bar. The four big whiskies he had swallowed in the
+last half-hour were singing in him now, and he blinked at her drunkenly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a scarlet ribbon on her dark curls, coquettish, vivid, and
+Gourlay stared at it dreamily, partly in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> a drunken daze, and partly
+because a striking colour always brought a musing and self-forgetting
+look within his eyes. All his life he used to stare at things dreamily,
+and come to himself with a start when spoken to. He forgot himself now.</p>
+
+<p>"Aggie," he said, and put his hand out to hers clumsily where it rested
+on the counter&mdash;"Aggie, that ribbon's infernal bonny on your dark hair!"</p>
+
+<p>She tossed her head, and perked away from him on her little high heels.
+Him, indeed!&mdash;the drunkard! She wanted none of his compliments!</p>
+
+<p>There were half a dozen in the place by this time, and they all stared
+with greedy eyes. "That's young Gourlay&mdash;him that was <i>expelled</i>," was
+heard, the last an emphatic whisper, with round eyes of awe at the
+offence that must have merited such punishment. "<i>Expelled</i>, mind
+ye!"&mdash;with a round shake of the head. "Watch Allardyce. We'll see fun."</p>
+
+<p>"What's this 'expelled' is, now?" said John Toodle, with a very
+considering look and tone in his uplifted face&mdash;"properly speaking, that
+is," he added, implying that of course he knew the word in its ordinary
+sense, but was not sure of it "properly speaking."</p>
+
+<p>"Flung oot," said Drucken Wabster, speaking from the fullness of his own
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>"Whisht!" said a third. "Here's Tam Brodie. Watch what <i>he</i> does."</p>
+
+<p>The entrance of Brodie spoiled sport for the Deacon. He had nothing of
+that malicious <i>finesse</i> that made Allardyce a genius at nicking men on
+the raw. He went straight to his work, stabbing like an awl.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal-lo!" he cried, pausing with contempt in the middle of the word,
+when he saw young Gourlay. "Hal-lo! <i>You</i> here!&mdash;Brig o' the Mains,
+miss, if <i>you</i> please.&mdash;Ay, man! God, you've been making a name up in
+Embro. I hear you stood up till him gey weel," and he winked openly to
+those around.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>Young Gourlay's maddened nature broke at the insult. "Damn you," he
+screamed, "leave <i>me</i> alone, will you? I have done nothing to <i>you</i>,
+have I?"</p>
+
+<p>Brodie stared at him across his suspended whisky glass, an easy and
+assured contempt curling his lip. "Don't greet owre't, my bairn," said
+he, and even as he spoke John's glass shivered on his grinning teeth.
+Brodie leapt on him, lifted him, and sent him flying.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a game of your father's, you damned dog," he roared. "But
+there's mair than him can play the game!"</p>
+
+<p>"Canny, my freendth, canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine
+chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of
+handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had the fine
+stroke.</p>
+
+<p>Gourlay picked himself bleeding from the floor, and holding a
+handkerchief to his mouth, plunged headlong from the room. He heard the
+derisive roar that came after him stop, strangled by the sharp swing-to
+of the door. But it seemed to echo in his burning ears as he strode
+madly on through the darkness. He uncorked his mutchkin and drank it
+like water. His swollen lip smarted at first, but he drank till it was a
+mere dead lump to his tongue, and he could not feel the whisky on the
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>His mind at first was a burning whirl through drink and rage, with
+nothing determined and nothing definite. But thought began to shape
+itself. In a vast vague circle of consciousness his mind seemed to sit
+in the centre and think with preternatural clearness. Though all around
+was whirling and confused, drink had endowed some inner eye of the brain
+with unnatural swift vividness. Far within the humming circle of his
+mind he saw an instant and terrible revenge on Brodie, acted it, and
+lived it now. His desires were murderers, and he let them slip, gloating
+in the cruelties that hot fancy wreaked upon his enemy. Then he suddenly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>remembered his father. A rush of fiery blood seemed to drench all his
+body as he thought of what had passed between them. "But, by Heaven," he
+swore, as he threw away his empty bottle, "he won't use me like that
+another time; I have blood in me now." His maddened fancy began building
+a new scene, with the same actors, the same conditions, as the other,
+but an issue gloriously diverse. With vicious delight he heard his
+father use the same sneers, the same gibes, the same brutalities; then
+he turned suddenly and had him under foot, kicking, bludgeoning,
+stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The
+memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing
+darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and
+he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed
+fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he
+was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready for him!</p>
+
+<p>And his father was ready for him, for he knew what had happened at the
+inn. Mrs. Webster, on her nightly hunt for the man she had sworn to
+honour and obey, having drawn several public-houses blank, ran him to
+earth at last in the bar-room of the Red Lion. "Yes, yes, Kirsty," he
+cried, eager to prevent her tongue, "I know I'm a blagyird; but oh, the
+terrible thing that has happened!" He so possessed her with his graphic
+tale that he was allowed to go chuckling back to his potations, while
+she ran hot-foot to the Green Shutters.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, poo-oor Mrs. Gourlay; and oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that
+brute Tam Brodie&mdash;&mdash;" Even as she came through the door the voluble
+clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of
+Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath his black glower.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!" he said, and ground it out of her.</p>
+
+<p>"The damned sumph!" he growled, "to let Brodie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> hammer him!" For a
+moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even
+dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' <i>him</i>!" he thought
+grimly. "When <i>I</i> get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to
+hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was neither
+doubt nor wonder&mdash;"I wonder will he fling the father as he flang the
+son!" But that was the instinct of his blood, not enough to make him
+pardon John. On the contrary, here was a new offence of his offspring.
+On the morrow Barbie would be burning with another affront which he had
+put upon the name of Gourlay. He would waste no time when he came back,
+be he drunk or be he sober; he would strip the flesh off him.</p>
+
+<p>"Jenny," he said, "bring me the step-ladder."</p>
+
+<p>He would pass the time till the prodigal came back&mdash;and he was almost
+certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie?&mdash;he would pass
+the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent
+money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to
+embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out
+a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in
+dark timber, and on the rich brown rafters there were wooden pegs and
+bars, for the hanging of Gourlay's sticks and fishing-rods. His gun was
+up there, too, just above the hearth. It had occurred to him about a
+month ago, however, that a pair of curving steel rests, that would catch
+the glint from the fire, would look better beneath his gun than the dull
+pegs, where it now lay against a joist. He might as well pass the time
+by putting them up.</p>
+
+<p>The bringing of the steps, light though they were, was too much for
+Janet's weak frame, and she stopped in a fit of coughing, clutching the
+ladder for support, while it shook to her spasms.</p>
+
+<p>"Tuts, Jenny, this'll never do," said Gourlay, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> unkindly. He took
+the ladder away from her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Away to
+your bed, lass. You maunna sit so late."</p>
+
+<p>But Janet was anxious for her brother, and wanted to sit up till he came
+home. She answered, "Yes," to her father, but idled discreetly, to
+consume the time.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's my hammer?" snarled Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I
+remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the
+front doorstep wi'. It'll be lying in the porch."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay, as usual," said Gourlay&mdash;"as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"John!" she cried in alarm, "you don't mean to take down the gun, do
+ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Huts, you auld fule, what are you skirling for? D'ye think I mean to
+shoot the dog? Set back on your creepie and make less noise, will ye?"</p>
+
+<p>Ere he had driven a nail in the rafter John came in, and sat down by the
+fire, taking up the great poker, as if to cover his nervousness. If
+Gourlay had been on the floor he would have grappled with him there and
+then. But the temptation to gloat over his victim from his present
+height was irresistible. He went up another step, and sat down on the
+very summit of the ladder, his feet resting on one of the lower rounds.
+The hammer he had been using was lying on his thigh, his hand clutched
+about its haft.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man, you've been taking a bit walk, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>John made no reply, but played with the poker. It was so huge, owing to
+Gourlay's whim, that when it slid through his fingers it came down on
+the muffled hearthstone with a thud like a pavior's hammer.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm told you saw the Deacon on your rounds? Did he compliment you on
+your return?"</p>
+
+<p>At the quiet sneer a lightning-flash showed John that Allardyce had
+quizzed him too. For a moment he was conscious of a vast self-pity.
+"Damn them, they're all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> down on me," he thought. Then a vindictive rage
+against them all took hold of him, tense, quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see Thomas Brodie when ye were out?" came the suave inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him," said John, raising fierce eyes to his father's. He was
+proud of the sudden firmness in his voice. There was no fear in it, no
+quivering. He was beyond caring what happened to the world or him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you saw him," roared Gourlay, as his anger leapt to meet the anger
+of his son. "And what did he say to you, may I speir?... Or maybe I
+should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the
+poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay
+screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror.
+As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the
+descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up
+his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone.
+Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.</p>
+
+<p>At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There
+followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place;
+yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to
+another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was
+different now&mdash;it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new
+significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy
+spell.</p>
+
+<p>As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.</p>
+
+<p>John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if
+petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair
+stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp
+edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him
+from his stupor&mdash;it seemed so monstrous and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>horrible, sticking all by
+itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring
+vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him,
+he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear
+on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you
+micht get up!"</p>
+
+<p>Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her
+brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have
+killed him!"</p>
+
+<p>Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery
+Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang
+up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.</p>
+
+<p>"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed.&mdash;"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs.
+Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the
+ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<p>"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak
+to me!"</p>
+
+<p>No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being
+close at hand; the girl, intently listening, was alone with her fear.
+All was silent in the room, and the terror deepened. Then the far-off
+sound in the house was heard once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother&mdash;mother, what's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Janet?" came a feebly complaining voice; "what's wrong wi'
+ye, lassie?"</p>
+
+<p>Janet and her mother were sleeping in the big bedroom, Janet in the
+place that had been her father's. He had been buried through the day,
+the second day after his murder. Mrs. Gourlay had shown a feverish
+anxiety to get the corpse out the house as soon as possible; and there
+had been nothing to prevent it. "Oh," said Doctor Dandy to the gossips,
+"it would have killed any man to fall from such a height on to the sharp
+edge of yon fender. No; he was not quite dead when I got to him. He
+opened his eyes on me, once&mdash;a terrible look&mdash;and then life went out of
+him with a great quiver."</p>
+
+<p>Ere Janet could answer her mother she was seized with a racking cough,
+and her hoarse bark sounded hollow in the silence. At last she sat up
+and gasped fearfully, "I thocht&mdash;I thocht I heard something moving!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be the wind," plained her mother; "it would just be the wind.
+John's asleep this strucken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> hour and mair. I sat by his bed for a lang
+while, and he prigged and prayed for a dose o' the whisky ere he won
+away. He wouldna let go my hand till he slept, puir fallow. There's an
+unco fear on him&mdash;an unco fear. But try and fa' owre," she soothed her
+daughter. "That would just be the wind ye heard."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nae wind!" said Janet.</p>
+
+<p>The stair creaked. The two women clung to each other, gripping tight
+fingers, and their hearts throbbed like big separate beings in their
+breasts. There was a rustle, as of something coming; then the door
+opened, and John flitted to the bedside with a candle in his hand. Above
+his nightshirt his bloodless face looked gray.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he panted, "there's something in my room!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, John?" said his mother, in surprise and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I thocht it was himsell! O mother, I'm feared, I'm feared! O mother,
+I'm <i>feared</i>!" He sang the words in a hysterical chant, his voice rising
+at the end.</p>
+
+<p>The door of the bedroom clicked. It was not a slamming sound, only the
+door went to gently, as if some one closed it. John dropped the candle
+from his shaking hand, and was left standing in the living darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Save me!</i>" he screamed, and leaped into the bed, burrowing down
+between the women till his head was covered by the bedclothes. He
+trembled so violently that the bed shook beneath them.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me bide wi' ye!" he pleaded, with chattering jaws; "oh, let me bide
+wi' ye! I daurna gang back to that room by mysell again."</p>
+
+<p>His mother put her thin arm round him. "Yes, dear," she said; "you may
+bide wi' us. Janet and me wouldna let anything harm you." She placed her
+hand on his brow caressingly. His hair was damp with a cold sweat. He
+reeked of alcohol.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p><p>Some one went through the Square playing a concertina. That sound of
+the careless world came strangely in upon their lonely tragedy. By
+contrast the cheerful, silly noise out there seemed to intensify their
+darkness and isolation here. Occasional far-off shouts were heard from
+roisterers going home.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay lay staring at the darkness with intent eyes. What horror
+might assail her she did not know, but she was ready to meet it for the
+sake of John. "Ye brought it on yoursell," she breathed once, as if
+defying an unseen accuser.</p>
+
+<p>It was hours ere he slept, but at last a heavy sough told her he had
+found oblivion. "He's won owre," she murmured thankfully. At times he
+muttered in his sleep, and at times Janet coughed hoarsely at his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Janet, dinna hoast sae loud, woman! You'll waken your brother."</p>
+
+<p>Janet was silent. Then she choked&mdash;trying to stifle another cough.</p>
+
+<p>"Woman," said her mother complainingly, "that's surely an unco hoast ye
+hae!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Janet, "it's a gey hoast."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Postie came clattering through the paved yard in his
+tackety boots, and handed in a blue envelope at the back door with a
+business-like air, his ferrety eyes searching Mrs. Gourlay's face as she
+took the letter from his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his
+curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no
+fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the
+missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay,
+Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she
+cried, "what am I to do wi' this?"</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless
+she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her
+to take an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> active interest in their common life (indeed he never had)
+that she was as helpless as a child.</p>
+
+<p>"It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look
+at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll
+open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never
+had a heid for business."</p>
+
+<p>She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to
+her slower mind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Glasgow</span>, <i>March 12, 18&mdash;.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that
+the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been
+paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless
+you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take
+the necessary steps to safeguard his interests.&mdash;Yours faithfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Brodie, Gurney, &amp; Yarrowby</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned
+palm, lying slack upon her knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does
+the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to
+us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell
+ye of the bond?"</p>
+
+<p>"He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden
+passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark&mdash;to be keepit in
+the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet&mdash;and us
+was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk,
+and brought him a gey pickle bawbees&mdash;am I to be on the parish in my
+auld age? Oh, <i>my</i> faither, <i>my</i> faither!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p><p>Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been
+but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should
+come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet
+was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of
+her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For
+her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield
+the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief&mdash;felt but not
+considered&mdash;at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It
+seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly,
+deadened now by these quick calamities. But that <i>she</i>, that
+Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common
+charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in
+agony.</p>
+
+<p>"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>"Waken John," said her mother feverishly&mdash;"waken John, and we'll gang
+through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his
+papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there
+may be something gude! In the desk&mdash;in the desk&mdash;there may be something
+gude in the desk!"</p>
+
+<p>John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table
+where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay
+with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites
+showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was
+recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the
+great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever
+dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top
+of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said
+he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account
+was overdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> to whimper. John
+slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the
+women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of
+his departure.</p>
+
+<p>He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door,
+looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was
+remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the
+hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The
+contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing,
+and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the
+heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized,
+however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the
+surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And
+that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to
+escape it.</p>
+
+<p>The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain.
+Damn the thing, why didn't it stop&mdash;with its monotonous tick-tack,
+tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed
+to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on
+snapping.</p>
+
+<p>He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to
+listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was
+a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with
+desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle
+greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like
+cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at
+that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he
+had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass
+noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision
+possible only to drink-steadied nerves&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> steadiness like the humming
+top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the
+courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken
+triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty
+straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to
+ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that
+had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in
+drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting
+into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world
+seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there
+was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes
+had actually been here&mdash;and were here with him still&mdash;where he was
+locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare
+at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he
+looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air
+had become his enemy&mdash;pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To
+breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a
+shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly
+enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the
+baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock,
+frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where
+his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing,
+with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes
+seeming to follow something in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look,
+look!" he cried, clutching her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> thin wrist; "see, there, there&mdash;coming
+round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would
+ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing
+unseen.</p>
+
+<p>The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her
+Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and
+murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a
+child! When will Ye be satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it
+went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and
+was throwing tumblers at his mother!</p>
+
+<p>"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite
+compassion&mdash;"puir body!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to <i>her</i> next,
+after killing his faither."</p>
+
+<p>"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the
+drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and
+felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled
+at the sharp question.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer
+Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy
+man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny,
+though, it seems uncanny."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent
+wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie&mdash;"about the horrors, I
+mean. <i>Did</i> he throw the tumbler at his mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> the kitchen on
+purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted
+to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his
+orders&mdash;his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid
+for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I
+wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The
+tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o'
+that&mdash;I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)&mdash;the
+tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the
+eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had
+stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith
+day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. "<i>He</i> would have sorted him; <i>he</i> would have
+trimmed the young ruffian!"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely&mdash;"no doubt. But it wath scarcely
+that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a
+thlap in the face till him!"</p>
+
+<p>Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He
+wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires
+within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon
+grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no
+appeal.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>"John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into
+our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company
+to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> When
+you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything
+coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would
+restore your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with
+the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall
+in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would
+calm your mind for ye."</p>
+
+<p>"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had
+detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me&mdash;no sleep
+for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een,
+coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"&mdash;he nodded, staring at
+her and breathing the word&mdash;"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is
+the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as
+if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness
+is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the
+lobby," he whispered hoarsely&mdash;"in the lobby when it was dark&mdash;in the
+lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither,
+though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because
+I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so
+feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered&mdash;"they're red&mdash;they're
+red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.</p>
+
+<p>He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in
+his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld
+against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He
+was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
+no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.</p>
+
+<p>"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> feared for your faither's
+een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
+And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, <i>my</i>
+faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
+throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at <i>me</i>
+frae beyond the grave."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
+snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
+colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
+across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
+to save.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
+drink gars you think sae."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
+drink&mdash;it helps a body."</p>
+
+<p>"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
+you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
+nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
+House with the Green Shutters."</p>
+
+<p>"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"</p>
+
+<p>She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
+gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
+of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
+murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
+feet, his head resting on her knee.</p>
+
+<p>They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
+from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
+town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
+in the street.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually all other sounds died away.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p><p>"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
+neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift&mdash;a
+gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
+sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
+a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
+and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.</p>
+
+<p>"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring
+at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark
+of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert
+Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't
+it?&mdash;Oh, what's that?"</p>
+
+<p>It was John talking in his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every
+phrase&mdash;"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the
+voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if
+the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist&mdash;and een
+like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ...
+they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite
+distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.</p>
+
+<p>The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far
+away.</p>
+
+<p>That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond
+the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it
+all demoniac. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their
+own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth.
+But hell seemed with them in the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something
+monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support,
+and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no,
+he was her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring
+from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear&mdash;"mother,
+suppose&mdash;suppose he said that before anybody else!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye?
+how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so
+they would! They would hang <i>my</i> boy&mdash;they would take and hang <i>my</i>
+boy!"</p>
+
+<p>They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on
+his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."</p>
+
+<p>"I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put
+her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something.
+And you and me can aye thole."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and
+placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off
+his drunken madness through the night.</p>
+
+<p>"John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie.
+Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away&mdash;will ye na?&mdash;and then thae een
+ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see
+the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> pleaded, "if
+there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will
+ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a
+teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye
+wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of
+Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk
+would stand in their doors to look at me, man&mdash;they would that&mdash;they
+would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun
+slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon
+the brae it would be"&mdash;and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future
+which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that
+roused her.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his
+leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat,
+as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his
+bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's <i>he</i> off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom
+o' this, if a body could find it out!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<p>When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry.
+Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her
+home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would
+take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it
+through the room, but stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor,
+would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long
+afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for?... Janet, lassie, what
+was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same
+reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something
+to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything
+she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at
+an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with
+the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork
+quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she
+spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the
+quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her
+head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she
+would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to
+tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often
+she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room,
+open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became
+afraid of her mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p><p>Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was
+watching her&mdash;an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her
+breast&mdash;a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude
+them too.</p>
+
+<p>"What can <i>she</i> have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.</p>
+
+<p>At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would
+be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her
+son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that
+was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in
+a restless vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on
+the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere&mdash;on the table,
+and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the
+autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink
+was wafted from the door.</p>
+
+<p>"John!" she panted, in surprise&mdash;"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."</p>
+
+<p>"And the bond, John&mdash;did ye speir about the bond?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so
+weak did she feel through her limbs.</p>
+
+<p>"John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do,
+that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me
+a'where&mdash;nicht and day."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward
+seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he
+said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?"
+she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> redder and redder. It's
+not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the
+curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they
+wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle
+went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the
+room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were
+there too&mdash;glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering
+at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes;
+but they followed me&mdash;they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and
+stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I
+was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother;
+I wa-as <i>not</i>. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye
+keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses
+opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky
+has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een
+should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody
+but me," he said dully&mdash;"never to onybody but me."</p>
+
+<p>His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both
+hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and
+kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's
+gey queer; it's gey queer."</p>
+
+<p>She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was
+trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld
+her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth,
+with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together
+in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over
+with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the
+aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the
+room above.</p>
+
+<p>"There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three
+shillings."</p>
+
+<p>It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a
+need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of
+his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this
+was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him
+greater than himself.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and
+flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.</p>
+
+<p>She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the
+fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was,
+"Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a
+flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last
+few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of
+it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling
+flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.</p>
+
+<p>John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she
+sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did
+not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was
+callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was
+ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and
+older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them
+apart to dree a separate weird.</p>
+
+<p>In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their
+dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end;
+they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall
+asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of
+herself rather than of him. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> was stunned by fate&mdash;as was he&mdash;and
+could think of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of
+whisky.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and
+dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance.
+There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the
+earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence.
+John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a
+tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like
+a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At
+word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads,
+keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste,
+not waiting till he passed ere they peeped&mdash;which was their usual way.
+Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him
+advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind
+him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not
+see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and
+through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round
+him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.</p>
+
+<p>He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle
+openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked
+her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in
+her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for
+himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the
+puckers in her seam.</p>
+
+<p>John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp <i>plunk</i> of a
+cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy
+thud like a fall.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear,
+not her mind. The world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so
+that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to
+burst beside her.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down
+and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had
+bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too
+ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"John?" questioned her mother&mdash;"John?... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely
+recalling, "ou ay. I think&mdash;I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."</p>
+
+<p>"The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna
+thole the darkness!"</p>
+
+<p>"John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal
+like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the
+wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead
+across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a
+smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that
+whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the
+poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was
+lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly
+up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear,
+as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.</p>
+
+<p>"There's twa thirds of the poison left," commented Mrs. Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's
+deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, he's deid," said Mrs. Gourlay, staring. "He winna be hanged now!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do?
+what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"</p>
+
+<p>"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly&mdash;"the
+neebours! What have <i>we</i> to do with the neebours? We are by
+ourselves&mdash;the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours.
+Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly.
+"Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something
+... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother
+killed sorrow with a new fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye
+mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in
+his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely,
+staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what
+it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what
+it was for."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't."</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed&mdash;I kenna weel what it was, but it
+gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten
+awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head
+flung back in horror and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and
+mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But
+I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let
+onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi'
+its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe
+awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.'
+I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> seemed to whisper I had
+a freend that nane o' them kenned o'&mdash;a freend that would deliver me!
+The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was
+br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't."</p>
+
+<p>"O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes
+raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered
+and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect
+her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her
+own.</p>
+
+<p>But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and
+was staring fixedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should
+sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John
+gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what
+was it I was thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through
+was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're
+young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew,
+or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was
+that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now&mdash;eh, Jenny?
+I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she
+said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss
+Richmond o' Tenshillingland."</p>
+
+<p>She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had
+flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble
+recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten
+what she said.</p>
+
+<p>"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my
+fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I
+canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was
+hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she
+added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame
+trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi'
+John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints
+enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna
+want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither
+came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after
+that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist
+wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me;
+it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected
+my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll
+be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would
+be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken
+<i>you</i> were just the same; I didna ken <i>you</i> were just the same." She
+looked. Her mother was not listening.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed
+with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was
+regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o'
+the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs.
+Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac&mdash;the skirl of a
+human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet
+stared at her in speechless fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" cried Janet.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife
+never will. <i>You</i> may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the
+poorhouse, but <i>I</i>'ll follow my boy."</p>
+
+<p>The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers,
+when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet
+that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be
+left alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.</p>
+
+<p>She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First
+Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from
+the pulpit, "the thirteent'&mdash;o' the First Corinthians:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
+charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
+and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
+mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of
+madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom
+that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no
+more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become
+one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function
+to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her
+feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded
+entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac
+power.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
+vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
+provoked, thinketh no evil;</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p><p>"<i>'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
+all things.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
+fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
+knowledge, it shall vanish away.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
+shall be done away.'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large
+blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more
+than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from
+beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death,
+but her mother's inspiration held her.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest
+of these is charity.'</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen"
+rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling
+Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before
+death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as
+sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.</p>
+
+<p>They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed
+it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was
+her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked
+at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the
+parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the
+poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give
+themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as
+if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs.
+Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she
+ceased to be above humanity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p><p>"Janet," she said wistfully, "<i>I</i> have had a heap to thole! Maybe the
+Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."</p>
+
+<p>"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother
+weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went
+into the parlour.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of
+grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an
+ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in
+him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow&mdash;the
+shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling
+temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got
+by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further.
+Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie
+complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the
+other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my
+face. And that was his only answer!"</p>
+
+<p>Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard
+every morning, right up to the back door.</p>
+
+<p>"A heap o' correspondence <i>thir</i> mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy
+little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they
+took the letters from his hand.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie
+was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the
+Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and
+yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except
+where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling
+off to his work, first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and
+left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.</p>
+
+<p>From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the
+pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no
+smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.</p>
+
+<p>Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green
+Shutters.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.</p>
+
+<p>"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment,
+"sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.</p>
+
+<p>"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel
+acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."</p>
+
+<p>"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.</p>
+
+<p>"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the
+clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie
+and blabbed it&mdash;he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his
+mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."</p>
+
+<p>Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the
+House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace,
+beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the
+country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts.
+Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant;
+"it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should
+get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Nut</i> me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> head as who should
+conduct of that kind a thousand miles off&mdash;"<i>nut</i> me, Post! I'll no
+breathe it to a living soul."</p>
+
+<p>The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy
+under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick
+up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked, but there was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their
+backs, it seems."</p>
+
+<p>He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out
+hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited
+he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled
+little place was curiously still.</p>
+
+<p>At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the
+door opened, and let him enter.</p>
+
+<p>The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large
+lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder
+everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left
+the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now,
+I'm thinking!"</p>
+
+<p>A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie
+crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot
+would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women
+must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an
+uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot
+till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"</p>
+
+<p>They did not hear, it seemed.</p>
+
+<p>"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p><p>At last&mdash;partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry&mdash;he opened
+the door of the parlour. "<i>Oh, my God!</i>" he screamed, leaping back, and
+with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry
+to be gone.</p>
+
+<p>He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was
+informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were
+"sequestered."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes?
+What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and
+covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak!" said a man solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"They have&mdash;they have&mdash;they have a' killed themselves," stammered the
+postman, pointing to the Gourlays.</p>
+
+<p>Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the
+road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man
+dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the
+Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch
+of the dawn.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/bdj.jpg" width='494' height='700' alt="Publishers review" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 25876-h.txt or 25876-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/8/7/25876">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/8/7/25876</a></p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9977 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The House with the Green Shutters, by George
+Douglas Brown
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The House with the Green Shutters
+
+
+Author: George Douglas Brown
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2008  [eBook #25876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN
+SHUTTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS
+
+by
+
+GEORGE DOUGLAS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.
+London, Edinburgh, and New York
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The frowsy chambermaid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the
+front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture and, being of
+slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without
+moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water
+glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of
+his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when
+it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness.
+
+The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of
+eight. They were yellow in the sun.
+
+Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay
+within the porch, and carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off
+round the corner of the public-house, her petticoat gaping behind.
+Halfway she met the hostler, with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance.
+He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The silly
+_tee-hee_ echoed up the street.
+
+A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the corner, and floating
+white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against
+the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were
+equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to
+be seen either in the Square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in
+the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work;
+the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their
+household cares.
+
+The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red
+chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy
+clearness of everything beneath the dawn--above all, the quietness and
+peace--made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to
+look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar
+delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect--almost
+an unearthliness--as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. But
+it was not the beauty of the hour that kept Gourlay musing at his gate.
+He was dead to the fairness of the scene, even while the fact of its
+presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in
+silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was
+a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look
+down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his
+being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was
+soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air,
+as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. It was the most
+secret and intimate joy of his life to go out and smoke on summer
+mornings by his big gate, musing over Barbie ere he possessed it with
+his merchandise.
+
+He had growled at the quarry carters for being late in setting out this
+morning (for, like most resolute dullards, he was sternly methodical),
+but in his heart he was secretly pleased. The needs of his business were
+so various that his men could rarely start at the same hour and in the
+same direction. To-day, however, because of the delay, all his carts
+would go streaming through the town together, and that brave pomp would
+be a slap in the face to his enemies. "I'll show them," he thought
+proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what
+a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion,
+Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate
+by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness
+of perfect scorn.
+
+Through the big green gate behind him came the sound of carts being
+loaded for the day. A horse, weary of standing idle between the shafts,
+kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient
+hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye;
+ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of
+an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as
+the horse quivered to the blow.
+
+"Run a white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae
+melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there
+wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for _you_ to
+dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse,
+warning whisper of impatience--loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear
+of being heard. "Hurry up, man--hurry up, or he'll be down on us like
+bleezes for being so late in getting off!"
+
+Gourlay smiled grimly, and a black gleam shot from his eye as he glanced
+round to the gate and caught the words. His men did not know he could
+hear them.
+
+The clock across the Square struck the hour, eight soft, slow strokes,
+that melted away in the beauty of the morning. Five minutes passed.
+Gourlay turned his head to listen, but no further sound came from the
+yard. He walked to the green gate, his slippers making no noise.
+
+"Are ye sleeping, my pretty men?" he said softly.... "_Eih?_"
+
+The "_Eih_" leapt like a sword, with a slicing sharpness in its tone
+that made it a sinister contrast to the first sweet question to his
+"pretty men." "_Eih?_" he said again, and stared with open mouth and
+fierce, dark eyes.
+
+"Hurry up, Peter," whispered the gaffer, "hurry up, for God sake. He has
+the black glower in his een."
+
+"Ready, sir; ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the
+other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy
+fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long,
+slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish
+gray. The bearded red brows, close above the pale blueness of his eyes,
+made them more vivid by contrast; they were like pools of blue light
+amid the brownness of his face. Peter always ran about his work with
+eager alacrity. A simple and willing old man, he affected the quick
+readiness of youth to atone for his insignificance.
+
+"Hup, horse; hup then!" cried courageous Peter, walking backwards with
+curved body through the gate, and tugging at the reins of a horse the
+feet of which struck sparks from the paved ground as they stressed
+painfully on edge to get weigh on the great wagon behind. The cart
+rolled through, then another, and another, till twelve of them had
+passed. Gourlay stood aside to watch them. All the horses were brown;
+"he makes a point of that," the neighbours would have told you. As each
+horse passed the gate the driver left its head, and took his place by
+the wheel, cracking his whip, with many a "Hup, horse; yean, horse; woa,
+lad; steady!"
+
+In a dull little country town the passing of a single cart is an event,
+and a gig is followed with the eye till it disappears. Anything is
+welcome that breaks the long monotony of the hours and suggests a topic
+for the evening's talk. "Any news?" a body will gravely inquire. "Ou
+ay," another will answer with equal gravity: "I saw Kennedy's gig going
+past in the forenoon." "Ay, man; where would _he_ be off till? He's owre
+often in his gig, I'm thinking." And then Kennedy and his affairs will
+last them till bedtime.
+
+Thus the appearance of Gourlay's carts woke Barbie from its morning
+lethargy. The smith came out in his leather apron, shoving back, as he
+gazed, the grimy cap from his white-sweating brow; bowed old men stood
+in front of their doorways, leaning with one hand on short, trembling
+staffs, while the slaver slid unheeded along the cutties which the left
+hand held to their toothless mouths; white-mutched grannies were keeking
+past the jambs; an early urchin, standing wide-legged to stare, waved
+his cap and shouted, "Hooray!"--and all because John Gourlay's carts
+were setting off upon their morning rounds, a brave procession for a
+single town! Gourlay, standing great-shouldered in the middle of the
+road, took in every detail, devoured it grimly as a homage to his pride.
+"Ha, ha, ye dogs!" said the soul within him. Past the pillar of the Red
+Lion door he could see a white peep of the landlord's waistcoat--though
+the rest of the mountainous man was hidden deep within his porch. (On
+summer mornings the vast totality of the landlord was always inferential
+to the town from the tiny white peep of him revealed.) Even fat Simpson
+had waddled to the door to see the carts going past. It was fat
+Simpson--might the Universe blast his adipose--who had once tried to
+infringe Gourlay's monopoly as the sole carrier in Barbie. There had
+been a rush to him at first, but Gourlay set his teeth and drove him off
+the road, carrying stuff for nothing till Simpson had nothing to carry,
+so that the local wit suggested "a wee parcel in a big cart" as a new
+sign for his hotel. The twelve browns prancing past would be a pill to
+Simpson! There was no smile about Gourlay's mouth--a fiercer glower was
+the only sign of his pride--but it put a bloom on his morning, he felt,
+to see the suggestive round of Simpson's waistcoat, down yonder at the
+porch. Simpson, the swine! He had made short work o' _him_!
+
+Ere the last of the carts had issued from the yard at the House with the
+Green Shutters the foremost was already near the Red Lion. Gourlay swore
+beneath his breath when Miss Toddle--described in the local records as
+"a spinster of independent means"--came fluttering out with a silly
+little parcel to accost one of the carriers. Did the auld fool mean to
+stop Andy Gow about _her_ petty affairs, and thus break the line of
+carts on the only morning they had ever been able to go down the brae
+together? But no. Andy tossed her parcel carelessly up among his other
+packages, and left her bawling instructions from the gutter, with a
+portentous shaking of her corkscrew curls. Gourlay's men took their cue
+from their master, and were contemptuous of Barbie, most unchivalrous
+scorners of its old maids.
+
+Gourlay was pleased with Andy for snubbing Sandy Toddle's sister. When
+he and Elshie Hogg reached the Cross they would have to break off from
+the rest to complete their loads; but they had been down Main Street
+over night as usual picking up their commissions, and until they reached
+the Bend o' the Brae it was unlikely that any business should arrest
+them now. Gourlay hoped that it might be so; and he had his desire, for,
+with the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went
+slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly
+down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses
+were unable to go fast--being forced to stell themselves back against
+the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession
+endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it
+disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared
+too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy resumed her reign. The
+street and the Square lay empty to the morning sun. Gourlay alone stood
+idly at his gate, lapped in his own satisfaction.
+
+It had been a big morning, he felt. It was the first time for many a
+year that all his men, quarrymen and carriers, carters of cheese and
+carters of grain, had led their teams down the brae together in the full
+view of his rivals. "I hope they liked it!" he thought, and he nodded
+several times at the town beneath his feet, with a slow up-and-down
+motion of the head, like a man nodding grimly to his beaten enemy. It
+was as if he said, "See what I have done to ye!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Only a man of Gourlay's brute force of character could have kept all the
+carrying trade of Barbie in his own hands. Even in these days of
+railways, nearly every parish has a pair of carriers at the least,
+journeying once or twice a week to the nearest town. In the days when
+Gourlay was the great man of Barbie, railways were only beginning to
+thrust themselves among the quiet hills, and the bulk of inland commerce
+was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was
+the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember
+that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade,
+at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing
+that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did
+it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye
+know?"--meaning thereby that he had so many horses travelling on his own
+business, that he could afford to carry other people's goods at rates
+that must cripple his rivals.
+
+"But that's very stupid, surely," said a visitor once, who thought of
+entering into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face!
+Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries
+stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the
+roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!"
+
+"To be sure is't, to be sure is't! Just the stupeedity o' spite! Oh,
+there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying;
+but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask
+him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh,' he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own
+convenience.' And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of
+late that the pride of him's not to be endured."
+
+It was not the insolence of sudden wealth, however, that made Gourlay
+haughty to his neighbours; it was a repressiveness natural to the man
+and a fierce contempt of their scoffing envy. But it was true that he
+had made large sums of money during recent years. From his father (who
+had risen in the world) he inherited a fine trade in cheese; also the
+carrying to Skeighan on the one side and Fleckie on the other. When he
+married Miss Richmond of Tenshillingland, he started as a corn broker
+with the snug dowry that she brought him. Then, greatly to his own
+benefit, he succeeded in establishing a valuable connection with
+Templandmuir.
+
+It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his
+ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff
+joviality which he--so little cunning in other things--knew to affect
+among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with
+Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed"
+his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?"
+and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the
+big decanter.
+
+More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding
+friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the
+making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a
+circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather.
+When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was
+a great deal of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the
+money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried--he would
+have had to howk down a hill--but he took thousands of loads from it for
+the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was
+ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's
+estate--the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land--and it was
+there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely--once in two
+years, perhaps--that they came into the House with the Green Shutters.
+Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own
+use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the
+Monday following.
+
+It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to
+his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against
+him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his
+weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them
+were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they
+would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt
+it with a sense of personal defeat that he--the donkey, as they thought
+him--should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the
+long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled
+themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept
+increasing between them.
+
+They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when
+Gourlay's "quarriers"--as the quarry horses had been named--came through
+the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets,
+washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping
+at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up,
+their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and
+said nothing.
+
+"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last--"I wouldn't mind if he
+weren't such a demned ess!"
+
+"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked,
+pretending not to understand.
+
+"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.
+
+"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But
+there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned
+ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"
+
+When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he
+was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the
+passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.
+
+"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech,
+large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's
+extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man--for gumption he has noan, noan
+whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go
+down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the
+thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."
+
+"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump
+at the new way of doing."
+
+"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar
+than that--he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. _I_'m talling ye.
+He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who
+approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his
+stupeedity."
+
+"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and
+Gourlay at the same time.
+
+"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character,"
+said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of
+abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of
+no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he
+died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has
+no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's----"
+
+"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned
+from the green gate and entered the yard. Jock Gilmour, the "orra" man,
+was washing down the legs of a horse beside the trough. It was Gourlay's
+own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a
+black--Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for
+sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his
+whim to give it the sanction of a higher law.
+
+Gilmour was in a wild temper because he had been forced to get up at
+five o'clock in order to turn several hundred cheeses, to prevent them
+bulging out of shape owing to the heat, and so becoming cracked and
+spoiled. He did not raise his head at his master's approach. And his
+head being bent, the eye was attracted to a patent leather collar which
+he wore, glazed with black and red stripes. It is a collar much affected
+by ploughmen, because a dip in the horse-trough once a month suffices
+for its washing. Between the striped collar and his hair (as he stooped)
+the sunburnt redness of his neck struck the eye vividly--the cropped
+fair hairs on it showing whitish on the red skin.
+
+The horse quivered as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned
+playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up
+beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its
+head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off
+hind leg was still unwashed.
+
+"Has the horse but the three legs?" said Gourlay suavely.
+
+Gilmour brought the horse back to the trough, muttering sullenly.
+
+"Were ye saying anything?" said Gourlay. "_Eih?_"
+
+Gilmour sulked out and said nothing; and his master smiled grimly at the
+sudden redness that swelled his neck and ears to the verge of bursting.
+
+A boy, standing in his shirt and trousers at an open window of the house
+above, had looked down at the scene with craning interest--big-eyed. He
+had been alive to every turn and phase of it--the horse's quiver of
+delight and fear, his skittishness, the groom's ill-temper, and
+Gourlay's grinding will. Eh, but his father was a caution! How easy he
+had downed Jock Gilmour! The boy was afraid of his father himself, but
+he liked to see him send other folk to the right about. For he was John
+Gourlay, too. Hokey, but his father could down them!
+
+Mr. Gourlay passed on to the inner yard, which was close to the scullery
+door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was
+curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his
+gleaming breast and _rooketty-cooing_ in the sun. Large, clear drops
+fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat
+stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a sense of
+inclusion and peace.
+
+There is a distinct pleasure to the eye in a quiet brick court where
+everything is fresh and prim; in sunny weather you can lounge in a room
+and watch it through an open door, in a kind of lazy dream. The boy,
+standing at the window above to let the fresh air blow round his neck,
+was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon
+swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the
+great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure
+in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it
+was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was
+delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most
+substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was,
+was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was
+thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to
+answer you civilly--which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being,
+physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was
+surcharged with the feeling that the fine buildings around him were his,
+that he had won them by his own effort, and built them large and
+significant before the world. He was lapped in the thought of it.
+
+All men are suffused with that quiet pride in looking at the houses and
+lands which they have won by their endeavours--in looking at the houses
+more than at the lands, for the house which a man has built seems to
+express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of
+his success. It is more personal than cold acres, stamped with an
+individuality. All men know that soothing pride in the contemplation of
+their own property. But in Gourlay's sense of property there was another
+element--an element peculiar to itself, which endowed it with its
+warmest glow. Conscious always that he was at a disadvantage among his
+cleverer neighbours, who could achieve a civic eminence denied to him,
+he felt nevertheless that there was one means, a material means, by
+which he could hold his own and reassert himself--by the bravery of his
+business, namely, and all the appointments thereof, among which his
+dwelling was the chief. That was why he had spent so much money on the
+house. That was why he had such keen delight in surveying it. Every time
+he looked at the place he had a sense of triumph over what he knew in
+his bones to be an adverse public opinion. There was anger in his
+pleasure, and the pleasure that is mixed with anger often gives the
+keenest thrill. It is the delight of triumph in spite of opposition.
+Gourlay's house was a material expression of that delight, stood for it
+in stone and lime.
+
+It was not that he reasoned deliberately when he built the house. But
+every improvement that he made--and he was always spending money on
+improvements--had for its secret motive a more or less vague desire to
+score off his rivals. "_That_'ll be a slap in the face to the Provost!"
+he smiled, when he planted his great mound of shrubs. "There's noathing
+like _that_ about the Provost's! Ha, ha!"
+
+Encased as he was in his hard and insensitive nature, he was not the man
+who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But
+he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen--oh yes,
+he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab,
+and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the
+Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and
+Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if
+they should manage his!)--he, for his part, preferred the substantial
+reality. He could never aspire to the provostship, but a man with a
+house like that, he was fain to think, could afford to do without it. Oh
+yes; he was of opinion he could do without it! It had run him short of
+cash to build the place so big and braw, but, Lord! it was worth it.
+There wasn't a man in the town who had such accommodation!
+
+And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's
+life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it
+would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce,
+trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his
+presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should
+prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"
+
+Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of
+its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and
+gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable
+distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving
+to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron
+railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the
+whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to
+screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls
+went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In
+front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for
+notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square.
+"Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges
+regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its
+aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its
+infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like
+house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts
+its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a
+place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its
+commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay
+himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.
+
+And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of
+constant remark--to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women
+because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. "'Deed, I don't
+wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the
+gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo;
+"whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats _me_! I
+never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every
+item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.
+"What's the news?" asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom
+the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has
+got new rones!" "Ha--ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the
+visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each
+other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between
+them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every
+tongue--and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so
+long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he
+surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy
+neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy
+paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.
+
+"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"
+
+She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in
+her defence, because she was angry at detection.
+
+"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a
+body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just
+sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his
+breakfast!"
+
+"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of
+_him_. _He_'ll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that
+_you_ should neglect your work till _he_ consents to rise."
+
+"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous,
+maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and
+the schooling's owre sore on him."
+
+"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped
+him."
+
+It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him harsher to his wife
+than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order
+in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked
+everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a
+couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay
+across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just
+above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong
+men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately
+defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else
+to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown
+cob in _my_ gig--I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such
+fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for
+want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He
+had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of
+personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence
+the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his
+belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which
+he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his
+hammer, it was sure to be gone--the two bright nails staring at him
+vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to
+break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and
+grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so
+smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of
+these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething
+rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of
+his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and
+span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House
+with the Green Shutters--that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes
+on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the
+sudden sight of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to
+fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after--her husband, her two
+children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken
+Wabster--who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken
+Wabster--came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work.
+Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for
+another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said
+he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had
+to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind
+or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.
+
+As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them
+easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge
+disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner
+of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet
+saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the
+window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a
+basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over
+on the ground.
+
+"It's a tidy house!" said he.
+
+"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that
+did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't
+in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly,
+but ye wouldna hear o't--oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted
+out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning;
+no wonder I'm a little tousy!"
+
+The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been
+widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A
+little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the
+square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime
+in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the
+discomfort of the kitchen.
+
+"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that
+kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was
+terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the
+grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll
+maybe have a clean house _than_."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of
+her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back
+window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her
+first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue,
+her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by
+drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary
+contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and
+wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to
+meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence.
+She scarcely heard them.
+
+Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck.
+Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in
+a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in
+weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in
+unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was
+quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton
+blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her
+withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.
+
+There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and
+abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy helplessness, staring
+in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven,
+even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the
+Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her
+feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady
+and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with
+crude, brief irony.
+
+Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong
+character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked
+the brute in him. He was so dull--only dull is hardly the word for a man
+of his smouldering fire--he was so dour of wit that he could never hope
+to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so
+resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud
+tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold
+his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done
+unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding
+made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a
+thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was
+able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned
+nonsense!"--that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an
+utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to
+John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he
+would have told them so, if he had met them.
+
+The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at
+the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a
+bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is
+rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto
+voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me,
+dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?"
+"Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"--these be
+words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice
+had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he
+despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of
+speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and
+his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab.
+And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck
+life like a black frost.
+
+In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use
+of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material
+well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the
+substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty,
+in his manner--unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close
+corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to
+the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him
+already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate
+foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town--and for his wife, who
+was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long
+that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay,
+where have _you_ been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she
+answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The
+Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your
+Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might
+be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered,
+"It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your
+auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."
+
+"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had
+them laced.
+
+"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window.
+"Wha-at?"
+
+"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."
+
+"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him
+wearily.
+
+"No doubt ye had to send _her_," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye
+couldna send _him_--eh?"
+
+"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang.
+Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her
+to run for a drop milk?"
+
+"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her
+brother should still be abed--oh, it's right that he should get the
+privilege--seeing he's the eldest!"
+
+Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened[1] on her boy." In
+spite of her slack grasp on life--perhaps, because of it--she clung with
+a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a
+thowless[2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And
+Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be
+hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he
+adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son--which became
+permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was
+his own favourite--perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect
+her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a
+pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost
+to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and
+saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though
+he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took
+her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to
+buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when
+she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man
+mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen
+table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in
+his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from
+the outer yard.
+
+When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear
+through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.
+
+He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water
+on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone
+besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in
+front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and
+knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of
+silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the
+feeling: "_My_ father is _your_ master, and ye daurna stand up till
+him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards
+dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.
+
+Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's
+quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood
+there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his
+father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's
+pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate
+malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we
+fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.
+
+John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still
+watching Gilmour with that silent, offensive look. He came into the
+path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a
+vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering
+about the boy's bare legs.
+
+"Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on
+again, I'm telling ye. What are _you_, onyway? Ye're just a servant.
+Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. _He_ can put ye in your
+place."
+
+Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John
+stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been
+washing down the horse's legs.
+
+"Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.
+
+"Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with
+his shoulder.
+
+But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would
+have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what
+would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was
+patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful
+fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.
+
+"Drap the clout," said Gilmour.
+
+"I'll no," said John.
+
+Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that
+its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the
+wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a
+sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!
+
+Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in
+the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed
+her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized
+the weary trollop of the kitchen.
+
+"What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at
+Gilmour.
+
+"Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.
+
+"Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck
+standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump--to strike a
+defenceless wean!--Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle
+ye.--Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But
+I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie _you_ the order to
+travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about _my_
+hoose to ill-use _my_ bairn."
+
+She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's
+enemy.
+
+"_Your_ servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking
+object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and
+burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"
+
+Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man
+of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered
+it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.
+
+"What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the
+ground.
+
+"This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath
+again--"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to
+Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at
+him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"
+
+"He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him,
+at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied
+leather's gaun to trample owre _me_."
+
+Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full
+minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.
+
+"Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.
+
+"Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him
+courage. "Gie me time to get _my_ kist, and I'll walk mighty quick. And
+damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the
+Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi!--the Hoose wi' the Green
+Shutters!"
+
+Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide.
+"You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would
+kill ye wi' a glower!"
+
+Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.
+
+"Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared.
+I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye
+off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."
+
+"Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever
+suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for
+your wor-rds."
+
+"Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o'
+yours. I don't like daft folk about _my_ hoose."
+
+"There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour
+angrily, as he turned away.
+
+He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As
+he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his
+left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.
+
+"Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye.
+Yon was the way to put ye down!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Browdened._ A Scot devoted to his children is said to be "browdened
+on his bairns."
+
+[2] _Thowless_, weak, useless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the
+bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will
+be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does--he's juist a bodie!"
+The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year
+from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he
+may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief
+occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the
+discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld
+residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can
+tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking
+geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for
+the drink--ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of
+whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye
+see, that's the reason o't.
+
+The genus "bodie" is divided into two species--the "harmless bodies" and
+the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second
+variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough
+fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay
+spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure,
+was not an impartial witness.
+
+The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they
+forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And,
+indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it
+was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to
+which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing
+at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left
+and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets
+that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street,
+and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters,
+the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a
+fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned
+to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never
+be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing
+speculation which often lasted half an hour.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the
+yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their
+morning dram.
+
+"Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.
+
+When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you
+felt sure it was going to be good.
+
+"Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam,
+casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft,
+white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds,
+it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."
+
+Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to
+himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in
+accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always
+grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he
+had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.
+
+"Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be
+cheap"--and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr.
+Wylie.
+
+Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.
+
+"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
+be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
+plentiful."
+
+"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
+three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
+and Barbie dances till't."
+
+That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
+clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
+knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
+Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
+about the hay.
+
+"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
+baker.
+
+"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
+the Cross! Where'll _he_ be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
+often up so soon."
+
+"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.
+
+"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
+whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
+the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
+in _him_. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."
+
+T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
+Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
+staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.
+
+"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
+big shoulder to get a look.
+
+"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to
+_her_?"
+
+"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's
+speiring him for bawbees."
+
+"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"
+
+"Or the Fechars?"
+
+"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe
+for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."
+
+"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly
+gowk."
+
+"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur
+than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:--
+
+
+     'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,
+     Till by himsel' he learned to wander,
+     Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
+           And no thick lang;
+     Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder
+           A heartfelt sang.'"
+
+
+Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he
+said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good!--Who's yellow
+doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"
+
+"Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"
+
+"It's like a herd's doag!"
+
+"Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb
+fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."
+
+"He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will
+have lost him."
+
+"Imph, that'll be the way o't."
+
+"I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle,
+who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying
+quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was
+exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.
+
+"The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that
+airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"
+
+"Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"
+
+"Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn
+voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a
+moment every head was turned to the hill.
+
+"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.
+
+"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of
+eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his
+profoundest cogitations to the "boax."
+
+"It _is_ a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."
+
+"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"
+
+At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his
+spine, so that his face was visible.
+
+"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll _he_ be
+doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always
+busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to
+somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."
+
+"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than
+usual in the animation of discovery--"I'll wager ye Gourlay has
+quarrelled him and put him to the door!"
+
+"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay,
+ay--faith ay--and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right,
+Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news _this_
+morning."
+
+They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to
+meet Gilmour coming down.
+
+"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.
+
+"No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down
+the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."
+
+"Ay, man, John. How's that na?"
+
+To be the centre of interest and the object of gracious condescension
+was balm to the wounded feelings of Gilmour. Gourlay had lowered him,
+but this reception restored him to his own good opinion. He was usually
+called "Jock" (except by his mother, to whom, of course, he was "oor
+Johnny"), but the best merchants in the town were addressing him as
+"John." It was a great occasion. Gilmour expanded in gossip beneath its
+influence benign.
+
+He welcomed, too, this first and fine opportunity of venting his wrath
+on the Gourlays.
+
+"Oh, I just telled Gourlay what I thocht of him, and took the door ahint
+me. I let him have it hot and hardy, I can tell ye. He'll no forget _me_
+in a hurry"--Gilmour bawled angrily, and nodded his head significantly,
+and glared fiercely, to show what good cause he had given Gourlay to
+remember him--"he'll no forget _me_ for a month of Sundays."
+
+"Ay, man, John, what did ye say till him?"
+
+"Na, man, what did he say to you?"
+
+"Wath he angry, Dyohn?"
+
+"How did the thing begin?"
+
+"Tell us, man, John."
+
+"What was it a-all about, John?"
+
+"Was Mrs. Gourlay there?"
+
+Bewildered by this pelt of questions, Gilmour answered the last that hit
+his ear. "There, ay; faith, she was there. It was her was the cause
+o't."
+
+"D'ye tell me that, John? Man, you surprise me. I would have thocht the
+thowless trauchle[3] hadna the smeddum left to interfere."
+
+"Oh, it was yon boy of hers. He's aye swaggerin' aboot, interferin' wi'
+folk at their wark--he follows his faither's example in that, for as the
+auld cock craws the young ane learns--and his mither's that daft aboot
+him that ye daurna give a look! He came in my road when I was sweeping
+out the close, and some o' the dirty jaups splashed about his shins. But
+was I to blame for that?--ye maun walk wide o' a whalebone besom if ye
+dinna want to be splashed. Afore I kenned where I was, he up wi' a dirty
+washing-clout and slashed me in the face wi't! I hit him a thud in the
+ear--as wha wadna? Out come his mither like a fury, skirling about _her_
+hoose, and _her_ servants, and _her_ weans. 'Your servant!' says
+I--'your servant! You're a nice-looking trollop to talk aboot servants,'
+says I."
+
+"Did ye really, John?"
+
+"Man, that wath bauld o' ye."
+
+"And what did _she_ say?"
+
+"Oh, she just kept skirling! And then, to be sure, Gourlay must come out
+and interfere! But I telled him to his face what I thocht of _him!_ 'The
+best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather,' says I, ''s no gaun to make
+dirt of me,' says I."
+
+"Ay, man, Dyohn!" lisped Deacon Allardyce, with bright and eagerly
+inquiring eyes. "And what did he thay to that na? _That_ wath a dig for
+him! I'the warrant he wath angry."
+
+"Angry? He foamed at the mouth! But I up and says to him, 'I have had
+enough o' you,' says I, 'you and your Hoose wi' the Green Shutters,'
+says I. 'You're no fit to have a decent servant,' says I. 'Pay _me my_
+wages, and I'll be redd o' ye,' says I. And wi' that I flang my kist on
+my shouther and slapped the gate ahint me."
+
+"And _did_ he pay ye your wages?" Tam Wylie probed him slyly, with a
+sideward glimmer in his eye.
+
+"Ah, well, no--not exactly," said Gilmour, drawing in. "But I'll get
+them right enough for a' that. He'll no get the better o' _me_." Having
+grounded unpleasantly on the question of the wages, he thought it best
+to be off ere the bloom was dashed from his importance, so he
+shouldered his chest and went. The bodies watched him down the street.
+
+"He's a lying brose, that," said the baker. "We a' ken what Gourlay is.
+He would have flung Gilmour out by the scruff o' the neck if he had
+daured to set his tongue against him!"
+
+"Faith, that's so," said Tam Wylie and Johnny Coe together.
+
+But the others were divided between their perception of the fact and
+their wish to believe that Gourlay had received a thrust or two. At
+other times they would have been the first to scoff at Gilmour's
+swagger. Now their animus against Gourlay prompted them to back it up.
+
+"Oh, I'm not so sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false,
+loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound;
+"I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled
+persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied
+Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will do him good."
+
+For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is
+rampant in petty towns such as Barbie. To go back to the beginning, the
+Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone
+is enough to make him so; for it is a scheme of personal salvation
+significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie.
+"At the Day of Judgment, my frehnds," said Mr. Struthers--"at the Day of
+Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!" Self-dependence was
+never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and
+the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the
+Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if
+it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells.
+
+From their individualism, however, comes inevitably a keen spirit of
+competition (the more so because Scotch democracy gives fine chances to
+compete), and from their keen spirit of competition comes, inevitably
+again, an envious belittlement of rivals. If a man's success offends
+your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a
+recognized weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit, and (inversely)
+elevates his rival.
+
+It is in a small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent,
+because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his
+neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example,
+and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin.
+"I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim (and when
+their hearts are big they are big to hypertrophy)--"I have grand news
+the day! Man, Jock Goudie has won the C.B."--"Jock Goudie"--an envious
+bodie will pucker as if he had never heard the name--"Jock Goudie? Wha's
+_he_ for a Goudie? Oh ay, let me see now. He's a brother o'--eh, a
+brother o'--eh" (tit-tit-titting on his brow)--"oh, just a brother o'
+Drucken Will Goudie o' Auchterwheeze! Oo-ooh, I ken _him_ fine. His
+grannie keepit a sweetie-shop in Strathbungo." There you have the
+"nesty" Scotsman.
+
+Even if Gourlay had been a placable and inoffensive man, then, the
+malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village)
+would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them.
+No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot (especially when
+spite wings his intuition), and Gourlay's thickness of wit and pride of
+place would in any case have drawn their sneers. So, too, on lower
+grounds, would his wife's sluttishness. But his repressiveness added a
+hundredfold to their hate of him. That was the particular cause which,
+acting on their general tendency to belittle a too-successful rival,
+made their spite almost monstrous against him. Not a man among them but
+had felt the weight of his tongue--for edge it had none. He walked among
+them like the dirt below his feet. There was no give and take in the
+man; he could be verra jocose with the lairds, to be sure, but he never
+dropped in to the Red Lion for a crack and a dram with the town-folk; he
+just glowered as if he could devour them! And who was he, I should like
+to know? His grandfather had been noathing but a common carrier!
+
+Hate was the greater on both sides because it was often impotent.
+Gourlay frequently suspected offence, and seethed because he had no idea
+how to meet it--except by driving slowly down the brae in his new gig
+and never letting on when the Provost called to him. That was a wipe in
+the eye for the Provost! The "bodies," on their part, could rarely get
+near enough Gourlay to pierce his armour; he kept them off him by his
+brutal dourness. For it was not only pride and arrogance, but a
+consciousness also that he was no match for them at their own game, that
+kept Gourlay away from their society. They were adepts at the under
+stroke, and they would have given him many a dig if he had only come
+amongst them. But, oh no, not he; he was the big man; he never gave a
+body a chance! Or if you did venture a bit jibe when you met him, he
+glowered you off the face of the earth with thae black een of his. Oh,
+how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused
+by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The
+"bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but
+against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an
+insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against
+him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the
+street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was
+absurd for a man in his "poseetion." But it was done with the sole
+desire of hearing something that might tell against Gourlay. Even
+countesses, we are told, gossip with malicious maids about other
+countesses. Spite is a great leveller.
+
+"Shall we adjourn?" said Brodie, when they had watched Jock Gilmour out
+of sight. He pointed across his shoulder to the Red Lion.
+
+"Better noat just now," said the Provost, nodding in slow
+authority--"better noat just now! I'm very anxious to see Gourlay about
+yon matter we were speaking of, doan't ye understa-and? But I'm
+determined not to go to his house! On the other hand, if we go into the
+Red Lion the now, we may miss him on the street. We'll noat have loang
+to wait, though; he'll be down the town directly, to look at the horses
+he has at the gerse out the Fechars Road. But _I'm_ talling ye, I simply
+will noat go to his house--to put up with a wheen damned insults!" he
+puffed in angry recollection.
+
+"To tell the truth," said Wylie, "I don't like to call upon Gourlay
+either. I'm aware of his eyes on my back when I slink beaten through his
+gate, and I feel that my hurdies are wanting in dignity!"
+
+"Huh!" spluttered Brodie, "that never affects me. I come stunting out in
+a bleeze of wrath and slam the yett ahint me!"
+
+"Oh, well," said the Deacon, "that'th one way of being dignified."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Sandy Toddle, "that he won't be in a very good key to
+consider our request this morning, after his quarrel with Gilmour."
+
+"No," said the Provost; "he'll be blazing angry! It's most unfoartunate.
+But we maun try to get his consent, be his temper what it will. It's a
+matter of importance to the town, doan't ye see, and if he refuses we
+simply can-noat proceed wi' the improvement."
+
+"It was Gilmour's jibe at the House wi' the Green Shutters that would
+anger him the most, for it's the perfect god of his idolatry. Eh, sirs,
+he has wasted an awful money upon yon house!"
+
+"Wasted's the word!" said Brodie, with a blatant laugh. "Wasted's the
+word! They say he has verra little lying cash! And I shouldna be
+surprised at all. For, ye see, Gibson the builder diddled him owre the
+building o't."
+
+"Oh, I'se warrant Cunning Johnny would get the better of an ass like
+Gourlay. But how in particular, Mr. Brodie? Have ye heard ainy details?"
+
+"I've been on the track o' the thing for a while back, but it was only
+yestreen I had the proofs o't. It was Robin Wabster that telled me. He's
+a jouking bodie, Robin, and he was ahint a dike up the Skeighan Road
+when Gibson and Gourlay forgathered--they stoppit just forenenst him!
+Gourlay began to curse at the size of Gibson's bill, but Cunning Johnny
+kenned the way to get round him brawly. 'Mr. Gourlay,' says he, 'there's
+not a thing in your house that a man in your poseetion can afford to be
+without, and ye needn't expect the best house in Barbie for an oald
+song!' And Gourlay was pacified at once! It appeared frae their crack,
+however, that Gibson has diddled him tremendous. 'Verra well then,'
+Robin heard Gourlay cry, 'you must allow me a while ere I pay that!' I
+wager, for a' sae muckle as he's made of late, that his balance at the
+bank's a sma' yin."
+
+"More thyow than thubstanth," said the Deacon.
+
+"Well, I'm sure!" said the Provost, "he needn't have built such a
+gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"
+
+"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I
+wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have
+come to her support!"
+
+"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his
+own pride, the brute. He leads the woman the life of a doag. I'm
+surprised that he ever married her!"
+
+"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi'
+her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars--a grand farmer he
+was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees,
+and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was _her_ money, as ye
+ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never
+cared a preen for _her_, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he
+couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And
+yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a
+braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind,
+and--ochonee! ochonee!--as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a
+cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a
+summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the
+gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads
+thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of
+the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan
+(that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and
+he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig
+and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a
+braw lass she----"
+
+"It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing
+aside the reminiscent Coe.
+
+"How can it be that, Provost? It'th _your_ place, surely. You're the
+head of the town!"
+
+When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who
+should be hindmost.
+
+"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look
+of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The
+thing'll gang smash at the outset--_I'm_ talling ye, now--it'll go
+smash at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a
+better way of approaching folk!"
+
+"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to
+see if the Provost was guying him.
+
+"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and Tam Wylie in a
+breath.
+
+"Certainly, it maun be left to the Deacon," assented Johnny Coe, when he
+saw how the others were giving their opinion.
+
+"Tho be it, then," snapped the Deacon.
+
+"Here he comes," said Sandy Toddle.
+
+Gourlay came down the street towards them, his chest big, his thumbs in
+the armholes of his waistcoat. He had the power of staring steadily at
+those whom he approached without the slightest sign of recognition or
+intelligence appearing in his eyes. As he marched down upon the bodies
+he fixed them with a wide-open glower that was devoid of every
+expression but courageous steadiness. It gave a kind of fierce vacancy
+to his look.
+
+The Deacon limped forward on his thin shanks to the middle of the road.
+
+"It'th a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," he simpered.
+
+"There's noathing wrong with the morning," grunted Gourlay, as if there
+was something wrong with the Deacon.
+
+"We wath wanting to thee ye on a very important matter, Mithter
+Gourlay," lisped the Deacon, smiling up at the big man's face, with his
+head on one side, and rubbing his fingers in front of him. "It'th a
+matter of the common good, you thee; and we all agreed that we should
+speak to _you_, ath the foremost merchant of the town!"
+
+Allardyce meant his compliment to fetch Gourlay. But Gourlay knew his
+Allardyce, and was cautious. It was well to be on your guard when the
+Deacon was complimentary. When his language was most flowery there was
+sure to be a serpent hidden in it somewhere. He would lisp out an
+innocent remark and toddle away, and Gourlay would think nothing of the
+matter till a week afterwards, perhaps, when something would flash a
+light; then "Damn him, did he mean '_that_'?" he would seethe, starting
+back and staring at the "_that_" while his fingers strangled the air in
+place of the Deacon.
+
+He glowered at the Deacon now till the Deacon blinked.
+
+"You thee, Mr. Gourlay," Allardyce shuffled uneasily, "it'th for your
+own benefit just ath much ath ourth. We were thinking of you ath well
+ath of ourthelves! Oh yeth, oh yeth!"
+
+"Ay, man!" said Gourlay, "that was kind of ye! I'll be the first man in
+Barbie to get ainy benefit from the fools that mismanage our affairs."
+
+The gravel grated beneath the Provost's foot. The atmosphere was
+becoming electric, and the Deacon hastened to the point.
+
+"You thee, there'th a fine natural supply of water--a perfect reservore
+the Provost sayth--on the brae-face just above _your_ garden, Mr.
+Gourlay. Now, it would be easy to lead that water down and alang through
+all the gardenth on the high side of Main Street--and, 'deed, it might
+feed a pump at the Cross, too, to supply the lower portionth o' the
+town. It would really be a grai-ait convenience. Every man on the high
+side o' Main Street would have a running spout at his own back door! If
+your garden didna run tho far back, Mr. Gourlay, and ye hadna tho muckle
+land about your place"--_that_ should fetch him, thought the Deacon--"if
+it werena for that, Mr. Gourlay, we could easily lead the water round to
+the other gardenth without interfering with your property. But, ath it
+ith, we simply can-noat move without ye. The water must come through
+your garden, if it comes at a-all."
+
+"The most o' you important men live on the high side o' Main Street,"
+birred Gourlay. "Is it the poor folk at the Cross, or your ain bits o'
+back doors that you're thinking o'?"
+
+"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!" protested Allardyce, head flung back, and palms
+in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!
+We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I do assure ye."
+
+"Ay, man! You're dis-in-ter-ested!" said Gourlay, but he stumbled on the
+big word and spoiled the sneer. That angered him, and, "It's likely," he
+rapped out, "that I'll allow the land round _my_ house to be howked and
+trenched and made a mudhole of to oblige a wheen things like you!"
+
+"Oh--oh, but think of the convenience to uth--eh--eh--I mean to the
+common good," said Allardyce.
+
+"I howked wells for myself," snapped Gourlay. "Let others do the like."
+
+"Oh, but we haven't all the enterprithe of you, Mr. Gourlay. You'll
+surely accommodate the town!"
+
+"I'll see the town damned first," said Gourlay, and passed on his steady
+way.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Trauchle_, a poor trollop who trails about; _smeddum_, grit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The bodies watched Gourlay in silence until he was out of earshot. Then,
+"It's monstrous!" the Provost broke out in solemn anger; "I declare it's
+perfectly monstrous! But I believe we could get Pow-ers to compel him.
+Yass; I believe we could get Pow-ers. I do believe we could get
+Pow-ers."
+
+The Provost was fond of talking about "Pow-ers," because it implied that
+he was intimate with the great authorities who might delegate such
+"Pow-ers" to him. To talk of "Pow-ers," mysteriously, was a tribute to
+his own importance. He rolled the word on his tongue as if he enjoyed
+the sound of it.
+
+On the Deacon's cheek bones two red spots flamed, round and big as a
+Scotch penny. His was the hurt silence of the baffled diplomatist, to
+whom a defeat means reflections on his own ability.
+
+"Demn him!" he skirled, following the solid march of his enemy with
+fiery eyes.
+
+Never before had his deaconship been heard to swear. Tam Wylie laughed
+at the shrill oath till his eyes were buried in his merry wrinkles, a
+suppressed snirt, a continuous gurgle in the throat and nose, in beaming
+survey the while of the withered old creature dancing in his rage. (It
+was all a good joke to Tam, because, living on the outskirts of the
+town, he had no spigot of his own to feed.) The Deacon turned the eyes
+of hate on him. Demn Wylie too--what was he laughing at!
+
+"Oh, I dare thay you could have got round him!" he snapped.
+
+"In my opinion, Allardyce," said the baker, "you mismanaged the whole
+affair. Yon wasna the way to approach him!"
+
+"It'th a pity you didna try your hand, then, I'm sure! No doubt a clever
+man like _you_ would have worked wonderth!"
+
+So the bodies wrangled among themselves. Somehow or other Gourlay had
+the knack of setting them by the ears. It was not till they hit on a
+common topic of their spite in railing at him that they became a band of
+brothers and a happy few.
+
+"Whisht!" said Sandy Toddle suddenly; "here's his boy!"
+
+John was coming towards them on his way to school. The bodies watched
+him as he passed, with the fixed look men turn on a boy of whose kinsmen
+they were talking even now. They affect a stony and deliberate regard,
+partly to include the newcomer in their critical survey of his family,
+and partly to banish from their own eyes any sign that they have just
+been running down his people. John, as quick as his mother to feel, knew
+in a moment they were watching _him_. He hung his head sheepishly and
+blushed, and the moment he was past he broke into a nervous trot, the
+bag of books bumping on his back as he ran.
+
+"He's getting a big boy, that son of Gourlay's," said the Provost; "how
+oald will he be?"
+
+"He's approaching twelve," said Johnny Coe, who made a point of being
+able to supply such news because it gained him consideration where he
+was otherwise unheeded. "He was born the day the brig on the Fleckie
+Road gaed down, in the year o' the great flood; and since the great
+flood it's twelve year come Lammas. Rab Tosh o' Fleckie's wife was
+heavy-footed at the time, and Doctor Munn had been a' nicht wi' her, and
+when he cam to Barbie Water in the morning it was roaring wide frae
+bank to brae; where the brig should have been there was naething but the
+swashing of the yellow waves. Munn had to drive a' the way round to the
+Fechars brig, and in parts o' the road the water was so deep that it
+lapped his horse's bellyband. A' this time Mrs. Gourlay was skirling in
+her pains and praying to God she micht dee. Gourlay had been a great
+crony o' Munn's, but he quarrelled him for being late; he had trysted
+him, ye see, for the occasion, and he had been twenty times at the yett
+to look for him. Ye ken how little he would stomach that; he was ready
+to brust wi' anger. Munn, mad for the want of sleep and wat to the bane,
+swure back at him; and than Gourlay wadna let him near his wife! Ye mind
+what an awful day it was; the thunder roared as if the heavens were
+tumbling on the world, and the lichtnin sent the trees daudin on the
+roads, and folk hid below their beds and prayed--they thocht it was the
+Judgment! But Gourlay rammed his black stepper in the shafts, and drave
+like the devil o' hell to Skeighan Drone, where there was a young
+doctor. The lad was feared to come, but Gourlay swore by God that he
+should, and he garred him. In a' the countryside driving like his that
+day was never kenned or heard tell o'; they were back within the hour! I
+saw them gallop up Main Street; lichtnin struck the ground before them;
+the young doctor covered his face wi' his hands, and the horse nichered
+wi' fear and tried to wheel, but Gourlay stood up in the gig and lashed
+him on through the fire. It was thocht for lang that Mrs. Gourlay would
+die; and she was never the same woman after. Atweel, ay, sirs, Gourlay
+has that morning's work to blame for the poor wife he has now. Him and
+Munn never spoke to each other again, and Munn died within the
+twelvemonth--he got his death that morning on the Fleckie Road. But, for
+a' so pack's they had been, Gourlay never looked near him."
+
+Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well--for
+Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the
+ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew,
+besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was
+lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay
+went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had
+seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in
+spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on
+the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on
+his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the
+sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of
+admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything.
+And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact
+of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller,
+and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them,
+was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but
+he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by
+bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.
+
+"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.
+
+"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
+Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
+Dandy had his place."
+
+"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
+doctor or a minister or wha-at?"
+
+"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
+It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
+again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
+speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"
+
+"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
+Provost.
+
+Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
+flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
+direction of their thoughts.
+
+"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
+his chin.
+
+"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.
+
+"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.
+
+And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
+trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
+There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every
+other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a
+most appropriate _role_. If his father was not about he would hang
+round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
+"Bleach-the-boys"--as the master had been christened by his scholars.
+"Mother, I have a pain in _my_ heid," he would whimper, and she would
+condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her--were
+it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
+strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
+really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
+home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
+keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
+his father.
+
+On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
+was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
+slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
+scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now--and the
+Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
+he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
+his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the
+yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
+nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
+Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
+arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
+his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
+attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
+his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
+so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
+the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
+himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
+comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.
+
+As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
+Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
+absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
+forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
+have been much more at his ease.
+
+Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
+John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
+of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
+he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
+became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart--to feel
+it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
+joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of
+odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a
+misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he
+knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop,
+on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression,
+and feeling like a boy slinking into school.
+
+In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that
+morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he
+crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes'
+run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this
+unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the
+pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the
+wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front,
+making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.
+
+He began talking of the new range.
+
+"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this
+morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and
+solemn protest. "It wasna _my_ faut! We're getting in a grand new range,
+and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room
+for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning,
+because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour--and here,
+when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!
+
+"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited
+jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the
+afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"
+
+The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly
+thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys,
+they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only
+grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee.
+It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in
+uncomfortable silence.
+
+"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my
+father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best!
+Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I
+leave the schule--and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't;
+I'll no bide a day longer than I need! I'm to go into the business, and
+then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two
+dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't."
+
+"Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle
+of his brow.
+
+"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with
+delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one
+fit retort to his bouncing.
+
+Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head
+against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he
+brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath
+against Swipey.
+
+"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey
+Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"
+
+In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt
+sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't.
+
+"G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man!
+Don't have _me_ getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your
+duds!"
+
+Now the father of Swipey--so called because he always swiped when
+batting at rounders--the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant
+of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that
+his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated,
+therefore, to sting him to the quick.
+
+The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove
+straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and
+Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.
+
+For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "_Ooh!_"
+with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull
+its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him
+at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his
+knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily
+(from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"
+
+Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey
+jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another
+moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant
+Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!"--Swipey's father was
+an Irishman.
+
+"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie--"let him up, and meet each other
+square!"
+
+"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with
+magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the
+air. "I could fight ten of him!--Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll
+poultice the road wi' your brose."
+
+John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys
+ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and
+shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.
+
+"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he
+ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which
+Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
+sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
+and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
+sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
+anvil.
+
+John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
+unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
+look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
+silent faces.
+
+A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
+a lonely smell, and ran to get away.
+
+"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
+through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"
+
+"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
+simple expression of his wish.
+
+"What for, my sweet?"
+
+"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."
+
+His mother saw his cut mouth.
+
+"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
+Has ainybody been meddling ye?"
+
+"It was Swipey Broon," he said.
+
+"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
+decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
+them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
+It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"
+
+In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
+on which she sank exhausted by her rage.
+
+"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
+fleas off him. The other boys were on _his_ side, or I would have
+walloped him."
+
+"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
+Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
+not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
+intil."
+
+"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"
+
+"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If _he_ saw ye!"
+
+"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
+garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."
+
+She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
+stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
+streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
+centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
+up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every
+now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
+slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
+still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
+started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!
+
+If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
+his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
+snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
+somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
+kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
+earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
+live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
+and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
+there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
+great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
+would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
+thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
+the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good
+jade!--stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
+friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
+mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
+glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
+the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
+mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
+painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
+best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
+picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
+from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
+Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
+the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
+water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
+the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
+roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
+she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
+glaring from the pool.--Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
+kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that _he_ liked. He
+wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
+were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
+waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
+somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
+a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
+beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
+slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
+gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
+they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
+and their love!" quoth he.
+
+To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from
+something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things
+to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of
+the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed,
+or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves
+vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was
+hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his
+mottled nose--John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw
+the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The
+varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs.
+Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself--to all
+these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the
+impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he
+was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that
+was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate
+it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge,
+among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended
+beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall
+suddenly down, and creep patiently again--this he would watch with
+curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once,
+"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"
+
+"They're queer," he said musingly.
+
+Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
+to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.
+
+But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
+moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
+numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
+story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
+world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
+wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
+rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
+from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
+voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
+then--oh, horror!--his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
+garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
+against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
+bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
+room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.
+
+The heavy steps came back to the landing.
+
+"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.
+
+"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
+mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."
+
+"_Hah!_" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
+should come in!
+
+But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
+pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
+kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
+them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
+himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole
+drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
+depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
+fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
+never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
+clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
+paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
+a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All
+these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
+unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But
+it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at
+all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as
+his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing
+his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.
+
+At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He
+crept down the stair.
+
+"_You_ were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in
+accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."
+
+"If ye wud----" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She
+shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.
+
+The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing
+it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs.
+Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a
+faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the
+grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the
+men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy
+range.
+
+"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye
+get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"
+
+"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the
+train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he
+added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."
+
+The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a
+little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright,
+sharp edges.
+
+"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of
+the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I
+happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as
+the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says
+he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?'
+says I. 'How do _you_ ken what _I_ want?' I made short work o' _him!_
+The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."
+
+Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a
+poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in
+Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.
+
+The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's
+an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man
+wi't."
+
+"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."
+
+The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
+the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
+up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
+with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
+laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
+heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
+Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
+he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
+stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
+fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.
+
+"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
+here! It's exactly the same size!"
+
+"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
+"You'll be killing folk next."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart,
+to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."
+
+"Have the carriers a big load?"
+
+"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And
+there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."
+
+The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and
+this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy
+thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky
+of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the
+cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of
+the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.
+
+"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile
+ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the
+ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove
+away!"
+
+Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from
+beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.
+
+"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean--d'ye mean
+the carriers too?"
+
+"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"
+
+Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from his fob, and,
+"It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.
+
+"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.
+
+There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only human
+being with whom he was ever really at his ease. It is only when a mind
+feels secure in itself that it can laugh unconcernedly at others. Peter
+was so simple that in his presence Gourlay felt secure; and he used to
+banter him.
+
+"The folk at the Cross winna expect the carriers till aicht, sir," said
+Peter, "and I doubt their stuff won't be ready."
+
+"Ay, man, Peter," Gourlay joked lazily, as if Peter was a little boy.
+"Ay, man, Peter. You think the folk at the Cross winna be prepared?"
+
+"No, sir," said Peter, opening his eyes very solemnly, "they winna be
+prepared."
+
+"It'll do them good to hurry a little for once," growled Gourlay, humour
+yielding to spite at the thought of his enemies. "It'll do them good to
+hurry a little for once. Be off, the lot of ye!"
+
+After ordering his carriers to start, to back down and postpone their
+departure, just to suit the convenience of his neighbours, would
+derogate from his own importance. His men might think he was afraid of
+Barbie.
+
+He strolled out to the big gate and watched his teams going down the
+brae.
+
+There were only four carts this morning because the two that had gone to
+Fechars yesterday with the cheese would not be back till the afternoon;
+and another had already turned west to Auchterwheeze, to bring slates
+for the flesher's new house. Of the four that went down the street two
+were the usual carriers' carts, the other two were off to Fleckie with
+meal, and Gourlay had started them the sooner since they were to bring
+back the ironwork which Templandmuir needed for his new improvements.
+Though the Templar had reformed greatly since he married his birkie
+wife, he was still far from having his place in proper order, and he had
+often to depend on Gourlay for the carrying of stuff which a man in his
+position should have had horses of his own to bring.
+
+As Gourlay stood at his gate he pondered with heavy cunning how much he
+might charge Templandmuir for bringing the ironwork from Fleckie. He
+decided to charge him for the whole day, though half of it would be
+spent in taking his own meal to Donnerton. In that he was carrying out
+his usual policy--which was to make each side of his business help the
+other.
+
+As he stood puzzling his wits over Templandmuir's account, his lips
+worked in and out, to assist the slow process of his brain. His eyes
+narrowed between peering lids, and their light seemed to turn inward as
+he fixed them abstractedly on a stone in the middle of the road. His
+head was tilted that he might keep his eyes upon the stone; and every
+now and then, as he mused, he rubbed his chin slowly between the thumb
+and fingers of his left hand. Entirely given up to the thought of
+Templandmuir's account, he failed to see the figure advancing up the
+street.
+
+At last the scrunch of a boot on the wet road struck his ear. He turned
+with his best glower on the man who was approaching; more of the
+"Wha-the-bleezes-are-you?" look than ever in his eyes--because he had
+been caught unawares.
+
+The stranger wore a light yellow overcoat, and he had been walking a
+long time in the rain apparently, for the shoulders of the coat were
+quite black with the wet, these black patches showing in strong contrast
+with the dryer, therefore yellower, front of it. Coat and jacket were
+both hanging slightly open, and between was seen the slight bulge of a
+dirty white waistcoat. The newcomer's trousers were turned high at the
+bottom, and the muddy spats he wore looked big and ungainly in
+consequence. In this appearance there was an air of dirty and
+pretentious well-to-do-ness. It was not shabby gentility. It was like
+the gross attempt at dress of your well-to-do publican who looks down on
+his soiled white waistcoat with complacent and approving eye.
+
+"It's a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," simpered the stranger. His air was
+that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on
+the weather with his laird.
+
+Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.
+
+"Is that _your_ opinion?" said he. "I fail to see't mysell."
+
+It was not in Gourlay to see the beauty of that gray, wet dawn. A fine
+morning to him was one that burnt the back of your neck.
+
+The stranger laughed: a little deprecating giggle. "I meant it was fine
+weather for the fields," he explained. He had meant nothing of the kind,
+of course; he had merely been talking at random in his wish to be civil
+to that important man, John Gourlay.
+
+"Imphm," he pondered, looking round on the weather with a wise air;
+"imphm; it's fine weather for the fields."
+
+"Are _you_ a farmer, then?" Gourlay nipped him, with his eye on the
+white waistcoat.
+
+"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi--hi! I'm not a farmer. I dare
+say, now, you have no mind of _me_?"
+
+"No," said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his
+dark eyes. "I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering
+_you_."
+
+"Man, I'm a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee."
+
+"Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!" said contemptuous Gourlay. "What's
+this they christened him now? 'Toddling Johnnie,' was it noat?"
+
+Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the
+remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the
+insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed
+aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure
+might provoke.
+
+But though Wilson was not a hardy man, it was not timidity only that
+caused his tame submission to Gourlay.
+
+He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of
+money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the
+mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the
+most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and
+fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well,"
+he would have swelled with gratified pride. For it is often the
+favourable estimate of their own little village--"What they'll think of
+me at home"--that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way
+in the world. No doubt that is why so many of them go home and cut a
+dash when they have made their fortunes; they want the cronies of their
+youth to see the big men they have become. Wilson was not exempt from
+that weakness. As far back as he remembered Gourlay had been the big man
+of Barbie; as a boy he had viewed him with admiring awe; to be received
+by him now, as one of the well-to-do, were a sweet recognition of his
+greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his
+smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that,
+though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his
+father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had
+been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they
+are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy
+self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to
+divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped
+comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a
+dull man--perhaps because he was a dull man--suspected insult in a
+moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's brain (though he was cleverer
+than most) that the world could find anything to scoff at in such a fine
+fellow as James Wilson. A less ironic brute than Gourlay would never
+have pierced the thickness of his hide. It was because Gourlay succeeded
+in piercing it that morning that Wilson hated him for ever--with a hate
+the more bitter because he was rebuffed so seldom.
+
+"Is business brisk?" he asked, irrepressible.
+
+Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's
+son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him
+setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town
+whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place,
+the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!
+
+For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson's manner that
+offended Gourlay--as if mole-catcher's son and monopolist were
+discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.
+
+"Business!" he said gravely. "Well, I'm not well acquainted with your
+line, but I believe mole traps are cheap--if ye have any idea of taking
+up the oald trade."
+
+Wilson's eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth
+opened--then shut--then he decided to speak after all. "Oh, I was
+thinking Barbie would be very quiet," said he, "compared wi' places
+where they have the railway. I was thinking it would need stirring up a
+bit."
+
+"Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?" birred Gourlay, with a stupid man's
+repetition of his jibe. "Well, I believe there's a grand opening in the
+moleskin line, so _there's_ a chance for ye. My quarrymen wear out their
+breeks in no time."
+
+Wilson's face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white.
+"Good-morning!" he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of
+his stick upon the wet road.
+
+"Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" Gourlay birred after him; "goo-ood
+mor-r-ning, serr!" He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put
+the branks on Wilson!
+
+Wilson was as furious at himself as at Gourlay. Why the devil had he
+said "Good-morning"? It had slipped out of him unawares, and Gourlay had
+taken it up with an ironic birr that rang in his ears now, poisoning his
+blood. He felt equal in fancy to a thousand Gourlays now--so strong was
+he in wrath against him. He had gone forward to pass pleasant remarks
+about the weather, and why should he noat?--he was no disgrace to
+Barbie, but a credit rather. It was not every working-man's son that
+came back with five hundred in the bank. And here Gourlay had treated
+him like a doag! Ah, well, he would maybe be upsides with Gourlay yet,
+so he might!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+"Such a rickle of furniture I never saw!" said the Provost.
+
+"Whose is it?" said Brodie.
+
+"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in
+air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of
+oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for
+a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this
+world's coming to!"
+
+"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at
+Fleckie for the last ten days--my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I
+dare say you have heard--oh yes, we must all go--so, ye see, I'm
+scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I
+thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."
+
+"Noat he! It's _whispered_ indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help
+in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled
+there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to
+understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the
+Cross--for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his
+furniture----"
+
+"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that.
+Will that be a son of his?"
+
+He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying
+chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson
+meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in
+shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically
+near his neck--so short was the space of shirt between the top line of
+his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and
+the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs,
+being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth
+instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a
+"cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek
+kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes,
+so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose.
+He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots--they only
+_looked_ clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so
+thin--skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair
+inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes
+wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and
+sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.
+
+"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.
+
+"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for?
+They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle,
+forgetting his English in surprise.
+
+"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in
+Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe
+wi't."
+
+"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.
+
+"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.
+
+"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.
+
+"It would take a heap to revolutionize _hit_," said the baker, the
+ironic man.
+
+"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's
+gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me
+before."
+
+"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.
+
+But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation,
+and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient
+parable.
+
+"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the
+back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an
+opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a
+body comes to think o't."
+
+"What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind,
+quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt
+of its possibilities.
+
+"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny
+Gibson--it was him had the selling o't--but he couldn't give me ainy
+satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid
+it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place
+for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that.
+'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The
+less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise
+me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"
+
+"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.
+
+"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.
+
+"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said
+Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of
+_that_."
+
+"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be
+at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark
+much loanger!"
+
+Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to
+read the notice here appended:--
+
+
+     "Mr. James Wilson begs to announce to the inhabitants of Barbie
+     and surrounding neighbourhood that he has taken these commodious
+     premises, No. 1 The Cross, which he intends to open shortly as a
+     Grocery, Ironmongery, and General Provision Store. J. W. is
+     apprised that such an Emporium has long been a felt want in the
+     locality. To meet this want is J. W.'s intention. He will try to do
+     so, not by making large profits on a small business, but by making
+     small profits on a large business. Indeed, owing to his long
+     acquaintance with the trade, Mr. Wilson will be able to supply all
+     commodities at a very little over cost price. For J. W. will use
+     those improved methods of business which have been confined
+     hitherto to the larger centres of population. At his Emporium you
+     will be able, as the saying goes, to buy everything from a needle
+     to an anchor. Moreover, to meet the convenience of his customers,
+     J. W. will deliver goods at your own doors, distributing them with
+     his own carts either in the town of Barbie or at any convenient
+     distance from the same. Being a native of the district, his
+     business hopes to secure a due share of your esteemed patronage.
+     Thanking you, in anticipation, for the favour of an early visit,
+
+       "Believe me, Ladies and Gentlemen,
+                             "Yours faithfully,
+                                     "JAMES WILSON."
+
+
+Such was the poster with which "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood"
+were besprinkled within a week of "J. W.'s" appearance on the scene. He
+was known as "J. W." ever after. To be known by your initials is
+sometimes a mark of affection, and sometimes a mark of disrespect. It
+was not a mark of affection in the case of our "J. W." When Donald Scott
+slapped him on the back and cried, "Hullo, J. W., how are the anchors
+selling?" Barbie had found a cue which it was not slow to make use of.
+Wilson even received letters addressed to "J. W., Anchor Merchant, No.
+1 The Cross." Ours is a nippy locality.
+
+But Wilson, cosy and cocky in his own good opinion, was impervious to
+the chilly winds of scorn. His posters, in big blue letters, were on the
+smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five
+miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of
+every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to
+door. The folk could talk of nothing else.
+
+"Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure
+here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in
+the gutter."
+
+"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises
+owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end
+o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest
+man, used to tell the minister."
+
+"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi'
+Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching.
+They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the
+considering eye in his head--yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from
+out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the
+cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And
+look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But
+Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and
+Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a
+great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their
+own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans
+round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like
+was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."
+
+It did.
+
+It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to
+Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long
+time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the
+goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew,
+and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose;
+he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was
+whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and
+that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should
+credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's
+misdemeanour.
+
+Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it
+is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake
+its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the
+larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us.
+Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look
+around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of
+chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phrase of
+Wilson's retired and solitary speculation. "Ay," he said, emerging from
+one of his business reveries, "there's bound to be heaps o' chances for
+a man like me, if I only look about me."
+
+He was "looking about him" in Glasgow when he forgathered with his
+cousin William--the borer he! After many "How are ye, Jims's" and mutual
+speirings over a "bit mouthful of yill"--so they phrased it; but that
+was a meiosis, for they drank five quarts--they fell to a serious
+discussion of the commercial possibilities of Scotland. The borer was of
+the opinion that the Braes of Barbie had a future yet, "for a' the
+gaffer was so keen on keeping his men in the dark about the coal."
+
+Now Wilson knew (as what Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties
+coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now
+is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were
+no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive
+preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In
+one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a
+laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda
+from its impoverished owner, laid the basis of a vast fortune.
+
+"D'ye mean--to tell--_me_, Weelyum Wilson," said James, giving him his
+full name in the solemnity of the moment, "d'ye mean--to tell--_me_,
+sir"--here he sank his voice to a whisper--"that there's joukery-pawkery
+at work?"
+
+"A declare to God A div," said Weelyum, with equal solemnity, and he
+nodded with alarmed sapience across his beer jug.
+
+"You believe there's plenty of coal up Barbie Valley, and that they're
+keeping it dark in the meantime for some purpose of their own?"
+
+"I do," said Weelyum.
+
+"God!" said James, gripping the table with both hands in his
+excitement--"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has
+been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra
+little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a
+puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If
+I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I
+have in't. You're going home the night, are ye not?"
+
+"I was just on my road to the station when I met ye," said Weelyum.
+
+"Send me a scrape of your pen to-morrow, man, if what you see on getting
+back keeps you still in the same mind o't. And directly I get your
+letter I'll run down and look about me."
+
+The letter was encouraging, and Wilson went forth to spy the land and
+initiate the plan of campaign. It was an important day for him. He
+entered on his feud with Gourlay, and bought Rab Jamieson's house and
+barn (with the field behind it) for a trifle. He had five hundred of his
+own, and he knew where more could be had for the asking.
+
+Rab Jamieson's barn was a curious building to be stranded in the midst
+of Barbie. In quaint villages and little towns of England you sometimes
+see a mellow red-tiled barn, with its rich yard, close upon the street;
+it seems to have been hemmed in by the houses round, while dozing, so
+that it could not escape with the fields fleeing from the town. There it
+remains and gives a ripeness to the place, matching fitly with the great
+horse-chestnut yellowing before the door, and the old inn further down,
+mantled in its blood-red creepers. But that autumnal warmth and cosiness
+is rarely seen in the barer streets of the north. How Rab Jamieson's
+barn came to be stuck in Barbie nobody could tell. It was a gaunt, gray
+building with never a window, but a bole high in one corner for the
+sheaves, and a door low in another corner for auld Rab Jamieson. There
+was no mill inside, and the place had not been used for years. But the
+roof was good, and the walls stout and thick, and Wilson soon got to
+work on his new possession. He had seen all that could be made of the
+place the moment he clapped an eye on it, and he knew that he had found
+a good thing, even if the pits should never come near Barbie. The bole
+and door next the street were walled up, and a fine new door opened in
+the middle, flanked on either side by a great window. The interior was
+fitted up with a couple of counters and a wooden floor; and above the
+new wood ceiling there was a long loft for a storeroom, lighted by
+skylights in the roof. That loft above the rafters, thought the
+provident Wilson, will come in braw and handy for storing things, so it
+will. And there, hey presto! the transformation was achieved, and
+Wilson's Emporium stood before you. It was crammed with merchandise. On
+the white flapping slant of a couple of awnings, one over each window,
+you might read in black letters, "JAMES WILSON: EMPORIUM." The letters
+of "James Wilson" made a triumphal arch, to which "Emporium" was the
+base. It seemed symbolical.
+
+Now, the shops of Barbie (the drunken man's shop and the dirty man's
+shop always excepted, of course) had usually been low-browed little
+places with faded black scrolls above the door, on which you might read
+in dim gilt letters (or it might be in white)
+
+
+                "LICENS'D TO SELL TEA & TOBACCO."
+
+
+"Licens'd" was on one corner of the ribboned scroll, "To Sell Tea &"
+occupied the flowing arch above, with "Tobacco" in the other corner.
+When you mounted two steps and opened the door, a bell of some kind went
+"_ping_" in the interior, and an old woman in a mutch, with big specs
+slipping down her nose, would come up a step from a dim little room
+behind, and wiping her sunken mouth with her apron--she had just left
+her tea--would say, "What's your wull the day, sir?" And if you said
+your "wull" was tobacco, she would answer, "Ou, sir, I dinna sell ocht
+now but the tape and sweeties." And then you went away, sadly.
+
+With the exception of the dirty man's shop and the drunken man's shop,
+that kind of shop was the Barbie kind of shop. But Wilson changed all
+that. One side of the Emporium was crammed with pots, pans, pails,
+scythes, gardening implements, and saws, with a big barrel of paraffin
+partitioned off in a corner. The rafters on that side were bristling and
+hoary with brushes of all kinds dependent from the roof, so that the
+minister's wife (who was a six-footer) went off with a brush in her
+bonnet once. Behind the other counter were canisters in goodly rows,
+barrels of flour and bags of meal, and great yellow cheeses in the
+window. The rafters here were heavy with their wealth of hams,
+brown-skinned flitches of bacon interspersed with the white tight-corded
+home-cured--"Barbie's Best," as Wilson christened it. All along the
+back, in glass cases to keep them unsullied, were bales of cloth, layer
+on layer to the roof. It was a pleasure to go into the place, so big and
+bien was it, and to smell it on a frosty night set your teeth watering.
+There was always a big barrel of American apples just inside the door,
+and their homely fragrance wooed you from afar, the mellow savour
+cuddling round you half a mile off. Barbie boys had despised the
+provision trade, heretofore, as a mean and meagre occupation; but now
+the imagination of each gallant youth was fired and radiant--he meant to
+be a grocer.
+
+Mrs. Wilson presided over the Emporium. Wilson had a treasure in his
+wife. She was Aberdeen born and bred, but her manner was the manner of
+the South and West. There is a broad difference of character between the
+peoples of East and West Scotland. The East throws a narrower and a
+nippier breed. In the West they take Burns for their exemplar, and
+affect the jovial and robustious--in some cases it is affectation only,
+and a mighty poor one at that. They claim to be bigger men and bigger
+fools than the Eastern billies. And the Eastern billies are very willing
+to yield one half of the contention.
+
+Mrs. Wilson, though Eastie by nature, had the jovial manner that you
+find in Kyle; more jovial, indeed, than was common in nippy Barbie,
+which, in general character, seems to have been transplanted from some
+sand dune looking out upon the German Ocean. She was big of hip and
+bosom, with sloe-black hair and eyes, and a ruddy cheek, and when she
+flung back her head for the laugh her white teeth flashed splendid on
+the world. That laugh of hers became one of the well-known features of
+Barbie. "Lo'd-sake!" a startled visitor would cry, "whatna skirl's
+tha-at!" "Oh, dinna be alarmed," a native would comfort him, "it's only
+Wilson's wife lauchin at the Cross!"
+
+Her manner had a hearty charm. She had a laugh and a joke for every
+customer, quick as a wink with her answer; her gibe was in you and out
+again before you knew you were wounded. Some, it is true, took exception
+to the loudness of her skirl--the Deacon, for instance, who "gave her a
+good one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a
+mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff
+of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her
+popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the
+penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways.
+She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax
+you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling
+like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he
+had no need to be afraid that things were mismanaging at home. During
+his first year in Barbie Mrs. Wilson was his sole helper. She had the
+brawny arm of a giantess, and could toss a bag of meal like a baby; to
+see her twirl a big ham on the counter was to see a thing done as it
+should be. When Drucken Wabster came in and was offensive once, "Poo-oor
+fellow!" said she (with a wink to a customer), "I declare he's in a high
+fever," and she took him kicking to the pump and cooled him.
+
+With a mate like that at the helm every sail of Wilson's craft was
+trimmed for prosperity. He began to "look about" him to increase the
+fleet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+That the Scot is largely endowed with the commercial imagination his
+foes will be ready to acknowledge. Imagination may consecrate the world
+to a man, or it may merely be a visualizing faculty which sees that as
+already perfect which is still lying in the raw material. The Scot has
+the lower faculty in full degree; he has the forecasting leap of the
+mind which sees what to make of things--more, sees them made and in
+vivid operation. To him there is a railway through the desert where no
+railway exists, and mills along the quiet stream. And his _perfervidum
+ingenium_ is quick to attempt the realizing of his dreams. That is why
+he makes the best of colonists. Galt is his type--Galt, dreaming in
+boyhood of the fine water power a fellow could bring round the hill,
+from the stream where he went a-fishing (they have done it since),
+dreaming in manhood of the cities yet to rise amid Ontario's woods (they
+are there to witness to his foresight). Indeed, so flushed and riotous
+can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it
+sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine
+idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of
+vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not
+so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. But in
+every district almost you may find a poor creature who for thirty years
+has cherished a great scheme by which he means to revolutionize the
+world's commerce, and amass a fortune in monstrous degree. He is
+generally to be seen shivering at the Cross, and (if you are a nippy
+man) you shout carelessly in going by, "Good-morning, Tamson; how's the
+scheme?" And he would be very willing to tell you, if only you would
+wait to listen. "Man," he will cry eagerly behind you, "if I only had
+anither wee wheel in my invention--she would do, the besom! I'll sune
+have her ready noo." Poor Tamson!
+
+But these are the exceptions. Scotsmen, more than other men perhaps,
+have the three great essentials of commercial success--imagination to
+conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them
+through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most
+cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and
+robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes
+the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely
+Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom
+ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always
+detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping
+cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using
+the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has
+expressed his love of _festina lente_ in business in a score of
+proverbs--"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the
+baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;"
+and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling of caution and imagination is
+the cause of his stable prosperity. And its characteristic is a sure
+progressiveness. That sure progressiveness was the characteristic of
+Wilson's prosperity in Barbie. In him, too, imagination and caution were
+equally developed. He was always foreseeing "chances" and using them,
+gripping the good and rejecting the dangerous (had he not gripped the
+chance of auld Rab Jamieson's barn? There was caution in that, for it
+was worth the money whatever happened; and there was imagination in the
+whole scheme, for he had a vision of Barbie as a populous centre and
+streets of houses in his holm). And every "chance" he seized led to a
+better one, till almost every "chance" in Barbie was engrossed by him
+alone. This is how he went to work. Note the "bit-by-bitness" of his
+great career.
+
+When Mrs. Wilson was behind the counter, Wilson was out "distributing."
+He was not always out, of course--his volume of trade at first was not
+big enough for that; but in the mornings, and the long summer dusks, he
+made his way to the many outlying places of which Barbie was the centre.
+There, in one and the same visit, he distributed goods and collected
+orders for the future. Though his bill had spoken of "carts," as if he
+had several, that was only a bit of splurge on his part; his one
+conveyance at the first was a stout spring cart, with a good brown cob
+between the shafts. But with this he did such a trade as had never been
+known in Barbie. The Provost said it was "shtupendous."
+
+When Wilson was jogging homeward in the balmy evenings of his first
+summer at Barbie, no eye had he for the large evening star, tremulous
+above the woods, or for the dreaming sprays against the yellow west. It
+wasn't his business; he had other things to mind. Yet Wilson was a
+dreamer too. His close, musing eye, peering at the dusky-brown nodge of
+his pony's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances,
+opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him
+in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial
+enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine
+bleaching green--pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything
+handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods--water power running to
+waste yonder--surely something could be made of that." He would follow
+his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of the
+passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the
+author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good
+company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging
+thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than
+Wilson was on nights like these.
+
+He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for
+development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to
+buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more
+eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of
+Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for
+merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a
+silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for
+stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his
+hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about
+Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the
+better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on
+the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in
+bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the
+cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it
+wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of
+butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering
+up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to
+dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it
+was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to
+be sure--threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the
+pound of butter--still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and
+hained gear helps weel.[4] And more important than the immediate profit
+was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this way established with
+merchants, in far-off Fechars and Poltandie, a connection for the sale
+of country produce which meant a great deal to him in future, when he
+launched out as cheese-buyer in opposition to Gourlay.
+
+It "occurred" to him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that
+the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and
+surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England.
+The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not
+from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests
+communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit
+system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's
+house (when he is away from home for preference), and laying a swatch of
+cloth across his wife's knee, "What do you think of that, mistress?" you
+inquire, watching the effect keenly. Instantly all her covetous heart is
+in her eye, and, thinks she to herself, "Oh, but John would look well in
+that at the kirk on Sunday!" She has no ready money, and would never
+have the cheek to go into a draper's and order the suit; but when she
+sees it lying there across her knee, she just cannot resist it. (And
+fine you knew that when you clinked it down before her!) Now that the
+goods are in the house, she cannot bear to let them out the door again.
+But she hints a scarcity of cash. "Tut, woman!" quoth you, bounteous and
+kind, "there's no obstacle in _that_! You can pay me in instalments!"
+How much would the instalments be, she inquires. "Oh, a mere
+trifle--half a crown a week, say." She hesitates and hankers. "John's
+Sunday coat's getting quite shabby, so it is, and Tam Macalister has a
+new suit, she was noticing--the Macalisters are always flaunting in
+their braws! And, there's that Paisley shawl for herself, too; eh, but
+they would be the canty pair, cocking down the road on Sunday in _that_
+rig! they would take the licht frae Meg Macalister's een--thae
+Macalisters are always so en-vy-fu'!" Love, vanity, covetousness,
+present opportunity, are all at work upon the poor body. She succumbs.
+But the half-crown weekly payments have a habit of lengthening
+themselves out till the packman has made fifty per cent. by the
+business. And why not? a man must have some interest on his money!
+Then there's the risk of bad debts, too--that falls to be considered.
+But there was little risk of bad debts when Wilson took to
+cloth-distributing. For success in that game depends on pertinacity in
+pursuit of your victim, and Wilson was the man for that.
+
+He was jogging home from Brigabee, where he had been distributing
+groceries at a score of wee houses, when there flashed on his mind a
+whole scheme for cloth-distribution on a large scale; for mining
+villages were clustering in about Barbie by this time, and he saw his
+way to a big thing.
+
+He was thinking of Sandy Toddle, who had been a Scotch cuddy in the
+Midlands, and had retired to Barbie on a snug bit fortune--he was
+thinking of Sandy when the plan rose generous on his mind. He would soon
+have more horses than one on the road; why shouldn't they carry swatches
+of cloth as well as groceries? If he had responsible men under him, it
+would be their own interest, for a small commission on the profits, to
+see that payments were levied correctly every week. And those colliers
+were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to
+buying than the cannier country bodies round. Lord! there was money in
+the scheme. No sooner thought of than put in practice. Wilson gave up
+the cloth-peddling after five or six years--he had other fish to fry by
+that time--but while he was at it he made money hand over fist at the
+job.
+
+But what boots it to tell of all his schemes? He had the lucky eye, and
+everything he looked on prospered.
+
+Before he had been a week in Barbie he met Gourlay, just at the Bend o'
+the Brae, in full presence of the bodies. Remembering their first
+encounter, the grocer tried to outstare him; but Gourlay hardened his
+glower, and the grocer blinked. When the two passed, "I declare!" said
+the bodies, "did ye see yon?--they're not on speaking terms!" And they
+hotched with glee to think that Gourlay had another enemy.
+
+Judge of their delight when they saw one day about a month later, just
+as Gourlay was passing up the street, Wilson come down it with a load of
+coals for a customer! For he was often out Auchterwheeze road in the
+early morning, and what was the use of an empty journey back again,
+especially as he had plenty of time in the middle of the day to attend
+to other folk's affairs? So here he was, started as a carrier, in full
+opposition to Gourlay.
+
+"Did you see Gourlay's face?" chuckled the bodies when the cart went by.
+"Yon was a bash in the eye to him. Ha, ha! he's not to have it all his
+own way now!"
+
+Wilson had slid into the carrying in the natural development of
+business. It was another of the possibilities which he saw and turned to
+his advantage. The two other chief grocers in the place, Cunningham the
+dirty and Calderwood the drunken, having no carts or horses of their
+own, were dependent on Gourlay for conveyance of their goods from
+Skeighan. But Wilson brought his own. Naturally, he was asked by his
+customers to bring a parcel now and then, and naturally, being the man
+he was, he made them pay for the privilege. With that for a start the
+rest was soon accomplished. Gourlay had to pay now for his years of
+insolence and tyranny; all who had irked beneath his domineering ways
+got their carrying done by Wilson. Ere long that prosperous gentleman
+had three carts on the road, and two men under him to help in his
+various affairs.
+
+Carting was only one of several new developments in the business of J.
+W. When the navvies came in about the town and accommodation was ill to
+find, Wilson rigged up an old shed in the corner of his holm as a
+hostelry for ten of them--and they had to pay through the nose for their
+night's lodging. Their food they obtained from the Emporium, and thus
+the Wilsons bled them both ways. Then there was the scheme for supplying
+milk--another of the "possibeelities." Hitherto in winter, Barbie was
+dependent for its milk supply on heavy farm-carts that came lumbering
+down the street, about half-past seven in the morning, jangling bells to
+waken sleepy customers, and carrying lanterns that carved circles of
+fairy yellow out the raw air. But Mrs. Wilson got four cows,
+back-calvers who would be milking strong in December, and supplied milk
+to all the folk about the Cross.
+
+She had a lass to help her in the house now, and the red-headed boy was
+always to be seen, jinking round corners like a weasel, running messages
+hot-foot, errand boy to the "bisness" in general. Yet, though everybody
+was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with
+much disarray. Wilson's yard was the strangest contrast to Gourlay's.
+Gourlay's was a pleasure to the eye, everything of the best and
+everything in order, since the master's pride would not allow it to be
+other. But though Wilson's Emporium was clean, his back yard was
+littered with dirty straw, broken boxes, old barrels, stable refuse, and
+the sky-pointing shafts of carts, uptilted in between. When boxes and
+barrels were flung out of the Emporium they were generally allowed to
+lie on the dunghill until they were converted into firewood. "Mistress,
+you're a trifle mixed," said the Provost in grave reproof, when he went
+round to the back to see Wilson on a matter of business. But "Tut,"
+cried Mrs. Wilson, as she threw down a plank, to make a path for him
+across a dub--"Tut," she laughed, "the clartier the cosier!" And it was
+as true as she said it. The thing went forward splendidly in spite of
+its confusion.
+
+Though trade was brisker in Barbie than it had ever been before, Wilson
+had already done injury to Gourlay's business as general conveyor. But,
+hitherto, he had not infringed on the gurly one's other monopolies. His
+chance came at last.
+
+He appeared on a market-day in front of the Red Lion, a piece of pinky
+brown paper in his hand. That was the first telegram ever seen in
+Barbie, and it had been brought by special messenger from Skeighan. It
+was short and to the point. It ran: "Will buy 300 stone cheese 8
+shillings stone[5] delivery at once," and was signed by a merchant in
+Poltandie.
+
+Gourlay was talking to old Tarmillan of Irrendavie, when Wilson pushed
+in and addressed Tarmillan, without a glance at the grain-merchant.
+
+"Have you a kane o' cheese to sell, Irrendavie?" was his blithe
+salutation.
+
+"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was
+Wilson speiring for? _He_ wasna a cheese-merchant.
+
+"How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson.
+
+"I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said
+Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!"
+
+"_I_'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin
+flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his
+left hand.
+
+"But--but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the
+offer, "_you_ have no means of storing cheese."
+
+"Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay, "there's no
+drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam
+came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country
+merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing--there's
+no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some
+folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not
+one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like
+me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese
+at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that."
+
+"C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain
+with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"
+
+Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign
+wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved
+back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The
+wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that
+no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the
+crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him
+and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a
+rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if
+wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while
+Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face
+that made the folk fall away.
+
+"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was
+gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the
+boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous
+stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!"
+cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt!
+It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and
+never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid
+about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"
+
+"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for
+his thplendid wrath yet."
+
+From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the
+people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each
+other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks,
+taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from
+hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable
+as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin.
+But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's
+tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became
+also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an
+active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into
+a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the
+schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show
+the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the
+wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.
+
+There was a pretty hell-broth brewing in the little town.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _Hained gear_, saved money.
+
+[5] That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time Scotch cheese
+was selling, _roughly_, at from fifty to sixty shillings the
+hundred-weight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+"Ay, man, Templandmuir, it's you!" said Gourlay, coming forward with
+great heartiness. "Ay, man, and how are ye? C'way into the parlour!"
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Gourlay," said the Templar. His manner was curiously
+subdued.
+
+Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen.
+Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with
+the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom
+everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay
+turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by
+the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big
+toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay"
+lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy,"
+he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John
+Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel
+like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of
+Barbie used to cry; "Gourlay both courts and cowes him--first he courts
+and then he cowes--and the Templar hasn't the courage to break it off!"
+The Provost hit the mark.
+
+But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink
+(a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of
+Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good
+Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and the new
+leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened
+housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an
+east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was
+nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good
+husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look
+in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over
+when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl--she made it a
+swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a
+man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her
+husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never
+know the difference! It's been used to swine!"
+
+But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was
+determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged
+her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said,
+and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her
+to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at
+the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter.
+
+"I'll write," he said feebly.
+
+"Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a
+coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made
+out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come
+to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I
+was you I wouldn't miss it for the world--just to let him know of his
+cheatry! Oh, it's very right that _I_"--she sounded the _I_ big and
+brave--"it's very right that _I_ should live in this tumbledown hole
+while _he_ builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that _I_ should
+put up with this"--she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling--"it's
+right that _I_ should put up with this, while yon trollop has a
+splendid mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his
+fortune has come out of you--the fool makes nothing from his other
+business--he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you
+that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience
+with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear
+the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with
+the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of
+his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, _I_ have. Write, indeed! In
+you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't
+show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!"
+
+No wonder the Templar looked subdued.
+
+When Gourlay came forward with his usual calculated heartiness, the
+laird remembered his wife and felt very uncomfortable. It was ill to
+round on a man who always imposed on him a hearty and hardy
+good-fellowship. Gourlay, greeting him so warmly, gave him no excuse for
+an outburst. In his dilemma he turned to the children, to postpone the
+evil hour.
+
+"Ay, man, John!" he said heavily, "you're there!" Heavy Scotsmen are
+fond of telling folk that they are where they are. "You're there!" said
+Templandmuir.
+
+"Ay," said John, the simpleton, "I'm here."
+
+In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the
+eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.
+
+"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.
+
+"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The
+lassie's more smart--she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he
+inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.
+
+"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the
+bottom of the class. Jimmy Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie
+set him to teach John his 'counts the day--after he had thrashed him!"
+
+She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears
+in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.
+
+"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt,
+"have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"
+
+John slunk from the room.
+
+"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll
+be back directly."
+
+He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser.
+He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump
+it up _cold_," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a
+mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by
+Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no--ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't
+lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple
+he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out
+to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.
+
+To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the
+fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the
+intimate of John Gourlay--and then, sober as a judge himself, he would
+drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the
+pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By
+a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for
+years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump
+to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.
+
+But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started
+to his feet.
+
+"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered--and his unusual flutter of
+refusal might have warned Gourlay--"noat to-night, if _you_ please; noat
+to-night, if _you_ please. As a matter of fact--eh--what I really came
+into the town for, doan't you see, was--eh--to attend the meeting the
+Provost has convened about the railway. You'll come down to the meeting,
+will ye noat?"
+
+He wanted to get Gourlay away from the House with the Green Shutters. It
+would be easier to quarrel with him out of doors.
+
+But Gourlay gaped at him across the table, his eyes big with surprise
+and disapproval.
+
+"Huh!" he growled, "I wonder at a man like you giving your head to that!
+It's a wheen damned nonsense."
+
+"Oh, I'm no so sure of that," drawled the Templar. "I think the railway
+means to come."
+
+The whole country was agog about the new railway. The question agitating
+solemn minds was whether it should join the main line at Fechars, thirty
+miles ahead, or pass to the right, through Fleckie and Barbie, to a
+junction up at Skeighan Drone. Many were the reasons spluttered in
+vehement debate for one route or the other. "On the one side, ye see,
+Skeighan was a big place a'readys, and look what a centre it would be if
+it had three lines of rail running out and in! Eh, my, what a centre!
+Then there was Fleckie and Barbie--they would be the big towns! Up the
+valley, too, was the shortest road; it would be a daft-like thing to
+build thirty mile of rail, when fifteen was enough to establish the
+connection! And was it likely--I put it to ainy man of sense--was it
+likely the Coal Company wouldn't do everything in their power to get the
+railway up the valley, seeing that if it didn't come that airt they
+would need to build a line of their own?"--"Ah, but then, ye see,
+Fechars was a big place too, and there was lots of mineral up there as
+well! And though it was a longer road to Fechars and part of it lay
+across the moors, there were several wee towns that airt just waiting
+for a chance of growth! I can tell ye, sirs, this was going to be a
+close question!"
+
+Such was the talk in pot-house and parlour, at kirk and mart and tryst
+and fair, and wherever potentates did gather and abound. The partisans
+on either side began to canvass the country in support of their
+contentions. They might have kept their breath to cool their porridge,
+for these matters, we know, are settled in the great Witenagemot. But
+petitions were prepared and meetings were convened. In those days
+Provost Connal of Barbie was in constant communion with the "Pow-ers."
+"Yass," he nodded gravely--only "nod" is a word too swift for the grave
+inclining of that mighty pow--"yass, ye know, the great thing in matters
+like this is to get at the Pow-ers, doan't you see? Oh yass, yass; we
+must get at the Pow-ers!" and he looked as if none but he were equal to
+the job. He even went to London (to interrogate the "Pow-ers"), and
+simple bodies, gathered at the Cross for their Saturday at e'en, told
+each other with bated breath that the Provost was away to the "seat of
+Goaver'ment to see about the railway." When he came back and shook his
+head, hope drained from his fellows and left them hollow in an empty
+world. But when he smacked his lips on receiving an important letter,
+the heavens were brightened and the landscapes smiled.
+
+The Provost walked about the town nowadays with the air of a man on
+whose shoulders the weight of empires did depend. But for all his airs
+it was not the Head o' the Town who was the ablest advocate of the route
+up the Water of Barbie. It was that public-spirited citizen, Mr. James
+Wilson of the Cross! Wilson championed the cause of Barbie with an
+ardour that did infinite credit to his civic heart. For one thing, it
+was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told
+his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye
+understand?"--for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the
+railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must
+agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything
+they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road
+the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in
+our behalf? Local opinion ought to be expressed! They're sending a
+monster petition from the Fechars side; we'll send the Company a bigger
+one from ours! Look at Skeighan and Fleckie and Barbie--three towns at
+our back, and the new Coal Company forbye! A public opinion of that size
+ought to have a great weight--if put forward properly! We must agitate,
+sirs, we must agitate; we maun scour the country for names in our
+support. Look what a number of things there are to recommend _our_
+route. It's the shortest, and there's no need for heavy cuttings such as
+are needed on the other side; the road's there a'ready--Barbie Water has
+cut it through the hills. It's the manifest design of Providence that
+there should be a line up Barbie Valley! What a position for't!--And,
+oh," thought Wilson, "what a site for building houses in my holm!--Let a
+meeting be convened at wunst!"
+
+The meeting was convened, with Provost Connal in the chair and Wilson as
+general factotum.
+
+"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.
+
+Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another,
+Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him
+condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But
+Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom
+he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He
+had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the
+quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.
+
+"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.
+
+When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid,
+and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was
+a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the
+side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter
+because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a
+hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he
+felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable
+hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same
+time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his
+growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly
+nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then,
+he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay
+was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green
+Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He
+hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such
+irritation between them.
+
+When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were
+knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to
+group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay,
+quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he
+loathed.
+
+Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a
+"bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion
+was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins
+running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the
+whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a
+strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness
+became a certainty--"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and
+never a good rub," thought Gourlay in a clean disgust. Full lips showed
+themselves bright red in the middle between the two wings of a very
+blonde and very symmetrical moustache. The ugly feature of the face was
+the blue calculating eyes. They were tender round the lids, so that the
+white lashes stuck out in little peaks. And in conversation he had a
+habit of peering out of these eyes as if he were constantly spying for
+something to emerge that he might twist to his advantage. As he talked
+to a man close by and glimmered (not at the man beside him, but far away
+in the distance of his mind at some chance of gain suggested by the
+other's words) Gourlay heard him say musingly, "Imphm, imphm, imphm!
+there might be something _in_ that!" nodding his head and stroking his
+moustache as he uttered each meditative "imphm."
+
+It was Wilson's unconscious revelation that his mind was busy with a
+commercial hint which he had stolen from his neighbour's talk. "The
+damned sneck-drawer!" thought Gourlay, enlightened by his hate; "he's
+sucking Tam Finlay's brains, to steal some idea for himsell!" And still
+as Wilson listened he murmured swiftly, "Imphm! I see, Mr. Finlay;
+imphm! imphm! imphm!" nodding his head and pulling his moustache and
+glimmering at his new "opportunity."
+
+Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes
+our thought on them to probe. We cannot keep our minds off them. "Why do
+they do it?" we snarl, and wondering why, we find out their character.
+Gourlay was not an observant man, but every man is in any man somewhere,
+and hate to-night driving his mind into Wilson, helped him to read him
+like an open book. He recognized with a vague uneasiness--not with fear,
+for Gourlay did not know what it meant, but with uneasy anger--the
+superior cunning of his rival. Gourlay, a strong block of a man cut off
+from the world by impotence of speech, could never have got out of
+Finlay what Wilson drew from him in two minutes' easy conversation.
+
+Wilson ignored Gourlay, but he was very blithe with Templandmuir, and
+inveigled him off to a corner. They talked together very briskly, and
+Wilson laughed once with uplifted head, glancing across at Gourlay as he
+laughed. Curse them, were they speaking of him?
+
+The hall was crammed at last, and the important bodies took their seats
+upon the front benches. Gourlay refused to be seated with the rest, but
+stood near the platform, with his back to the wall, by the side of
+Templandmuir.
+
+After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"--they
+lasted half an hour--he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting.
+Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got
+the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull,
+and a pull all together"--a phrase which he repeated many times in the
+course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.
+
+"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the
+Provost.
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.
+
+"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.
+
+"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost,
+"there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we
+were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our
+direction. I had thoat, after the able--I must say the very able--speech
+of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to
+utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to
+elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here
+for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was
+all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken,
+ladies and gentlemen--or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe
+there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be
+there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way
+which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some
+who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of
+tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid
+that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to
+bring."--Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people
+watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The
+Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to
+catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed.--"Now, gentlemen, as
+Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang
+pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will _noat_ do
+to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to
+have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will
+show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one
+opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it
+seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand.
+So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the
+town for mainy years--at least he used to be that--I call upon Mr.
+Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."
+
+Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as
+he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of
+the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson
+and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition
+would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he
+would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of
+the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false
+position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public,
+and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.
+
+Gourlay evaded the question.
+
+"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to
+consider the state of some folk's back doors."--That was a nipper to
+Wilson!--"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"
+
+"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"
+
+A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him,
+with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.
+
+"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said
+Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."
+
+"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary
+loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as
+Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but
+Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he
+yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.
+
+"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but
+myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It
+would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among
+the first, and do everything I can in its support."
+
+"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll
+get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the
+hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as
+they go out."
+
+"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were
+carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and
+one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.
+
+The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and
+glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high
+courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its
+expression. He was smiling as he faced them.
+
+"Let _me_ pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the
+bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.
+
+"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.
+
+He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the
+anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was
+the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to
+complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself
+to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning
+to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had
+laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would
+have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the
+popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the
+brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his
+grievance.
+
+They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said
+between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind.
+Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had
+dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was
+longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.
+
+That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was
+partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage),
+and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the
+louder for its pent fury.
+
+"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came opposite the House
+with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than
+a year."
+
+It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from
+him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.
+
+"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"
+
+"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a
+monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be
+damned if I put up with that!"
+
+And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions
+and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark
+will do for an explosion.
+
+"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he
+should alienate the quarry laird.
+
+"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than
+ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten
+him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day,
+though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and
+your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse
+me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your
+tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."
+
+He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence,
+leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely
+the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life
+he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire
+to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood
+rocked him where he stood.
+
+He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it.
+It was locked--at this early hour!--and the simple inconvenience let
+loose the fury of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist
+till the blood streamed on his knuckles.
+
+It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before
+his awful eyes.
+
+"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"
+
+The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had
+endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his
+night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand
+there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom
+with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.
+
+She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack
+lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful
+frightened child, "what have I been doing?... Man, what did you hit me
+for?"
+
+He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute--knew she had
+done nothing to-night more than she had ever done--knew he had vented on
+her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a
+stick; how could he explain--to _her_? He gaped and glowered for a
+speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour,
+slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.
+
+She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in
+her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking
+it up coarsely--we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony.
+And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro
+in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o'
+me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
+
+The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared
+face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.
+
+The sympathy of children with those who weep is innocently selfish. The
+sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in
+the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief
+would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to
+appreciate the inward agony.
+
+So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet,
+mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."
+
+But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me,
+it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.
+
+Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an
+assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and
+as it happened she was all alone.
+
+"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth
+back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some
+corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything
+perticular?"
+
+She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged
+on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a
+husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him
+in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them;
+come to be done by the husband or to do him--in either case, therefore,
+the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either
+to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about
+it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her
+parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's
+affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face
+be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was
+suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the
+builder. What was _he_ spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up
+to? Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to
+inquire.
+
+"Would I do instead?" she asked.
+
+"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded
+round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham
+that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"
+
+"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye
+had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing
+on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty
+morning"--and her laugh went skelloching up the street.
+
+"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to
+present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."
+
+"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms
+akimbo.--"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot
+from the back premises.
+
+"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack
+wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important
+business."
+
+The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him
+foremost.
+
+While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly.
+Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.
+
+He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as
+a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the
+jovial gleam, or they may be mean things--little and sly and oily.
+Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they
+glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with
+a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow
+teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a
+grin--it was a _rictus_, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady
+eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He
+was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness
+(perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and
+the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long
+ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other
+nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to
+Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act
+against him. They had made advances to each other--birds of a feather,
+in short.
+
+The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a
+perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in
+Barbie, four years ago now.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to
+see me on?"
+
+"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.
+
+"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his
+guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him.
+"James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her,
+leaving Gibson in the yard.
+
+"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for
+nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your
+een."
+
+"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand
+thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a
+little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency--and that
+was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise
+very early that got the better o' a man like him!
+
+"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room
+where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot
+of red earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round
+table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which
+two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed
+miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the
+family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a
+beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green
+mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in
+perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world
+that there was no place like home.
+
+Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he
+said blithely.
+
+"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered
+it for nothing."
+
+"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter
+and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the
+drink ran over on the table.
+
+"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in
+alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the mercies?" He stooped his lips
+to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar
+should escape him.
+
+They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said
+the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed
+glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little
+finger uppermost.
+
+Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his
+uvula.
+
+"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."
+
+"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.
+
+Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his
+hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped
+Wilson's knee in whispering importance.
+
+"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his
+eyes.
+
+"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the
+business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"
+
+"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.
+
+"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two
+forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green
+teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.
+
+"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners
+a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the
+Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to
+say I have nabbed the contract for the building."
+
+"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am
+that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could
+Gibson be wanting with _him_ if it wasna to arrange about the carting?
+"Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're
+drinking nothing at all. Let _me_ help you."
+
+"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's
+not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."
+
+Wilson's mouth forgot to shut, and his eyes were big and round as his
+mouth in staring disappointment. Was it this he was wasting his drink
+for?
+
+"Where do I come in?" he asked blankly.
+
+Gibson tossed off another glassful of the burning heartener of men, and
+leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
+
+"D'ye ken Goudie, the Company's manager? He's worth making up to, I can
+tell ye. He has complete control of the business, and can airt you the
+road of a good thing. I made a point of helping him in everything, ever
+since he came to Barbie, and I'm glad to say that he hasna forgotten't.
+Man, it was through him I got the building contract; they never threw't
+open to the public. But they mean to contract separate for carting the
+material. That means that they'll need the length of a dozen horses on
+the road for a twelvemonth to come; for it's no only the
+building--they're launching out on a big scale, and there's lots of
+other things forbye. Now, Goudie's as close as a whin, and likes to keep
+everything dark till the proper time comes for sploring o't. Not a
+whisper has been heard so far about this village for the miners--there's
+a rumour, to be sure, about a wheen houses going up, but nothing _near_
+the reality. And there's not a soul, either, that kens there's a big
+contract for carting to be had 'ceptna Goudie and mysell. But or a
+month's by they'll be advertising for estimates for a twelvemonth's
+carrying. I thocht a hint aforehand would be worth something to you, and
+that's the reason of my visit."
+
+"I see," said Wilson briskly. "You're verra good, Mr. Gibson. You mean
+you'll give me an inkling in private of the other estimates sent in, and
+help to arrange mine according?"
+
+"Na," said Gibson. "Goudie's owre close to let me ken. I'll speak a word
+in his ear on your behalf, to be sure, if you agree to the proposal I
+mean to put before you. But Gourlay's the man you need to keep your eye
+on. It's you or him for the contract--there's nobody else to compete wi'
+the two o' ye."
+
+"Imphm, I see," said Wilson, and tugged his moustache in meditation. All
+expression died out of his face while his brain churned within. What
+Brodie had christened "the considering keek" was in his eyes; they were
+far away, and saw the distant village in process of erection; busy with
+its chances and occasions. Then an uneasy thought seemed to strike him
+and recall him to the man by his side. He stole a shifty glance at the
+sandy smiler.
+
+"But I thought _you_ were a friend of Gourlay's," he said slowly.
+
+"Friendship!" said Gibson. "We're speaking of business. And there's
+sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I
+sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides,
+there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a
+rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither
+to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the advantage of us
+both. Oom?"
+
+"I hardly see what you're driving at," said Wilson.
+
+"I'm driving at this," said Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him
+for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o'
+sheer spite--yes, out o' sheer spite--rather than be licked by _you_ in
+public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we
+like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the
+estimates sent in, d'ye see? Imphm, it's the partners. Goudie has
+noathing to do wi' that. And if Gourlay once gets round the partners,
+you'll be left out in the cold for a very loang time. Shivering, sir,
+shivering! You will that!"
+
+"Dod, you're right. There's a danger of that. But I fail to see how we
+can prevent it."
+
+"We can put Gourlay on a wrong scent," said Gibson.
+
+"But how, though?"
+
+Gibson met one question by another.
+
+"What was the charge for a man and a horse and a day's carrying when ye
+first came hereaway?" he asked.
+
+"Only four shillings a day," said Wilson promptly. "It has risen to six
+now," he added.
+
+"Exactly," said Gibson; "and with the new works coming in about the town
+it'll rise to eight yet. I have it for a fact that the Company's willing
+to gie that. Now if you and me could procure a job for Gourlay at the
+lower rate, before the news o' this new industry gets scattered--a job
+that would require the whole of his plant, you understand, and prevent
+his competing for the Company's business--we would clear"--he clawed his
+chin to help his arithmetic--"we would clear three hundred and
+seventy-four pounds o' difference on the twelvemonth. At least _you_
+would make that," he added, "but you would allow me a handsome
+commission of course--the odd hundred and seventy, say--for bringing the
+scheme before ye. I don't think there's ocht unreasonable in tha-at. For
+it's not the mere twelvemonth's work that's at stake, you understand;
+it's the valuable connection for the fee-yuture. Now, I have influence
+wi' Goudie; I can help you there. But if Gourlay gets in there's just a
+chance that you'll never be able to oust him."
+
+"I see," said Wilson. "Before he knows what's coming, we're to provide
+work for Gourlay at the lower rate, both to put money in our own pocket
+and prevent him competing for the better business."
+
+"You've summed it to the nines," said Gibson.
+
+"Yes," said Wilson blankly, "but how on earth are _we_ to provide work
+for him?"
+
+Gibson leaned forward a second time and tapped Wilson on the knee.
+
+"Have you never considered what a chance for building there's in that
+holm of yours?" he asked. "You've a fortune there, lying undeveloped."
+
+That was the point to which Cunning Johnny had been leading all the
+time. He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a
+contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good
+commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the
+conspiracy to cripple Gourlay.
+
+Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He
+blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his
+comrade. He tugged his moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his
+eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the
+breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet
+room. Wilson was one of the men whom you hear thinking.
+
+"I see," he said slowly. "You mean to bind Gourlay to cart building
+material to my holm at the present price of work. You'll bind him in
+general terms so that he canna suspect, till the time comes, who in
+particular he's to work for. In the meantime I'll be free to offer for
+the Company's business at the higher price."
+
+"That's the size o't," said Gibson.
+
+Wilson was staggered by the rapid combinations of the scheme. But
+Cunning Johnny had him in the toils. The plan he proposed stole about
+the grocer's every weakness, and tugged his inclinations to consent. It
+was very important, he considered, that he, and no other, should obtain
+this contract, which was both valuable in itself and an earnest of other
+business in the future. And Gibson's scheme got Gourlay, the only
+possible rival, out of the way. For it was not possible for Gourlay to
+put more than twelve horses on the road, and if he thought he had
+secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for
+another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that
+Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling,
+in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for
+him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed
+by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before
+him. Cunning Johnny knew all this when he broached the scheme--he
+foresaw the pull of it on Wilson's nature. Yet Wilson hesitated. He did
+not like to give himself to Gibson quite so rapidly.
+
+"You go fast, Mr. Gibson," said he. "Faith, you go fast. This is a big
+affair, and needs to be looked at for a while."
+
+"Fast!" cried Gibson. "Damn it, we have no time to waste. We maun act on
+the spur of the moment."
+
+"I'll have to borrow money," said Wilson slowly; "and it's verra dear at
+the present time."
+
+"It was never worth more in Barbie than it is at the present time. Man,
+don't ye see the chance you're neglecting? Don't ye see what it means?
+There's thousands lying at your back door if ye'll only reach to pick
+them up. Yes, thousands. Thousands, I'm telling ye--thousands!"
+
+Wilson saw himself provost and plutocrat. Yet was he cautious.
+
+"_You_'ll do well by the scheme," he said tartly, "if you get the sole
+contract for building these premises of mine, and a fat commission on
+the carrying forbye."
+
+"Can you carry the scheme without me?" said Gibson. "A word from me to
+Goudie means a heap." There was a veiled threat in the remark.
+
+"Oh, we'll come to terms," said the other. "But how will you manage
+Gourlay?"
+
+"Aha!" said Gibson, "I'll come in handy for that, you'll discover.
+There's been a backset in Barbie for the last year--things went owre
+quick at the start and were followed by a wee lull; but it's only for a
+time, sir--it's only for a time. Hows'ever, it and you thegither have
+damaged Gourlay: he's both short o' work and scarce o' cash, as I found
+to my cost when I asked him for my siller! So when I offer him a big
+contract for carting stones atween the quarry and the town foot, he'll
+swallow it without question. I'll insert a clause that he must deliver
+the stuff at such places as I direct within four hundred yards of the
+Cross, in ainy direction--for I've several jobs near the Cross, doan't
+ye see, and how's he to know that yours is one o' them? Man, it's easy
+to bamboozle an ass like Gourlay! Besides, he'll think my principals
+have trusted me to let the carrying to ainy one I like, and, as I let it
+to him, he'll fancy I'm on his side, doan't ye see? He'll never jalouse
+that I mean to diddle him. In the meantime we'll spread the news that
+you're meaning to build on a big scale upon your own land; we'll have
+the ground levelled, the foundations dug, and the drains and everything
+seen to. Now, it'll never occur to Gourlay, in the present slackness o'
+trade, that you would contract wi' another man to cart your material,
+and go hunting for other work yoursell. That'll throw him off the scent
+till the time comes to put his nose on't. When the Company advertise for
+estimates he canna compete wi' you, because he's pre-engaged to me; and
+he'll think you're out o't too, because you're busy wi' your own woark.
+You'll be free to nip the eight shillings. Then we'll force him to
+fulfill his bargain and cart for us at six."
+
+"If he refuses?" said Wilson.
+
+"I'll have the contract stamped and signed in the presence of
+witnesses," said Gibson. "Not that that's necessary, I believe, but a
+double knot's aye the safest."
+
+Wilson looked at him with admiration.
+
+"Gosh, Mr. Gibson," he cried, "you're a warmer! Ye deserve your name. Ye
+ken what the folk ca' you?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Gibson complacently. "I'm quite proud o' the
+description."
+
+"I've my ain craw to pick wi' Gourlay," he went on. "He was damned
+ill-bred yestreen when I asked him to settle my account, and talked
+about extortion. But bide a wee, bide a wee! I'll enjoy the look on his
+face when he sees himself forced to carry for you, at a rate lower than
+the market price."
+
+When Gibson approached Gourlay on the following day he was full of
+laments about the poor state of trade.
+
+"Ay," said he, "the grand railway they boasted o' hasna done muckle for
+the town!"
+
+"Atwell ay," quoth Gourlay with pompous wisdom; "they'll maybe find, or
+a's by, that the auld way wasna the warst way. There was to be a great
+boom, as they ca't, but I see few signs o't."
+
+"I see few signs o't either," said Gibson, "it's the slackest time for
+the last twa years."
+
+Gourlay grunted his assent.
+
+"But I've a grand job for ye, for a' that," said Gibson, slapping his
+hands. "What do ye say to the feck of a year's carting tweesht the
+quarry and the town foot?"
+
+"I might consider that," said Gourlay, "if the terms were good."
+
+"Six shillins," said Gibson, and went on in solemn protest: "In the
+present state o' trade, doan't ye see, I couldna give a penny more."
+Gourlay, who had denounced the present state of trade even now, was
+prevented by his own words from asking for a penny more.
+
+"At the town foot, you say?" he asked.
+
+"I've several jobs thereaway," Gibson explained hurriedly, "and you must
+agree to deliver stuff ainy place I want it within four hundred yards o'
+the Cross. It's all one to you, of course," he went on, "seeing you're
+paid by the day."
+
+"Oh, it's all one to me," said Gourlay.
+
+Peter Riney and the new "orra" man were called in to witness the
+agreement. Cunning Johnny had made it as cunning as he could.
+
+"We may as well put a stamp on't," said he. "A stamp costs little, and
+means a heap."
+
+"You're damned particular the day," cried Gourlay in a sudden heat.
+
+"Oh, nothing more than my usual, nothing more than my usual," said
+Gibson blandly. "Good-morning, Mr. Gourlay," and he made for the door,
+buttoning the charter of his dear revenge in the inside pocket of his
+coat. Gourlay ignored him.
+
+When Gibson got out he turned to the House with the Green Shutters, and
+"Curse you!" said he; "you may refuse to answer me the day, but wait
+till this day eight weeks. You'll be roaring than."
+
+On that day eight weeks Gourlay received a letter from Gibson requiring
+him to hold himself in readiness to deliver stone, lime, baulks of
+timber, and iron girders in Mr. Wilson's holm, in terms of his
+agreement, and in accordance with the orders to be given him from day to
+day. He was apprised that a couple of carts of lime and seven loads of
+stone were needed on the morrow.
+
+He went down the street with grinding jaws, the letter crushed to a
+white pellet in his hand. It would have gone ill with Gibson had he met
+him. Gourlay could not tell why, or to what purpose, he marched on and
+on with forward staring eyes. He only knew vaguely that the anger drove
+him.
+
+When he came to the Cross a long string of carts was filing from the
+Skeighan Road, and passing across to the street leading Fleckie-ward. He
+knew them to be Wilson's. The Deacon was there, of course, hobbling on
+his thin shanks, and cocking his eye to see everything that happened.
+
+"What does this mean?" Gourlay asked him, though he loathed the Deacon.
+
+"Oh, haven't ye heard?" quoth the Deacon blithely. "That's the stuff for
+the new mining village out the Fleckie Road. Wilson has nabbed the
+contract for the carting. They're saying it was Gibson's influence wi'
+Goudie that helped him to the getting o't."
+
+Amid his storm of anger at the trick, Gourlay was conscious of a sudden
+pity for himself, as for a man most unfairly worsted. He realized for a
+moment his own inefficiency as a business man, in conflict with
+cleverer rivals, and felt sorry to be thus handicapped by nature. Though
+wrath was uppermost, the other feeling was revealed, showing itself by a
+gulping in the throat and a rapid blinking of the eyes. The Deacon
+marked the signs of his chagrin.
+
+"Man!" he reported to the bodies, "but Gourlay was cut to the quick. His
+face showed how gunkit he was. Oh, but he was chawed. I saw his breist
+give the great heave."
+
+"Were ye no sorry?" cried the baker.
+
+"Thorry, hi!" laughed the Deacon. "Oh, I was thorry, to be sure," he
+lisped, "but I didna thyow't. I'm glad to thay I've a grand control of
+my emotionth. Not like thum folk we know of," he added slyly, giving the
+baker a "good one."
+
+All next day Gibson's masons waited for their building material in
+Wilson's holm. But none came. And all day seven of Gourlay's horses
+champed idly in their stalls.
+
+Barbie had a weekly market now, and, as it happened, that was the day it
+fell on. At two in the afternoon Gourlay was standing on the gravel
+outside the Red Lion, trying to look wise over a sample of grain which a
+farmer had poured upon his great palm. Gibson approached with false
+voice and smile.
+
+"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna
+day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."
+
+To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the
+gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on
+his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed
+gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground
+them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.
+
+"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every other man's son ...
+frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o'
+Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"
+
+Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's
+shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.
+
+"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense
+quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.
+
+But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.
+
+Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles
+of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying
+through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the
+great table where the market-folk were drinking.
+
+For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a
+circle of white faces and startled cries.
+
+Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to
+fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his
+black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game
+John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."
+
+Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window,
+his grin a _rictus_ of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.
+
+"By God, Gourlay," he screamed, "I'll make you pay for this; I'll fight
+you through a' the law courts in Breetain, but you'll implement your
+bond."
+
+"Damn you for a measled swine! would you grunt at me?" cried Gourlay,
+and made to go at him through the window. Though he could not reach him,
+Gibson quailed at his look. He shook his fist in impotent wrath, and
+spat threats of justice through his green teeth.
+
+"To hell wi' your law-wers!" cried Gourlay. "I'd throttle ye like the
+dog you are on the floor o' the House o' Lords."
+
+But that day was to cost him dear. Ere six months passed he was cast in
+damages and costs for a breach of contract aggravated by assault. He
+appealed, of course. He was not to be done; he would show the dogs what
+he thought of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+In those days it came to pass that Wilson sent his son to the High
+School of Skeighan--even James, the red-haired one, with the squint in
+his eye. Whereupon Gourlay sent _his_ son to the High School of Skeighan
+too, of course, to be upsides with Wilson. If Wilson could afford to
+send his boy to a distant and expensive school, then, by the Lord, so
+could he! And it also came to pass that James, the son of James the
+grocer, took many prizes; but John, the son of John, took no prizes.
+Whereat there were ructions in the House of Gourlay.
+
+Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his
+main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he
+saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a
+lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon
+shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with
+delight to helping his father in the business--how grand it would be to
+drive about the country and see things!--and he had irked at being kept
+for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business
+went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay
+was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to
+Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk
+or a mill o't.
+
+But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to
+drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His
+imagination set to work on what he heard of the High School of
+Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could
+_he_ do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in
+public; how could _he_ stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o'
+them?
+
+"I don't want to gang," he whined.
+
+"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what _you_ want? Go you
+shall."
+
+"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.
+
+"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help _you_ would be in
+business."
+
+"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
+support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
+opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
+to be a minister."
+
+Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
+different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
+growled.
+
+So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
+forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
+opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
+he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
+was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
+was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
+important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
+was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
+upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
+and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
+assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
+mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
+still was the home-coming--to board the empty train at Skeighan when
+the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
+cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
+a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
+get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
+Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
+lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
+nights--his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
+ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
+the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
+school days--and are fools for the remainder of their lives.
+
+The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
+over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
+youngster in their ken.
+
+"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
+musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.
+
+"To no good--you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
+regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
+train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
+he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
+swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
+from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
+Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't--he shook like a dog in a wet
+sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
+your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz--it would blind ye
+by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
+his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
+before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
+obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,'
+said he, and he actually bocked himsell."
+
+Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
+his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
+fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
+was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
+classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
+Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
+from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
+off at such times--it was easy to slip out--and playing truant in the
+byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
+the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
+mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.
+
+For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
+cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
+congenital horror of eerie sounds--he was his mother's son for that--and
+he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
+afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
+the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
+oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
+and forgot the world.
+
+He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
+was only the baker--the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
+the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
+wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
+wonderful hearty manner with a boy.
+
+"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The
+storm's at the burstin'!"
+
+"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
+birth.
+
+"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
+see't?"
+
+They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
+thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
+roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
+close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
+vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
+cowering earth. The rain came--a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
+to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
+white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
+open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
+started violently--that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.
+
+The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
+Gourlay screamed in terror.
+
+The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.
+
+"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
+know. You ought to be a hardy man."
+
+"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
+just let on to be."
+
+But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
+vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.
+
+"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
+"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
+hands.
+
+A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
+dagger!" stared Gourlay.
+
+"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash--then jerked
+to the side--then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
+coulter of a plough."
+
+Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
+centre.
+
+"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
+door."
+
+"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.
+
+"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
+much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
+to think them over when they're by."
+
+Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
+the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
+explain.
+
+"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
+"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"--he
+nodded to the warring heavens.
+
+The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.
+
+"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him
+playing truant!
+
+"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten
+train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."
+
+John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.
+
+When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the
+offender; yet his eye seemed to stab--a flash shot from its centre to
+transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and
+you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his
+son.
+
+"I--I--I----" John stammered and choked.
+
+"What are you doing here?" said his father.
+
+John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his
+father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.
+
+"How lang has he been here, baker?"
+
+There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke
+with a firm civility.
+
+"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.
+
+"I see. You want to shield him.--You have been playing the truant, have
+'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on _you_ for this to be the end o't?"
+
+"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy.
+Dinna thrash him."
+
+"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to
+thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I
+don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."
+
+He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down
+High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as
+you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the
+face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground.
+Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the
+old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up
+and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on
+amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.
+
+Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger
+shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a
+moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own
+son.
+
+He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from
+his great hand.
+
+"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.
+
+"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.
+
+"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him--the fellow that runs
+the business."
+
+"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.
+
+"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
+janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a
+classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.
+
+The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
+fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
+brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
+world.
+
+"I believe I pay _you_ to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
+this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
+spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
+huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
+master.
+
+"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.
+
+"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay _you_ to teach that boy, and you allow
+him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"
+
+"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
+deprecating hands.
+
+The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.
+
+"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach
+_you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
+hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
+to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"
+
+He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor.
+
+Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
+forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
+However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
+to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
+Shutters.
+
+He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
+was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
+last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
+smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the
+great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
+he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
+Templandmuir who was speaking.
+
+"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
+said the Templar.
+
+"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have
+lost infernal!"
+
+"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
+enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
+settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
+hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
+Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
+need o' that."
+
+Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
+with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
+entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
+doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
+were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
+a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.
+
+"Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
+evening.
+
+She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
+fondly. He was as tall as herself now.
+
+"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
+grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."
+
+"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
+times!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
+was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days--only a
+few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
+between--the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
+and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
+all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
+telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
+distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
+first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
+too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
+wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
+lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
+Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
+increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
+buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
+security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.
+
+"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
+him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
+the cash.
+
+He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and
+always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you
+thought, as you saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his
+driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which
+he looked down on Barbie for many a day.
+
+A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as
+of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.
+
+"Come in," snapped Gourlay.
+
+Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He
+only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at
+a word.
+
+"Tam's deid!" he blurted.
+
+Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob
+stood out on his cheek.
+
+"Deid!" he stared.
+
+"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his
+feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was
+lying deid in the loose-box. The batts--it's like."
+
+For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise,
+forgetting to take down his razor.
+
+"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.
+
+The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid
+and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly;
+he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He
+had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the
+luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his
+proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of
+quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other
+calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister,
+prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.
+
+"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was
+no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten
+his stock, and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it
+for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for
+one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the
+words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark
+vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."
+
+He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct
+prompted him to lock the door.
+
+He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes,
+slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his
+neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam
+had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put
+Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world
+before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and
+his master netted in a mesh of care.
+
+"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if
+pleading in his own defence.
+
+For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam
+the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam
+the powney," and he turned away.
+
+How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock
+train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited
+till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a
+brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome,
+though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own
+horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went
+by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and
+detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of
+them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from
+nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw
+him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep among them cheek for jowl.
+Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to
+turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a
+public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!
+
+The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross,
+nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and
+elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward;
+but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused,
+was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never
+splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the
+thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty
+brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close
+below the driver.
+
+As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for
+Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to
+mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves
+off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy
+Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so
+thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and
+address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.
+
+The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.
+
+The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the
+crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that
+ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.
+
+Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin.
+"Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife,
+I'm thinking!"
+
+"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty
+trollop."
+
+"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly
+temper."
+
+They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him
+off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not
+their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet
+superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the
+veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now
+the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)--talking
+_to_ each other, indeed, but _at_ him, while he must keep quiet in their
+midst.
+
+At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played
+their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's
+ears, to his comprehension.
+
+The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.
+
+"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.
+
+"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to
+a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who
+throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man
+builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support
+it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he
+took the quarry in his own hand."
+
+"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with
+a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented
+enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the
+game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent
+folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him
+turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his
+enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.
+
+"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
+of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
+houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.--I'm thinking, Mr.
+Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"
+
+"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that _you_ should have
+been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
+and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
+in two or three years!"
+
+"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
+other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
+welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"
+
+Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
+self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
+but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
+his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
+Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
+seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
+said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
+jaw."
+
+But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.
+
+"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
+College at Embro in October?"
+
+"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
+been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
+town."
+
+"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on _him_! It must be a
+terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
+got a prize!"
+
+The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
+very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
+danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
+tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
+hedge.
+
+"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired--a civil enough
+question surely.
+
+"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."
+
+"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"
+
+"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
+It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
+it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
+you're doing--especially if you've little money left to come and go on."
+
+"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he
+had better put him in hith business--if he hath ainy business left to
+thpeak o', that ith!"
+
+The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work,
+past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of
+ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and
+blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the
+world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of
+hate and malice and a petty rage.
+
+"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.
+
+"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.
+
+"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust.
+"Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"
+
+Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But
+don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"--he dwelt on his name in
+ringing pride--"John Gourla can fight for his own hand--if so there need
+to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a
+dirt it spreads the wider!"
+
+"Who was referring to _you_?" bellowed Brodie.
+
+Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the
+wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying
+to stare fiercely the while.
+
+"Maybe ye werena referring to me," said Gourlay slowly. "But if _I_ had
+been in your end o' the brake _ye_ would have been in hell or this!"
+
+He had said enough. There was silence in the brake till it reached
+Skeighan. But the evil was done. Enough had been said to influence
+Gourlay to the most disastrous resolution of his life.
+
+"Get yourself ready for the College in October," he ordered his son that
+evening.
+
+"The College!" cried John aghast.
+
+"Yes! Is there ainything in that to gape at?" snapped his father, in
+sudden irritation at the boy's amaze.
+
+"But I don't want to gang!" John whimpered as before.
+
+"Want! what does it matter what _you_ want? You should be damned glad of
+the chance! I mean to make ye a minister; they have plenty of money and
+little to do--a grand, easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a
+stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every
+qualification!"
+
+"It's against _my_ will," John bawled angrily.
+
+"_Your_ will!" sneered his father.
+
+To John the command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had
+been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too
+contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business
+stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the
+last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from
+which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an
+imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he
+saw two pictures with uncanny vividness--himself in bleak lodgings
+raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home
+to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies,
+laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They
+would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must
+he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he
+still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life
+where everything terrified his mind?
+
+"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave
+Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious
+impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a
+man like his father?
+
+"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand--"not another word!
+You go to College in October!"
+
+"Ay, man, Johnny," said his mother, "think o' the future that's before
+ye!"
+
+"Ay," howled the youth in silly anger, "it's like to be a braw future!"
+
+"It's the best future you can have!" growled his father.
+
+For while rivalry, born of hate, was the propelling influence in
+Gourlay's mind, other reasons whispered that the course suggested by
+hate was a good one on its merits. His judgment, such as it was,
+supported the impulse of his blood. It told him that the old business
+would be a poor heritage for his son, and that it would be well to look
+for another opening. The boy gave no sign of aggressive smartness to
+warrant a belief that he would ever pull the thing together. Better make
+him a minister. Surely there was enough money left about the house for
+tha-at! It was the best that could befall him.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay, for her part, though sorry to lose her son, was so pleased
+at the thought of sending him to college, and making him a minister,
+that she ran on in foolish maternal gabble to the wife of Drucken
+Webster. Mrs. Webster informed the gossips, and they discussed the
+matter at the Cross.
+
+"Dod," said Sandy Toddle, "Gourlay's better off than I supposed!"
+
+"Huts!" said Brodie, "it's just a wheen bluff to blind folk!"
+
+"It would fit him better," said the Doctor, "if he spent some money on
+his daughter. She ought to pass the winter in a warmer locality than
+Barbie. The lassie has a poor chest! I told Gourlay, but he only gave a
+grunt. And 'oh,' said Mrs. Gourlay, 'it would be a daft-like thing to
+send _her_ away, when John maun be weel provided for the College.' D'ye
+know, I'm beginning to think there's something seriously wrong with yon
+woman's health! She seemed anxious to consult me on her own account, but
+when I offered to sound her she wouldn't hear of it. 'Na,' she cried,
+'I'll keep it to mysell!' and put her arm across her breast as if to
+keep me off. I do think she's hiding some complaint! Only a woman whose
+mind was weak with disease could have been so callous as yon about her
+lassie."
+
+"Oh, her mind's weak enough," said Sandy Toddle. "It was always that!
+But it's only because Gourlay has tyraneezed her verra soul. I'm
+surprised, however, that _he_ should be careless of the girl. He was aye
+said to be browdened upon _her_."
+
+"Men-folk are often like that about lassie-weans," said Johnny Coe.
+"They like well enough to pet them when they're wee, but when once
+they're big they never look the road they're on! They're a' very fine
+when they're pets, but they're no sae fine when they're pretty misses.
+And, to tell the truth, Janet Gourlay's ainything but pretty!"
+
+Old Bleach-the-boys, the bitter dominie (who rarely left the studies in
+political economy which he found a solace for his thwarted powers),
+happened to be at the Cross that evening. A brooding and taciturn man,
+he said nothing till others had their say. Then he shook his head.
+
+"They're making a great mistake," he said gravely, "they're making a
+great mistake! Yon boy's the last youngster on earth who should go to
+College."
+
+"Ay, man, dominie, he's an infernal ass, is he noat?" they cried, and
+pressed for his judgment.
+
+At last, partly in real pedantry, partly with humorous intent to puzzle
+them, he delivered his astounding mind.
+
+"The fault of young Gourlay," quoth he, "is a sensory perceptiveness in
+gross excess of his intellectuality."
+
+They blinked and tried to understand.
+
+"Ay, man, dominie!" said Sandy Toddle. "That means he's an infernal
+cuddy, dominie! Does it na, dominie?"
+
+But Bleach-the-boys had said enough. "Ay," he said dryly, "there's a
+wheen gey cuddies in Barbie!" and he went back to his stuffy little room
+to study "The Wealth of Nations."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The scion of the house of Gourlay was a most untravelled sprig when his
+father packed him off to the University. Of the world beyond Skeighan he
+had no idea. Repression of his children's wishes to see something of the
+world was a feature of Gourlay's tyranny, less for the sake of the money
+which a trip might cost (though that counted for something in his
+refusal) than for the sake of asserting his authority. "Wants to gang to
+Fechars, indeed! Let him bide at home," he would growl; and at home the
+youngster had to bide. This had been the more irksome to John since most
+of his companions in the town were beginning to peer out, with their
+mammies and daddies to encourage them. To give their cubs a "cast o' the
+world" was a rule with the potentates of Barbie; once or twice a year
+young Hopeful was allowed to accompany his sire to Fechars or Poltandie,
+or--oh, rare joy!--to the city on the Clyde. To go farther, and get the
+length of Edinburgh, was dangerous, because you came back with a halo of
+glory round your head which banded your fellows together in a common
+attack on your pretensions. It was his lack of pretension to travel,
+however, that banded them against young Gourlay. "Gunk" and "chaw" are
+the Scots for a bitter and envious disappointment which shows itself in
+face and eyes. Young Gourlay could never conceal that envious look when
+he heard of a glory which he did not share; and the youngsters noted his
+weakness with the unerring precision of the urchin to mark simple
+difference of character. Now the boy presses fiendishly on an intimate
+discovery in the nature of his friends, both because it gives him a new
+and delightful feeling of power over them, and also because he has not
+learned charity from a sense of his deficiencies, the brave ruffian
+having none. He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie
+boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young
+Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other
+the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders
+they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and
+they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow
+at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off
+Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of
+his adventures. He had been in fifteen taverns, and one hotel (a
+temperance hotel, where old Brown bashed the proprietor for refusing to
+supply him gin); one Pepper's Ghost; one Wild Beasts' Show; one
+Exhibition of the Fattest Woman on the Earth; also in the precincts of
+one jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the
+floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey
+for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home
+of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for
+the benefit of young Gourlay--for Swipey, though his name was the base
+Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the
+imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink
+home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars,
+though my faither 'ull no allow _me_!" "Never mind, dear," she would
+soothe him; "when once you're in the business, you'll gang a'where. And
+nut wan o' them has sic a business to gang intill!"
+
+But though he longed to go here and there for a day, that he might be
+able to boast of it at home, young Gourlay felt that leaving Barbie for
+good would be a cutting of his heart-strings. Each feature of it, town
+and landward, was a crony of old years. In a land like Barbie, of quick
+hill and dale, of tumbled wood and fell, each facet of nature has an
+individuality so separate and so strong that if you live with it a
+little it becomes your friend, and a memory so dear that you kiss the
+thought of it in absence. The fields are not similar as pancakes; they
+have their difference; each leaps to the eye with a remembered and
+peculiar charm. That is why the heart of the Scot dies in flat southern
+lands; he lives in a vacancy; at dawn there is no Ben Agray to nod
+recognition through the mists. And that is why, when he gets north of
+Carlisle, he shouts with glee as each remembered object sweeps on the
+sight: yonder's the Nith with a fisherman hip-deep jigging at his rod,
+and yonder's Corsoncon with the mist on his brow. It is less the
+totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the
+heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay.
+With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience,
+and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there
+ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie?
+It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it
+was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom
+he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority.
+If a poor workman slouched past him on the road, he set him down in his
+heart as one of that rotten crowd from the Weaver's Vennel or the
+Tinker's Wynd. Barbie was in subjection to the mind of the son of the
+important man. To dash about Barbie in a gig, with a big dog walloping
+behind, his coat-collar high about his ears, and the reek of a
+meerschaum pipe floating white and blue many yards behind him, jovial
+and sordid nonsense about home--that had been his ideal. His father, he
+thought angrily, had encouraged the ideal, and now he forbade it, like
+the brute he was. From the earth in which he was rooted so deeply his
+father tore him, to fling him on a world he had forbidden him to know.
+His heart presaged disaster.
+
+Old Gourlay would have scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from
+the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for
+herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came
+she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the
+platform--a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his
+life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was
+pointed out as "Young Gourlay off to the College." But he had no
+pleasure in the role, for his heart was in his boots.
+
+He took the slow train to Skeighan, where he boarded the express. Few
+sensational experiences were unknown to his too-impressionable mind, and
+he knew the animation of railway travelling. Coming back from Skeighan
+in an empty compartment on nights of the past, he had sometimes shouted
+and stamped and banged the cushions till the dust flew, in mere joy of
+his rush through the air; the constant rattle, the quick-repeated noise,
+getting at his nerves, as they get at the nerves of savages and
+Englishmen on Bank Holidays. But any animation of the kind which he felt
+to-day was soon expelled by the slow uneasiness welling through his
+blood. He had no eager delight in the unknown country rushing past; it
+inspired him with fear. He thought with a feeble smile of what Mysie
+Monk said when they took her at the age of sixty (for the first time in
+her life) to the top of Milmannoch Hill. "Eh," said Mysie, looking round
+her in amaze--"eh, sirs, it's a lairge place the world when you see it
+all!" Gourlay smiled because he had the same thought, but feebly,
+because he was cowering at the bigness of the world. Folded nooks in
+the hills swept past, enclosing their lonely farms; then the open
+straths, where autumnal waters gave a pale gleam to the sky. Sodden
+moors stretched away in vast patient loneliness. Then a gray smear of
+rain blotted the world, penning him in with his dejection. He seemed to
+be rushing through unseen space, with no companion but his own
+foreboding. "Where are you going to?" asked his mind, and the wheels of
+the train repeated the question all the way to Edinburgh, jerking it out
+in two short lines and a long one: "Where are you going to? Where are
+you going to? Ha, ha, Mr. Gourlay, where are you going to?"
+
+It was the same sensitiveness to physical impression which won him to
+Barbie that repelled him from the outer world. The scenes round Barbie,
+so vividly impressed, were his friends, because he had known them from
+his birth; he was a somebody in their midst and had mastered their
+familiarity; they were the ministers of his mind. Those other scenes
+were his foes, because, realizing them morbidly in relation to himself,
+he was cowed by their big indifference to him, and felt puny, a nobody
+before them. And he could not pass them like more manly and more callous
+minds; they came burdening in on him whether he would or no. Neither
+could he get above them. Except when lording it at Barbie, he had never
+a quick reaction of the mind on what he saw; it possessed him, not he
+it.
+
+About twilight, when the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with
+a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it
+seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling
+through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But
+in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be
+sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and
+unfamiliar scene--planted in its midst by a miracle of speed, and
+gazing at it closely through a window! Two ploughmen from the farmhouse
+near the line were unyoking at the end of the croft; he could hear the
+muddy noise ("splorroch" is the Scotch of it) made by the big hoofs on
+the squashy head-rig. "Bauldy" was the name of the shorter ploughman, so
+yelled to by his mate; and two of the horses were "Prince and Rab"--just
+like a pair in Loranogie's stable. In the curtainless window of the
+farmhouse shone a leaping flame--not the steady glow of a lamp, but the
+tossing brightness of a fire--and thought he to himself, "They're
+getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring
+in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He
+wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it
+was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago
+should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had
+never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might
+get his vivid impression.
+
+When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the
+world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness
+was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to
+be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of
+which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea
+things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the
+black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His
+spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.
+
+The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.
+
+If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to
+console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when
+entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to
+cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy
+alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors
+are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They
+have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of
+uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon
+forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the
+waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more
+than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace
+in work, was left to prey upon itself.
+
+If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the
+comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions
+it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a
+sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and
+stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.
+
+Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they
+thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed
+with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with
+impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of
+thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he
+observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly
+depressed--the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life,
+though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings
+which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his
+timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street
+in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of
+its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning
+foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen
+fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after
+he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and
+made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and
+manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them
+unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting
+woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an
+unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls
+wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming
+black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground.
+Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of
+gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed.
+He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead
+fire in sullen apathy.
+
+He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no
+means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received
+a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky
+that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient
+chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives
+an idea--which is slightly mistaken--of Jock Allan, and an idea--which
+is very unmistakable--of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place
+of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all
+the honour in one's power.
+
+"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman--so the hearty Allan dubbed
+him--"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a
+grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a
+great how-d'ye-do. 'Come out on Thursday night, and dine with me,' says
+he, in his big way. So here I went out to see him. I can tell you he's a
+warmer! I never saw a man eat so much in all my born days--but I suppose
+he would be having more on his table than usual to show off a bit,
+knowing us Barbie boys would be writing home about it all. And drink!
+D'ye know, he began with a whole half tumbler of whisky, and how many
+more he had I really should _not_ like to say! And he must be used to
+it, too, for it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. And then he
+smoked and smoked--two great big cigars after we had finished eating,
+and then 'Damn it,' says he--he's an awful man to swear--'damn it,' he
+says, 'there's no satisfaction in cigars; I must have a pipe,' and he
+actually smoked _four_ pipes before I came away! I noticed the cigars
+were called 'Estorellas--Best Quality,' and when I was in last Saturday
+night getting an ounce of shag at the wee shoppie round the corner, I
+asked the price of 'these Estorellas.' 'Ninepence a piece!' said the
+bodie. Just imagine Jock Allan smoking eighteen-pence, and not being
+satisfied! He's up in the world since he used to shaw turnips at
+Loranogie for sixpence a day! But he'll come down as quick if he keeps
+on at yon rate. He made a great phrase with me; but though it keeps down
+one's weekly bill to get a meal like yon--I declare I wasn't hungry for
+two days--for all that I'll go very little about him. He'll be the kind
+that borrows money very fast--one of those harum-scarum ones!"
+
+Criticism like that is a boomerang that comes back to hit the emitting
+skull with a hint of its kindred woodenness. It reveals the writer more
+than the written of. Allan was a bigger man than you would gather from
+Wilson's account of his Gargantuan revelry. He had a genius for
+mathematics--a gift which crops up, like music, in the most unexpected
+corners--and from plough-boy and herd he had become an actuary in Auld
+Reekie. Wilson had no need to be afraid, the meagre fool, for his host
+could have bought him and sold him.
+
+Allan had been in love with young Gourlay's mother when she herself was
+a gay young fliskie at Tenshillingland, but his little romance was soon
+ended when Gourlay came and whisked her away. But she remained the one
+romance of his life. Now in his gross and jovial middle age he idealized
+her in memory (a sentimentalist, of course--he was Scotch); he never saw
+her in her scraggy misery to be disillusioned; to him she was still the
+wee bit lairdie's dochter, a vision that had dawned on his wretched
+boyhood, a pleasant and pathetic memory. And for that reason he had a
+curious kindness to her boy. That was why he introduced him to his boon
+companions. He thought he was doing him a good turn.
+
+It was true that Allan made a phrase with a withered wisp of humanity
+like young Wilson. Not that he failed to see through him, for he
+christened him "a dried washing-clout." But Allan, like most
+great-hearted Scots far from their native place, saw it through a veil
+of sentiment; harsher features that would have been ever-present to his
+mind if he had never left it disappeared from view, and left only the
+finer qualities bright within his memory. And idealizing the place he
+idealized its sons. To him they had a value not their own, just because
+they knew the brig and the burn and the brae, and had sat upon the
+school benches. He would have welcomed a dog from Barbie. It was from a
+like generous emotion that he greeted the bodies so warmly on his visits
+home--he thought they were as pleased to see him as he was to see them.
+But they imputed false motives to his hearty greetings. Even as they
+shook his hand the mean ones would think to themselves: "What does he
+mean by this now? What's he up till? No doubt he'll be wanting something
+off me!" They could not understand the gusto with which the returned
+exile cried, "Ay, man, Jock Tamson, and how are ye?" They thought such
+warmth must have a sinister intention.--A Scot revisiting his native
+place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.
+
+There were two things to be said against Allan, and two only--unless, of
+course, you consider drink an objection. Wit with him was less the
+moment's glittering flash than the anecdotal bang; it was a fine old
+crusted blend which he stored in the cellars of his mind to bring forth
+on suitable occasions, as cob-webby as his wine. And it tickled his
+vanity to have a crowd of admiring youngsters round him to whom he might
+retail his anecdotes, and play the brilliant _raconteur_. He had cronies
+of his own years, and he was lordly and jovial amongst them--yet he
+wanted another _entourage_. He was one of those middle-aged bachelors
+who like a train of youngsters behind them, whom they favour in return
+for homage. The wealthy man who had been a peasant lad delighted to act
+the jovial host to sons of petty magnates from his home. Batch after
+batch as they came up to College were drawn around him--partly because
+their homage pleased him, and partly because he loved anything whatever
+that came out of Barbie. There was no harm in Allan--though when his
+face was in repose you saw the look in his eye at times of a man
+defrauding his soul. A robustious young fellow of sense and brains would
+have found in this lover of books and a bottle not a bad comrade. But he
+was the worst of cronies for a weak swaggerer like Gourlay. For Gourlay,
+admiring the older man's jovial power, was led on to imitate his faults,
+to think them virtues and a credit; and he lacked the clear, cool head
+that kept Allan's faults from flying away with him.
+
+At dinner that night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water.
+There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the
+cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan--a guileless and inquiring
+mind--and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of
+the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair.
+Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So they go.
+
+Tarmillan was the last to arrive. He came in sucking his thumb, into
+which he had driven a splinter while conducting an experiment.
+
+"I've a morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from
+a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my
+head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing
+on my navel trying to reduce the curvature."
+
+"Gosh!" said Partan, who was a literal fool, "is that the treatment they
+purshoo?"
+
+"That's the treatment!" said Tarmillan, sizing up his man. "Oh, it's a
+queer thing lockjaw! I remember when I was gold-mining in Tibet, one of
+our carriers who died of lockjaw had such a circumbendibus in his body
+that we froze him and made him the hoop of a bucket to carry our water
+in. You see he was a thin bit man, and iron was scarce."
+
+"Ay, man!" cried Partan, "you've been in Tibet?"
+
+"Often," waved Tarmillan, "often! I used to go there every summer."
+
+Partan, who liked to extend his geographical knowledge, would have
+talked of Tibet for the rest of the evening--and Tarmie would have told
+him news--but Allan broke in.
+
+"How's the book, Tarmillan?" he inquired.
+
+Tarmillan was engaged on a treatise which those who are competent to
+judge consider the best thing of its kind ever written.
+
+"Oh, don't ask me," he writhed. "Man, it's an irksome thing to write,
+and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to
+ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be
+delivered. I'm glad you invited me--to get away from the confounded
+thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a
+monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow
+of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but
+'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a
+big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."
+
+"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."
+
+"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much
+in trying to be small.--Tozer, what do you think?"
+
+"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.
+
+"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.
+
+Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.
+
+"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere
+show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run _at_ him and he
+runs."
+
+He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage
+that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in
+young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a
+hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from
+piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he
+equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A
+bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and
+it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan
+give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.
+
+To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk
+was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard
+ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show
+that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.
+
+"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said
+Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full
+swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the
+invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the
+"good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on,
+"and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a
+dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I
+wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. '_He
+was a great fellow my friend Will_,' he rang out in yon deep voice of
+his. '_The thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him_.' Man,
+it made a quiver go down my spine."
+
+"Oh, Bauldy has been a kenned phrase-maker for the last forty year,"
+said Tarmillan. "But every other Scots peasant has the gift. To hear
+Englishmen talk, you would think Carlyle was unique for the word that
+sends the picture home--they give the man the credit of his race. But
+I've heard fifty things better than 'willowy man' in the stable a-hame
+on a wat day in hairst--fifty things better--from men just sitting on
+the corn-kists and chowing beans."
+
+"I know a better one than that," said Allan. Tarmillan had told no
+story, you observe, but Allan was so accustomed to saying "I know a
+better one than that," that it escaped him before he was aware. "I
+remember when Bauldy went off to Paris on the spree. He kept his mouth
+shut when he came back, for he was rather ashamed o' the outburst. But
+the bodies were keen to hear. 'What's the incense like in Notre Dame?'
+said Johnny Coe, with his een big. '_Burning stink!_' said Bauldy."
+
+"I can cap that with a better one still," said Tarmillan, who wasn't to
+be done by any man. "I was with Bauldy when he quarrelled Tam Gibb of
+Hoochan-doe. Hoochan-doe's a yelling ass, and he threatened Bauldy--oh,
+he would do this, and he would do that, and he would do the other thing.
+'_Damn ye, would ye threaten me?_' cried Bauldy. '_I'll gar your brains
+jaup red to the heavens!_' And I 'clare to God, sirs, a nervous man
+looked up to see if the clouds werena spattered with the gore!"
+
+Tozer cleared a sarcastic windpipe.
+
+"Why do you clear your throat like that?" said Tarmillan--"like a craw
+with the croup, on a bare branch against a gray sky in November! If I
+had a throat like yours, I'd cut it and be done wi't."
+
+"I wonder what's the cause of that extraordinary vividness in the
+speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan--more to keep the blades
+from bickering than from any wish to know.
+
+"It comes from a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said
+a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down the table.
+
+What cockerel was this crowing?
+
+They turned, and beheld the blushing Gourlay.
+
+But Tarmillan and Tozer were at it again, and he was snubbed. Jimmy
+Wilson sniggered, and the other youngsters enjoyed his discomfiture.
+Huh! What right has _he_ to set up his pipe?
+
+His shirt stuck to his back. He would have liked the ground to open and
+swallow him.
+
+He gulped a huge swill of whisky to cover his vexation; and oh, the
+mighty difference! A sudden courage flooded his veins. He turned with a
+scowl on Wilson, and, "What the devil are _you_ sniggering at?" he
+growled. Logan, the only senior who marked the byplay, thought him a
+hardy young spunkie.
+
+The moment the whisky had warmed the cockles of his heart Gourlay ceased
+to care a rap for the sniggerers. Drink deadened his nervous perception
+of the critics on his right and left, and set him free to follow his
+idea undisturbed. It was an idea he had long cherished--being one of the
+few that ever occurred to him. He rarely made phrases himself--though,
+curiously enough, his father often did without knowing it--the harsh
+grind of his character producing a flash. But Gourlay was aware of his
+uncanny gift of visualization--or of "seeing things in the inside of his
+head," as he called it--and vanity prompted the inference, that this was
+the faculty that sprang the metaphor. His theory was now clear and
+eloquent before him. He was realizing for the first time in his life
+(with a sudden joy in the discovery) the effect of whisky to unloose the
+brain; sentences went hurling through his brain with a fluency that
+thrilled. If he had the ear of the company, now he had the drink to
+hearten him, he would show Wilson and the rest that he wasn't such a
+blasted fool! In a room by himself he would have spouted to the empty
+air.
+
+Some such point he had reached in the hurrying jumble of his thoughts
+when Allan addressed him.
+
+Allan did not mean his guest to be snubbed. He was a gentleman at heart,
+not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he
+remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland.
+
+"I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence--he had reached
+that stage--"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted."
+
+Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.
+
+"Metaphor comes from the power of seeing things in the inside of your
+head," said the unconscious disciple of Aristotle--"seeing them so vivid
+that you see the likeness between them. When Bauldy Johnston said 'the
+thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him,' he _saw_ the print
+of a thumb in wet clay, and he _saw_ the Almighty making a man out of
+mud, the way He used to do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy
+flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never
+make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. _I_
+can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily--"anything
+I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before
+me."
+
+"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan.
+"I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."
+
+He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and
+panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while
+airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay
+took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud
+mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed
+it meekly.
+
+Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man,
+with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood
+was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows,
+whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish
+blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the
+Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who
+soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that
+account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready
+for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring
+nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours,
+taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they
+"couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day
+he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had
+heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and
+liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.
+
+He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by
+the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat
+smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing.
+When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the
+door.
+
+"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round
+to the Howff for a while?"
+
+"The Howff?" said Gourlay.
+
+"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where
+some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh,
+nothing to speak of, ye know--just a dram and a joke to pass the time
+now and then!"
+
+"Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts
+smeddum in your blood!"
+
+Logan nipped the guard of his arm in heavy playfulness and led him to
+the Howff.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By
+the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican
+could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their
+wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of
+social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink
+appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive
+nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to
+the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to
+sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a kind of
+prestige since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom
+he met there--Armstrong and Gillespie--became his friends at College and
+the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both
+in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him
+over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie--though they saw through
+him--let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He
+found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave
+a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from
+very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to
+say, but with the nervous antennae of their minds they feel the attitude
+of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the point
+ahead, they blunder where blunter minds would go forward undismayed.
+That was the experience of young Gourlay. If he tried to talk freely
+when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of
+his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its
+concentration. In plainer language, when he was drunk he was less afraid
+of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He
+was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As
+nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring
+stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him
+"smeddum."
+
+With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to
+his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to
+solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
+each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years.
+But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that
+had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the
+stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the
+gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming,
+"Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have
+expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was
+equally sincere. How sincere is another question.
+
+Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half
+confirmed him in his evil ways.
+
+"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy,
+less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man.
+Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the
+philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that
+matter--himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man,
+whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the
+outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is
+terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of
+man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry
+heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their
+midst."
+
+Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
+through it too!
+
+"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
+in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
+never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and
+depress."
+
+"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest
+because it was "just like him."
+
+"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who
+knew--"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its
+windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the
+world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it
+is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens,
+being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
+away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
+the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the
+most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait,
+sure of their eternal aim. The man to whom the infinite beckons is not
+to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear;
+there is no fear--it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true
+philosophy--if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another,
+but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a
+warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That,
+gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."
+
+"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!"
+
+And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did. He had no conception
+of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think
+that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as
+Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind
+thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny
+mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourlay, though he could not
+understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the
+fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to
+tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched
+street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a
+thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened
+to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he
+paced onward in a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the
+frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
+street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he
+was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For,
+like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of
+which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in
+reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs
+consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he
+was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him,
+making short work of _him_! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern
+supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had
+become the master of his world, and not its slave.
+
+"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems
+to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"
+
+His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the
+subject for the Raeburn.
+
+The Raeburn was a poor enough prize--a few books for an "essay in the
+picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie.
+Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the
+valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter
+when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be
+asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him
+their perception that he at least had been a failure. A bodie would
+dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused
+awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year?
+Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to
+have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days,
+but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as
+if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway.
+But _he_ was a clever chap."
+
+The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing
+soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the
+"fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give
+him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never
+met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more
+emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the
+tear.
+
+"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.
+
+"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style
+of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy
+hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth
+(so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite
+gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of
+the lady."
+
+Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness
+of mind to bear upon his task (it was not in him to bring), but his
+morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town
+far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a
+darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy
+splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his
+ears the skirl of the man who went overboard--struck dead by the icy
+water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.
+
+He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried
+eagerly, "it would be the _cold_ would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
+would go in!"
+
+A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
+other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
+tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
+the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
+a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
+there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
+of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
+shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
+the helm.
+
+"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
+all--that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
+icicle!"
+
+Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
+small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
+in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
+for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.
+
+"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
+me before the whole class for doing so little o't."
+
+The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
+rated quality higher than quantity.
+
+"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
+the session--"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
+on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"
+
+"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.
+
+"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"
+
+A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
+of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.
+
+"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
+Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
+place to bray in."
+
+The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.
+
+"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
+you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
+but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman--he
+has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
+and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
+Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
+island of South Uist--has sent me in no less than a hundred and
+fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the
+adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and
+dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the
+MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"--he gloomed at them
+humorously--"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of
+laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat
+there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I
+leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why
+tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.
+
+When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with a quiver in his
+voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he
+said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they
+sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"
+
+(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary
+voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite
+ill.")
+
+The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.
+
+"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College
+Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now
+gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of
+the session, but really you must behave more quietly.--So little does
+that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that
+the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short
+pages."
+
+Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his
+ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
+Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.
+
+"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious
+blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in
+some ways, a wonderful imagination."
+
+"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.
+
+"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its
+lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already
+seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures
+something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible
+existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but
+hears--actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and
+entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest
+form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the word, merging
+in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is
+no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion
+for its use."
+
+Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.
+
+"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the
+sketch--no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little
+sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'--'and'--'and,' like a
+schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the
+writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape
+him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the
+thing--faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The
+writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words--lucky if it
+glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch
+there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed,
+too nervous a sense of the external world."
+
+"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by
+Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.
+
+"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of
+his bleating sheep--"I would strongly impress on the writer to set
+himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought.
+That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create
+an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a
+curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on.
+Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."
+
+"Name, name!" cried the fellows.
+
+"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest public-house. The
+occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay
+about Tam's advice.
+
+"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got
+to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard,
+solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."
+
+"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock
+express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew
+them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had
+often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he
+stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was
+nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody
+at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man,
+and the son of a mentioned man--young Mr. Gourlay!
+
+He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were
+mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty
+Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world,
+while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As
+Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of
+distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.
+
+"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one
+of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and
+when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to
+examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light
+another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the
+stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing
+through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his vanity to hear
+Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from
+the Univ-ai-rsity!"
+
+He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too
+eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour
+of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he
+had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late,"
+old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to
+have him home."
+
+He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the
+Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and
+made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country
+round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should
+proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His
+fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the
+long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.
+
+He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room
+for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy
+ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with
+its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one
+peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far
+away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning
+edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a
+circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen;
+there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next
+she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was
+alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was
+softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit
+indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven
+dream. He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all.
+One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn--he had won the
+Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.
+
+Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped
+him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at
+the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden
+pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie
+existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a
+thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him,
+they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their
+midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would
+know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of
+the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would
+surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations.
+Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.
+
+He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger,
+the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and
+cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The
+very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.
+
+The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.
+
+"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.
+
+"It's me, faither," said John.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."
+
+"Faither, I have--I have won the Raeburn!"
+
+"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"--and the window slammed.
+
+Next moment it was up.
+
+"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.
+
+"Nut him!" said John.
+
+"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"
+
+John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his
+life his father had praised him.
+
+He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its
+descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As
+he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
+yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
+on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
+fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
+moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
+the dying embers--the look of one who has gained short respite from a
+task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
+the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
+to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
+apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.
+
+She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
+news, and basked in her adoration.
+
+She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
+big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
+was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.
+
+He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
+I think we might."
+
+He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
+listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
+fine thing!"
+
+"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
+worshipper.
+
+"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
+one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
+grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm
+sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
+ay," she said, and stared at the embers.
+
+It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
+their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
+established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
+to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
+struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
+young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
+almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
+ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
+temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
+purest white.
+
+"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
+many wee clouts for?"
+
+She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out,"
+she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."
+
+"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack
+breast.
+
+She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.
+
+"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.
+
+But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
+man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
+it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
+memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
+results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
+higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
+viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
+thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
+keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
+success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
+unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
+He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
+expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
+is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
+thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
+meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
+world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
+him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
+carries him heavens-high--till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
+that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
+world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
+position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
+And then follows a recital of his faded glories--generally ending with
+a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.
+
+Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
+as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
+destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
+strength of it.
+
+On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
+was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
+dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
+he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
+with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
+they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
+conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
+disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
+tributaries to his new importance--somehow their attitude was different
+from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
+bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
+his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
+could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
+feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
+Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
+father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
+buzzed about the town.
+
+Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
+daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
+Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
+whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
+heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
+aince wud and aye waur[6] wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'
+wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
+browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but----" and
+with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.
+
+When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
+Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
+his thin shanks.
+
+"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"
+
+Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
+rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
+tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.
+
+"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
+before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."
+
+"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."
+
+The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
+tho! Imphm. The weed."
+
+Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
+cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
+doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."
+
+"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
+hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
+from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
+little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
+a twinkling."
+
+"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
+work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
+through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
+to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
+easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
+yourself. But there! what need I be telling _you_ that? A College-bred
+man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
+You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun--a dram now
+and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"
+
+At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
+manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
+pose for more than five minutes at a time.
+
+"You're _right_, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
+sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
+to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."
+
+"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
+the Black Bull?--I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
+gude--thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
+Highland charge."--It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
+thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
+manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.--"But no doubt,"
+the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice--"but
+no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
+favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
+taste in thpirits."
+
+"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
+of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
+so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"
+
+"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
+drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
+him in Embro."
+
+"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."
+
+"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.
+
+It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
+was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to
+the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
+Gourlay was merely boasting--as young blades are apt to do of
+acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
+the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
+failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.
+
+"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
+have the great thprees?"
+
+"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
+should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
+I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there--d'ye know, yon's the finest
+fellow I ever met in my life!--and Bauldy Logan--he's another great
+chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie--great friends of mine, and
+damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
+there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
+talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
+remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
+whistled a jig."
+
+Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
+to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
+pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
+John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
+his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
+management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
+felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
+"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
+never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"
+
+"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
+the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood
+about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
+that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame--jutht
+another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys--Pate Wylie and you
+and a wheen mair--having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."
+
+"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
+Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
+"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."
+
+"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.
+
+"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
+and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
+"Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."
+
+"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
+convenient opportunity."
+
+He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
+talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
+fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
+unpleasant manners.
+
+Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
+Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
+remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
+legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
+spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
+which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
+His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
+rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
+especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
+face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
+projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
+his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
+that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
+times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
+Importance" was one of his nicknames.
+
+Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
+battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
+passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
+wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
+long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
+place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
+through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
+conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
+alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
+a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did
+it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
+system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
+and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
+Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
+them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
+Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
+Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
+He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
+"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
+Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
+criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
+having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
+fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
+Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
+they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
+required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
+Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
+he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
+talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
+way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
+ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
+he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
+of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his
+courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
+and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.
+
+"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
+Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
+mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
+have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"
+
+Gourlay blushed and thanked him.
+
+"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
+three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
+clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
+wasting his time!"
+
+Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
+father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
+years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.
+
+"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
+visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
+application--a strenuous and devoted application--even from the man of
+abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
+ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
+doing?"
+
+Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he
+answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.
+
+"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
+men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
+Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
+it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
+pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
+ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
+prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
+obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
+German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
+added, with solemn and pondering brows--"perhaps he was a little too
+fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
+fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
+wondered if Hegel was a drink.
+
+"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.
+
+"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
+And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
+theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"
+
+Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
+to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
+modestly enough.
+
+"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
+minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
+doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
+of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
+see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
+the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
+good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
+Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
+satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
+promise!"
+
+Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
+Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
+stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
+his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
+eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
+word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
+compliments for _his_ son! The tables were turned at last.
+
+His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
+won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
+sovereign.
+
+"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
+to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
+eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
+spend as much as the rest o' folk."
+
+"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.
+
+That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
+talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
+of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking--that he
+had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
+was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
+confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
+hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
+careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
+the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
+fellow to be mean."
+
+Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered
+by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
+hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie--Lord, but young Gourlay was the
+fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
+had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
+afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
+immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
+ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
+and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
+student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
+answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
+yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
+Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
+to his other occupations--plurality of professions, you observe, being
+one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
+Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
+phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
+what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
+misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
+speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
+shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
+on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
+make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well--he took a
+paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
+instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
+vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
+neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
+welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
+had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
+his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
+Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
+however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
+support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
+disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
+coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
+preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
+ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
+That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
+not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
+Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
+the like without drinking in every howff you came across.
+
+When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was
+able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter
+than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh,"
+he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything
+and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and
+that crowd--I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath
+blowing his trump--which I greatly doubt--they're as thick as thieveth.
+Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling
+oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It
+theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this
+thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I
+mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"
+
+"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad--especially
+the young ministers."
+
+"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are
+just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties.
+They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."
+
+"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already.
+I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."
+
+"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."
+
+"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body
+solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he
+wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.
+
+"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent
+hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of--too disgusted
+to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing
+him up about that prize o' his."
+
+"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.
+
+"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused
+the ex-Provost.
+
+"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think
+at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a
+crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that
+hell gapes for. And owre they flap."
+
+But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of _him_,"
+said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.
+
+Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland)
+young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence
+from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater
+abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother
+(who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed)
+often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in
+the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're
+unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she
+utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine
+moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was
+sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk
+upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he
+could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green
+quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded
+when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at
+the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing
+beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a
+wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a
+circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's
+son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw
+through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and
+threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind
+him.
+
+Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he
+would--who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about
+them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more
+ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him.
+"Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the
+door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the
+fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness--flushed with
+pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a
+compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the
+character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a
+splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree
+to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes."
+"What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the
+nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper
+pose--that of a _grand homme manque_, of a man who would be a genius
+were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear
+a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which--so he
+wished them to believe--alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It
+was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you
+didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to
+answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do
+them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to
+hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he
+didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made
+him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] "_Aince wud and aye waur_," silly for once and silly for always.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+On a beautiful evening in September, when a new crescent moon was
+pointing through the saffron sky like the lit tip of a finger, the City
+Fathers had assembled at the corner of the Fleckie Road. Though the moon
+was peeping, the dying glory of the day was still upon the town. The
+white smoke rose straight and far in the golden mystery of the heavens,
+and a line of dark roofs, transfigured against the west, wooed the eye
+to musing. But though the bodies felt the fine evening bathe them in a
+sensuous content, as they smoked and dawdled, they gave never a thought
+to its beauty. For there had been a blitheness in the town that day, and
+every other man seemed to have been preeing the demijohn.
+
+Drucken Wabster and Brown the ragman came round the corner, staggering.
+
+"Young Gourlay's drunk!" blurted Wabster--and reeled himself as he
+spoke.
+
+"Is he a wee fou?" said the Deacon eagerly.
+
+"Wee be damned," said Wabster; "he's as fou as the Baltic Sea! If you
+wait here, you'll be sure to see him! He'll be round the corner
+directly."
+
+"De-ar me, is he so bad as that?" said the ex-Provost, raising his hands
+in solemn reprobation. He raised his eyes to heaven at the same time, as
+if it pained them to look on a world that endured the burden of a young
+Gourlay. "In broad daylight, too!" he sighed. "De-ar me, has he come to
+this?"
+
+"Yis, Pravast," hiccupped Brown, "he has! He's as phull of drink as a
+whelk-shell's phull of whelk. He's nearly as phull as meself--and
+begorra, that's mighty phull." He stared suddenly, scratching his head
+solemnly as if the fact had just occurred to him. Then he winked.
+
+"You could set fire to his braith!" cried Wabster. "A match to his mouth
+would send him in a lowe."
+
+"A living gas jet!" said Brown.
+
+They staggered away, sometimes rubbing shoulders as they lurched
+together, sometimes with the road between them.
+
+"I kenned young Gourlay was on the fuddle when I saw him swinging off
+this morning in his greatcoat," cried Sandy Toddle. "There was debauch
+in the flap o' the tails o't."
+
+"Man, have you noticed that too!" cried another eagerly. "He's aye warst
+wi' the coat on!"
+
+"Clothes undoubtedly affect the character," said Johnny Coe. "It takes a
+gentleman to wear a lordly coat without swaggering."
+
+"There's not a doubt o' tha-at!" approved the baker, who was merry with
+his day's carousal; "there's not a doubt o' tha-at! Claes affect the
+disposeetion. I mind when I was a young chap I had a grand pair o'
+breeks--Wull I ca'ed them--unco decent breeks they were, I mind, lang
+and swankie like a ploughman; and I aye thocht I was a tremendous honest
+and hamely fallow when I had them on! And I had a verra disreputable
+hat," he added--"Rab I christened him, for he was a perfect devil--and I
+never cocked him owre my lug on nichts at e'en but 'Baker!' he seemed to
+whisper, 'Baker! Let us go out and do a bash!' And we generally went."
+
+"You're a wonderful man!" piped the Deacon.
+
+"We may as well wait and see young Gourlay going by," said the
+ex-Provost. "He'll likely be a sad spectacle."
+
+"Ith auld Gourlay on the thtreet the nicht?" cried the Deacon eagerly.
+"I wonder will he thee the youngster afore he gets hame! Eh, man"--he
+bent his knees with staring delight--"eh, man, if they would only meet
+forenenst uth! Hoo!"
+
+"He's a regular waster," said Brodie. "When a silly young blood takes a
+fancy to a girl in a public-house he's always done for; I've observed it
+times without number. At first he lets on that he merely gangs in for a
+drink; what he really wants, however, is to see the girl. Even if he's
+no great toper to begin with, he must show himself fond o' the dram, as
+a means of getting to his jo. Then, before he kens where he is, the
+habit has gripped him. That's a gate mony a ane gangs."
+
+"That's verra true, now that ye mention't," gravely assented the
+ex-Provost. His opinion of Brodie's sagacity, high already, was enhanced
+by the remark. "Indeed, that's verra true. But how does't apply to young
+Gourlay in particular, Thomas? Is _he_ after some damsel o' the
+gill-stoup?"
+
+"Ou ay--he's ta'en a fancy to yon bit shilp in the bar-room o' the Red
+Lion. He's always hinging owre the counter talking till her, a cigarette
+dropping from his face, and a half-fu' tumbler at his elbow. When a
+young chap takes to hinging round bars, ae elbow on the counter and a
+hand on his other hip, I have verra bad brows o' him always--verra bad
+brows, indeed. Oh--oh, young Gourlay's just a goner! a goner, sirs--a
+goner!"
+
+"Have ye heard about him at the Skeighan Fair?" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"No, man," said Brodie, bowing down and keeking at Toddle in his
+interest; "I hadna heard about tha-at! Is this a _new_ thing?"
+
+"Oh, just at the fair; the other day, ye know!"
+
+"Ay, man, Sandy!" said big Brodie, stooping down to Toddle to get near
+the news; "and what was it, Sandy?"
+
+"Ou, just drinking, ye know, wi'--wi' Swipey Broon--and, eh, and that
+M'Craw, ye know--and Sandy Hull--and a wheen mair o' that kind--ye ken
+the kind; a verra bad lot!" said Sandy, and wagged a disapproving pow.
+"Here they all got as drunk as drunk could be, and started fighting wi'
+the colliers! Young Gourlay got a bloodied nose! Then nothing would
+serve him but he must drive back wi' young Pin-oe, who was even drunker
+than himsell. They drave at sic a rate that when they dashed from this
+side o' Skeighan Drone the stour o' their career was rising at the far
+end. They roared and sang till it was a perfect affront to God's day,
+and frae sidie to sidie they swung till the splash-brods were skreighing
+on the wheels. At a quick turn o' the road they wintled owre; and there
+they were, sitting on their doups in the atoms o' the gig, and glowering
+frae them! When young Gourlay slid hame at dark he was in such a state
+that his mother had to hide him frae the auld man. She had that, puir
+body! The twa women were obliged to carry the drunk lump to his
+bedroom--and yon lassie far ga'en in consumption, too, they tell me! Ou,
+he was in a perfectly awful condition--perfectly awful!"
+
+"Ay, man," nodded Brodie. "I hadna heard o't. Curious that I didna hear
+o' that!"
+
+"It was Drucken Wabster's wife that telled it. There's not a haet that
+happens at the Gourlays but she clypes. I speired her mysell, and she
+says young Gourlay has a black eye."
+
+"Ay, ay; there'th thmall hope for the Gourlayth in _him_!" said the
+Deacon.
+
+"How do _you_ ken?" cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've
+seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and,
+eh, but he was _this_ waster!--according to their way of it--and, oh,
+but he was the _other_ waster! and, ochonee, but he was the _wild_
+fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his doormat; for it was
+only the fire in the ruffian made him seem sae daft."
+
+"True!" said the ex-Provost, "true! Still there's a decency in daftness.
+And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start
+canny, and you'll steer weel,' my mother used to say; but he has started
+unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin."
+
+"Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And
+never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a
+breenge."
+
+"Well, I like young men to be quiet," said Sandy Toddle. "I would rather
+have them a wee soft than rollickers."
+
+"Not I!" said the baker. "If I had a son, I would rather an ill deil sat
+forenenst me at the table than parratch in a poke. Burns (God rest his
+banes!) struck the he'rt o't. Ye mind what he said o' Prince Geordie:
+
+
+     'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been known
+       To mak a noble aiver;
+     And ye may doucely fill a throne,
+       For a' their clishmaclaver.
+     There him at Agincourt wha shone.
+       Few better were or braver;
+     And yet wi' funny queer Sir John
+       He was an unco shaver
+             For mony a day.'
+
+
+Dam't, but Burns is gude."
+
+"Huts, man, dinna sweer sae muckle!" frowned the old Provost.
+
+"Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like
+spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner
+wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his
+withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial
+gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same
+the bit bodie; so he used to say '_Dim it!_' in a wee, sma voice that
+was clean rideec'lous. He was a lauchable dirt, that."
+
+"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.
+
+"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.)
+"Alexander Toddle was his name: '_Dim it!_' he used to squeak, for he
+had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English.
+'_Dim it!_' said he. I like a man that says '_Dahm't._'"
+
+"Ay; but then, you thee, _you_'re an artitht in wordth," said the
+Deacon.
+
+"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.
+
+"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end
+o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the
+throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young
+Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie
+and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my
+opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.
+
+"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a
+possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"
+
+He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out,
+with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she,
+"what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea
+wi' me!"
+
+He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his
+hunkers--for fine he saw through her--and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great
+muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye--I'll gang in and have a dish o'
+tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.
+
+"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
+kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."
+
+"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
+went thae lamb-like!"
+
+"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's
+the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."
+
+"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
+gentleman!"
+
+"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
+if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
+dacent wife, and a bigger field--oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
+possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
+neck till't."
+
+"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.--"Here comes his
+son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."
+
+Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
+they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
+Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
+fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
+they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
+on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
+road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
+went.
+
+"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
+feel the slight, blatant to resent it.
+
+"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.
+
+With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.
+
+"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
+between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
+cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay--just down for a flying visit to see my
+little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again--Barbie's too quiet
+for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"
+
+The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
+as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
+bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
+reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
+in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering
+to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side
+by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was
+letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a
+fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left
+coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the
+Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear
+remembrance!"
+
+The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was
+too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.
+
+"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College
+again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at
+Skeighan Station. Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be
+punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels
+a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is,"
+he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the
+door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."
+
+Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of
+that easy-swinging door.
+
+"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."
+
+"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast
+pocket of his coat.
+
+John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay
+had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The
+young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of
+millions.
+
+The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the
+darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little
+old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already
+mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the
+gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against
+the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from
+the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson
+had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a
+separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay
+stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was.
+His lips parted, and--as they saw in the light from the door--his look
+grew dreamy and far-away.
+
+The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten
+in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto.
+That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go
+splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely
+assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots
+at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh--to those lodgings,
+those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real
+elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he
+forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering
+dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the
+impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and
+the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump,
+so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear
+country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world
+among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was
+fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no
+doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his
+friend; he had known it always.
+
+The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's
+nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn
+wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried;
+"we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."
+
+Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another,
+and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink
+till I light my cigar."
+
+He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on
+purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he
+went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.
+
+He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one
+side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat
+pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his
+brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered up the reins.
+"Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder,
+and they were off with a bound.
+
+"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.
+
+Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks
+to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when
+he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"--for Peter said
+"mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister"
+was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
+in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
+tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
+withered little man.
+
+That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
+session at the University.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
+Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
+simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
+had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
+there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
+Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
+surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
+was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
+a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
+about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
+of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
+clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
+sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
+mester; and hardy, too--infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.
+
+But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day
+after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
+with.
+
+It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day--a day
+when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
+and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
+of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
+tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw--which seemed strange and
+unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
+beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
+among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
+were gurgling and _rookety-cooing_, mating for the coming year. He fell
+to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
+aside--"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
+softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
+waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
+
+Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
+moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who
+would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the
+old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on
+nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and
+occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without
+knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming
+at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger
+and a keener man.
+
+"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."
+
+Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful
+gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few
+yellow tusks.
+
+"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays
+could not penetrate his mind.
+
+"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye
+steadily.
+
+"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful
+gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak
+onything."
+
+"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly--"it's no that. But I'm giving up
+the business."
+
+Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth
+forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld
+servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a
+true ane."
+
+"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."
+
+"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing
+for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.
+
+Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;"
+and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.
+
+Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he
+said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."
+
+"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned
+back to his work--"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about
+the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long
+service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'--to mind you o'----" he
+broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.
+
+Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears;
+others by an angry scowl--hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their
+weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their
+weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that
+Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's
+father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
+submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
+other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
+deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More--the
+going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
+quick. Therefore he scowled.
+
+Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his
+heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away
+across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and
+came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held
+out his hand.
+
+Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"
+
+Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not
+in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi'
+the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't."
+
+"Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.
+
+Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his
+pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so
+bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and
+the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay
+had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He
+stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.
+
+"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."
+
+It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate
+pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several
+speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and
+retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs,
+that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are apt to do when
+despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the
+end of his resources.
+
+Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had
+sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at
+any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay
+attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of
+his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would
+have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at
+least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the
+whole of life to him. For one thing, the son's success would justify the
+father's past and prevent it being quite useless; it would have produced
+a minister, a successful man, one of an esteemed profession. Again, that
+success would be a salve to Gourlay's wounded pride; the Gourlays would
+show Barbie they could flourish yet, in spite of their present downcome.
+Thus, in the collapse of his fortunes, the son grew all-important in the
+father's eyes. Nor did his own poverty seem to him a just bar to his
+son's prosperity. "I have put him through his Arts," thought Gourlay;
+"surely he can do the rest himsell. Lots of young chaps, when they
+warstle through their Arts, teach the sons of swells to get a little
+money to gang through Diveenity. My boy can surely do the like!" Again
+and again, as Gourlay felt himself slipping under in the world of
+Barbie, his hopes turned to John in Edinburgh. If that boy would only
+hurry up and get through, to make a hame for the lassie and the auld
+wife!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Young Gourlay spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as he had spent
+the last. Last winter, however, it was simply a weak need for
+companionship that drew him to the Howff. This winter it was more: it
+was the need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction.
+He had a further impulse to conviviality now. It had become a habit that
+compelled him.
+
+The diversions of some men are merely subsidiary to their lives,
+externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp
+a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other
+occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an
+irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always
+visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never
+gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and
+long for the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his books of
+an evening but he thought to himself, "I wonder what they're doing at
+the Howff to-night?" At once he visualized the scene, imagined every
+detail, saw them in their jovial hours. And, seeing them so happy, he
+longed to be with them. On that night, long ago, when his father ordered
+him to College, his cowardly and too vivid mind thought of the ploys the
+fellows would be having along the Barbie roads, while he was mewed up in
+Edinburgh. He saw the Barbie rollickers in his mind's eye, and the
+student in his lonely rooms, and contrasted them mournfully. So now,
+every night, he saw the cosy companions in their Howff, and shivered at
+his own isolation. He felt a tugging at his heart to be off and join
+them. And his will was so weak that, nine times out of ten, he made no
+resistance to the impulse.
+
+He had always a feeling of depression when he must sit down to his
+books. It was the start that gravelled him. He would look round his room
+and hate it, mutter "Damn it, I must work;" and then, with a heavy sigh,
+would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table, tugging the
+hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression left him, when he
+buckled to his work; as his mind became occupied with other things the
+vision of the Howff was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his
+brains made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the
+sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten
+minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they
+were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is
+Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it
+merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray
+Daylicht'--they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten
+minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came back
+at two in the morning, staggering.
+
+On a bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had
+gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It
+was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the
+air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray
+city, naked and bare. There was light enough, with the lengthening days,
+to see plainly the rawness of the world. There were cold yellow gleams
+in windows fronting a lonely west. Uncertain little puffs of wind came
+swirling round corners, and made dust and pieces of dirty white paper
+gyrate on the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in
+their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses.
+Sometimes they stopped--their trousers legs flapping behind them--and
+trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the
+streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower.
+
+By eight o'clock, however, he was merry with the barley-bree, and making
+a butt of himself to amuse the company. He was not quick-witted enough
+to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to essay it unprovoked; on
+the other hand, his swaggering love of notice impelled him to some form
+of talk that would attract attention. So he made a point of always
+coming with daft stories of things comic that befell him--at least, he
+said they did. But if his efforts were greeted with too loud a roar,
+implying not only appreciation of the stories, but also a contempt for
+the man who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was
+immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger. And the moment
+after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.
+
+"I remember when I was a boy," he hiccupped, "I had a pet goose at
+home."
+
+There was a titter at the queer beginning.
+
+"I was to get the price of it for myself, and so when Christmas drew
+near I went to old MacFarlane, the poulterer in Skeighan. 'Will you buy
+a goose?' said I. 'Are ye for sale, my man?' was his answer."
+
+Armstrong flung back his head and roared, prolonging the loud _ho-ho!_
+through his big nose and open mouth long after the impulse to honest
+laughter was exhausted. He always laughed with false loudness, to
+indicate his own superiority, when he thought a man had been guilty of a
+public silliness. The laugh was meant to show the company how far above
+such folly was Mr. Armstrong.
+
+Gourlay scowled. "Damn Armstrong!" he thought, "what did he yell like
+that for? Does he think I didn't see the point of the joke against
+myself? Would I have told it if I hadn't? This is what comes of being
+sensitive. I'm always too sensitive! I felt there was an awkward
+silence, and I told a story against myself to dispel it in fun, and this
+is what I get for't. Curse the big brute! he thinks I have given myself
+away. But I'll show him!"
+
+He was already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him, as was
+his habit.
+
+"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he
+said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No
+gentleman laughs like that."
+
+"'_Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one
+of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to
+frequent it greatly.
+
+Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the
+great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his
+resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three
+students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster,
+for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind.
+
+"I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a
+diversion.
+
+"Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay.
+
+"Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row
+with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely
+appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the
+thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he
+never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first."
+
+"He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think
+too much of themselves. They wouldn't bully _me_! There's good stuff in
+the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not
+to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man."
+
+"Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?"
+
+"Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too
+far."
+
+He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled
+him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities.
+It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink,
+just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends."
+
+When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and
+after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other
+two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a
+gentleman.
+
+When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to
+monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him?
+The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was
+fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future,
+in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of
+Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought,
+what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into
+Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of
+his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the
+man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten
+the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let
+him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk
+of his dirty soul to him!
+
+The drink was dying in him now, for the trio had walked for more than an
+hour through the open air when they left Gillespie's rooms. The
+stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his brain morbidly alive. He
+was anxious to sleep, but drowsy dullness kept away. His mind began to
+visualize of its own accord, independent of his will; and, one after
+another, a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of his brain. He
+saw them as plainly as you see this page, but with a different
+clearness--for they seemed unnatural, belonging to a morbid world. Nor
+did one suggest the other; there was no connection between them; each
+came vivid of its own accord.
+
+First it was an old pit-frame on a barren moor, gaunt, against the
+yellow west. Gourlay saw bars of iron, left when the pit was abandoned,
+reddened by the rain; and the mounds of rubbish, and the scattered
+bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace, and the melancholy
+shining pools. A four-wheeled old trolley had lost two of its wheels,
+and was tilted at a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.
+
+"Why do I think of an old pit?" he thought angrily; "curse it! why can't
+I sleep?"
+
+Next moment he was gazing at a ruined castle, its mouldering walls
+mounded atop with decaying rubble; from a loose crumb of mortar a long,
+thin film of the spider's weaving stretched bellying away to a tall weed
+waving on the crazy brink. Gourlay saw its glisten in the wind. He saw
+each crack in the wall, each stain of lichen; a myriad details stamped
+themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession of
+figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes. Each figure
+was cowled; but when it came directly opposite, it turned and looked at
+him with a white face. "Stop, stop!" cried his mind; "I don't want to
+think of you, I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of
+you! Go away!" But as they came of themselves, so they went of
+themselves. He could not banish them.
+
+He turned on his side, but a hundred other pictures pursued him. From
+an inland hollow he saw the great dawn flooding up from the sea, over a
+sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging up the
+heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was gray with dew. The inland
+hollow was full of little fields, divided by stone walls, and he could
+not have recalled the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness.
+For a moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his
+vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep
+slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow
+leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air.
+The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness.
+Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the
+boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they
+moved.
+
+He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium
+of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was
+sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was
+only automatic visualization.
+
+Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with
+his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness.
+Ha! that was better.
+
+His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window
+and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep.
+Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; _clank, clank, clank_
+went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his
+street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the
+footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the
+deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath
+him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool
+whistle? What had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one
+man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to
+sleep the whole night long.
+
+He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to
+the world.
+
+He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door.
+By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to
+consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying
+to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
+the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as
+bark.
+
+For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top
+of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold
+gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and
+drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off
+to the University.
+
+It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold
+drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the
+street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to
+an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his
+last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of
+sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a
+fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I
+trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got
+to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!
+
+"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.
+
+He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the
+white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain.
+Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank
+sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to
+his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling in his body he lurched
+off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had
+changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky
+gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That
+stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."
+
+He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear
+garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a
+malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
+university class--which is many most moral individuals--has a similar
+eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It
+will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when
+nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer,
+who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the
+condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly
+every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most
+portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last
+triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to
+account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom--bad cold!"
+Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of
+"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"--which no man seemed
+to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their
+feet.
+
+The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.
+
+Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It
+was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink
+still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his
+morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The
+morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.
+
+At last the lecturer plunged wildly at the door and flung it open.
+"Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.
+
+A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him;
+and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and
+vindictive glower.
+
+He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to
+his mouth and bellowed "_Cock-a-doodle-do_!"
+
+Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the
+rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously--"you
+there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end
+of the hour."
+
+There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the
+stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them
+at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his
+rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate
+silence took the room--the more impressive for the former noise. Every
+eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.
+
+If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been
+cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the
+company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies
+would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by
+surprise and fear.
+
+Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more
+sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery,
+while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they
+were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him
+furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance
+itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other
+rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same
+burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling
+fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the
+mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer,
+he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others--the Snuffler took it
+all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it
+suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the
+lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he
+wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy
+stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let
+him punish all or none, for they had all been kicking up a row--why, big
+Cunningham had been braying like an ass only a minute before.
+
+He spied Armstrong and Gillespie glinting across at him with a curious
+look: they were wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his
+guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look, and resented it.
+He was on his mettle before them, it seemed. The fellow who had
+swaggered at the Howff last night about "what _he_ would do if a
+professor jumped on _him_," mustn't prove wanting in the present trial,
+beneath the eyes of those on whom he had imposed his blatancy.
+
+When we think of what Gourlay did that day, we must remember that he was
+soaked in alcohol--not merely with his morning's potation, but with the
+dregs of previous carousals. And the dregs of drink, a thorough toper
+will tell you, never leave him. He is drunk on Monday with his
+Saturday's debauch. As "Drucken Wabster" of Barbie put it once, "When a
+body's hard up, his braith's a consolation." If that be so--and Wabster,
+remember, was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled to the
+highest credence--if that be so, it proves the strength and persistence
+of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or, as Wabster called it, of "a
+good soak." In young Gourlay's case, at any rate, the impregnation was
+enduring and complete. He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil.
+
+As the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper in his dogged
+sullenness. When the class streamed from the large door on the right, he
+turned aside to the little anteroom on the left, with an insolent swing
+of the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously--he
+felt their eyes upon his back. And, therefore, as he went through the
+little door, he stood for a moment on his right foot, and waggled his
+left, on a level with his hip behind, in a vulgar derision of them, the
+professor, and the whole situation. That was a fine taunt flung back at
+them!
+
+There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets
+a chance he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice forced him
+to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on
+the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the
+wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had
+no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet
+shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at
+once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty
+than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of
+superiority. The class was his master, but here was one of them he could
+cow at any rate.
+
+"Well?" he asked, bringing his thin finger-tips together, and flinging
+one thigh across the other.
+
+Gourlay shuffled his feet uneasily.
+
+"Yes?" inquired the other, enjoying his discomfiture.
+
+Gourlay lowered. "Whatna gate was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a
+blatter out of his thin mouth, and ha' done wi't?"
+
+"I'm waiting!" said the lecturer.
+
+The words "I apologize" rose in Gourlay, but refused to pass his throat.
+No, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't! He would see the lecturer far enough,
+ere he gave an apology before it was expressly required.
+
+"Oh, that's the line you go on, is it?" said the lecturer, nodding his
+head as if he had sized up a curious animal. "I see, I see! You add
+contumacy to insolence, do you?... Imphm."
+
+Gourlay was not quite sure what contumacy meant, and the uncertainty
+added to his anger.
+
+"There were others making a noise besides me," he blurted. "I don't see
+why _I_ should be blamed for it all."
+
+"Oh, you don't see why _you_ should be had up, indeed? I think we'll
+bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so."
+
+Gourlay, being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself
+swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry
+owl--the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful
+rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have
+liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the
+lecturer have it hot and strong; the next, he was quivering in a
+cowardly horror of the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curse
+his tormentor! Why did he keep him here, when his head was aching so
+badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his drunken rage.
+
+"I wonder what you think you came to College for?" said the lecturer. "I
+have been looking at your records in the class. They're the worst I ever
+saw. And you're not content with that, it seems. You add misbehaviour to
+gross stupidity."
+
+"To hell wi' ye!" said Gourlay.
+
+There was a feeling in the room as if the air was stunned. The silence
+throbbed.
+
+The lecturer, who had risen, sat down suddenly as if going at the knees,
+and went white about the gills. Some men would have swept the ruffian
+with a burst of generous wrath, a few might have pitied in their anger;
+but this young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat. Unable to
+cow the insolent in present and full-blooded rage, he fell to thinking
+of the great machine he might set in motion to destroy him. As he sat
+there in silence, his eyes grew ferrety, and a sleek revenge peeped from
+the corners of his mouth. "I'll show him what I'll do to him for this!"
+is a translation of his thought. He was thinking, with great
+satisfaction to himself, of how the Senatus would deal with young
+Gourlay.
+
+Gourlay grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him. They had
+been a thunderclap to his own ears. He had been thinking them, but--as
+he pleaded far within him now--had never meant to utter them; they had
+been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seething up within him,
+longing to burst, but afraid. It was the taunt of stupidity that fired
+his drunken vanity to blurt them forth.
+
+The lecturer eyed him sideways where he shrank in fear. "You may go," he
+said at last. "I will report your conduct to the University."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gourlay was sitting alone in his room when he heard that he had been
+expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober
+now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the
+window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay
+sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid
+his character bare to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not by
+conscious effort; insight was uncanny and apart from will. He saw that
+blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with want of brains; and
+that the results of these, converging to a point, had produced the
+present issue, his expulsion. His mind recognized how logical the issue
+was, assenting wearily as to a problem proved. Given those qualities, in
+those circumstances, what else could have happened? And such a weakling
+as he knew himself to be could never--he thought--make effort sufficient
+to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism came over him, as of one
+doomed. He bowed his head, and let his arms fall by the sides of his
+chair, dropping them like a spent swimmer ready to sink. The sudden
+revelation of himself to himself had taken the heart out of him. "I'm a
+waster!" he said aghast. And then, at the sound of his own voice, a fear
+came over him, a fear of his own nature; and he started to his feet and
+strode feverishly, as if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging
+and inherent ill. It was as if he were trying to run away from himself.
+
+He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image
+with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard
+through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill
+ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"
+
+He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the
+Howff for consolation.
+
+With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character
+at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid
+reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more
+definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to
+go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the
+dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he
+entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that
+he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when
+the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again.
+His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in
+imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.
+
+Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into
+his mood, no less big with destruction. It was all his father's fault
+for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
+serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his
+own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they
+had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in
+forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head.
+Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at
+home by their own foolish scheme--it had punished _him_ enough, for one.
+And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more
+fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical
+father would suffer through his degradation too.
+
+At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had
+ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so,
+free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless
+voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased
+his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor--outside of
+which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to
+somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the
+window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing,
+said, "_Flat white nose!_" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at
+the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose _would_ look flat and
+white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in
+on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to
+think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had
+been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well,
+it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going
+to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said,
+nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist--"none
+of your jaw; d'ye hear?"
+
+He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and
+knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly
+through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He
+nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped
+dead at their words.
+
+"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not
+unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."
+
+John heard the mumble of his father's voice.
+
+"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie
+for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."
+
+"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face
+his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before
+him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green
+Shutters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away
+from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and
+Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused
+the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried,
+"this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy
+fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their
+dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but,
+over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for
+the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple
+expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest--of suspense, yet
+certainty--that had them in its grip. "He's _bound_ to come down," said
+Certainty. "Yes; but _when_, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more
+eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited
+for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if
+they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen
+interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That
+invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a
+small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest
+that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this
+case it was chiefly malevolent--only because Gourlay had been such a
+brute to Barbie.
+
+Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was
+one and the same--a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a
+more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every
+tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with
+the Green Shutters been so much talked of.
+
+"Pride _will_ have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack
+of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common
+proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener
+spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff
+he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes
+are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken
+perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."
+
+Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away
+from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could
+only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the
+gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of
+retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand
+and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.
+
+"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of
+Gourlay's remark--"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean
+Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"
+
+On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old
+Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a
+smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in
+gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly
+John, and the fellow went away.
+
+Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear,
+and he wheeled eagerly.
+
+Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at
+the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had
+stung him.
+
+"My God!" he cried, "had _I_ not enough to thole?"
+
+"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct,
+then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the
+Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son.--Lord!
+what a tit-bit for my rounds."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband
+standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often
+seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this
+bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.
+
+"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"
+
+"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on
+the floor.
+
+"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the
+dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll
+put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't--the lot o' ye."
+
+The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.
+
+"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is
+it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them
+tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter
+with _my_ boy? Is there ainything the matter with _my_ boy?"
+
+The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She
+was a fluttering thing in his grip.
+
+"_Every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy," he sneered slowly,
+"_every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy. And it's your fault too,
+damn you, for you always spoiled him!"
+
+With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the
+letter within the great fender.
+
+"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so
+wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door!
+That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean,
+my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but
+could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion"
+swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to
+hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.
+
+"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was
+thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.
+
+It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest
+due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and
+try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny
+was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.
+
+He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the
+Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the
+gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that
+his life meant was bound up in that house--it had been the pride of the
+Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the
+dust--their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on
+the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors
+flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and
+added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o' _my_ hoose!"
+
+He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life;
+he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he
+might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the
+House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending.
+Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for
+himself--rather the house was himself; there was no division between
+them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his
+character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind,
+unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And
+John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green
+Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a
+prodigal.
+
+As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a
+conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr.
+Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay
+in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine
+stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were
+innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared
+enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson
+addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones
+that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!"
+Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten
+yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour
+surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.
+
+He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped
+to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a
+son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation,
+therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled,
+his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger.
+His voice had a moan of intensity.
+
+"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness....
+"Eh?... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."
+
+He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet
+voice, from the yawing mouth, beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was
+deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.
+
+"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a
+vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must
+grind an answer.
+
+Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful
+man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was
+the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off _my_
+shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion.
+Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.
+
+But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult,
+and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest
+thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the
+additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you
+referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send
+him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson
+was an adept in the art.
+
+"Man," he lied blandly, but his voice was quivering--"ma-a-an, I wasn't
+so much as giving ye a thoat! It's verra strange if I cannot pass a joke
+with my o-old friend Templandmuir without _you_ calling me to book. It's
+a free country, I shuppose! Ye weren't in my mind at a-all. I have more
+important matters to think of," he ventured to add, seeing he had
+baffled Gourlay.
+
+For Gourlay was baffled. For a directer insult, an offensive gesture,
+one fierce word, he would have hammered the road with the Provost. But
+he was helpless before the bland, quivering lie. Maybe they werena
+referring to him; maybe they knew nothing of John in Edinburgh; maybe he
+had been foolishly suspeecious. A subtle yet baffling check was put upon
+his anger. Madman as he was in wrath, he never struck without direct
+provocation; there was none in this pulpy gentleness. And he was too
+dull of wit to get round the common ruse and find a means of getting at
+them.
+
+He let loose a great breath through his nostrils, as if releasing a
+deadly force which he had pent within him, ready should he need to
+spring. His mouth opened again, and he gaped at them with a great,
+round, unseeing stare. Then he swung on his heel.
+
+But wrath clung round him like a garment. His anger fed on its
+uncertainties. For that is the beauty of the Wilson method of insult:
+you leave the poison in your victim's blood, and he torments himself.
+"Was Wilson referring to _me_, after all?" he pondered slowly; and his
+body surged at the thought. "If he was, I have let him get away
+unkilled," and he clutched the hands whence Wilson had escaped. Suddenly
+a flashing thought stopped him dead in the middle of his walk, staring
+hornily before him. He had seen the point at last that a quicker man
+would have seized on at the first. Why had Wilson thrust his damned
+voice on him on this particular morning of all days in the year, if he
+was not gloating over some news which he had just heard about the
+Gourlays? It was as plain as daylight: his son had sent word from
+Edinburgh. That was why he brayed and ho-ho-hoed when Gourlay went by.
+Gourlay felt a great flutter of pulses against his collar; there was a
+pain in his throat, an ache of madness in his breast. He turned once
+more. But Wilson and the Templar had withdrawn discreetly to the Black
+Bull; the street wasna canny. Gourlay resumed his way, his being a dumb
+gowl of rage. His angry thought swept to John. Each insult, and fancied
+insult, he endured that day was another item in the long account of
+vengeance with his son. It was John who had brought all this flaming
+round his ears--John whose colleging he had lippened to so muckle. The
+staff on which he leaned had pierced him. By the eternal heavens he
+would tramp it into atoms. His legs felt John beneath them.
+
+As the market grew busy, Gourlay was the aim of innumerable eyes. He
+would turn his head to find himself the object of a queer, considering
+look; then the eyes of the starer would flutter abashed, as though
+detected spying the forbidden. The most innocent look at him was poison.
+"Do they know?" was his constant thought; "have they heard the news?
+What's Loranogie looking at me like that for?"
+
+Not a man ventured to address him about John--he had cowed them too
+long. One man, however, showed a wish to try. A pretended sympathy, from
+behind the veil of which you probe a man's anguish at your ease, is a
+favourite weapon of human beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon longed to
+try it on Gourlay. But his courage failed him. It was the only time he
+was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a
+recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old
+rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me,
+neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a _terrible_ affair! It'th on
+everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have
+tha-at--my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above
+the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the
+other was writhing at his words.
+
+Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were
+giving him a wide berth; for they knew that he was dangerous. He was no
+longer the man whom they had baited on the way to Skeighan; then he had
+some control, now three years' calamities had fretted his temper to a
+raw wound. To flick it was perilous. Great was the surprise of the
+starers, therefore, when the idle old Deacon was seen to detach himself
+and hail the grain merchant. Gourlay wheeled, and waited with a levelled
+eye. All were agog at the sight--something would be sure to come o'
+this--here would be an encounter worth the speaking o'. But the Deacon,
+having toddled forward a bittock on his thin shanks, stopped half-roads,
+took snuff, trumpeted into his big red handkerchief, and then, feebly
+waving, "I'll thee ye again, Dyohn," clean turned tail and toddled back
+to his cronies.
+
+A roar went up at his expense.
+
+"God!" said Tam Wylie, "did ye see yon? Gourlay stopped him wi' a
+glower."
+
+But the laugh was maddening to Gourlay. Its readiness, its volume,
+showed him that scores of folk had him in their minds, were watching
+him, considering his position, cognizant of where he stood. "They ken,"
+he thought. "They were a' waiting to see what would happen. They wanted
+to watch how Gourlay tholed the mention o' his son's disgrace. I'm a
+kind o' show to them."
+
+Johnny Coe, idle and well-to-pass, though he had no business of his own
+to attend to, was always present where business men assembled. It was a
+gra-and way of getting news. To-day, however, Gourlay could not find
+him. He went into the cattle mart to see if he was there. For two years
+now Barbie had a market for cattle, on the first Tuesday of the month.
+
+The auctioneer, a jovial dog, was in the middle of his roaring game. A
+big red bullock, the coat of which made a rich colour in the ring, came
+bounding in, scared at its surroundings--staring one moment and the next
+careering.
+
+"There's meat for you," said he of the hammer; "see how it runs! How
+much am I offered for _this_ fine bullock?" He sing-songed, always
+saying "_this_ fine bullock" in exactly the same tone of voice.
+"Thirteen pounds for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-five; thirteen-ten;
+thirteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-ten; any further bids on
+thirteen-ten? why, it's worth that for the colour o't; thank ye,
+sir--thirteen-fifteen; fourteen pounds; fourteen pounds for _this_ fine
+bullock; see how the stot stots[7] about the ring; that joke should
+raise him another half-sovereign; ah, I knew it would--fourteen-five;
+fourteen-five for _this_ fine bullock; fourteen-ten; no more than
+fourteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; going at fourteen-ten;
+gone--Irrendavie."
+
+Now that he was in the circle, however, the mad, big, handsome beast
+refused to go out again. When the cattlemen would drive him to the yard,
+he snorted and galloped round, till he had to be driven from the ring
+with blows. When at last he bounded through the door, he flung up his
+heels with a bellow, and sent the sand of his arena showering on the
+people round.
+
+"I seh!" roared Brodie in his coarsest voice, from the side of the ring
+opposite to Gourlay. "I seh, owctioner! That maun be a College-bred
+stot, from the way he behaves. He flung dirt at his masters, and had to
+be expelled."
+
+"Put Brodie in the ring and rowp him!" cried Irrendavie. "He roars like
+a bill, at ony rate."
+
+There was a laugh at Brodie, true; but it was at Gourlay that a hundred
+big red faces turned to look. He did not look at them, though. He sent
+his eyes across the ring at Brodie.
+
+"Lord!" said Irrendavie, "it's weel for Brodie that the ring's acqueesh
+them! Gourlay'll murder somebody yet. Red hell lap out o' his e'en when
+he looked at Brodie."
+
+Gourlay's suspicion that his son's disgrace was a matter of common
+knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that
+everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but
+resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting
+figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round
+for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun
+thole, I suppose. They were under _my_ feet for many a day, and they're
+taking their advantage now."
+
+But though he could thole, his anger against John was none the less. It
+was because they had been under his feet for many a day that John's
+conduct was the more heinous. It was his son's conduct that gave
+Gourlay's enemies their first opportunity against him, that enabled them
+to turn the tables. They might sneer at his trollop of a wife, they
+might sneer at his want of mere cleverness; still he held his head high
+amongst them. They might suspect his poverty; but so far, for anything
+they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in
+Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The
+selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the
+completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was
+invulnerable--so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the
+men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against
+him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the
+conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to
+get their knife into him at last, and they were turning the dagger in
+the wound. All owing to the boy on whom he had staked such hopes of
+keeping up the Gourlay name! His account with John was lengthening
+steadily.
+
+Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out
+and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet,
+big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to
+see him.
+
+It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.
+
+She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On
+her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red
+mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless
+mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her
+round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she
+spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much
+you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring
+at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and
+down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.
+
+"Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad
+pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.
+
+"No-a!" she shrilled--for Miss Coe answered questions with an
+old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great
+surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was
+it ainything particular?"
+
+"No," said Gourlay heavily. "I--I just wanted to see him," and he
+trudged away.
+
+Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's
+wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun
+caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the
+toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute--I'm
+sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"
+
+It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside
+in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.
+
+Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had
+skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"
+
+"It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed,
+"it's hell in _my_ throat to ask from any man."
+
+"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always
+looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take
+the risk."
+
+"Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook
+he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It
+was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk,
+to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were
+not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the
+Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt,
+if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.
+
+"If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye
+not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they
+respected me."
+
+"Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the
+baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another
+half-hour."
+
+A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the
+shadows.
+
+"God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to
+listen to our talk!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide
+himself."
+
+Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man,
+would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would
+not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.
+
+So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with
+shame and anger and foreboding.
+
+The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son--sitting
+muffled in his coat by the great fender.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] _Stot_, a bullock; _to stot_, to bound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and
+glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and
+significance, filling the doorway in his silence.
+
+The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers,
+his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil
+his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return
+for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out
+of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden
+sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap
+on him at once and glut his rage--a madness which only a will like his
+could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.
+
+To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out
+of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it
+is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a
+violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and
+again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking
+beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness.
+Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him,
+till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye.
+Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its
+contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward--and a coward
+had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as
+he slunk away. "_Ha!_" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and
+the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a
+man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he
+lives, send him slinking away _animo castrato_--for that is what it
+comes to--is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape
+of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost--derives from
+it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his
+son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less
+than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a
+loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man
+like a wriggling urchin on the floor.
+
+As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing
+cry of "_John!_" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her
+chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she
+wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers,
+fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not
+remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of
+cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son
+to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and
+inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "_God have
+mercy!_"
+
+For a length of time there was a loaded silence.
+
+Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at
+hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from
+around him. Janet whimpered.
+
+But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his
+voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great,
+shivering breastfuls of air between the words, as if for strength to
+utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by
+his own rage.
+
+"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar
+me!... Im-phm!"
+
+The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing
+anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was
+demoniac, appalling.
+
+John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast
+hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his
+father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going
+to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered
+into it, to get away as far as he could.
+
+"I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness,
+and his eyes never left his son.
+
+And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big
+clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else.
+It smote the ear.
+
+"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer
+seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.
+
+"Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He
+heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.
+
+He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his
+hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother--looking at each other
+with affrighted eyes--could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay,
+man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!...
+Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.
+
+When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in
+a suspended agony.
+
+"Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and nipped her ear as he
+passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"
+
+"Ay, faither," she answered.
+
+"And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"
+
+She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head
+sank low on her breast.
+
+"Nothing!" she said at last.
+
+"Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay
+him?"
+
+"No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."
+
+"When did ye get back?" he asked.
+
+"Just after--just after----" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she
+were afraid of mentioning his name.
+
+"Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at;
+you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after
+him; he aye had the best o't.--I howp _you_ are in good health?" he
+sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down
+at the outset o' a great career!... For ye _are_ at the outset o' a
+great career; are ye na?"
+
+His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a
+cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had
+leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage.
+But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the
+creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.
+
+"Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're
+at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"
+
+Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had
+to be answered.
+
+"No," whimpered John.
+
+"Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"
+
+"Yes," lied John.
+
+"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my
+brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"--he leaned over
+suavely--"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as
+usual? Eh?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"No," gulped the cowerer.
+
+"_Nae_ prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended
+surprise. "_Nae-ae_ prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"
+
+Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who,
+when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at
+her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks--"No," he pants; and "Are
+you sorry for being a bad boy?"--"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good
+boy now, then?"--"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one
+with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own
+nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not
+asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay
+cared--when once he had bye with him.
+
+Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice,
+Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be
+such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt
+at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand
+talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the
+brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung
+mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John
+Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop
+for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my
+dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That!_"
+
+He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.
+
+"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and
+I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he
+sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to
+celebrate the occeesion!"
+
+The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort
+to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of
+the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he
+was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious
+constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression.
+They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in
+a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and
+checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface.
+Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter,
+a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond
+himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the
+escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was
+that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his
+disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a
+desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would
+spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim
+which he would not kill.
+
+"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear.
+"What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits--just to shelebrate the
+joyful occeesion, ye know--ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful
+occeesion!"
+
+Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the
+rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her
+trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.
+
+Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle
+for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the
+jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this
+gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a
+night o't--we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"
+
+"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.
+
+"No," wheezed John.
+
+"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College!
+Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or _this_
+nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."
+
+Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy.
+Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt
+at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins
+of his listeners with a start of fear--it leapt so suddenly.
+
+"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.
+
+John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which
+his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go
+and take it.
+
+"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait
+on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn!
+The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the
+storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but
+_he_ wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "_he_ wasna feared; no,
+by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly
+again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra
+appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?...
+Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just
+as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye
+know--a splurge to attract folk's attention!"
+
+John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.
+
+"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye;
+"take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something
+about that--some poetry or other. Who was it?"
+
+"I dinna ken," whimpered John.
+
+"Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie.
+Come on now--who was it?"
+
+"It was Burns," said John.
+
+"Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject?
+Eh?"
+
+"'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered
+John.
+
+"A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. "'Freedom and whisky gang
+thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were
+savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great
+admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"
+
+"Yes," said John.
+
+"Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine
+free fellow you are!"
+
+It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than
+half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had
+been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had
+taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely
+blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire
+leapt in his throat to get at it.
+
+"Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the
+thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a
+look at that throat o' yours. Stand up!... _Stand up when I tall 'ee!_"
+
+John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating
+in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And
+the fear weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a
+heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing
+from his chalky face.
+
+"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a
+saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"
+
+John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries.
+The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he
+went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment,
+to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was
+enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.
+
+He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in
+insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new
+suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to
+the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal
+smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted
+him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his
+father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear.
+Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration,
+"I'll _kill_ him; I'll _kill_ him; by God, I'll _kill_ him--if he doesna
+stop this--if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material
+self was paralyzed with fear.
+
+"Open your mouth!" came the snarl--"_wider, damn ye! wider!_"
+
+"Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about
+to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's
+the Latin for throat?"
+
+"Guttur," said John.
+
+"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like
+a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in
+very good health, after a-all.... Eh?... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'!
+He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what
+he needs, though.--Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he
+roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the
+last time--it's _your_ turn now, auld wife, it's _your_ turn now! Gang
+for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be
+proud of!"
+
+He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.
+
+"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the
+gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that;
+and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy--though I never
+got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my
+name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that--a great consolation!"
+
+The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to
+pieces on the floor.
+
+"Hurrah!" yelled Gourlay.
+
+He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn
+about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go
+smash--what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so
+careful, seemed to delight in the smashings and the breakings; they
+suited his despair.
+
+He saw that his spirit of destruction frightened them, too, and that was
+another reason to indulge it.
+
+"To hell with everything," he yelled, like a mock-bacchanal. "_We_'re
+the hearty fellows! We'll make a red night now we're at it!" And with
+that he took the heel of a bottle on his toe and sent it flying among
+the dishes on the dresser. A great plate fell, split in two.
+
+"Poor fellow!" he whined, turning to his son; "poo-oor fellow! I fear he
+has lost his pheesic. For that was the last bottle o' brandy in my
+aucht; the last John Gourlay had, the last he'll ever buy. What am I to
+do wi' ye now?... Eh?... I must do something; it's coming to the bit
+now, sir."
+
+As he stood in a heaving silence the sobbing of the two women was heard
+through the room. John was still swaying on the floor.
+
+Sometimes Gourlay would run the full length of the kitchen, and stand
+there glowering on a stoop; then he would come crouching up to his son
+on a vicious little trot, pattering in rage, the broken glass crunching
+and grinding beneath his feet. At any moment he might spring.
+
+"What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?" he moaned.... "Eh?... What
+do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"
+
+As he came grinning in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and
+the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The
+stricture of the lips had squeezed them bloodless.
+
+He went back to the dresser once more and bent low beside it, glancing
+at his son across his left shoulder, with his head flung back sideways,
+his right fist clenched low and ready from a curve of the elbow. It
+swung heavy as a mallet by his thigh. Janet got to her knees and came
+shuffling across the floor on them, though her dress was tripping her,
+clasping her outstretched hands, and sobbing in appeal, "Faither,
+faither; O faither; for God's sake, faither!" She clung to him. He
+unclenched his fist and lifted her away. Then he came crouching and
+quivering across the floor slowly, a gleaming devilry in the eyes that
+devoured his son. His hands were like outstretched claws, and shivered
+with each shiver of the voice that moaned, through set teeth, "What do
+ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?... What do ye think I mean to do wi'
+ye now?... Ye damned sorrow and disgrace that ye are, what do ye think I
+mean to do wi' ye now?"
+
+"Run, John!" screamed Mrs. Gourlay, leaping to her feet. With a hunted
+cry young Gourlay sprang to the door. So great had been the fixity of
+Gourlay's wrath, so tense had he been in one direction, as he moved
+slowly on his prey, that he could not leap to prevent him. As John
+plunged into the cool, soft darkness, his mother's "Thank God!" rang
+past him on the night.
+
+His immediate feeling was of coolness and width and spaciousness, in
+contrast with the hot grinding hostility that had bored so closely in on
+him for the last hour. He felt the benignness of the darkened heavens. A
+tag of some forgotten poem he had read came back to his mind, and,
+"Come, kindly night, and cover me," he muttered, with shaking lips; and
+felt how true it was. My God, what a relief to be free of his father's
+eyes! They had held him till his mother's voice broke the spell. They
+seemed to burn him now.
+
+What a fool he had been to face his father when empty both of food and
+drink! Every man was down-hearted when he was empty. If his mother had
+had time to get the tea, it would have been different; but the fire had
+been out when he went in. "He wouldn't have downed me so easy if I had
+had anything in me," he muttered, and his anger grew as he thought of
+all he had been made to suffer. For he was still the swaggerer. Now that
+the incubus of his father's tyranny no longer pressed on him directly, a
+great hate rose within him for the tyrant. He would go back and have it
+out when he was primed. "It's the only hame I have," he sobbed angrily
+to the darkness; "I have no other place to gang till! Yes, I'll go back
+and have it out with him when once I get something in me, so I will." It
+was no disgrace to suck courage from the bottle for that encounter with
+his father, for nobody could stand up to black Gourlay--nobody. Young
+Gourlay was yielding to a peculiar fatalism of minds diseased: all that
+affects them seems different from all that affects everybody else; they
+are even proud of their separate and peculiar doom. Young Gourlay not
+thought but felt it--he was different from everybody else. The heavens
+had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to
+fill yourself with drink before you faced him.
+
+A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept
+about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a
+coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after
+the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that
+semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them
+now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and
+control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more
+variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of
+time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before
+the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve,
+shaking in terror--indeed he was shaking now. But his vanity came
+uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the
+darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face
+curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had
+started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking
+back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual
+busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping
+lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets,
+and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an
+outshot chest, and entered with a "breenge." But for all his swagger he
+must have had a face like death, for there was a cry among the idlers. A
+man breathed, "My God! What's the matter?" With shaking knees Gourlay
+advanced to the bar, and, "For God's sake, Aggie," he whispered, "give
+me a Kinblythmont!"
+
+It went at a gulp.
+
+"Another!" he gasped, like a man dying of thirst, whom his first sip
+maddens for more. "Another! Another!"
+
+He had tossed the other down his burning throat when Deacon Allardyce
+came in.
+
+He knew his man the moment he set eyes on him, but, standing at the
+door, he arched his hand above his brow, as you do in gazing at a dear
+unexpected friend, whom you pretend not to be quite sure of, so
+surprised and pleased are you to see him there.
+
+"Ith it Dyohn?" he cried. "It _ith_ Dyohn!" And he toddled forward with
+outstretched hand. "Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce
+believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with
+both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that.
+And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?"
+
+"Oh, _I_'m all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a
+wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.
+
+"A wha-at?" said the Deacon, blinking in a puzzled fashion with his
+bleary old eyes.
+
+"A dram--a drink--a drop o' the Auld Kirk," said Gourlay, with a
+stertorous laugh down through his nostrils.
+
+"Hi! hi!" laughed the Deacon in his best falsetto. "Ith that what ye
+call it up in Embro? A wet, ay! Ah, well, maybe I will take a little
+drope, theeing you're tho ready wi' your offer."
+
+They drank together.
+
+"Aggie, fill me a mutchkin when you're at it," said Gourlay to the
+pretty barmaid with the curly hair. He had spent many an hour with her
+last summer in the bar. The four big whiskies he had swallowed in the
+last half-hour were singing in him now, and he blinked at her drunkenly.
+
+There was a scarlet ribbon on her dark curls, coquettish, vivid, and
+Gourlay stared at it dreamily, partly in a drunken daze, and partly
+because a striking colour always brought a musing and self-forgetting
+look within his eyes. All his life he used to stare at things dreamily,
+and come to himself with a start when spoken to. He forgot himself now.
+
+"Aggie," he said, and put his hand out to hers clumsily where it rested
+on the counter--"Aggie, that ribbon's infernal bonny on your dark hair!"
+
+She tossed her head, and perked away from him on her little high heels.
+Him, indeed!--the drunkard! She wanted none of his compliments!
+
+There were half a dozen in the place by this time, and they all stared
+with greedy eyes. "That's young Gourlay--him that was _expelled_," was
+heard, the last an emphatic whisper, with round eyes of awe at the
+offence that must have merited such punishment. "_Expelled_, mind
+ye!"--with a round shake of the head. "Watch Allardyce. We'll see fun."
+
+"What's this 'expelled' is, now?" said John Toodle, with a very
+considering look and tone in his uplifted face--"properly speaking, that
+is," he added, implying that of course he knew the word in its ordinary
+sense, but was not sure of it "properly speaking."
+
+"Flung oot," said Drucken Wabster, speaking from the fullness of his own
+experience.
+
+"Whisht!" said a third. "Here's Tam Brodie. Watch what _he_ does."
+
+The entrance of Brodie spoiled sport for the Deacon. He had nothing of
+that malicious _finesse_ that made Allardyce a genius at nicking men on
+the raw. He went straight to his work, stabbing like an awl.
+
+"Hal-lo!" he cried, pausing with contempt in the middle of the word,
+when he saw young Gourlay. "Hal-lo! _You_ here!--Brig o' the Mains,
+miss, if _you_ please.--Ay, man! God, you've been making a name up in
+Embro. I hear you stood up till him gey weel," and he winked openly to
+those around.
+
+Young Gourlay's maddened nature broke at the insult. "Damn you," he
+screamed, "leave _me_ alone, will you? I have done nothing to _you_,
+have I?"
+
+Brodie stared at him across his suspended whisky glass, an easy and
+assured contempt curling his lip. "Don't greet owre't, my bairn," said
+he, and even as he spoke John's glass shivered on his grinning teeth.
+Brodie leapt on him, lifted him, and sent him flying.
+
+"That's a game of your father's, you damned dog," he roared. "But
+there's mair than him can play the game!"
+
+"Canny, my freendth, canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine
+chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of
+handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had the fine
+stroke.
+
+Gourlay picked himself bleeding from the floor, and holding a
+handkerchief to his mouth, plunged headlong from the room. He heard the
+derisive roar that came after him stop, strangled by the sharp swing-to
+of the door. But it seemed to echo in his burning ears as he strode
+madly on through the darkness. He uncorked his mutchkin and drank it
+like water. His swollen lip smarted at first, but he drank till it was a
+mere dead lump to his tongue, and he could not feel the whisky on the
+wound.
+
+His mind at first was a burning whirl through drink and rage, with
+nothing determined and nothing definite. But thought began to shape
+itself. In a vast vague circle of consciousness his mind seemed to sit
+in the centre and think with preternatural clearness. Though all around
+was whirling and confused, drink had endowed some inner eye of the brain
+with unnatural swift vividness. Far within the humming circle of his
+mind he saw an instant and terrible revenge on Brodie, acted it, and
+lived it now. His desires were murderers, and he let them slip, gloating
+in the cruelties that hot fancy wreaked upon his enemy. Then he suddenly
+remembered his father. A rush of fiery blood seemed to drench all his
+body as he thought of what had passed between them. "But, by Heaven," he
+swore, as he threw away his empty bottle, "he won't use me like that
+another time; I have blood in me now." His maddened fancy began building
+a new scene, with the same actors, the same conditions, as the other,
+but an issue gloriously diverse. With vicious delight he heard his
+father use the same sneers, the same gibes, the same brutalities; then
+he turned suddenly and had him under foot, kicking, bludgeoning,
+stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The
+memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing
+darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and
+he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed
+fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he
+was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready for him!
+
+And his father was ready for him, for he knew what had happened at the
+inn. Mrs. Webster, on her nightly hunt for the man she had sworn to
+honour and obey, having drawn several public-houses blank, ran him to
+earth at last in the bar-room of the Red Lion. "Yes, yes, Kirsty," he
+cried, eager to prevent her tongue, "I know I'm a blagyird; but oh, the
+terrible thing that has happened!" He so possessed her with his graphic
+tale that he was allowed to go chuckling back to his potations, while
+she ran hot-foot to the Green Shutters.
+
+"Eh, poo-oor Mrs. Gourlay; and oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that
+brute Tam Brodie----" Even as she came through the door the voluble
+clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of
+Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath his black glower.
+
+"Go on!" he said, and ground it out of her.
+
+"The damned sumph!" he growled, "to let Brodie hammer him!" For a
+moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even
+dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' _him_!" he thought
+grimly. "When _I_ get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to
+hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was neither
+doubt nor wonder--"I wonder will he fling the father as he flang the
+son!" But that was the instinct of his blood, not enough to make him
+pardon John. On the contrary, here was a new offence of his offspring.
+On the morrow Barbie would be burning with another affront which he had
+put upon the name of Gourlay. He would waste no time when he came back,
+be he drunk or be he sober; he would strip the flesh off him.
+
+"Jenny," he said, "bring me the step-ladder."
+
+He would pass the time till the prodigal came back--and he was almost
+certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie?--he would pass
+the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent
+money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to
+embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out
+a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in
+dark timber, and on the rich brown rafters there were wooden pegs and
+bars, for the hanging of Gourlay's sticks and fishing-rods. His gun was
+up there, too, just above the hearth. It had occurred to him about a
+month ago, however, that a pair of curving steel rests, that would catch
+the glint from the fire, would look better beneath his gun than the dull
+pegs, where it now lay against a joist. He might as well pass the time
+by putting them up.
+
+The bringing of the steps, light though they were, was too much for
+Janet's weak frame, and she stopped in a fit of coughing, clutching the
+ladder for support, while it shook to her spasms.
+
+"Tuts, Jenny, this'll never do," said Gourlay, not unkindly. He took
+the ladder away from her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Away to
+your bed, lass. You maunna sit so late."
+
+But Janet was anxious for her brother, and wanted to sit up till he came
+home. She answered, "Yes," to her father, but idled discreetly, to
+consume the time.
+
+"Where's my hammer?" snarled Gourlay.
+
+"Is it no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I
+remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the
+front doorstep wi'. It'll be lying in the porch."
+
+"Oh, ay, as usual," said Gourlay--"as usual."
+
+"John!" she cried in alarm, "you don't mean to take down the gun, do
+ye?"
+
+"Huts, you auld fule, what are you skirling for? D'ye think I mean to
+shoot the dog? Set back on your creepie and make less noise, will ye?"
+
+Ere he had driven a nail in the rafter John came in, and sat down by the
+fire, taking up the great poker, as if to cover his nervousness. If
+Gourlay had been on the floor he would have grappled with him there and
+then. But the temptation to gloat over his victim from his present
+height was irresistible. He went up another step, and sat down on the
+very summit of the ladder, his feet resting on one of the lower rounds.
+The hammer he had been using was lying on his thigh, his hand clutched
+about its haft.
+
+"Ay, man, you've been taking a bit walk, I hear."
+
+John made no reply, but played with the poker. It was so huge, owing to
+Gourlay's whim, that when it slid through his fingers it came down on
+the muffled hearthstone with a thud like a pavior's hammer.
+
+"I'm told you saw the Deacon on your rounds? Did he compliment you on
+your return?"
+
+At the quiet sneer a lightning-flash showed John that Allardyce had
+quizzed him too. For a moment he was conscious of a vast self-pity.
+"Damn them, they're all down on me," he thought. Then a vindictive rage
+against them all took hold of him, tense, quivering.
+
+"Did you see Thomas Brodie when ye were out?" came the suave inquiry.
+
+"I saw him," said John, raising fierce eyes to his father's. He was
+proud of the sudden firmness in his voice. There was no fear in it, no
+quivering. He was beyond caring what happened to the world or him.
+
+"Oh, you saw him," roared Gourlay, as his anger leapt to meet the anger
+of his son. "And what did he say to you, may I speir?... Or maybe I
+should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.
+
+"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the
+poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay
+screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror.
+As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the
+descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up
+his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone.
+Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.
+
+At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There
+followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place;
+yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to
+another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was
+different now--it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new
+significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy
+spell.
+
+As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.
+
+John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if
+petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair
+stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp
+edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him
+from his stupor--it seemed so monstrous and horrible, sticking all by
+itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring
+vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him,
+he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear
+on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you
+micht get up!"
+
+Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her
+brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have
+killed him!"
+
+Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery
+Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang
+up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.
+
+"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed.--"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs.
+Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the
+ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak
+to me!"
+
+No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being
+close at hand; the girl, intently listening, was alone with her fear.
+All was silent in the room, and the terror deepened. Then the far-off
+sound in the house was heard once more.
+
+"Mother--mother, what's that?"
+
+"What is it, Janet?" came a feebly complaining voice; "what's wrong wi'
+ye, lassie?"
+
+Janet and her mother were sleeping in the big bedroom, Janet in the
+place that had been her father's. He had been buried through the day,
+the second day after his murder. Mrs. Gourlay had shown a feverish
+anxiety to get the corpse out the house as soon as possible; and there
+had been nothing to prevent it. "Oh," said Doctor Dandy to the gossips,
+"it would have killed any man to fall from such a height on to the sharp
+edge of yon fender. No; he was not quite dead when I got to him. He
+opened his eyes on me, once--a terrible look--and then life went out of
+him with a great quiver."
+
+Ere Janet could answer her mother she was seized with a racking cough,
+and her hoarse bark sounded hollow in the silence. At last she sat up
+and gasped fearfully, "I thocht--I thocht I heard something moving!"
+
+"It would be the wind," plained her mother; "it would just be the wind.
+John's asleep this strucken hour and mair. I sat by his bed for a lang
+while, and he prigged and prayed for a dose o' the whisky ere he won
+away. He wouldna let go my hand till he slept, puir fallow. There's an
+unco fear on him--an unco fear. But try and fa' owre," she soothed her
+daughter. "That would just be the wind ye heard."
+
+"There's nae wind!" said Janet.
+
+The stair creaked. The two women clung to each other, gripping tight
+fingers, and their hearts throbbed like big separate beings in their
+breasts. There was a rustle, as of something coming; then the door
+opened, and John flitted to the bedside with a candle in his hand. Above
+his nightshirt his bloodless face looked gray.
+
+"Mother," he panted, "there's something in my room!"
+
+"What is it, John?" said his mother, in surprise and fear.
+
+"I--I thocht it was himsell! O mother, I'm feared, I'm feared! O mother,
+I'm _feared_!" He sang the words in a hysterical chant, his voice rising
+at the end.
+
+The door of the bedroom clicked. It was not a slamming sound, only the
+door went to gently, as if some one closed it. John dropped the candle
+from his shaking hand, and was left standing in the living darkness.
+
+"_Save me!_" he screamed, and leaped into the bed, burrowing down
+between the women till his head was covered by the bedclothes. He
+trembled so violently that the bed shook beneath them.
+
+"Let me bide wi' ye!" he pleaded, with chattering jaws; "oh, let me bide
+wi' ye! I daurna gang back to that room by mysell again."
+
+His mother put her thin arm round him. "Yes, dear," she said; "you may
+bide wi' us. Janet and me wouldna let anything harm you." She placed her
+hand on his brow caressingly. His hair was damp with a cold sweat. He
+reeked of alcohol.
+
+Some one went through the Square playing a concertina. That sound of
+the careless world came strangely in upon their lonely tragedy. By
+contrast the cheerful, silly noise out there seemed to intensify their
+darkness and isolation here. Occasional far-off shouts were heard from
+roisterers going home.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay lay staring at the darkness with intent eyes. What horror
+might assail her she did not know, but she was ready to meet it for the
+sake of John. "Ye brought it on yoursell," she breathed once, as if
+defying an unseen accuser.
+
+It was hours ere he slept, but at last a heavy sough told her he had
+found oblivion. "He's won owre," she murmured thankfully. At times he
+muttered in his sleep, and at times Janet coughed hoarsely at his ear.
+
+"Janet, dinna hoast sae loud, woman! You'll waken your brother."
+
+Janet was silent. Then she choked--trying to stifle another cough.
+
+"Woman," said her mother complainingly, "that's surely an unco hoast ye
+hae!"
+
+"Ay," said Janet, "it's a gey hoast."
+
+Next morning Postie came clattering through the paved yard in his
+tackety boots, and handed in a blue envelope at the back door with a
+business-like air, his ferrety eyes searching Mrs. Gourlay's face as she
+took the letter from his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his
+curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no
+fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the
+missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay,
+Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she
+cried, "what am I to do wi' this?"
+
+She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless
+she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her
+to take an active interest in their common life (indeed he never had)
+that she was as helpless as a child.
+
+"It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?"
+
+"No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look
+at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll
+open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never
+had a heid for business."
+
+She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to
+her slower mind:--
+
+
+                                            "GLASGOW, _March 12, 18--._
+
+     "SIR,--We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that
+     the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been
+     paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless
+     you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take
+     the necessary steps to safeguard his interests.--Yours faithfully,
+
+                                       BRODIE, GURNEY, & YARROWBY."
+
+
+Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned
+palm, lying slack upon her knee.
+
+"Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does
+the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to
+us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?"
+
+"I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell
+ye of the bond?"
+
+"He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden
+passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark--to be keepit in
+the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet--and us
+was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk,
+and brought him a gey pickle bawbees--am I to be on the parish in my
+auld age? Oh, _my_ faither, _my_ faither!"
+
+Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been
+but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should
+come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet
+was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of
+her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For
+her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield
+the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief--felt but not
+considered--at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It
+seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly,
+deadened now by these quick calamities. But that _she_, that
+Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common
+charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in
+agony.
+
+"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.
+
+"Waken John," said her mother feverishly--"waken John, and we'll gang
+through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his
+papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there
+may be something gude! In the desk--in the desk--there may be something
+gude in the desk!"
+
+John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table
+where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay
+with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites
+showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was
+recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the
+great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever
+dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top
+of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said
+he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account
+was overdrawn.
+
+"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began to whimper. John
+slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the
+women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of
+his departure.
+
+He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door,
+looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was
+remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the
+hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The
+contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing,
+and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the
+heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized,
+however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the
+surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And
+that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to
+escape it.
+
+The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain.
+Damn the thing, why didn't it stop--with its monotonous tick-tack,
+tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed
+to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on
+snapping.
+
+He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to
+listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was
+a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with
+desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle
+greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like
+cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.
+
+"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at
+that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he
+had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass
+noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision
+possible only to drink-steadied nerves--a steadiness like the humming
+top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the
+courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken
+triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty
+straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of
+darkness.
+
+An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to
+ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that
+had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in
+drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting
+into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world
+seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there
+was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes
+had actually been here--and were here with him still--where he was
+locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare
+at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he
+looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air
+had become his enemy--pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To
+breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a
+shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly
+enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the
+baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock,
+frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where
+his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing,
+with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.
+
+"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes
+seeming to follow something in the room.
+
+"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.
+
+"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look,
+look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there--coming
+round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would
+ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing
+unseen.
+
+The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on
+the floor.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her
+Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and
+murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a
+child! When will Ye be satisfied?"
+
+Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it
+went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and
+was throwing tumblers at his mother!
+
+"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite
+compassion--"puir body!"
+
+"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to _her_ next,
+after killing his faither."
+
+"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you
+mean?"
+
+"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the
+drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and
+felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled
+at the sharp question.
+
+"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer
+Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy
+man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny,
+though, it seems uncanny."
+
+"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent
+wonder.
+
+"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie--"about the horrors, I
+mean. _Did_ he throw the tumbler at his mother?"
+
+"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into the kitchen on
+purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted
+to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his
+orders--his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid
+for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I
+wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The
+tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o'
+that--I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)--the
+tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the
+eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had
+stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."
+
+"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith
+day!"
+
+"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. "_He_ would have sorted him; _he_ would have
+trimmed the young ruffian!"
+
+"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely--"no doubt. But it wath scarcely
+that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a
+thlap in the face till him!"
+
+Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He
+wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires
+within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon
+grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.
+
+"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.
+
+The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no
+appeal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into
+our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company
+to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way? When
+you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything
+coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would
+restore your mind."
+
+"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with
+the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall
+in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.
+
+"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would
+calm your mind for ye."
+
+"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had
+detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me--no sleep
+for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een,
+coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"--he nodded, staring at
+her and breathing the word--"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is
+the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as
+if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness
+is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the
+lobby," he whispered hoarsely--"in the lobby when it was dark--in the
+lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither,
+though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because
+I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so
+feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered--"they're red--they're
+red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.
+
+He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in
+his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld
+against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He
+was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
+no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.
+
+"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's
+een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."
+
+"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
+And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, _my_
+faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
+throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at _me_
+frae beyond the grave."
+
+Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
+snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
+colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
+across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
+to save.
+
+"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
+drink gars you think sae."
+
+"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
+drink--it helps a body."
+
+"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
+you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
+nonsense!"
+
+"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
+House with the Green Shutters."
+
+"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"
+
+She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
+gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
+of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
+murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
+feet, his head resting on her knee.
+
+They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
+from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
+town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
+in the street.
+
+Gradually all other sounds died away.
+
+"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
+neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."
+
+"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.
+
+Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift--a
+gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
+sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
+a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
+and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.
+
+"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring
+at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark
+of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert
+Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"
+
+"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't
+it?--Oh, what's that?"
+
+It was John talking in his sleep.
+
+"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every
+phrase--"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the
+voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if
+the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's
+foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist--and een
+like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ...
+they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite
+distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.
+
+The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far
+away.
+
+That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond
+the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it
+all demoniac. The women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their
+own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth.
+But hell seemed with them in the room.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something
+monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support,
+and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no,
+he was her son.
+
+"Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring
+from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear--"mother,
+suppose--suppose he said that before anybody else!"
+
+"Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye?
+how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so
+they would! They would hang _my_ boy--they would take and hang _my_
+boy!"
+
+They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on
+his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.
+
+"Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."
+
+"I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put
+her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten
+her.
+
+"Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something.
+And you and me can aye thole."
+
+In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and
+placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off
+his drunken madness through the night.
+
+"John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie.
+Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away--will ye na?--and then thae een
+ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see
+the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she pleaded, "if
+there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will
+ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a
+teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye
+wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of
+Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk
+would stand in their doors to look at me, man--they would that--they
+would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun
+slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon
+the brae it would be"--and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future
+which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that
+roused her.
+
+Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his
+leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat,
+as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his
+bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.
+
+"Where's _he_ off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom
+o' this, if a body could find it out!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry.
+Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her
+home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would
+take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it
+through the room, but stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor,
+would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long
+afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for?... Janet, lassie, what
+was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same
+reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something
+to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything
+she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at
+an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with
+the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork
+quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she
+spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the
+quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her
+head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she
+would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to
+tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often
+she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room,
+open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became
+afraid of her mother.
+
+Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was
+watching her--an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her
+breast--a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude
+them too.
+
+"What can _she_ have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.
+
+At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would
+be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her
+son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that
+was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in
+a restless vacancy.
+
+She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on
+the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere--on the table,
+and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the
+autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink
+was wafted from the door.
+
+"John!" she panted, in surprise--"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"
+
+"Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."
+
+"And the bond, John--did ye speir about the bond?"
+
+"Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so
+weak did she feel through her limbs.
+
+"John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do,
+that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"
+
+"No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me
+a'where--nicht and day."
+
+"Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward
+seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he
+said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?"
+she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.
+
+"Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting redder and redder. It's
+not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the
+curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they
+wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle
+went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the
+room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were
+there too--glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering
+at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes;
+but they followed me--they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and
+stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I
+was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother;
+I wa-as _not_. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye
+keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses
+opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky
+has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.
+
+"Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een
+should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody
+but me," he said dully--"never to onybody but me."
+
+His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both
+hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and
+kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's
+gey queer; it's gey queer."
+
+She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was
+trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld
+her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth,
+with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together
+in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over
+with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the
+aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.
+
+For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the
+room above.
+
+"There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three
+shillings."
+
+It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a
+need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of
+his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this
+was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him
+greater than himself.
+
+"There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and
+flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.
+
+She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the
+fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was,
+"Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a
+flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last
+few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of
+it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling
+flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.
+
+John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she
+sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did
+not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was
+callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was
+ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and
+older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them
+apart to dree a separate weird.
+
+In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their
+dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end;
+they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall
+asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of
+herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate--as was he--and
+could think of nothing.
+
+Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of
+whisky.
+
+It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and
+dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance.
+There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the
+earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence.
+John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a
+tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like
+a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At
+word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads,
+keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste,
+not waiting till he passed ere they peeped--which was their usual way.
+Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him
+advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind
+him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not
+see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and
+through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round
+him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.
+
+He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle
+openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked
+her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in
+her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for
+himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the
+puckers in her seam.
+
+John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp _plunk_ of a
+cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy
+thud like a fall.
+
+To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear,
+not her mind. The world around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so
+that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to
+burst beside her.
+
+In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down
+and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had
+bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.
+
+"I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too
+ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"
+
+"John?" questioned her mother--"John?... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely
+recalling, "ou ay. I think--I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."
+
+"The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna
+thole the darkness!"
+
+"John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"
+
+There was a silence of the grave.
+
+She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal
+like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.
+
+Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the
+wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead
+across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a
+smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that
+whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the
+poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was
+lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly
+up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear,
+as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.
+
+"There's twa thirds of the poison left," commented Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+"Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's
+deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"
+
+"Ay, he's deid," said Mrs. Gourlay, staring. "He winna be hanged now!"
+
+"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do?
+what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"
+
+"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly--"the
+neebours! What have _we_ to do with the neebours? We are by
+ourselves--the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours.
+Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly.
+"Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something
+... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.
+
+Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother
+killed sorrow with a new fear.
+
+"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye
+mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in
+his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely,
+staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what
+it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what
+it was for."
+
+"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't."
+
+"Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed--I kenna weel what it was, but it
+gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten
+awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head
+flung back in horror and disgust.
+
+"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"
+
+"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and
+mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But
+I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let
+onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi'
+its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe
+awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.'
+I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it seemed to whisper I had
+a freend that nane o' them kenned o'--a freend that would deliver me!
+The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was
+br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't."
+
+"O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes
+raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered
+and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect
+her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her
+own.
+
+But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and
+was staring fixedly.
+
+"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should
+sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John
+gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what
+was it I was thinking of?"
+
+"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.
+
+"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through
+was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're
+young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew,
+or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was
+that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now--eh, Jenny?
+I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she
+said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss
+Richmond o' Tenshillingland."
+
+She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had
+flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble
+recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten
+what she said.
+
+"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my
+fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I
+canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled
+me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was
+hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she
+added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame
+trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi'
+John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints
+enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna
+want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither
+came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after
+that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist
+wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me;
+it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected
+my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll
+be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would
+be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken
+_you_ were just the same; I didna ken _you_ were just the same." She
+looked. Her mother was not listening.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed
+with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was
+regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o'
+the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"
+
+There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs.
+Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac--the skirl of a
+human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet
+stared at her in speechless fear.
+
+"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"
+
+"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+"Mother!" cried Janet.
+
+"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife
+never will. _You_ may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the
+poorhouse, but _I_'ll follow my boy."
+
+The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers,
+when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet
+that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be
+left alone.
+
+"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"
+
+"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.
+
+She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First
+Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from
+the pulpit, "the thirteent'--o' the First Corinthians:"--
+
+"_'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
+charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal._
+
+"_'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
+and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
+mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.'_"
+
+Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of
+madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom
+that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no
+more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become
+one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function
+to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her
+feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded
+entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac
+power.
+
+"_'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
+vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,_
+
+"_'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
+provoked, thinketh no evil;_
+
+"_'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;_
+
+"_'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
+all things._
+
+"_'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
+fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
+knowledge, it shall vanish away._
+
+"_'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part._
+
+"_'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
+shall be done away.'_"
+
+Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large
+blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more
+than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from
+beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death,
+but her mother's inspiration held her.
+
+"_'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest
+of these is charity.'_"
+
+Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen"
+rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling
+Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before
+death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as
+sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.
+
+They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed
+it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was
+her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked
+at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the
+parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the
+poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give
+themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as
+if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs.
+Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.
+
+She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she
+ceased to be above humanity.
+
+"Janet," she said wistfully, "_I_ have had a heap to thole! Maybe the
+Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."
+
+"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother
+weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"
+
+"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went
+into the parlour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of
+grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an
+ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in
+him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow--the
+shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling
+temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got
+by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further.
+Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie
+complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the
+other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my
+face. And that was his only answer!"
+
+Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard
+every morning, right up to the back door.
+
+"A heap o' correspondence _thir_ mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy
+little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they
+took the letters from his hand.
+
+On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie
+was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the
+Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and
+yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except
+where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling
+off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and
+left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.
+
+From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the
+pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no
+smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.
+
+Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green
+Shutters.
+
+"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.
+
+"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment,
+"sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.
+
+"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel
+acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."
+
+"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.
+
+"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the
+clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie
+and blabbed it--he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his
+mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."
+
+Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the
+House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace,
+beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.
+
+"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"
+
+"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.
+
+"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.
+
+"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the
+country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts.
+Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant;
+"it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should
+get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news.
+
+"_Nut_ me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his head as who should
+conduct of that kind a thousand miles off--"_nut_ me, Post! I'll no
+breathe it to a living soul."
+
+The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy
+under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick
+up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.
+
+He knocked, but there was no answer.
+
+"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their
+backs, it seems."
+
+He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out
+hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited
+he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled
+little place was curiously still.
+
+At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the
+door opened, and let him enter.
+
+The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large
+lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the
+sunshine.
+
+"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder
+everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left
+the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now,
+I'm thinking!"
+
+A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie
+crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot
+would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women
+must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an
+uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot
+till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.
+
+"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"
+
+They did not hear, it seemed.
+
+"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"
+
+At last--partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry--he opened
+the door of the parlour. "_Oh, my God!_" he screamed, leaping back, and
+with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry
+to be gone.
+
+He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was
+informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were
+"sequestered."
+
+"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes?
+What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"
+
+The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and
+covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.
+
+"Speak!" said a man solemnly.
+
+"They have--they have--they have a' killed themselves," stammered the
+postman, pointing to the Gourlays.
+
+Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the
+road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man
+dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the
+Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch
+of the dawn.
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS***
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