Hatter's Castle

"Yeth?" he now lisped to Mrs. Brodie.

"You lend money," she gasped.

"Vot you vont to pawn?" he thrust at her. Although his voice was gentle, she was startled at such crudity of expression.

"I've nothing here now. I wanted to borrow forty pounds."

He glanced sideways at her, regarding her rusty, unfashionable clothing, her rough hands and broken nails, the tarnish on the thin, worn, gold band of her solitary ring, her ludicrous battered hat missing, with his glittering eyes, no item of her sad and worthless attire. He thought she must be mad. Caressing his fleshy, curved nose between his finger and thumb he said thoughtfully:

"Zat es a lot of monesh. Ve must ave security. You must bring gold or jewels if you vish to raise zat amount."

She should, of course, have had jewels! In her novels these were the touchstone of a lady's security, but, apart from her wedding ring, she had only her mother's silver watch which she might, with good fortune, have pledged for fifteen shillings and, realising something of the insufficiency of her position she faltered:

"You would not lend it on my furniture or or on note of hand. I saw in the papers some people do that, do they not?"

He continued to rub his nose, considering, beneath his benignly tallowed brow, that these Gentile women were all alike scraggy and worn and stupid. Did she not realise that his business was conducted on the basis of shillings, not of pounds? And that, though he could produce the sum she required, he would require security and interest which he had realised at his initial survey to be utterly beyond her? He shook his head, gently but finally, and said, without ceasing to be conciliatory, using indeed, to that end his deprecating hands:

"Ve don't do zat beesness. Try a bigger firm say en ze ceety. Oh, ye! Zey might do et. Zey have more monesh zan a poor man like me."

She regarded him with a palpitating heart in stunned, humiliated silence, having braved the danger and suffered the indignity of entering his wretched hovel without achieving her purpose. Yet she was obliged to accept his decision she had no appeal and she was out once more in the dirty street amongst the puddles, the littered tin cans and the garbage in the gutter, without having procured even one of the forty pounds she required. She was utterly abased and humiliated yet, as she walked quickly away, she appreciated with a growing anxiety that, though she had achieved nothing, Matt would at this very moment be waiting in immediate anticipation of the arrival of the money. Lowering her umbrella over her face to avoid detection, she hastened her steps feverishly towards home.

Nessie awaited her in a small imitation apron, triumphantly playing the housewife over her neat pile of clean crockery, preparing herself for her just reward of sweetmeats, but Mamma thrust her roughly aside.

"Another time, Nessie," she cried. "Don't bother me! I'll get you them another time." She entered the scullery and plunged her hand into the box where old copies of newspapers and periodicals, brought home by Brodie, were kept for household purposes, chiefly the kindling of fires. Removing a pile of these, she spread them out upon the stone floor and flung herself before them on her knees, as though she grovelled before some false god. She hurriedly ran her eye over several of these sheets until, with an inarticulate cry of relief, she found what she sought. What had that wretched Jew said ? "Try a bigger firm," he had told her, in his indecently garbled English, and, accordingly, she chose the largest advertisement in the column, which informed her with many glowing embellishments that Adam McSevitch a genuine Scotsman lent 5 to 500, without security, on note of hand alone; that country clients would be attended promptly at their own homes, and, memorable feature, that the strictest and most inviolable secrecy would be preserved nay, insisted upon between the principal and his client.

Mrs. Brodie breathed more calmly as, without removing her hat or coat, she rose to her feet, hurried to the kitchen and sat down and composed a short, but carefully worded letter, asking Adam McSevitch to attend her at her home on Monday forenoon at eleven o'clock. She sealed the letter with the utmost precaution, then dragged her tired limbs out of the house and into the town once more. In her haste the constant pain in her side throbbed more intensely, but she did not allow it to interfere with her progress and by half-past three she succeeded in reaching the general post office, where she bought a stamp and carefully posted her letter. She then composed and dispatched a wire to "Brodie: Poste Restante: Marseilles", saying,

"Money arrives Monday sure. Love. Mamma." The cost of the message left her stricken, but though she might have reduced the cost by omitting the last two words, she could not force herself to do so. Matt must be made to understand, above everything, that it was she who, with her own hands, had sent the wire, and that she, his mother, loved him.

A sense of comfort assuaged her on her way home; the feeling that she had accomplished something and that on Monday she would assuredly obtain the money, reassured her, yet nevertheless, as the day dragged slowly to its end, she began to grow restless and impatient. The consolation obtained from her definite action gradually wore of! and left her sad, inert and helpless, obsessed by distressing doubts. She fluctuated between extremes of indecision and terror; felt that she would not obtain the money, then that she would be surely discovered; questioned her ability to carry through the undertaking; fled in her mind from the fact, as from an unreal and horrid nightmare, that she of all people should be attempting to deal with money-lenders.

Sunday dragged past her in an endless succession of interminable minutes, during the passage of which she glanced at the clock a hundred times, as if she might thus hasten the laboured transit of time and so terminate her own anxiety and the painful expectancy of her son. During the slow hours of the tardily passing day, she formed and reformed the simple plan she had made, trembled to think how

she would address Mr. McSevitch, was convinced that he would treat her as a lady, then felt certain that he would not, reread his advertisement secretly, was cheered by his comforting offer to lend ^500, then shocked by the amazing effrontery of it. When she retired eventually to rest, her head whirled with confusion, and she dreamed she was overwhelmed by an avalanche of golden pieces.

On Monday morning she could hardly maintain her normal demeanour, she shook so palpably with apprehension, but mercifully her anxiety was not detected and she sighed with relief when first Nessie, and then Brodie, disappeared through the front door. She now had only Grandma Brodie to dispose of, for from the moment she had written her letter she had fully appreciated the obvious danger of having the inquisitive, garrulous and hostile old woman about the house at the time fixed for the interview. The danger that she might stumble upon the entire situation was too great to be risked, and Mamma, with unthought-of cunning, prepared to attack her upon her weakest point. At half-past nine therefore, when she took up to the old woman her usual breakfast of porridge and milk, she did not, as was her custom, immediately leave the room, but instead sat down upon the bed and regarded its aged occupant with an assumed and exaggerated expression of concern.

"Grandma," she began, "you never seem to get out the house these days at all. You look real peaky to me the now. Why don't you take a bit stroll this morning?" The old dame poised the porridge spoon in her yellow claw and cast a suspicious eye upon Mamma from under her white, frilled nightcap.

"And where would I stroll to on a winter's day?" she asked distrustfully. "Do ye want me to get inflammation of the lungs so as you can get rid o' me?"

Mamma forced a bright laugh, an exhibition of gaiety which it tortured her heart to perform.

"It's a lovely day!" she cried. "And do ye know what I'm goin' to do with ye? I'm just going to give you a florin, to go and get yourself some Deesides and some oddfellows."

Grandma looked at the other with a dubious misgiving, sensing immediately a hidden motive but tempted by the extreme richness of the enticement. In her senile greediness she loved particularly the crisp biscuits known as "Deeside"; she doted upon those large, flat, round sweets so inappropriately named oddfellows; in her own room she endeavoured, always, to maintain a stock of each of these delicacies in two separate tins inside her top drawer; but now, as Mamma was well aware, her supplies were exhausted. It was a tempting offer!

"Where's the money?" she demanded craftily. Without speaking, Mamma revealed the shining florin in the middle of her palm.

The crone blinked her bleared eyes at it, thinking with rapid, calculating glances that there would be enough for the Deesides, the oddfellows, and maybe a wee dram over and above.

"I micht as weel take a dauner, then," she muttered slowly, with the semblance of a yawn to indicate indifference.

"That's right, Grandma I'll help ye," encouraged Mamma as, trembling with an exultation she feared to display, realising that so far victory was hers, she assisted the other out of bed. Before the old woman could have time to change her mind, she wrapped her in her voluminous clothing, tied a multitude of tapes, drew on the elastic-sided boots, brought her the jet-spangled bonnet, held out and enveloped her in the black, beaded cape. Then she presented her with her false teeth upon the charger of a cracked saucer, handed her the two-shilling piece and, having thus finally supplied her with the weapons and the sinews of the war about to be waged on the Deesides, she led the old woman down the stairs and saw her go tottering out along the road, before the clock showed half -past ten. Exercising the utmost dispatch, she now made all the beds, washed the dishes, tidied the house, made herself, in her own phrase, decent, and sat down

breathlessly at the parlour window to await her visitor.

As the hands of the marble timepiece on the parlour mantelpiece drew near to eleven, Mamma shook with trepidation, as though she expected a cab to dash up to the house and the front bell to ring, simultaneously with the first stroke of the hour. As the clock eventually struck eleven strokes and was silent, she wondered if Mr, McSevitch would bring the money in golden sovereigns in a bag, or present it to her in immaculate notes; then, as the hands indicated five minutes, ten minutes, then fifteen minutes past the appointed time and still no one came, she grew restless. If her visitor did not come at the hour she had specially indicated, all her carefully thought-out arrangements would go for nothing and she shuddered to think what would happen if he arrived during the dinner hour, when her husband would be in the house.

At twenty minutes to twelve she had almost abandoned hope when, suddenly, she observed two strange gentlemen appear opposite the house. They arrived on foot and carried no bag, but were dressed exactly alike, in a manner which Mrs. Brodie felt might represent the peak of elegance, the most dashing summit of contemporary male fashion. Their Derby hats, that curled till brim met crown, were tilted rakishly above glossy side whiskers; their very short jackets were tight to the waist, with long rolling lapels, so that the chest of each had the appearance of swelling forward like that of a pouter pigeon, whilst the curve of the lower part of the back swept protrudingly, but equally enticingly, in an obverse direction; their check trousers, maintaining an agreeable looseness in the upper portions, clung more sympathetically to the figure as they descended, and terminated finally with the tightness of spats around small, inconspicuous, but none the less shining, shoes. Each wore a large, heavy watch chain high up across his spotted, fancy waistcoat whilst, even at such a distance as that from which she viewed them, she noted upon their fingers a coruscation of jewelled rings which sparkled and flashed with every fluent movement. No strangers of such composed address or brilliant plumage had, in the memory of Mrs. Brodie, ever flitted down upon the town of Levenford and, with a beating heart and a fascinated eye, she realised instinctively although her anticipation had visualised a patriarchal gentleman in an Inverness cloak with a bluff manner and a benevolent shaggy beard that these men of the world were the emissaries of McSevitch genuine Scotsman.

From the middle of the roadway they looked knowingly at the house, as though their eyes, having embraced and criticised every architectural feature of its outer aspect, bored like gimlets through the hard stone walls, examining the inadequacies of its inner structure and contemptuously discovering a host of deficiencies hitherto concealed even from its occupants.

At length, after a prolonged, impassive stare, one of the two turned his head slowly and, out o the corner of his mouth, said something to his companion, who on his part pushed his hat farther back upon his head, veiled his protuberant eyeballs and laughed with an experienced air.

Like a sudden, startled victim of diplopia, Mrs. Brodie now saw them advance simultaneously, proceed through the gateway abreast, saw them glance in unison at every stone on the courtyard, and, as they paused before the cannon in front of the porch, she shrank teck behind the concealment of her curtain.

"Bit o' junk that, but solid stuff brass by the look on it," she heard one say, as he fingered his large, pearly tie-pin. The other flicked the gun barrel with his finger nail, as though he wished to see if it might ring true, but immediately he withdrew the finger and thrust it hastily into his mouth, "Ow! It's bloody hard, anyway," floated in through the half-open window towards Mamma's astounded ears.

The bell rang. Mechanically she went to answer it and, as she threw open the door, she was confronted by two identically competent smiles which met and returned her shrinking gaze with a dazzling exhibition of gold and ivory.

"Mrs. Brodie?" said one, extinguishing his smile.

"You wrote?" said the other, doing likewise.

"Are you from Mr. McSevitch?" she stammered.

"Sons," said the first easily.

"Partners," said the second gracefully.

Overcome by the ease of their manners, but none the less shaken by a faint misgiving, she hesitatingly took them into the parlour. Immediately their sharp gaze, which had beeu glued upon her, became detached and darted around every object in the room in abstracted yet eager estimation, until finally, as the orbits of their inspection intersected, their glances met significantly and one addressed the other in a tongue unknown to Mrs. Brodie. The language was strange, but the tone familiar and, even as she winced at its disparaging note, her cheeks coloured with a faint indignation, as she thought that such words as these were, at least, not genuine Scottish. Then, alternately, they began to bombard her.

"You want forty pounds, lady ?"

"On the quiet without any one knowin' not evert the old man, lady."

"Been havin' a little flutter, perhaps?"

"What do you want it for, lady?"

Their well-informed glances devastated her as they moved their fingers, sparkling their rings affluently, demonstrating agreeably that they had the money, that she it was who desired it. She was at their mercy.

When they had drawn everything from her regarding the house, her husband, herself, and her family, they exchanged a nod and, as one man, arose. They toured the parlour, then tramped loudly and indifferently through the house, fingering, handling, stroking, twiddling and weighing everything in it, peering, poking and prying into every room with Mamma at their heels like a debased and submissive dog. When they had reviewed the most intimate details of the life of the household as manifested to them in the interior of cupboards, the inside of wardrobes, the contents of drawers, and made her blush painfully as, penetrating even to her bedroom, they regarded with a knowing air the space beneath her bed, they at last descended the stairs, looking everywhere but at her. She could see refusal in their faces.

"I'm afraid it's no good, lady. Your furniture's poor stuff, heavy, old-fashioned; won't sell!" said one at last, with an odious show of candour. "We might lend you two tens on it or say even twenty-four pounds. Yes, say twenty-five at the outside limit and on our own terms of interest," he continued, as he produced a quill tooth-pick from his waistcoat pocket and assisted his calculations by, its assiduous application. "What say?"

"Yes, lady," said the other; "times is bad these days and you're not what you might call a good loan. We're always polite to a lady funny the number of ladies we does business with but you haven't got the security."

"But my things are all good," quavered Mamma in a faint voice; "they've been handed down in the family."

"You couldn't give them away now, ma'am," the gentleman with the toothpick assured her, shaking his head sadly. "No, not even in a downright gift. We've reached the limit, the fair limit. How about that twenty-five pounds of good money?"

"I must have forty pounds," said Mamma weakly; "anything else is no good." She had set the fixed sum in her mind and nothing short of its complete achievement would satisfy her.

"You've nothing else to show, lady ?" said one insinuatingly. "Funny what you ladies will shake out when you're put to it. You've nothing up your sleeve for the last?"

"Only the kitchen," replied Mrs. Brodie humbly, as she threw open the door, loath to allow them to depart, desiring despairingly to entice them into the plain apartment for a last consideration of her appeal. They went in, following her reluctantly, disdainfully, but immediately their attention was riveted by a picture which hung conspicuously upon the wall, framed in a wood of mottled, light yellow walnut. It was an engraving entitled "The Harvesters", was marked

First Proof, and signed J. Bell.

"Is that yours, lady?" said one, after a significant pause.

"Yes," said Mrs. Brodie, "it's mine. It was my mother's before me. That small pencil sketch in the corner of the margin has been much admired."

They talked in low tones before the picture, peered at it through a glass, rubbed it, pawed it possessively.

"Would you like to sell this, lady ? Of course, it's nothing to make a noise on oh, dear, no! but we would offer you yes five pounds for it," said the second eventually, in an altered, ingratiating tone.

"I can sell nothing," whispered Mamma. "Mr. Brodie would notice it at once."

"Say ten pounds then, lady," exclaimed the first, with a great show of magnanimity.

"No! No!" returned Mamma, "But if it's worth something, will ye not lend me the rest of the money on it? If it's worth something to buy, it's surely worth something to lend on." She waited in a fever of anxiety, hanging upon the inflection of their voices, upon their quick, expressive gestures, upon the very lift of their eyebrows while they held colloquy together upon her picture. At last, after prolonged argument, they agreed.

"You win, then, lady," said one, "We'll lend you the forty pounds, but you'll have to give us your bond on the picture and the rest of the furniture as well."

"We're giving the money away, lady," said the other, "but we'll do it for your sake. We see you need the money bad; but you must understand that if you don't pay up, that picture and your furniture belongs to us."

She nodded dumbly, feverishly, filled with a choking, unendurable sense of a hard-fought victory. They went back into the parlour and sat down at the table, where she signed the endless papers that they produced for her, appending her signature where they indicated with a blind, reckless indifference. She understood that she would have to repay three pounds a month for two years, but she cared nothing for that and, as they counted out the money in crisp pound notes, she took it like a woman in a dream, and, like a sleepwalker, she showed them to the door. In spite of everything, she had got the money for Matt.

Early that afternoon she wired the money. In the overwrought state of her imagination she seemed to see the clean bank notes actually rushing through the blue to the salvation of her son and, when they had gone, for the first time in three days she breathed peacefully and a mantle of tranquillity descended upon her.

VI

ON the following morning Brodie sat at breakfast, cold, moody, detached, the two, sharp, vertical furrows lately become more intensely grooved marking the centre of his forehead between his sunk eyes like cicatriced wounds and giving to his gloomy visage a perpetual air of brooding perplexity. Caught in the unrelieved severity of the pale morning light, his unwary countenance, relieved

of observation, seemed to justify the idle remark uttered in the Paxton home that now he was beyond his depth, and from behind that low wall of his harassed forehead, the confusion of his mind seemed to obtrude itself so forcibly that even as he sat still and quiet at table, he appeared to flounder helplessly with all the impotent brute strength of a harpooned whale. His diminutive intellect, so disproportionate to his gigantic body, could not direct him towards safety and while he lashed out in the most mistaken directions in his efforts to avoid a final catastrophe, he still saw disaster steadily closing in upon him.

He, of course, knew nothing of the wire or of Mamma's action on the previous day. Mercifully, he was not aware of the unauthorised feet that had so boorishly tramped through his domain, yet his own worries and misfortunes were more than sufficient to render his temper like tinder, ready to ignite and flame furiously at the first spark of provocation. Now, having finished his porridge, he awaited

with ill-concealed impatience his special cup of coffee which Mrs. Brodie was pouring out for him at the scullery stove.

This morning cup of coffee was one of the minor tribulations of Mamma's harassed existence, for although she made tea admirably she rarely succeeded in making coffee to Brodie's exacting taste, which demanded that it must be freshly brewed, freshly poured, and steaming hot. This innocent beverage had become a convenient peg upon which to hand any matutinal grievance, and most mornings he complained bitterly about it, on any or every pretext. It was too sweet, not strong enough, had too many grounds in it; it burned his tongue or was full of the straggling skin of boiled milk. No matter how she made it the result was declared unsatisfactory. The very action of carrying his cup to the table became to her a penance as, knowing the tremor of her hand, he insisted further that the cup must be brimming full and not a single drop must be spilled upon the saucer. This last transgression was the most deadly that she could commit, and when it occurred he would wilfully allow the drop from the bottom of the cup to fall upon his coat, and would then roar:

"Ye careless besom, look what you've done! I can't keep a suit of clothes for your feckless, dirty ways."

Now, as she entered with the cup, he flung at her an irascible look for having kept him waiting exactly nine seconds, a look which developed into a sneering stare as, maintaining the brimming cup erect and the saucer inviolate by a tense effort of her slightly trembling hand, she walked slowly from the scullery door to the table. She had almost achieved her objective when suddenly, with a frantic cry, she dropped everything upon the floor and clutched her left side with both hands. Brodie gazed with stupefied rage at the broken crockery, the spilled coffee, and, last of all, at her distorted figure, writhing before him amongst the wreckage on the floor. He shouted. She did not hear his bellow, she was so pierced by the sudden spasm of pain which transfixed her side like a white-hot skewer from which burning ripples of agony emanated and thrilled through her flesh. For a moment she suffered intensely, then gradually, as though this awful cautery cooled, the waves of pain grew less and with a bloodless face she rose to her feet and stood before her husband, heedless at that instant of her enormity in upsetting his coffee. Relief at her emancipation from pain gave her tongue an unusual liberty.

"Oh! James," she gasped. "That was far the worst I've ever had. It nearly finished me. I really think I should see the doctor about it. I get the pain so much now and I sometimes feel a wee, hard lump in my side." Then she broke off, becoming aware suddenly of his high, affronted dignity.

"Is that a fact now?" he sneered. "We're goin' to run to the doctor for every touch o' the bellyache that grips us, we can so well afford it! And we can afford to scale the good drink on the floor and smash the china! Never mind the waste! Never mind my breakfast; just smash, smash a' the time." His voice rose with each word, then changed suddenly to a sneering tone. "Maybe ye would like a consultation of a' the doctors in the town? They might be able to find something

wrang wi' ye if they brought round a' their learned books and put their empty heads together about ye! Who was it ye would be speirin' to see now?"

"They say that Renwick is clever," she muttered unthinkingly.

"What!" he shouted. "Ye talk o' goin' to that snipe that fell foul o' me last year. Let me see you try it!"

"I don't want to see anybody, Father," cringed Mamma; "it was just the awfu' pain that's been grippin' me off and on for so long; but it's away now and I'll just not bother."

He was thoroughly infuriated.

"Not bother! I've seen you botherin'! Don't think I havena seen you with a' your dirty messin'. It's been enough to scunner a man and I'll put up wi' it no longer. Ye can take yersel' off to another room. From to-night onwards ye'll get out of my bed. Ye can move out o' my road, ye fusty old faggot!"

She understood that he was casting her out of their marriage bed, the bed in which she had at first lain beside him in love, where she had borne for him her children. For nearly thirty years of her life it had been her resting place; in sorrow and in sickness her weary limbs had stretched themselves upon that bed. She did not think of the relief it would afford her to have her own, quiet seclusion at nights, away from his sulky oppression, to retire to Mary's old room and be alone in peace; she felt only the cutting disgrace of being thrown aside like a used and worn-out vessel. Her face burned with shame as though he had made some gross, obscene remark to her, but, as she looked deeply into his eyes, all that she said was:

"It's as you say, James! Will I make ye some more coffee?"

"No! Keep your demned coffee. Til do without any breakfast," he bawled. Although he had already eaten a large bowl of porridge and milk, he felt that she had wilfully defrauded him out of his breakfast, that he was again suffering because of her incompetence, her malingering assumption of illness. "I wouldna be surprised if ye tried to starve us next, with your blasted scrimpin'," he shouted finally, as he pranced out of the house.

His black resentment continued all the way to the shop, and although his mind left the incident, the sense of injustice still rankled, while the thought of the day before him did nothing to restore his serenity. Perry had now left him, amidst a storm of contumely and reproaches no doubt; but he had nevertheless gone and Brodie had been able to substitute for his rare and willing assistant only a small boy who merely opened the shop and ran the errands. Apart from the

loss of trade through the defection of the competent Perry, the onus of supporting the entire work of the shop now lay upon his broad but unaccustomed shoulders, and even to his dull comprehension it became painfully evident that he had entirely lost the knack of attending to such people as now drifted into his shop. He hated and despised the work, he never knew where to find things, he was too irritable, too impatient, altogether too big for this occupation.

He had, also, begun to find that his better class customers, upon whose social value he had so prided himself, were insufficient to keep his business going; he realised with growing dismay that they patronised him only upon odd occasions and were invariably neglectful, in quite a gentlemanly fashion, of course, of the settlement of their indebtedness to him. In the old days he had allowed these accounts to run on for two, three, or even four years, secure in the knowledge that he would eventually be paid; they would see, he had told himself in a lordly fashion, that James Brodie was not a petty tradesman grasping for his money, but a gentleman like themselves, who could afford to wait another gentleman's convenience. Now, however, with the acute drop in the cash income of the business, he was in such need of ready money that these large, outstanding accounts of the various county families became a source of great anxiety, and although he had sent out, with much laborious auditing and unaccustomed reckoning, a complete issue of them, apart from a few including the Latta account which were paid to him immediately, the entire bundle might have been posted into the middle of the Leven for all the result that immediately accrued to him. He fully realised that it was useless to send them out again, that these

people would pay in their time and not in his; the mere fact that he had already requested settlement with an unusual urgency might possibly estrange them from him altogether.

His own debts to the few conservative, wholesale houses whom he favoured had grown far beyond their usual limits. Never a good business man, his usual method had been to order goods when, and as, he pleased, and to pay no heed to amounts, invoices, or accounts until the dignified representative of each house visited him at recogirised intervals, in the accepted and friendly manner consonant between two firms of standing and reputation. Then, after a polite and cordial conversation upon the topics of the moment, Brodie would go to the small, green safe sunk in the wall of his office, unlock it grandly, and produce a certain canvas bag.

"Well," he would remark imposingly, "what is our obligation to-day?”

The other would murmur deprecatingly and, as if urged against his will to present the bill, would produce his handsome pocketbook, rustle importantly amongst its papers and reply suavely:

"Well, Mr. Brodie, since you wish it, here is your esteemed account;" whereupon Brodie, with one glance at the total, would count out a heap of sovereigns and silver from the bag in settlement.

While he might more easily have paid by cheque, he disdained this as a mean, pettifogging instrument and preferred the magnanimous action of disbursing the clean, bright coins as the worthier manner of the settlement of a gentleman's debts. "That's money," he had once said in answer to a question, "and value for value. What's the point o' writin' on a small slip of printed paper. Let them use it that likes it but the braw, bright siller was good enough for my forbears, and it'll be good enough for me." Then, when it was stamped and signed, he would negligently stuff the other's receipt in his waist-coat pocket and the two gentlemen would shake hands warmly and part with mutual expressions of regard. That, considered Brodie, was how a man of breeding conducted such affairs.

To-day, however, although he expected a visit of this nature, he took no proud satisfaction from the thought but, instead, dreaded it. Mr. Soper himself, of Bilsland and Soper, Ltd., the largest and most conservative firm with whom he dealt, was coming to see him and, contrary to the usual procedure, he had actually been advised of this call by letter, an unexpected and unwonted injury to his pride. He well knew the reason of such a step, but nevertheless he felt the full bitterness of the blow to his self-esteem; anticipated too, with sombre dismay, the interview which was in prospect.

When he reached the shop he sought to lose his unhappy forebodings in the work of the day, but there was little to occupy him; business was at a standstill. Yet, attempting some show of activity, he walked cumbersomely about the shop with the ponderous movements of a restless leviathan. This spurious display did not deceive even the small errand boy who, peering fearfully through the door of the back shop, saw Brodie stop every few moments whilst in the midst of some unnecessary operation and gaze blankly in front of him, heard him mutter to himself in a vague yet intense abstraction. With the street urchin's cunning he guessed that his employer was on the verge of disaster and he felt, with a strong measure of relief, that it would not be long before he was obliged to set about finding for himself another, and a more congenial, situation.

After an interminable, dragging hiatus, during which it seemed as if the entire hours of the forenoon would pass without a customer appearing, a man entered whom Brodie recognised as an old customer. Thinking that here was some one who, if not important, was at least loyal, he advanced with a great show of hearti-

ness, and greeted him.

"Well, my man," he said, "what can we do for you?"

The other, somewhat taken aback by such cordiality, asserted laconically that he only required a cloth cap, a plain ordinary cap like the one he had purchased some time before, a grey check, size six and seven-eighths.

"Like the one you're wearing?" asked Brodie encouragingly.

The other looked uncomfortable.

"Naw," he replied, "this is a different yin; this is ma Sunday bonnet."

"Let me see," said Brodie, and struck by a dim idea he put out his hand, suddenly removed the cap from the other's head, and looked at it. Inside, on the shiny sateen lining, was stamped M. H. & H. the hated symbol of his rival next door. Immediately his face flooded with angry resentment and he flung the cap back at its owner.

"So!" he cried. "Ye’ve been goin' next door for your braw and fancy stuff, have ye? To wear on Sundays, forsooth! And then ye've the impertinence to come in to me for a plain, ordinary bonnet after ye've given them the best o' your trade. Do ye think I'm goin' to take their leavin's? Go back and buy a' the trashy rubbish in their waxworks museum. I'll not serve ye for a pound note."

The other looked exceedingly discomfited. "Aw! Mr. Brodie. I didna mean it like that. I juist gie'n them a trial for a kind o' novelty. It was really the wife's doin'. She egged me on to see what the new place was like. That's like the women, ye ken but I've come back to ye."

"And I'm not goin' to have ye," roared Brodie. "Do ye think ye can treat me like that? I'll not stand it. It's a man that's before ye, not a demned monkey on a stick like they've got next door," and he banged his fist on the counter.

It was a ridiculous position. It was as though he expected the man to fawn at his feet and implore to be reinstated as a customer; as though, in his absurd rage, he expected the other to beg to be allowed the honour of buying from him. Something of this amazement dawned in the workman's face; he shook his head uncomprehendingly.

"I can get what I want elsewhere. I've nae doubt you're a grand gentleman, but you're cuttin' off your nose to spite your face."

When he had gone, Brodie's passion suddenly subsided and his face took on a mortified expression as he realised that he had done a foolish thing which would react injuriously upon his business. This man that he had refused to serve would talk, talk exaggeratedly in his resentment, and probably a garbled version of his action would be circulating freely in Levenford in the course of a few hours' time. People would make unfavourable comments about him and his high-handed ways, and although in the past he would have revelled in their adverse gossip, exulted uncompromisingly in their cackle, now he felt, in the light of his past experience, that people who heard the story would determine that they would not be subject to a similar indignity, that they would give his business a wide berth in the future. He wrinkled up his eyes at these disturbing thoughts and he damned the man, the people, and the town.

When one o'clock arrived, he threw out to the boy that he would be gone for half an hour. Since Perry's departure had deprived him of a responsible person to leave in charge, it was only on rare occasions that he went home for his midday meal and, on such occasions, although his business had diminished considerably, he was impatient to the point of irritability when he undertook the longer journey home for dinner; he felt, with a strange and unwarranted optimism, that he might be missing something which might vitally affect the business for the better. To-day, therefore, he walked only a few paces down the street and went into the Winton Arms. Previous to the last twelve months it was unthought of for him to enter these doors except in the late evening, and by the special, private door allotted to himself and his fellow Philosophers; but now these visits had become usual and to-day Nancy, the pretty barmaid, had a cold pie and some pickled red cabbage for his lunch.

"What will ye drink to-day, Mr. Brodie a glass of beer?" she asked him, looking up from under her dark curling lashes.

He looked at her heavily, noticing, despite his despondency, how a few, tiny, yellow freckles set off her creamy white skin like the delicate, golden specks upon a robin's egg.

"You ought to know I never drink beer, Nancy. I can't abide it. Bring me some whisky and cold water."

Nancy opened her lips to speak but, although she wished to say that she thought it a pity to see a fine man like himself taking so much drink through the day, she was afraid and she uttered no words. She thought Mr. Brodie a grand upstanding gentleman with, if her information was accurate, a perfect scarecrow of a wife, and mingled with her interest was compassion, an especial sorrow for him now that he bore this air of deep yet melancholy abstraction. He was, for her, invested with the essential elements of romance.

When she brought him his whisky he thanked her with an upward look of his dark, moody face, which seemed not to dismiss but to encourage her, and as she hovered about the table whilst he ate his lunch, waiting for an opportunity to anticipate his needs, he observed her carefully out of the corner of his eyes. She was a fine little jade, he thought, his gaze travelling upwards from her small foot in its neat shoe, over her well-turned ankle under the close black stocking, sweeping her tight, firm hips and breasts, neat yet full, rising to her lips, which were red like the outer petals of fuchsia flowers against the whiteness of her skin. And, as he surveyed her, he was suddenly moved. A sudden, terrific desire for all the lustful pleasures that he had been denied rushed over him; he wished to rise immediately from the table and crush Nancy in his huge embrace, to feel a young, hard, resistant body in his arms instead of the torpid, slavish lump that he had for so long been obliged to accept. For the moment he could scarcely swallow and his throat went dry with the urge of another appetite. He had heard stray, little whispers and veiled allusions about Nancy that whetted his hunger fiercely, told him it was a hunger which would be easy to appease; but with a tremendous effort of will he controlled himself and went on eating mechanically, his glowing eyes fixed upon his plate.

"Some other time," he kept telling himself, realising that this important engagement of the afternoon must be faced, that he must restrain himself, curb himself against the time of the interview with Soper, which might be filled with a critical significance for the future of his business. He did not look at her again during his short meal, although now her presence fascinated him and the brush of her body against his arm as she removed his plate made him clench his teeth. "Some other time! Some other time!"

Silently he accepted the biscuits and cheese she brought him and quickly consumed them, but when he had finished he got up and, standing close to her, significantly pressed a coin into her warm hand.

"You've looked after me real well these last weeks," he said, looking at her strangely. 'Til not forget ye."

"Oh! Mr. Brodie, I hope this doesna mean you'll not be back," she cried in concern. "I would miss ye if ye didna come in again."

"Would ye miss me, then?" he replied slowly. "That's good! You and me would suit not bad thegither, I'm thinkin’. So don't worry. I'll be back, all right." He paused and added in a low voice "Yes! And maybe ye ken what for."

She mustered a blush and affected to hang her head, feeling, despite her fear to the contrary, that he had noticed her and was disposed to favour her with his regard. She was interested in him, obsessed by his strength; because she was not a virgin her nature responded more ardently to the suggestion of vital force which emanated from him. He was such a free man with his money, too, was Mr. Brodie!

"A big man like you couldna see much in such a wee thing as me," she murmured provokingly; "ye wouldna want to try!"

"I'll be back," he repeated and looked at her intently, penetratingly, then turned on his heel and was gone.

For an instant she stood quite still, her eye sparkling with satisfaction, her affectation of meekness abandoned, then she ran to the window and stood on tiptoes to watch him go down the street.

Back again in his shop Brodie made a powerful effort to dismiss the warm images which so pleasantly permeated his mind and tried to prepare his ideas for the forthcoming visit of Mr. Soper. But his thoughts lacked continuity or coherence; he was unable, now as always, to formulate any definite, original plan of campaign; the instant he started to consider the possibilities of an idea his mind wandered off at a tangent and he began to think again of Nancy, of the warm look in her eyes, of the chances of arranging a meeting with her. In disgust he gave up the struggle, and feeling that he must blindly await the developments of the interview before he could attempt to cope with them, he got up and went into his shop to await the arrival of his visitor.

As he had said in his letter, at three o'clock precisely Mr. Soper arrived at the shop, and Brodie, who stood ready, immediately came forward and greeted him; but, as they shook hands, Brodie seemed to sense more firmness and less effusiveness in the other's grasp, though he ignored this suspicion and said, with a great assumption of cordiality:

"Come away into my office, Mr. Soper. Moderate weather for the time of year. Yes! Very mild indeed."

Somehow his visitor was not inclined to discuss the weather. As they sat down on opposite sides of the desk he looked at Brodie with a politely formal mien, then looked away. He was well aware of Brodie's position and for the sake of old association had intended to be kind; but now the rank odour of spirits which clung to the other and the loose, easy manner of his greeting prejudiced him intensely. Soper himself was a man of well-defined ideas on moral grounds, being a strong adherent of the sect of Plymouth Brethren, and, in addition, a handsome contributor to the Scottish Temperance Association; as he sat there in his rich, well-fitting clothes, contemplating his admirably kept finger nails, he drew in his lips in a manner totally adverse to Brodie's interest.

"If this open weather continues they'll be gettin' on well with the ploughin'. I saw they had made a bend at the Main's Farm the other day I was out," Brodie persevered, his sluggish wit failing to attune itself to the other's inimical attitude, his obtuse mind compelling him to continue to force remarks in the usual strain set by the precedent of such interviews in the past. "I often take a bit run into the country when I have the opportunity ay! I'm real fond o' seein' a good pair o' horses turnin' up the fine, rich land up by there."

Soper let him run on, then suddenly, in a cold, incisive voice he cut in.

"Mr. Brodie, your total indebtedness to my firm is exactly one hundred and twenty-four pounds ten shillings and sixpence. I am here at the request of my co-partners to request payment."

Brodie stopped as if he had been shot.

"Wha' what?" he stammered. "What's come on ye?"

"I appreciate that it is a large sum, but you have postponed payment of our bills on the last three visits of our representative, and in consequence of the large amount involved and the fact that you are an old client I have, as you may have surmised, made this personal visit to request settlement."

In Brodie's mind two opposing forces, rage at the other's manner and consternation at the amount of his debt, dragged against each other violently. Although he had no records for verification, he knew at once that Soper's figure must, although it appalled him, be correct; these people never made mistakes. But the other's chilling attitude left him aghast and the fact that he was powerless to deal with it as he would have wished infuriated him. If he had possessed the money he would have paid Soper instantly and closed his account with the firm on the spot; but he was well aware of his inability to do this and, with an effort, stifled his fury.

"You'll surely give an old client like myself time to settle?" he managed to articulate, as a negative confession of his inability to find the money.

"You have paid us nothing for over twelve months, Mr. Brodie, and we are naturally becoming anxious. I'm afraid I must ask you to meet this bill now."

Brodie looked at him, then at his safe set in the wall which contained, he knew, less than five pounds, thought futilely of his banking account which had dwindled to an inconsiderable trifle.

"If you don't," Soper was continuing, "I'm afraid we must press. We don't like it, but we shall have to press."

Brodie's eye grew sullen like that of a baited bull.

"I cannot pay," he said. "I cannot pay to-day. But there will be no need for ye to press, as ye call it; ye should well know that James Brodie is an honest man. I'll pay ye but you must give me time to raise the money."

"How do you propose to do that, might I ask, Mr. Brodie?"

"Ye can ask till you're blue in the face, man, but it's no duty of mine to enlighten you. All that ye need to know is that you'll have your precious money by the end o' the week. I have said it and my word is my bond."

Looking at him, Soper's face softened slightly.

"Yes," he said after a pause, "I know that. I know you've had your difficulties, Mr. Brodie. These undercutting companies with their modern shops," he shrugged his shoulders expressively. "But we have our troubles as well and we have our own obligations to meet. There's little room for sentiment in business nowadays. But still how exactly are things with you?"

As Brodie tried to think of a devastating reply, suddenly it seemed to him with a grim humour that nothing would shock the other more than the plain truth.

"Less than three pounds has come into the business in two weeks," he shot out abruptly. "How do ye like that?"

The other raised his well-kept hands in horror.

"Mr. Brodie, you shock me! I had been told, but I did not know it was as bad as that." He looked at Brodie's harsh face for a moment then said, in a more kindly tone, "There's a saying on 'change, man, which you might well consider. It's sometimes better to cut your losses. Cut your losses rather than go under. Don't batter your head against a brick wall. You'll forgive me but you understand what I mean." He rose to go.

"I don't understand! What the devil do you mean?" asked Brodie. "I'm here. I've always been here, and, by God, I'll stay here."

Soper paused on his way to the door.

"I mean this kindly to you, Mr. Brodie," he exclaimed, "and what I say is offered to you in a helpful spirit of advice. You can take it or leave it, but experience tells me that you are in an impossible position here. You've had a grand thing here in your day but now these folks next door have got you beat a hundred ways. Man alive, remember this is the year 1881. We're all moving with new ideas and up-to-date methods but you, and the wheels of progress have run ye down. It's a wise man who knows when he's beat and if I were you I would shut up my shop and get out with what I could. Why don't you get out of here and try something else? A big man like you could stock a farm and work it with the best." He held out his hand frankly and said in parting: "You'll not forget us at the end of the week!"

Brodie gazed after him with a flat expressionless face, gripping the edge of the desk until the sinews on the back of his hands showed white under the dark, hairy skin and the veins rose up like twisted cords.

"Stock a farm!" he muttered. "He surely doesna kisow what little. I have left;" and, as his thoughts rushed outwards into open spaces in a wild regret, he whispered to himself, "He's right, though! That would have been the life for me if I could have managed it. I could have settled down close to the land I love so weel, the land that should be mine. But I canna do't now. I maun battle on here."

He was now aware that he would have to bond his house, his sole remaining asset, in order to find the money to settle his account with Soper and to discharge the remainder of these obligations which had gradually accumulated. No one would know; he would go secretly to a lawyer in Glasgow who would arrange everything, but already he felt dully as if his own house did not belong to him. It was as if, with his own hands, he was compelled to begin the destruction and disintegration of the solid structure he had seen arise stone by stone, like the gradual erection of an edifice of his own hopes. He loved his house, yet he would have to pledge it to maintain the honour of his name. Above everything he must keep untarnished his reputation for equity and honesty, must demonstrate at once that he James Brodie could owe no man a penny. There were some things that he could not do! Then, with a sudden turn of his mind, he seemed by contrast' to remember something; his eye glistened, his lower lip protruded slowly and his mouth twisted into a warped smile. Amongst the desert of his troubles he suddenly espied a green oasis of pleasure. There were some things that he could do! Darkly, a hidden purpose concealed within him like the secret of a crime, he went out of the shop, heedlessly leaving it untenanted, and slowly directed his course towards the Winton Arms.

VII

MRS. BRODIE was resting on the parlour sofa, an unwonted indolence on her part, more especially at this early hour of the afternoon, when she should have been industriously occupied in washing the dinner dishes. To-day, however, her forces had spent themselves sooner than usual and she had felt that she must rest before nightfall.

"I'm so knocked up," she mentioned to Grandma Brodie, "I feel ready to drop. I think I'll lie down a wee."

The old woman had eyed her reprovingly and, moving hastily out of the room for fear she herself might be asked to wash up, had replied:

"It surely doesna take much to upset you; you're always moanin' and groanin' about your health they days. When I was your age I did twice your work and never blinked an eye ower it."

Nevertheless, on her departure, Mamma had gone quietly into the parlour and lain down, and now, feeling better, refreshed and restored, she reflected idly that if only she had made a habit of this short afternoon repose earlier in her life she might have worn better; still she felt thankful that, for the past ten days, she had suffered no recurrence of her excruciating pain but merely that dragging

ache which, through long familiarity, she now almost ignored.

Nearly three weeks had elapsed since the dispatch of the money to Matt and, for all the acknowledgment which she had received, the forty pounds might still have rested securely in the coffers of McSevitch. To think, even, of that ridiculous, hateful name made her shiver slightly, it was costing her so dear to scrape together the first instalment of her debt, to stint and save parsimoniously so that, from time to time, she might thankfully place some coins in the tin box specially put aside, hidden in her own drawer for this not to be forgotten purpose. It seemed to her, from the painful difficulty of her accumulation, as if this debt would hang threateningly above her head for the next two years, like a perpetually suspended sword.

Here, of course, she made no allowance for Matt, and now, amidst the harassing thoughts of her present position, the mere consideration of his return caused a pallid smile to enliven her features. She was firmly assured in her inmost heart that the moment he came back he would stretch out his hand lovingly, compassionately, and with one word relieve her of this racking responsibility. The corners of her drawn lips relaxed as she reflected that it would not be long

before her son was once more in her arms, comforting her, rewarding her a hundredfold for the superhuman effort she had made on his behalf. She pictured the last stages of his journey, saw him, an impatient manly figure, pacing the deck of the ship, disembarking impetuously, now driving hurriedly through crowded, thronging streets, sitting restlessly in the corner of his railway compartment, and finally flinging himself eagerly into the cab which would restore him to her.

The vision of his return hung before her, dazzled her with its imminence, yet as she looked idly out of the window and gradually observed that a cab, loaded with luggage, had driven up at the gate, her brow became furrowed incredulously, as if she failed to believe what she saw. It could not be Matt her boy her own son and yet, miraculously, it was he, home to her at last, stepping out of the cab nonchalantly, as though he had not traversed three thousand miles of sea and land to come to her. With an incoherent cry she

raised herself, stumbled to her feet, ran precipitately out of the house

and had enveloped him in her arms almost before he was out of the cab.

"Matt!" she panted, overcome by the excess of her feelings. "Oh! Matt!"

He started back a little, protesting,

"Half a chance, Mamma. Take it easy. You'll smother me if you go on like that."

"Oh! Matt! My dear boy!" she whispered. "You're back to me at last."

"Whoa up, Mamma!" he cried. "Don't weep all over me. I'm used to a dry climate. There now! Don't make a hankerchief of my new tie."

At his protests she at last relinquished her embrace, but would not altogether let him go, and clutching his sleeve fondly, as though fearful that she might again lose him, exclaimed fervently:

"I can hardly believe I've got you back again, son. It's a sight for my tired eyes to see you, for I was thinking about you the minute you drove up. I've missed you wearily, wearily!"

"Well, we're certainly here again, old girl," he quizzed her; "back to the same old Levenford, same old ancestral home, and same old Mamma!"

Mrs. Brodie looked at him dotingly. Everything here might be the same, but he had altered, was profoundly different from the raw youth who had left her only two years ago.

"My! Matt!" she cried. "You've got a real smart look about you. There's an air about you that fair takes my breath away. You're a man now, my son!"

"That's right," he agreed, surveying his surroundings rather than her. "I've learned a thing or two since I saw you last. I'll show them some style in this old Borough before very long. Gad ! But everything here seems poky compared with what I've been used to." Then, turning commandingly to the cabby he shouted:

"Bring in my luggage, you! Jilde!"

She observed proudly that he who had departed with one small, brass-bound chest now returned with a galaxy of bags and trunks; and could he, on that memorable day when she had let him go fluttering from under her wings, have addressed a cabman in terms of such autocratic disdain? She could not forbear from expressing her fond admiration at the change as she followed his swaggering figure into the hall.

"Oh! That's nothing," he exclaimed carelessly; "I've been used to a retinue of servants out there blacks, you know and a man gets so accustomed to ordering them about, 'tis no trouble to make this old gharry wallah jump to it. Pay him, though, will you, Mamma! I happen to have run out of change at the moment." His look conveyed a sense of superiority to the task of paying a mere cabman and, with a final condescending survey, he moved off and entered the house.

Mamma ran for her purse and at once settled with the man and as she returned, closing the front door securely lest her son might suddenly be taken from her again, the pile of boxes in the hall gladdened her; her heart sang joyously the words: "He's back! Matt's back for good!"

She rejoined him in the kitchen where he was reclining in the armchair, his legs extended, his arms drooping over the sides of the chair, his whole pose indicative of fashionable ennui.

"Rather fatiguing journey!" he murmured, without moving his head. "I find the trains in this country very noisy. Give a man a confounded headache."

"Rest ye rest ye then, my boy," she exclaimed. "You're home now, that's the main thing." She paused, having so many things to say that she did not know where to begin, yet realising that before she could permit herself to indulge her selfish curiosity, she must restore his strength with some honest food prepared by her own loving hands. "I'm dying to hear all about it, Matt," she said; "but let me get you a bite of something first."

He waved the suggestion of food aside.

"Yes, dear a little cold ham or a cup of lentil soup. You could surely take that. You mind that nice nourishing soup I used to make for you. You were always fond of it."

Matt shook his head definitely, saying, "I don't want to eat just now. I'm used to a late dinner at night now besides, I had a snack in Glasgow."

She was slightly disheartened, but still insisted. "You'll be thirsty after your journey, son. Have a cup of tea. There's nobody can make it like me."

"All right, then," he assented. "Go ahead, if that's the best you can do!"

She did not quite grasp his meaning, but rushed in a passion of love to get him the tea, and when she brought him the large steaming cup she seated herself upon a low stool before him, watching with hungry eyes his every gesture. He was not discomposed by her eager stare but, as he sipped his tea, he casually drew a bright leather case from his pocket and, extracting a thick cheroot, withdrew the straw from it and lit up, demonstrating more plainly than words could tell that he was master of himself, a finished man of the world.

Whilst she studied his easy gestures and admired the fashionable negligence of his suit of smooth, light cloth, she became aware with some concern that his face had altered, grown older than she had expected. His eyes, particularly, had aged and seemed darker than before, with a fine network of wrinkles besetting the corners of the lids; his features had sharpened, his complexion turned to a more sallow, even yellowish tinge, whilst his cheeks seemed to be tightly stretched upon the framework of his jaws. She felt convinced now that some harsh and bitter experience had marred his separation from her and, deeming him to have recovered somewhat, her tone was gentle as she said:

"Tell me, Matt, all about it."

He regarded her from beneath his half-closed eyes, and replied abruptly, "About what?"

"Oh! Just everything, son! Ye can't deceive your mother's eyes. Somebody's been hard on you unjust too. But I know so little. Tell me how you left India and what what happened on the way back!"

His eyes opened more fully and, waving his cigar, he immediately grew voluble.

"Oh! That!" he said. "That's soon explained. There's nothing to tell there. I simply threw up my job because it got on my nerves! To be quite honest, Mamma, I couldn't stand the damned dock wallah who ran the office. Everything was a fault with him. If a man were a bit late in the morning, after an evening at the club, or if there happened to be a day taken off work just for a little social engagement you know he was simply unbearable." He contemplated her with an injured air as he drew at his cigar, and added indignantly, "You know how I could never abide being put upon. I was never the one to endure being bossed about by any one. It's not my nature. So I told him in plain language what I thought and walked out on him."

"Did ye not speak to Mr. Waldie about it, Matt?" she queried, sharing his resentment. "He's a Levenford man and a good man He has a great name for fairness."

"It's him I mean, the soor!" retorted Matthew bitterly. "He's the very one that tried to drive me like a coolie. Not a gentleman!" he added. "Nothing but a damned, psalm-singing slave driver."

Mamma's expression grew vaguely troubled and confused.

"Was that the reason of it, son? It wasna right if he did that to you." She paused, then ventured timidly, "We thought it might be your health?"

"Health's as sound as a bell," said Matthew sulkily. "It was the blasted job. I liked everything else out there. It was a fine life if I had been left alone. But he won't cook me, the old swine. I'll go abroad again Burma! Or Malay this time. I'll never stay in this rotten place after what I've seen."

Mrs. Brodie's heart sank. Here was her son barely home, restored only this moment to her arms, and in the next breath he talked of leaving her, of returning, like Alexander, to attempt fresh conquests in these wild foreign lands which terrified her.

"Yell not be thinkin' of that for a bit, dear," she quavered. "Maybe you'll get a post at home that would suit you better. Then you wouldna need to leave me again."

He laughed shortly.

"Do you believe I could live in a hole like this after the kind of life I've had out there ? What can you offer me here to make up for it? Think of it," he cried. "I had the club, dinners at the mess, dances, the races, polo matches, servants to wait on me hand and foot every single thing I could want."

He dazzled her with his romantic mendacity so that she saw him mixing in exclusive Society, at regimental dinners, rubbing shoulders with officers in their red mess jackets, with ladies in gleaming satin, and, overcome by the inadequacy of anything that she could offer in return, she could only say weakly:

"I know there's not much of that at home, son. But I'll I'll do my best to attend to you, to make you comfortable here." He made no reply and, at his eloquent silence, she hesitated, dismayed that the conversation should languish in this fashion, as though after two years he had nothing to to tell her, no eagerness to discover how she had fared in his absence.

"Did ye have a good voyage home?" she ventured at last.

"Tolerable! Quite tolerable," he admitted. "Weather was good but 1 got very bored towards the end. I left the ship at Marseilles."

"That was where I sent ye the your money," she remarked haltingly. "Ye got it safe?"

"Yes, I got it all right," he replied negligently. "Took a devilish age to come through though. Long to come and quick to go."

"I suppose ye had some grave need of a' that siller, Matt?"

"That's right," he replied. "I needed it that was enough, wasn't it?"

"True enough, Matt," she answered. "I knew from your wire you had sore need of it. But it was such a sum of money."

"Sum of fiddlesticks," he retorted angrily. "You would think it wasn't my own the way you talk. I worked for it, didn't I? I didn't rob ye for it. It was mine to spend as I liked."

"Spend," she echoed; "ye needed it for something more than jus’ the spendin' of it."

He burst into a high laugh.

"Mamma! You'll be the death of me! You know I came back overland. How could a man get along without a little pocket money?" He broke off and regarded her with mock solemnity. "I tell you what I did, Mamma. I went around all the blind beggars in Paris and shared out the cash amongst them. That was the last little fling I had in gay Paree before getting home to this excitin' spot."

She was totally submerged, and the vision of Paris rose before her, indicating clearly that she had demeaned herself, thrust herself into the clutches of unchristian money-lenders for the sole purpose of sending him with a full purse into the unchaste delights of a wicked city. For what wild and reckless extravagances on his part would she be compelled to pay tribute over the next two years? Despite her burning love she said reproachfully, and at the grave risk of offending him:

"Oh! Matt, I would rather ye hadna visited such a like place. I'm not saying you did wrong with the money, dear, but that that city must be full of temptations for a young man. I'm afraid it was a mistaken thing to do and I'm sure Agnes would think the same."

Again he laughed rudely.

"What Agnes thinks or says means as much to me now as the squeak of an old boot. I know what she would think, all right, and as for her talk, there's too much hymn book about that for my taste. I'll never sit on her sofa again. No! She's not the woman for me, Mamma! I'm finished with her."

"Matt! Matt!" burst out Mamma. "Don't talk like that. Ye can't mean what you say. Agnes is devoted to you."

"Devoted!" he retorted. "Let her keep that for them that wants it. What else has she got? Nothing! Why," he continued expansively, "I've met women with more in their little finger than she has in her whole body. Charm! Vivacity! Life!"

Mrs. Brodie was horrified and, as she gazed at her son appealingly, a sudden thought struck her.

"Ye havena broken the pledge, have ye, son?" she quavered anxiously.

He looked at her queerly, asking himself if the old girl thought he was still at her apron strings. Perhaps he had been too unguarded with her.

"Just a spot of Hollands occasionally," he replied smoothly. "We have to take it out there, you know, for the good of the liver."

She immediately visioned his liver as a dry, absorbent sponge, driving him to imbibe spirits to saturate it, and feeling the mercy of his return to what was, in a double sense, a more temperate climate, she returned bravely to the charge.

"Agnes is a good girl, Matt! She would be the salvation of any man. She's waited on you faithfully. It would break her heart if ye gave her up now."

"All right, Mamma," he replied suavely. "Don't worry! Don't get excited! I'll see her if you like." It suddenly occurred to him that, imbued with his more potent worldly experience, it might be amusing to see Miss Moir again.

"That's good of you, son. You go and see her. I knew you would do that for me." She was at once relieved, feeling the power of her love over him, knowing that when the young people came together everything would be right again. If he had strayed, Agnes would bring him back to the narrow pathway, and now hastily, for fear he might suddenly take back his promise, she passed on, reclaiming him further.

"I'm afraid you have had a very gay life out there, Matt. I don't blame ye, my boy, but it would be difficult to keep your mind fixed on the more godly matters of life." His vague allusions had shocked her; she must know more, be at all costs reassured. And she continued interrogatively: "Still, you did read your chapter every day, didn't you, son?"

He moved restlessly in his chair, glanced at her resentfully.

"That sounds just like old Waldie, Mamma," he replied impatiently. "You'll be asking me if I walked down Chowringee Road with a text slung round my neck or thumped a Bible out on the maidan in the evenings."

"Don't, Matt! Don't! I don't like to hear you talk so lightly," trembled Mamma. Far from allaying her suspicions, he was increasing them. "Maybe you'll go to the meeting again with Agnes, now you're back. You mean so much to me now. I want ye to be happy and there's never any happiness apart from goodness in this life, dear."

"What do you know about happiness?" he retorted. "You always looked miserable enough before."

"You'll go to the meeting with Agnes, won't ye, Matt?" she persisted. "Try just the once to please me."

"I'll see," he replied evasively. "I'll go if I want to go but don't sermonise me any more. I don't like it; I'm not used to it and I won't have it."

"I know that you'll go for my sake," she whispered, placing her worn hand on his knee. "Ye ken that Mary's away now and that I've nobody but you. You were aye my own boy!"

"I knew Mary was away, all right," he snickered. "Where is she since her little accident?"

"Hush! Hush! Don't speak like that," she returned hastily. "That's shameful talk!" She paused, shocked, then added, "She's in London, we think, but her name's forbidden in the house. For goodness sake, don't talk that way before your father."

He threw off her caressing hand.

"What do I care for Father," he blustered. "I'm a man now. I can do what I like. I'm not afraid of him any longer."

"I know that, Matt! You're a fine big man," she wheedled, “but your father's had an awfu' time since ye left. I'll rely on ye not to try his temper too much. Til just get the brunt of it if ye do. Don't tell him any of these things you've told me. He's that touchy nowadays he mightna like it. He's worried business is not what it used to be."

"It serves him right," he said sulkily, as he rose, feeling that she had, as usual, rubbed him the wrong way. "You would think I cared an anna piece what happened to him. Let him try any tricks on me and it'll be the worse for him." He made his way to the door, adding, "I'm going up for a wash now."

"That's right, Matt! Your own room's prepared. I've kept it ready for you since the day ye left. Not a soul has been in it and not a hand has touched it but my own. The bed has been well aired for you too. You go and freshen yourself up and Til lay the tea while you're upstairs." She watched him eagerly, awaiting some expression of appreciation for her forethought, but he was still offended at her and went into the hall without a word. She heard him pick up a bag and march upstairs and, straining her ears, listened to every movement he made above. She heard him go into Grandma's room, heard this new, swaggering laugh of his as he greeted the old woman with a boisterous flourish. Despite her confused disquiet, the sounds which he made above comforted her and she became filled with a glowing sense of gratitude at the feeling of his proximity; she had her own son actually in the house beside her after all these weary months of separation. She breathed a prayer of gratitude as she quickly began to make preparations for the evening meal.

Soon Nessie came bounding in. She had seen the trunks in the hall and rushed up to Manwna in a flutter, crying:

"Is he home, Mamma? What great big boxes! Where is he? I wonder if he's brought me a present from India. Oh! I want to see Matt! Where is he?" At Mrs. Brodie's word she dashed upstairs, calling out expectantly to Matt, all eagerness to see him. In a few moments, however, she came down slowly, stood again before Mamma,

this time dejectedly, frowning her little petulant frown, her swelling excitement entirely collapsed.

"I hardly knew him," she remarked, in her old-fashioned way. "He's not like our Matt a bit. He didn't seem in the least glad to see me."

"Tuts, Nessie!" exclaimed Mamma. "You're haverin'. He's had a long journey. Give him time to settle down."

"When I went in he was drinkin' something out a wee leather bottle. He said not to bother him."

"He would be doing his unpackin', child. Don't be so impatient. He's got other things to think of just now, f orb ye you."

"When I asked him about my compass he said he had thrown it away he said something I didna understand something about it bein' like your nose."

Mrs. Brodic coloured deeply, but made no reply. She felt sure that Nessie must be making some mistake, must have misconstrued the remark, yet her heart was heavy at the thought of what might have been implied.

"I thought he might have brought me a wee string o' coral beads or something like that," persisted Nessie. "Grandma's real upset too; she thought he might have minded her with a keepsake. He seems to have brought nothing for anybody."

"Don't be selfish, Nessie!" cried Mamma sharply, venting all her pent-up feeling in this rebuke. "Your brother has enough to do with his money without squandering it on you. Not another word out of your head! Away and call Grandma down to make the toast," and, pursing her lips closely together, Mrs. Brodie inclined her head more rigidly to its angle of endurance, set herself resignedly to arrange the tea things upon the table.

When tea time drew near, Matthew came down to the kitchen, A faint flush tinged the yellow of the skin around his prominent cheek bones, his speech was more profuse than when he had arrived, and, detecting a faint but suggestive odour upon his breath, instantly Mamma knew that he had been fortifying himself for the meeting with his father. Observing him covertly she perceived that, despite

his vaunting talk, he dreaded this coming encounter; at once her recent humiliation was forgotten and all her instincts rose again to his protection.

"Sit down by the table, on your chair, son! Don't tire yourself out any more."

"'S all right, Mamma," he replied. "I'll keep on my pins. Been cramped up travelling these last few days. I like to stretch myself a bit." He moved restlessly about the room, nervously fingering everything within reach, looking repeatedly at the clock, and getting in her way as she passed to and from the table.

Grandma Brodie, who had entered behind him and now sat by the fireside, called out:

"Man! You're like a knotless thread. Is that a habit you've picked up off these black men, to wander about like that? It fair makes my head giddy to look at ye." She was still bitter about not having received a present from him.

Eventually he sat down, joining the others at the table. In spite of all his resistance, the approach of half-past five was cowing him; all the firm resolutions which he had formed for days past to stand up to his father and assert himself as a man of the world began to ooze from him, and his especial determination to maintain a nonchalant assurance at this first interview gradually wilted. Coming home, it had been easy for him to tell himself that he cared nothing for his father now, as he sat in his old chair at the same table and within the same unaltered room, waiting, his ears anxiously alert for that firm heavy footstep, the overwhelming sweep of old associations deluged him and, losing all his acquired dash and hardihood, he became the nervously expectant youth once more. Instinctively he turned to his mother and to his annoyance found her limpid eye regarding him with a sympathetic understanding. He saw that she appreciated his emotions, that his apprehension was apparent to her, and a furious resentment against her stirred him as he exclaimed:

"What are you looking at now? It's enough to make a man jump when you look at him like that." He stared at her angrily until she lowered her eyes.

At half-past five the well-remembered click of the door startled him; the sound was exactly to the second, for Brodie, after a prolonged period of irregularity in his meals, had now resumed, with an utter disregard for business, his habits of scrupulous punctuality. Now, as his father came into the room, Matthew gathered himself together, controlled the movements of his hands, prepared himself for a bitter onslaught of words. But Brodie did not speak, did not once

look at his son. He sat down and began to partake comfortably of his tea, which he seemed to enjoy immensely. Matthew was abashed. In all his visualisations of the meeting, nothing like this had ever occurred and now he had an almost irresistible impulse to cry out, like a schoolboy in disgrace, "Look, Father, I'm here! Take notice of me!"

Brodie, however, took no notice of him, but went quietly on with his meal, staring straight ahead of him and saying no word, until it seemed as though he had no intention of recognising his son. But at last, after a long time, when the tension in the room had grown almost unbearable, he turned and looked at Matthew. It was a penetrating gaze which saw everything and expressed everything, pierced the outside shell of hard bravado into the soft, shrinking flesh beneath, permeated and illuminated the deep recesses of Matthew's mind, and which said:

"You've returned at last, then. I know you! Still a weakling and now a failure!"

Under that glance Matthew seemed to diminish visibly in stature and, although he fought with all the strength in him to meet his father's eyes, he could not. His own gaze wavered, quailed, and to the intense humiliation of his swaggering vanity fell downwards to the ground.

Brodie smiled grimly, then having, without uttering one word, brow-beaten the other to subjection, he spoke, saying only, with a cutting inflection:

"You've arrived!" Yet expressed within the short compass of these simple words were a dozen sarcastic, objectionable meanings. Mamma trembled. The baiting of her son had begun and, though she saw that it was going to be worse than she had feared, she dared not say a word for fear of aggravating her husband's mood. Her eyes fell upon her Matt with a terrified, compassionate sympathy as Brodie continued, "It's a real pleasure to see your braw, handsome face again, although it has turned as yellow as a guinea. Ye were aye a bit pasty-faced, now I think o't, but all the gold ye've been savin' out by there has fair jaundiced ye." He surveyed Matthew critically, warming to his work, finding an outlet in this sardonic onslaught for all his bitter sufferings of the past months.

"It's worth it, though, no doubt it's worth it," he continued. "You'll have brought us a hantle o' gold from these foreign parts ye've been slavin' in. Ye'll be a rich man now? Are ye rich?" he shot out suddenly.

Matthew shook his head dismally, and at this silent negation Brodie's eyebrows lifted in a stupendous sneer.

"What!" he cried. "Ye havena brought back a fortune? That beats a 5 ! I thought from the way you've been jauntin' about Europe and from those grand big boxes in the hall that ye must be worth a mint o' money at least. Then, if ye're not as rich as all that, why did ye get yoursef thrown out o' your position?"

"I didn't like it," muttered Matthew.

"Dear! Dear!" remarked Brodie, appearing to address the company at large. "He didna like his position. He maun be a big man to be so hard to please as all that; and the downright honesty of the man to admit that he didna like it." Then, turning to Matthew and hardening his tone, he exclaimed, "Do ye not mean that it didna like you? I've been told here in Levenford that you were soundly kicked out o' it. That they got as sick of the sight o' ye out there as I am already." He paused, then continued suavely, "Still, I may be wronging you. I've no doubt ye've got something splendid in view some marvellous new position. Have ye not?"

His tone demanded a reply and Matthew muttered "No" sulkily, hating his father now with a violence which shook him, feeling it an unbearable humiliation that he, the travelled, the experienced, the sophisticated buck, should be spoken to like this. He swore inwardly that though at present he made no resistance, when he was stronger, more recovered from his journey, he would be revenged for every

insult.

"No new post to go to!" Brodie continued, with assumed affability. "No post and no money! You've just come back to live off your father. Come back like a beaten dog. Ye think it's easier to sponge on me than to work, I suppose."

A tremor ran through Matthew's frame.

"What!" cried Brodie. "Are ye cold ? It's the sudden change from the great heat ye've been called upon to endure when you were workin' yourself into the jaundice outbye. Your dear mother will have to get ye some warm clothes out o' these grand, big cases o' yours. I mind weel she was aye plaisterin' ye with flannels when ye were a boy; And now that you're a braw, full-grown man she mustna let ye get a chill. Na! Na! You're too precious and valuable for that."

He passed up his cup for more tea, remarking, "I havena made such a good tea for a long time! It fair gives me an appetite to see your pookey face back again."

Matthew could endure these taunts no longer, and giving up the pretence of eating he got up, mumbling to Mamma in a broken voice:

"I can't stand this any longer. I don't want any tea. I'll away out!"

"Sit down!" thundered Brodie, pushing the other back with his closed fist. "Sit down, sir. Ye can go when I tell ye to and not before. I'm not done with ye yet." Then, as Matthew subsided into his seat, he continued cuttingly, "Are we not to have the privilege of your society, next? Ye've been away two years and yet you canna bide in the house two minutes. Can ye not see that we're all waiting to hear about these wonderful adventures you’ve had out there ? We're just hanging on the words that are ready to drop from your lips. Come on! Tell us all about them."

"Tell you about what?" answered Matthew sullenly.

"About the grand, excitin' time ye've had outbye. About the rajahs and princes you've been hobnobbin' with about the elephants and the tigers ye've shot tell us quick before ye've time to mak' it up. Yell be a perfect daredevil now, I suppose ? There'll be no end to what ye can do?"

"I can maybe do more than you think," muttered Matthew under his breath.

"Indeed, now!" sneered Brodie, catching at the other's words. "You're going to surprise us, are ye? It's the same story as before, always what you're goin' to do. Never what ye've done, mind ye, but always what's comin' off next! Gad! When I look at ye there with that cringin' look about ye and all these fine, flashy clothes on ye, it makes me wonder what ye will do." His anger rose until it almost choked him, but with an effort he controlled it and continued in his smooth, ironic voice, "Never mind, though! It's such a treat to have ye back that we mustna be too hard on ye. The main thing is that you've come back safe and sound from all the terrible dangers that ye're too modest to speak about. We must have the notice o' your return put in the Advertiser. Then all your braw friends especially your lady friends will ken that you're home. They'll be swarmin' round ye like flies round a honey pot. That's what ye like, isn't it to have the women pettin' ye and runnin' after ye?"

Matthew made no reply and after a moment's pause Brodie continued, drawing back his lips sardonically:

"I suppose next Sunday that mother o' yours will have ye all toshed up and have ye out at the kirk for the general admiration o' her braw congregation. Ye might even squeeze your way into the choir again, if ye were sleekit enough, to let them all hear your bonnie voke lifted up in praise o' the Lord. It would be a real manly thing to sing in the choir again would it not? Answer me, ye dummy. Do ye hear what I'm sayin' to ye?"

"I'll not sing in any choir," retorted Matthew, thinking sullenly that it was like his father to bring up this memory of the past and use it derisively to force him into a ridiculous position.

"The prodigal son refuses to sing," sneered Brodie. "Did ye ever hear the like o't and him that had the lovely, lovely voice. Well, my fine man," he continued with a snarl, "if ye'll not sing for your mother, you'll sing for me. You'll sing to the tune I pipe. Don't think that I can't see through ye. I do! Ye've disgraced yourself and me. Ye hadna the grace to stick to your job like a man ye must come running back home to your soft mother like a beaten cur. But don't think ye can try that with me. Keep yourself in order when I'm about or, by God! it'll be the waur o' ye. Do ye understand what I mean?" He rose from the table abruptly and stood glaring down at his son. "I'm not finished with ye yet. I'll knock the fancy notions out o' your head before I'm done with ye. I warn ye keep

out of my path, sir, or I'll smash ye down as ye stand. Do ye hear me?"

Matthew, emboldened by seeing that his father was about to go and goaded by the very humiliation of his position, raised his head and looked sideways at the other, muttering:

"I'll keep out of your way, all right."

Brodie's eye flamed fiercely in return. He grasped Matthew's shoulder.

"You dog!" he shouted. "Don't look at me like that. Don't dare to do it or I'll break you. You thing that calls yourself by the name o' Brodie. You're a disgrace to me, sir. Yes! A bigger disgrace than your bitch of a sister." Then, as Matthew's eye again fell, he continued, disgust mingling with his anger, "It scunners me to think a man of noble blood could beget a whelp like you. You're the first Brodie to be called a coward, but, by God, you are one, none the less. You're a hangdog coward and I'm ashamed o' ye!" He shook his son like a sack of bones, then suddenly relaxed his hold and allowed him to collapse inertly back into the chair.

"Watch what you're about, my man. I'll have my eye on ye," he cried forbiddingly, as he walked out of the room.

When he had gone Nessie and Grandma continued silently to look at Matthew. But Mamma dropped on her knees beside him and placed her arm around his shoulder,

"Never mind. Matt! Never mind, my own son! I love ye onyway!" she wept.

He thrust down her arm whilst the muscles of his face twitched under the pale skin.

"I'll pay him out yet," he whispered, as he arose. "I'll get even with him. If he's not done with me, I'm not done with him."

"You're not going out now, son," cried Mrs. Brodie fearfully. "Ye'll bide in with me to-night, won't you? I want ye to be beside me."

He shook his head.

"No!" he said, controlling his voice with an effort. "I must go out." He licked his dry lips. "I've got some some old friends to look up. I'm goin' out now. Give me a key."

"Don't go, son," she implored. "Don't let what your father said upset ye. He doesna mean it. He's worried himself. Stay in with your mother now, there's a good lad. Ye've had no tea at all. Stay in and I'll make ye something nice. I love ye, Matt. I love ye so much I would do anything for ye!"

"Give me the key, then," he replied. "That's what I want."

Silently she gave him her own key. He thrust it into his pocket, saying, "I'll be late! Don't sit up for me."

She followed him, wavering in fear, to the door. "Ye'll be careful, Matt, won't ye. Keep out o' mischief for my sake, son. Don't let him drive ye to anything rash. I couldna bear it now that you're safely back to me."

He made no reply but was gone, disappearing rapidly into the darkness beyond. Her ears followed his steps until they died into the quiet of the night, then, with a short, dry sob, she turned and went back to the kitchen. She did not know what was going to happen, but she feared exceedingly.

VIII

NEXT morning Mrs. Brodie woke early, while it was still almost dark, but as she stirred she heard in the distance the first faint, challenging cock crow, betokening, despite the obscurity, the imminent dawn of another day. Although she had waited up late on the night before, she had not seen Matthew come in and now, after a troubled sleep, her first thought was to assure herself that he was

well. As she dressed there was no need for her to be timorously silent for fear of disturbing her husband, since she was now alone in the small room that had been Mary's, yet from long habit her actions were as stealthy and inaudible as the movements of a shadow. The dim light entered the window of the bedroom and vaguely revealed her ghostly, drooping figure as she shivered into her clothes. Her underclothing was so patched, darned and repaired as to become at any time a puzzle to assume and now, in the cold obscurity of the chill February air, her insensitive, roughened fingers fumbled confusedly with the coarse, worn garments. As she dressed thus, by sense of touch, her teeth chattered slightly, giving the sole audible indication of her presence and activity.

When she had covered her body, she rubbed her hands soundlessly together to induce some sign of circulation and slid out of the room in her stocking feet.

Matthew's bedroom, being at the back of the house and facing east, was better illuminated; as she silently entered it she saw, amongst the disordered confusion of bedclothes, the outlines of his regularly breathing form, and she too again breathed regularly with relief. His face looked leaden in the bluish pallor of the morning light; at the corners of his mouth dry sordes had formed, and his dark hair lay tangled upon his brow. Between his lips his tongue seemed to protrude slightly as though it had become too swollen and bulky for its normal confines, and with each respiration it acted as a dull sounding board for the hoarse passage of his breath.

Mamma gently restored the blankets and coverlet to a more orderly comfort, ventured even to stroke the tumbled locks of hair from his eyes but as, at her touch, he stirred uneasily and muttered, she drew back, quickly removing her hand, yet leaving it poised in mid-air above his head as though unconsciously she blessed him in his sleep. Her gaze, too, was like a benediction, maintained for many moments. At length, reluctantly, she slowly withdrew her eyes from his face and turned to go. On her way out of the room she observed that his coat, vest and trousers were strewn in disarray on the floor, that his shirt had been flung into one corner, his collar and tie into another and, as though glad to render him service, she stooped, picked up the scattered garments, folded them neatly upon a chair, looked again at his sleeping face and went quietly away.

Downstairs, everything lay exposed in the stale, repugnant ebb of the low tide of early daybreak; the night, receding like an ocean, had left the furniture disordered, the dead fire dirty with grey, powdered ashes, the pile of unwashed dishes cluttering the scullery sink obscenely, like wreckage upon a desolate shore.

In the usual way, before she stirred herself into jerky activity to lay and light the fire, blacklead the grate, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, boil the porridge and perform the endless necessities of the morning, she would first indulge herself with a cup of strong tea, feeling, in her own words, that it drew her together. The hot, fragrant liquid was like a healing draught, comforting her, warming her, clearing away the mists in her brain and resigning her to the hardships of another day.

This morning, however, although she hurriedly infused and poured out a cup of tea, she did not herself drink it but, having carefully cut and delicately buttered two thin slices of bread, she placed these, together with the tea, appetisingly upon a tray, which she then carried up to Matthew's room.

"Matt," she whispered, touching him lightly upon the shoulder, "here's some tea for ye, son. It'll freshen ye up." Although she bent over him he still snored on, exuding with each breath the reeking odor of stale liquor, which disturbed her deeply, made her, in her agitation, speak more loudly. "Matt! Here's something nice for ye!"

That was what she used to say to him, coaxingly, when he was a boy, and at her words he stirred, half awake, twisted impatiently, and with eyes still closed, muttered:

"Let me sleep, boy. Go to hell. Don't want any chota hazri"

Unhappily, she shook him.

"Matt, dear, this tea will do you good. It's nice for ye in the morning."

At this he opened his eyes and surveyed her from under listless, stuporous lids; within his dark pupils she could see the dull, unhappy comprehension of his position slowly reawaken.

"It's you, is it," he slurred. "What you want wakenin' me like this. Let me sleep."

"But the nice tea, dear! So refreshing. I went straight down and made it myself."

"You're always flinging tea at me! Let me sleep, damn it all!" He hunched round his back at her and was at once asleep again.

Mamma looked miserably from his prone figure to the tray still in her hands, as though unable to comprehend his refusal or the full force of his abuse; then, moved by the thought that he might later reconsider his decision, she laid the tray down on a chair by the bedside, covered the cup warmly with the saucer, inverted the plate protectingly over the fresh bread, and turned disconsolately away.

He was on her mind all morning. The fire was kindled, the dishes were washed, the boots were brushed, the porridge bubbled; she took up her husband's shaving water, then began to lay the table whilst she thought of him, lamenting the words he had used to her, mourning the revealing odour of his breath, yet all the time excusing him in her mind. The shock of coming home, of his father's treatment, had upset him; as for his language, he had, poor boy, been in a rough land and had not been fully awakened when he spoke to her. Whilst she forgave him, the still house began to stir; light and heavy sounds vibrated through the ceiling, doors were opened and shut upstairs, and now, confronted by the fear that some further disturbance irneht arise between Brodie and her son, she listened anxiously for the noise of some sudden outburst, the clash of angry voices, even for the sound of a blow. To her intense relief none came, and, after Nessie had come downstairs and been hurriedly fed and packed off with her satchel of books, Brodie descended and began to breakfast in sombre, solitary silence. She had taken the utmost care that everything should be perfect for him this morning in order to lull him into a more amiable mood; was prepared, even,

to lie blatantly about Matt's coming in late: but although his mood seemed to her unpropitious, her fear proved to be unfounded and he departed without a single reference to his son.

When he had gone she breathed more easily and, her tranquillity further restored by a belated cup of tea, she prepared Grandma's breakfast and took it upstairs shortly before ten o'clock. When she had visited the old woman she tiptoed across the landing and listened with her ear to the door of Matt's room; hearing only the rise and fall of his breathing, she softly opened the door. She saw at once that nothing had been touched and, to her wounded feelings, it seemed as though the undisturbed tray mutely rebuked her, that the plate still investing the untouched bread and butter, and the saucer still uselessly covering the long since cold tea were like tokens of her folly and presumption. He still slept. Confusedly she wondered if his removal from what she considered to be an antipodean hemisphere might not have inverted the hours of his repose, and, in rendering him active at night and drowsy by day, have thus made it a necessity for him to sleep through certain hours of the forenoon. Unconvinced in mind but none the less eased a little in heart, feeling that if not this, perhaps some kindred reason existed for his behaviour, she did not disturb him and again passed quietly out of the room.

Hesitatingly she addressed herself to her household duties in an effort to divert her attention, but as the forenoon drew on, uneasiness gradually possessed her; she comprehended that if their son was still in bed when Brodie returned for dinner, a disastrous scene might take place. Anxiously she pricked her ears for the first evidence of his retarded activity and, towards noon, was rewarded by hearing the faint creak of his bed as it surrendered his body, the sound of his step upon the boards above. Hastily decanting water into a jug from the kettle which stood ready boiling, she rushed upstairs to leave it outside his door.

He was a long time dressing, but about quarter to one he carne slowly downstairs and entered the kitchen. She greeted him fondly.

"I'm that glad you've had a nice long sleep, dear, but you've had no breakfast. Will you have a bite before your dinner? Just say the word; it'll not be the least bother for me to get ye a " It had been on her tongue to offer him the universal panacea a cup of tea but mercifully she recollected his remark of the morning in time and added, "anything that's in the house."

"I never eat much in the morning." He was smartly dressed in a different suit from the day before, in a smooth, fawn hopsack with a puce shirt and natty brown tie to match; as he fingered the bow of his tie with white plastic fingers that trembled slightly, he eyed her doubtfully, judging erroneously from her adulatory manner that she could not fully have realised his discomfiture of the night before.

"I miss the fresh fruit my servants used to bring me," he asserted, feeling that some further explanatory remark might be required of him.

"You'll have some nice apples to-morrow, Matt," she replied eagerly. "Ill put in the order sure. If ye just tell me what you'd like, or the kind of food you've been used to outbye, I'll do my best to get it for ye."

His attitude repudiated the idea of such sour wizened apples as she might obtain for him in this unproductive land; he waved his hand eloquently and retorted shortly:

"I meant mangos, fairy bananas, pineapple. Nothing but the best is any use to me."

"Well, son, we'll do our utmost, anyway," she replied bravely, although somewhat out of countenance at the grandiloquence of his remark. "I've got a nice dinner for ye, now. Then, if ye feel like it afterwards, I was thinking maybe we might have a bit stroll together."

"I'm going out for tiffin" he answered coldly, as though her suggestion was ridiculous and to be seen walking with her decrepit, outlandish figure the last thought his superior mind woyld entertain,

Her face fell and she stammered:

"I I had such nice nourishin' broth for ye, boy, as sweet as anything."

"Give it to the old man," he retorted bitterly. "Give him a bucketful. He can stand it." He paused for a moment, then continued in a more ingratiating tone, "I wonder though, Mamma, if you would lend me a pound or two for to-day. It's such a confounded nuisance, but my bank drafts have not come through from Calcutta yet." He frowned at the annoyance of it all. "It's causing me no end of inconvenience. Here am I stuck up for a little ready cash all through their beastly delay. Lend me a fiver and you shall have it next week."

A fiver! She almost burst into hysterical tears at the word, at the painful absurdity of his request that she should lend him at a moment's notice five pounds she who was bleeding herself white to scrape together the monthly toll that would soon be levied on her, who had, apart from the three pounds she had laboriously collected for the purpose, only a few paltry copper and silver coins in her purse!

"Oh! Matt," she cried. "Ye don't know what you're askin'. There isna such a sum in the house!"

"Come on now," he replied rudely, "you can do it fine. Toll out. Where's your bag?"

"Don't speak to me like that, dear," she whispered. "I canna bear it. I would do anything for ye but what you're askin' is impossible."

"Lend me one pound then, seeing you're so stingy," he said, with a hard look at her. "Come on! give me a miserable pound."

"Ye can't understand, son," she pleaded. "I'm so poor now I can hardly make ends meet. Your father doesna give me enough for us to live on." A yearning desire took hold of her to tell him of the manner in which she had been obliged to raise the money to send to him at Marseilles but she stifled it, realising with a sudden pause that this moment, above all, was not propitious.

"What does he think he's doing? He's got his business and this precious wonderful house of his," Matthew sneered. "What is it he's spending the money on now?"

"Oh! Matt, I hardly like to tell ye' she sobbed, "but things seem to be in a bad way with your father in the business. I'm I'm feared the house is bonded. He hasna said a word to me but I saw some papers lyin' in his room. It's terrible. It's the opposition that's started against him in the town. I've no doubt he'll win through, but in the meantime I've got to make one shillin' do the work of two."

He looked at her in sullen amazement, but refused, none the less, to be diverted from the issue.

"That's all very well, Mamma!" he grumbled. "I know you. You always had something tucked away for a rainy day. I want a pound. I tell you I've got to have it. I need it."

"Oh, my dear, have I not told ye how ill off we are," she wept.

"For the last time, will ye lend me it?" he threatened.

As she again sobbingly refused him she thought, in her agitation, for the space of a horrified instant, that he was about to strike her, but abruptly he turned upon his heel and left the room. As she stood there, her hand clutching her side, she heard him banging about through the -rooms upstairs and finally come down, pass through the hall without speaking and slam out of the house.

When the reverberating echoes of the bang of the door had died upon the air, they still resounded in her brain like an ominous portent of the future and involuntarily she raised her hands to her ears to blot them out as she sat down at the kitchen table, an abject, disillusioned figure. She felt, as she rested there, her head supported in her hands, that the story of the bank draft must be a specious lie, that having spent the forty pounds, he was now penniless. Had he

almost threatened her? She did not know, but he had wanted the money badly, and she, alas, had been unable to give it to him. Before she could analyse her emotions further, and realising now that she should have been in a position to accede to his later demand, that in a fashion the fault had been hers, on top of her misery came a great rush of tenderness. Poor boy, he had been used to mixing with gentlemen who spent money freely, and it was only fair that he should have

money in his pocket like the rest. It was, in fact, a necessity after the high society life he had been leading. It was not just to expect a young man as well put on as Matt to go out without the means of backing up his smart appearance. He had really not been to blame and, in some degree, she regretted not having given him at least a few shillings, if he would have accepted them from her. As the affair became thus presented to her in a more satisfactory light and she was

filled by a sense of her own inadequacy, she rose and, drawn by an irresistible attraction she went up to his room and with loving care began to tidy the litter of wearing apparel which encumbered it. She now discovered that his clothing was not so plentiful as might have been expected from first appearances, finding one trunk to be completely empty, two of his cases to be filled with thin drill suits and another stuffed untidily with soiled linen. Eagerly, she seized upon socks to darn, shirts to mend, collars to starch, feeling it a joy to serve him by attending to these needs, beatitude even to touch his garments.

Eventually, having restored order amongst his things and arranged, for her attention, a large bundle which she bore away in triumph, she entered her own room, made her bed, and began in a more cheerful spirit to dust the furniture. As she came to the shallow china toilet tray that rested on the small table by the window, an undetermined sense of perplexity affected her; a familiar impression to which she had long been accustomed in her subconscious mind was now lacking. She pondered absently for a moment, then suddenly realised that she did not hear the intimate, friendly tick of her watch which, except on those state occasions when she wore it, lay always upon this small tray of hers which now confronted her, denuded of all but a few stray hairpins. When she had been compelled to change her room she had, of course, brought this tray with her and the watch had still remained upon it; indeed, for twenty years the touch of this tray had been consonant with her hearing of the watch, and at once she noticed the silence.

Although she knew that she was not wearing the watch she clutched at her bodice; but it was not there, and immediately she began to look for it in a flurry, searching everywhere in her own room, in Brodie's room, downstairs in the parlour and in the kitchen. As her unsuccessful search was prolonged, a worried look appeared on her face. It was her mother's watch, a fine scrolled silver shell with a gilt face, delicate spidery hands and a Swiss mechanism which never failed to register the exact minute, and although it was not valuable she had for it, and for the small faded daguerreotype of her mother clipped inside the case, a rare and sentimental affection. It was her only trinket and for this fact alone she treasured it deeply. As she stooped to survey the floor she knew that she had not mislaid it and she asked herself if some one had not accidentally interfered with it. Suddenly she straightened up. Her face lost its annoyance and instead became stricken. She realised in an illuminating flash that Matt had taken her watch. She had heard him in her room, after she had refused to give him the money, and he had rushed out without speaking to her. She knew irrevocably that he had stolen her watch for any paltry sum he might obtain for it. She would gladly have given him it as she had given him everything in life that was hers to give, but he had thieved it from her with a sly, sneaking baseness. With a hopeless gesture she pushed back a wisp of grey hair that had been disarranged in her futile search. "Matt! my son," she cried aloud. "You know I would have given you it! What way did ye steal it?"

On this, the day following her son's return, when she had glowingly anticipated content and the mitigation of her worries, she found herself sunk more deeply into the well of her dejection. Dinner passed and the afternoon proceeded eventlessly towards evening. Amidst the trouble of her thoughts the fall of dusk and the fading of the short grey twilight made her wish poignantly to see him. Only let them be alone together, the mother and the son, and she felt she could

soften any hardness in his heart. He could not, she was convinced, withstand the entreaty of her affection; he would be at her feet in penitence and remorse if only she could express to him in words the love that was in her heart. But still he did not appear and, when the clock struck the half hour after five and he did not come in for tea, she was immeasurably distressed.

"I suppose that braw mannie o' yours is ower feared to come in," Brodie sneered at her, as she handed him his tea. "He's deliberately avoidin’ me sulkin' outside there until I've gane out again. Then he'll come sneakin' in for your sympathy and consolation. Don't think I don't see through it all, although it's behind my back."

"No indeed, Father," she quavered. "I assure ye there's nothing to keep from ye. Matt has just gone out to look up some o' his friends."

"Is that so, now?" he answered. "I didna ken he had any friends,' but from what you make out he must be the popular hero, right enough! Well, tell your model son, when ye see him, that I'm savin’ up a' that I've got to say until I meet him next. I'll keep it hot for him."

She made no reply, but served him with his meal, and when he went out set herself again to wait.

At seven o'clock, about an hour after Brodie had left the house, Matthew did, indeed, return. He came in quietly with a slight indication upon his face of the old downcast expression of his youth, sidled into the room and, looking at Mamma ingratiatingly, said in a soft voice:

"I'm sorry I'm late, Mamma dear. I hope I haven't put you about?"

She looked at him eagerly.

"I have worried about you, Matt! I didn't know where you had gone!"

"I know," he replied in a subdued voice. "It was downright thoughtless of me. I don't think I had quite got used to being here. I may have got a little careless since I've been away, Mamma, but I'll make up for it to you."

"It's not like you to be careless," she cried, "except to yourself, going without your food like this. Have you had your tea?"

"No," he replied, "I haven't, but I'm real hungry now, though. Have you something for me to eat?"

She was touched, convinced, despite her day of despondency, that this was her own son again who had sloughed off the skin of his wicked Indian experiences.

"Matt!" she said earnestly. "You ought to know better than ask. Your supper is in the oven this very minute." She ran to the oven and produced impressively for his inspection a thick cut of finnan haddie cooked in milk, a dish of which he had been particularly fond in the past.

"Wait just half a minute," she cried, "and I'll be ready for you."

Grandma Brodie had gone up to her room and Nessie was occupying the table with her homework, nevertheless, in a few moments Mamma had spread a white cloth upon half of the table and had covered it with every requisite of an appetising meal.

"There, now," she said, "I've told ye I wouldn't be long. There's no one can do a thing for ye like your own mother. Sit in, Matt, and let us see what you can do."

He rolled his eyes up at her gratefully and bowed his head.

"Oh! Mamma, you're too kind to me! I don't deserve it. It's like heaping coals of fire on my head after the way I've gone on. It does look good though, doesn't it?"

She nodded her head happily, watching him eagerly as he drew in his chair, sat down and began to eat with large, quick mouthfuls. "Poor boy, he must have been starving," she thought, as the succulent white flakes of the fish melted magically under the relentless attack of his knife and fork. Nessie, sucking the stump of a pencil at the other end of the table, watched him over the edge of her book with a different emotion.

"Some folks are luckier than others," she remarked enviously. "We didn't get finnan haddie to-night."

Matt looked at her with a wounded expression, then placed the last large piece of fish carefully in his mouth.

"If I had known, Nessie," he expostulated, "I would have offered you some. Why did you not speak before?"

"Don't be so selfish, girl," cried Mamma sharply. "You're had enough and plenty, and you know it. Your brother needs some decent food now. He's had a hard time lately. You get on with your lessons. Here, Matt try some of these oatcakes."

Matt thanked her with a warm, upward look and continued to eat. At his attitude Mamma was overjoyed and, the loss of her watch now completely forgotten, she regarded him benevolently, happily, every mouthful he took causing her an intense enjoyment, as if the food which he consumed was savoured by her own palate with infinite relish. She observed with sympathy that his face was marked by smuts; amazed at her own shrewdness, she surmised that he had brushed into a dusty hedge, that he had been hiding outside from his father. She was concerned, so that benevolence gave way to protection; he was her own boy once more and she would shelter and defend him against the world.

"Did ye enjoy that, son?" she asked finally, hungering for his praise. "I took special pains with it. I knew ye always liked it."

He smacked his lips.

"It was lovely, Mamma! Better than all the curries I had to put up with out in India. I tell you I’ve missed your cooking. I've never had a decent dish like that since I left."

"Is that the case, son?" she exclaimed. "It gladdens me to hear it. Now! Is there anything else you would like?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw on the dresser a dish of small apples which he imagined she must have procured for him. He looked at her a moment reflectively.

"I think, Mamma, I would like an apple," he said with the simplicity of one who has pure desires. She was overjoyed to have anticipated his wish and at once brought over the dish.

"Just what I thought. 1 gave the boy the order this morning," she said delightedly, proving her thoughtfulness of his every wish. "You said you wanted fruit and I said that you should have it."

"Thank you, Mamma! I don't wish to smoke," he explained, as he bit with difficulty into the hard fruit, "and I'm told an apple destroys the craving. What need have I to smoke, anyway? It doesn't do me any good."

Mrs. Brodie laid her hand caressingly on his shoulder as she murmured:

"Matt, it does my heart good to hear you say that. It's worth more to me than anything on this earth. I'm happy. 1 feel we're going to understand each other better now. It must have been the long separation that upset us both, but these misunderstandings are sent from above to try us. I prayed for understanding to come to the both of us and the prayer of an unworthy woman has been answered."

He lowered his eyes for a moment in remorse, while he persisted in his efforts with the apple, then, looking up and choosing his words with extreme care, he said slowly, unveiling another rapturous surprise for her:

"You know, Mamma, I saw Agnes this afternoon."

She started with surprise and pleasure.

"Of course," he hurried on, before she could speak, "I can't say much just now. You mustn't ask me anything. My lips must be sealed on what passed between us, but it was very satisfactory." He smiled at her deprecatingly. "I thought you would be pleased to hear, though."

She clasped her hands in ecstasy, her bliss only tempered by the thought that it was not she herself, but another woman in the person of Miss Moir, who had, perchance, turned her son's steps back to righteousness. Still, she was overjoyed and, stifling the unworthy thought, she ejaculated:

"That's good! That's grand! Agnes will be as happy as I am about it." Her bowed back straightened slightly as she raised her moist eyes to heaven in unspoken gratitude; when she looked down again to earth Matthew was addressing Nessie.

"Nessie dear! I was selfish a minute ago but I'll make up for it now. I'm going to give you this half of my apple if you leave Mamma and me together a little. I want to talk to her privately."

"Nonsense, Nessie!" exclaimed Mamma, as Nessie stretched out her hand agreeably. "If you're to have a bit apple don't take the bite out your brother's mouth."

"Yes, Mamma. I'm going to give this to Nessie!" insisted Matt, in a kindly voice, "but she must let you and me have a little chat now. I've got something to say that's for your ears alone!"

"Well, Nessie," said Mrs. Brodie, "take it, and thank Matt for it, and don't let us have any more of your ungrateful remarks in the future. You can leave your homework in the meantime and go into the parlour and do your practising for half an hour. Away with you now. Take the matches and be careful how you light the gas."

Glad to be relieved from her hated books, Nessie skipped out of the room and soon the halting tinkle of the piano came faintly into the kitchen, interpolated at first by pauses barren of melody, co-related to the lifting of the apple from the bass end of the keyboard.

"Now, Matt," said Mrs. Brodie warmly, drawing her chair close to his, feeling that her improbable dream of the morning was about to be fulfilled and hugging herself with a trembling satisfaction.

"Mamma," began Matthew smoothly, inspecting his hands carefully, "I want you to forgive me for being so well so offhand since I came back; but you know I've been worried. I've had a lot on my mind."

"I could see that, son!" she agreed compassionately. "My heart has gone out to you to see how you've been upset. It's not everybody that understands your sensitive nature the way I do."

"Thank you, Mamma," he exclaimed. "You're kind as ever you were, and if you forget any hard words I've said I'll be grateful. I'll try and be a better man."

"Don't belittle yourself in that fashion, Matt," she cried. "I don't like to hear it. You were aye a good boy. Ye were always my own son I never knew ye do a really wrong action."

He lifted his eyes for an instant and shot a quick furtive glance at her, then immediately veiled them, murmuring:

"It's nice to be in with you again, Mamma."

She smiled devotedly at his words, recollecting that as a boy it had been a manifestation of his childish pique to be "out with her", and, when she was eventually restored to favour, to be "in with her."

"We'll never be out with each other again, will we, dear?" she countered fondly.

"That's so, Mamma," he agreed, and allowed an impressive pause to elapse before remarking casually, "Agnes and I are going to the prayer meeting to-night."

"That's splendid, Matt," she whispered. He was definitely reclaimed! "I'm that pleased about it. Oh, but I would like to come with you both!" She halted timidly. "Still I I suppose ye would rather be your two selves. It's not for me to interfere."

"It might be as well, perhaps, Mamma," he admitted deprecatingly. "You know how it is!"

She looked at the clock, observing that it was quarter to eight. She regretted exceedingly having to break up this heart-to-heart talk, but with true unselfishness she said, with a not unhappy sigh:

"It's nearly eight as it is, I'm afraid. You'll have to be stirring now or you'll be late," and she made as though to move.

"Just a minute, though, Mamma!"

"Yes, dear!"

"I wanted to ask you another thing!" He hesitated and looked at her soulfully, having, from his point of view, reached the critical point of the interview. u Mamma," he murmured irresolutely.

"What is it, Matt, my dear?"

'It's just like this, Mamma! I may as well be honest with you! I've been an awful spendthrift," he confessed. "People have taken advantage of my generosity. I have no money just now. How can I go about with Agnes with nothing in my pocket?" He had the air of one, the victim of his own open-handedness, from whom the words fell shamefully. "I'm used to having some cash always with me. It makes me feel so small to be without it, specially when I'm with a lady, back in my own town. Could you not help me, Mamma, until I get started again?"

She saw at once that it was a supremely reasonable request. She had been right in assuming that her boy, accustomed to high and lavish society, could not confront Levenford penniless; still less could he encounter Miss Moir in such a penurious predicament. In the flush of her reunion to him she threw caution to the winds and, with a magnificent sacrifice, she arose silently, unlocked her drawer and withdrew from it the square box which contained her accumulated savings for the initial repayment of her heavy debt. She looked adoringly at Matthew, heedless of the future, remembering only that she was the mother of this loving and devoted son.

"This is my all, Matt," she said soberly, "and I've saved it dearly for a most important and necessary cause. But I'm going to give ye some of it."

His eyes gleamed as she opened the box and took out a pound.

"Take this for your pocket, son," she said simply, holding out the note to him in her outstretched hand, her worn face softened by love, her bent figure drooping a little towards him. "I give it to you gladly. It's yours!" It was a sacrifice of supreme and touching beauty.

"How much have ye altogether?" asked Matthew ingenuously, rising up and going close to her. "You've got a lot in there, right enough."

"There's nearly three pounds here," she replied, "and it's been a weary job for me to save it. Times are hard with us now, Matt harder than ye might think. I'll need every penny of this by the end of the month."

"Mamma! Let me keep it for you," he said wheedlingly. "I'll keep it till the end of the month. I'll not spend it. I might as well keep it in my pocket as let you lock it in that old tin box. What a funny place to keep your money!" He made the idea of her little box as a receptacle for money appear almost ludicrous. "I'll be your banker, Mamma! It's nice for me to feel I have something to fall back on, even if I never have the need for it. Just the feel of it beside me would make me comfortable. Come on, Mamma! A pound is nothing, really, to a fellow like me." He held out his hand coaxingly.

She looked at him with a vague, frightened doubt in her eyes.

"It's most important for me to have this money by the end o' the month," she stammered. "I don't know what'll happen if I haven't got it."

"You shall have it then," he assured her. "What a worrier you are! Leave it to me. I'm as safe as the Bank of England!" He took the money out of the open box as he continued talking volubly, reassuringly. "You're not going to let your Matt go about like a pauper, are you, Mamma!" He laughed at the very idea. "A gentleman needs a little ready brass to give him assurance. You'll be right as rain, Mamma," he continued, edging into the hall. "I'll see to that! Don't sit up for me now; I'll like as not be late."

He was out and away with a last, gay wave and she was left with the open, empty box in her hands, staring at the panels of the front door that had closed behind him. She sighed convulsively whilst the piano chattered i& her ears with a false sprightliness. Blindly she suppressed the recurrent thought of her missing watch and an inchoate doubt as co the wisdom of so weakly allowing him to take the money. Matt was a good boy! He was hers again and their mutual love would surmount any obstacle and conquer all difficulties. He was on his way to worship God with a good Christian girl. Happiness flowed into her heart once more and she returned to the kitchen, well content with what she had done.

She sat down, gazing into the fire, a faint reminiscent smile upon her face at the memory of his tenderness to her. "He did relish that fish, the boy," she murmured to herself. "I maun make him some more nice dishes." Then, suddenly, as she was about to recall Nessie to her lessons, the door bell rang with a short, trenchant peal. Mamma felt startled as she got up, it was so far beyond the time of an ordinary visitor. Matthew had his key, he could not have returned like this; the least thing upset her nowadays, she reflected, as she cautiously opened the door. Miss Moir, palely outlined in the glimmer of the lobby lamp, stood before her.

"Oh! Aggie dear, it's you," she exclaimed in some relief, pressing her hand to her side. "I got quite a fright. You've just missed Matthew by a few minutes."

"Can I come in, Mrs. Brodie?" Again Mamma was startled. Not once in the space of three years had Agnes addressed her in such terms and never in such a strange, unnatural voice.

"Come in of course ye can come in, but but I'm telling you Matthew has gone out to meet ye."

"I would like to speak to you, please." '

In amazement Mamma admitted a frozen-faced Agnes. They went into the kitchen.

"What's it a' about, dear?" she faltered. "I don't understand this in the least. Matt's away to meet you. Are ye not well?"

"Quite well, thank you," came from Miss Moir's stiff lips. "Did you know that that Matthew came to see me this afternoon?"

She had the utmost difficulty in uttering his name.

"Yes! He's just told me. He's gone to take you to the meeting; Matt has gone to get you” repeated Mrs. Brodie stupidly, mechanically, as a fearful spasm gripped her heart.

"It's a lie!" exclaimed Agnes. "He's not gone to see me or to look near any meeting."

"What!" faltered Mamma.

"Did he tell you what happened to-day?" said Agnes, sitting up straight and gazing in front of her with hard eyes.

"No! No!" halted Mamma. "He said he couldna speak about it yet."

"I can well believe that," cried Agnes bitterly.

"What was it, then?" whimpered Mrs. Brodie. "Tell us, for God's sake."

Agnes paused for a moment, then, with a quick indrawing of her breath, she steeled herself to her humiliation. "He came in smelling of drink; in fact, he was nearly the worse of it. In spite of that, I was glad to see him. He went into the back shop. He talked a lot of nonsense and then he tried to borrow to borrow money off me."

She sobbed dryly. "I would have given him it but I saw he would just spend it on spirits. When I refused he called me awful names. He swore at me. He said I was a " She broke down completely.

Her big eyes gushed tears. Her full bosom panted with hard sobs; her large mouth drew into gibbering grimaces. In a frenzy of lamentation she flung herself at Mrs. Brodie's feet.

"But that wasna everything," she cried. "I had to go into the shop a minute. When I came back he tried to he tried to insult me, Mamma. I had to struggle with him. Oh! If only he had been kind to me, I would have given him what he wanted. I don't care whether I'm wicked or not. I would! I would!" she shrieked. Her sobs strangled her. "I love him, but he doesn't love me. He called me an ugly bitch. He tried to take to take advantage of me. Oh! Mamma, it's killing me. I wanted him to do it, if only he had loved me. I wanted it!" she repeated in a high hysteria. "I had to tell ye. I'm worse than Mary was. I wish I was dead and finished."

She flung back her head and gazed wildly at Mrs. Brodie. The eyes of the two women met and fused in a dull horror of despair, then Mamma's lips twisted grotesquely, her mouth drew to one side, she made as though to speak but could not, and with an incoherent cry she fell back helplessly in her chair. As Agnes gazed at the limp figure, her eyes slowly grew startled, her thoughts withdrew gradually from her own sorrow.

"Are ye ill?" she gasped. "Oh! I didn't think it would take you like that. I'm so upset myself I never thought it might make you feel as bad as that. Can I not get you anything?"

Mamma's eyes sought the other's face, but still she did not speak.

"What can I do for you?" cried Agnes again. "You look so bad I'm frightened. Will I get you some water will I get the doctor? Speak to me."

At last Mamma spoke.

"I thought my boy was going out with ye to worship the Lord," she whispered in a strange voice. "I prayed that it should be so."

"Oh! Don't talk like that," exclaimed Agnes. "You'll need to corns and lie down a wee. Come and lie down till you're better!"

"My side hurts me," said Mamma dully. "It must be that my heart is broken. Let me go to my bed. I want to be quiet and by my lone in the darkness."

"Let me help you, then," cried Agnes, and taking the other's passive arm she drew her to her feet, supported her, and led her unresistingly up the stairs to her bedroom. There she undressed her and assisted her to bed. "What else can I do for you?" she said, finally. "Would you like the hot bottle?"

"Just leave me," replied Mamma, lying on her back and looking directly upwards. "Ye've been kind to help me, but I want to be by myself now."

"Let me sit with you for a bit! I don't like to go away yet awhile."

"No! Agnes. I want ye to go!" said Mrs. Brodie, in a dull flat voice. "I want to shut myself in the darkness. Turn out the gas and leave me. Just leave me be."

"Will I not leave the gas in a peep?" persisted Agnes. "No matter what's happened I can't think to go away like this."

"I wish the darkness," commanded Mrs. Brodie, "and I wish to be alone,"

Agnes made as though to speak but, feeling the futility of further protest, she took a last look at the inert figure upon the bed, then, as she had been bidden, turned out the gas. Leaving the room in blackness she passed silently from the house.

IX

As Matthew shut the front door upon Mamma and ran lightly down the steps, he was filled with a lively humour and as he smiled knowingly, the sham meekness fell from his face like a mask. "That's the way to work the old woman. Smart! Done like an artist too," he chuckled to himself, "and not bad for a first touch." He was proud of his achievement and felt in agreeable anticipation that he would do even better next time, that Mamma must have a tidy sum tucked away in a safe place. It would be his for the asking! The few shillings which he had received by pawning her watch had disgusted him, for he had expected it to be worth considerably more, but now that he had a few pounds in his pocket, his prestige and cheerfulness were restored. Just let him have the cash, he told himself gleefully, and he was all right. He knew how to disport himself with it!

The lights of the town twinkled invitingly. After Calcutta, Paris, London, he would find Levenford contemptibly small, yet this very disdain filled him with a delightful self-esteem. He, the man of the world, would show them a few things in the town to-night. Yes, by gad! he would paint it a bright, vermilion red! At his thoughts, a throaty laugh broke from him exultantly and he looked about him eagerly. As he swung along he saw dimly on the other side of the street the moving figure of a woman and, looking after the indistinct figure, he leered to himself, "That one's not much good to a man, she's in too much of a hurry. What does she want to run like that for?" He did not know that it was Agnes Moir on her way to see his mother.

He quickened his steps through the darkness that wrapped him like a cloak, revelling in this obscurity which made him feel more dashing, alive than the broad light of day. What manner of youth had he once been, to be afraid of this stimulating opacity? It was the time when a man woke up, when he could have some fun! Memories of lotus-eating nights he had spent in India recurred to him and, as they rose before him, whetting his anticipation, he muttered, "These were the nights. These were the splurges. I'll go back, all right. Trust me!" Gaily he plunged into the first public house in the street.

"Gin and angostura," he cried in an experienced tone, banging a pound note down on the bar. When the drink came he drained it in a gulp and nodded his head affirmatively, sophisticatedly. With the second glass in his hand he gathered up his change, slipped it into his pocket, tilted his hat to a rakish angle and looked round the saloon.

It was a poor sort of place, he noted indifferently, with drab red walls, poor lights, dirty spittoons and sawdust on the floor. Heavens! Sawdust on the floor, after the rich, thick-piled carpet into which his feet had sunk so seductively in that little place in Paris. Despite his demand, there had been no bitters in his gin. Still, he did not care: this was only the opener! His first and invariable proceeding on these jovial excursions was to get a few drinks into himself quickly. "When I've got a bead in me," he would say, "I'm as right as the mail. Man! I'm a spunky devil then." Until he felt the airy spinning of wheels within his brain he lacked drive, daring and nerve; for, despite his bluster, he was at heart the same soft, irresolute weakling as before and he required this blurring of his impressionable senses before he could enjoy himself in perfect self-confidence. His susceptible nature reacted quickly to the suggestive urge of alcohol and his bold dreams and pretentious longings were solidified thereby into actualities, so that he assumed with every glass a more superior aspect, a more mettled air of defiance.

"Anything happening in this hole to-night?" he enquired largely of the barman it was the class of tavern which, of necessity, had a large, powerful male behind the bar. The barman shook his close-cropped bullet head, looking curiously at the other, wondering who the young swell might be.

"No!" he replied cautiously, "I don't think so. There was a mechanics' concert in the Borough Hall on Thursday!"

"Gad!" replied Matthew, with a guffaw. "You don't call that sort of thing amusement. You're not civilised here. Don't you know anything about a neat little place to dance in, with a smart wench or two about. Something in the high-stepping line."

"You'll no' get that here," replied the tapman shortly, wiping the bar dry with a cloth, and adding sourly, "This is a decent town you're in."

"Don't I know it," cried Matt expansively, embracing with his glance the only other occupant of the room a labouring man who sat on a settle against the wall, watching him with a fascinated eye from behind a pint pot of beer. "Don't I know it. It's the deadest, most sanctimonious blot on the map of Europe. Aha! But you should see what I've seen. I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. But what's the odds. You don't know the difference here between a bottle of Pommeroy and a pair of French corsets."

He laughed loudly at his own humour, viewing their incredulous faces with an increasing merriment, then suddenly, although gratified at the impression he had created, he perceived that no further amusement, no further adventure was to be had there, and, moving to the door with a nod of his head and a tilt of his hat, he lounged out through the swing doors into the night.

He sauntered slowly along Church Street. That delicious woolly numbness was already beginning to creep around the back of his ears and infiltrate his brain. An easy sensation of well-being affected him; he wanted lights, company, music. Disgustedly he looked at the blank, shuttered shop windows and the few quickly moving pedestrians, and parodying contemptuously the last remark of the barman, he muttered to himself, "This is a decent graveyard you're in." He was seized by a vast and contemptuous loathing for Levenford. What good was a town of this kind to a seasoned man like him whose worldly knowledge stretched from the flash houses in Barrackpore to the Odeon bar in Paris?

Moodily, at the corner of Church Street and High Street, he turned into another saloon. Here, however, his glance immediately brightened. This place was warm, well lit, and filled with the animated chatter of voices; a glitter of mirrors and cut glass threw back myriads of coruscating lights; stacks of bottles with vivid labels were banked behind the bar and through half -drawn curtains he saw, in another room, the smooth, green cloth of a billiard table.

"Give me a Mackay's special," he ordered impressively. "John Mackay's and no other for me."

A plump, pink woman with jet drop earrings served him delicately. He admired the crook of her little finger as she decanted the spirits, considering it the essence of refinement, and although she was matronly he smiled at her blandly. He was such a lion with the ladies! A reputation like his must be sustained at all costs!

"Nice snug little place you've got here," he remarked loudly. "Reminds me of Spinosa's bar in Calcutta. Not so large but pretty well as comfortable!" There was a hush in the conversation, and feeling with satisfaction that he was being stared at, he sipped his whisky appreciatively, with the air of a connoisseur, and went on, "They don't give you the right stuff out there, though! Not unless you watch them! Too much blue vitriol in it. Like the knock-out gin at Port Said. Nothing like the real John Mackay." To his satisfaction, a few people began to collect round him; an English sailor in the crowd nudged him familiarly and said, thickly:

"You been out there too, cocky?"

"Just back!" said Matt affably, draining his glass. "Back across the briny from India."

"And so have I," replied the other, staring at Matthew with a fixed solemnity, then gravely shaking hands with him, as though the fact that they had both returned from India made them brothers now and for all time. "Bloody awful heat out there, isn't it, cocky? Gives me a thirst that lasts till I get back."

"Have a wet, then?"

"Naow! You have one along o' me!"

Agreeably they argued the point until they finally decided by tossing.

"Lovely lady," cried Matthew, with a killing glance at the fat barmaid. He won and the sailor ordered drinks for every one in the small coterie. "Right with the ladies every time," sniggered Matthew. He was glad that he had won and the sailor, in the exuberance of his drunken hospitality, glad to have lost. Whilst they drank, they compared their amazing experiences and the mob gaped whilst they discussed mosquitoes, monsoons, bars, bazaars, ship biscuits, pagodas, sacred and profane cows and the contours and anatomical intimacies of Armenian women. Stories circulated as freely as the drinks until the sailor, far ahead in the matter of inebriation, began to grow incoherent, maudlin, and Matt, at the outset of his night's enjoyment and swollen with an exuberant dignity, set himself to look for an excuse to shake him off.

"What can a man do in this half-dead town?" he cried. "Can't you squeeze out some excitement here?" This was not the society he had moved in before leaving for India and no one recognized him; as, indeed, they did not know him to be a son of the ancient Borough, he preferred them to regard him as a stranger, a dashing cosmopolitan.

They could think of nothing worthy of him and were silent until finally some one suggested:

"What about billiards?"

"Ah! a game of pills," said Matt thoughtfully; "that's something in my line."

"Billiards!" roared the seaman. "I'm true blue, I am! I'll play anybody alive for for anything you like to what I " His voice deteriorated into a drunken dribble of sound. Matthew considered hirn dispassionately.

"You're the champion, are you? Good enough. I'll play you fifty up for a pound a side," he challenged.

"Right," shouted the other. He surveyed Matthew with lowered lids and an oscillating head, indicating, in incoherent yet unmistakable picturesque language, that he would be soused for a son of a sea cook if he would go back on his word. "Where's your money?" he asked solemnly, in conclusion.

Each produced his stake, which the onlooker who had first suggested the game had the honour of holding, and, as no one had ever played in the place for such an unheard-of sum, the crowd, simmering with excitement, surged into the billiard room behind them amidst considerable commotion, and the game commenced.

Matthew, looking dashingly proficient in his shirt sleeves, began. He was, he fully understood, a good player, having practised assiduously in Calcutta, often indeed during the daytime when he should have been perched upon his office stool, and he realised with an inward complacency that the other, in his present condition, could be no match for him. Professionally, he ran his eye along his cue, halked it and, feeling that he was the focus of the combined admiration of the gathering, broke the balls, but failed to leave the red in baulk. His opponent, swaying slightly upon his feet, slapped his ball on the table, took a rapid sight at it and slammed hard with his cue. His ball struck the red with terrific violence and, pursuing it eagerly all around the table through a baffling intricacy of acute and obtuse angles, finally bolted after it into the bottom right-hand pocket. The crowd voiced its appreciation of the prodigious fluke. He turned and, supporting himself against the table, bowed gravely, then exclaimed triumphantly to Matthew:

"Whadeye think of that, cocky? Who's topsy-boozy now? Didn't I say I was true blue? Wasn't that a shot? I'll play you with cannon balls next time." He wanted to stop the game for a profound dissertation upon the merits of his marvellous stroke and a lengthy explanation of how he had performed it, but, after some persuasion, he was prevailed upon to continue. Though he readdressed himself to the ame with the air of a conqueror, his next shot was hardly so successful, for his ball struck hard on the bottom, bounced skittishly across the cloth, hurdled the edge of the table in its stride, and landed with a thud on the wooden floor amidst even louder and more prolonged applause than had greeted his previous effort.

"Wha' do I get for that?" he enquired owlishly, of the assembly at large.

"A kick on the arse!" shouted somebody at the back. The seaman shook his head sadly, but they all laughed, even the fat barmaid, who was craning her neck to see the fun and who tittered involuntarily, but recovering herself with a start, quickly merged her merriment into a more modest cough.

It was now Matthew's turn to play, and though the balls were favourably placed, he began with great caution, making three easy cannons and then going in off the red. Next, he began to play a series of red losing hazards into the right middle pocket, so accurately that at every stroke the object ball returned with slow, unerring exactitude to the required position below the middle of the table. The crowd held its breath with profound and respectful attention whilst he continued

his break. Under the bright lights his white, fleshy hands swam over the smooth baize like pale amoebae in a green pool; his touch upon the cue was as delicate and as gentle as a woman's; the spirits in him steadied him like a rock. This was the greatest joy that life could offer him, not merely to show off his perfect poise and masterly ability before this throng, but to draw upon himself this combined admiration and envy. His empty vanity fed itself greedily upon their adulation.

When he had made thirty-nine he paused significantly, rechalked his cue, and neglecting, obviously an easy ball which lay over the pocket, he addressed himself ostentatiously to a long and difficult cushion cannon. He achieved it, and with three, further quick shots ran out with his unfinished break of fifty. A storm of cheering filled the room.

"Go on, sir! Don't stop! Show us what you can do!"

"Who is he? The man's a marvel!"

"Stand us a pint, mister. It's worth that, anyway!"

But with a lordly assumption of indolence he refused to continue, pocketed his winnings and flung his cue into the rack; now that he had made his reputation, he was afraid to mar it. They surrounded him, clapping him on the back, pushing and shoving each other, trying to shake hands with him, whilst he gloried in his popularity, laughing, talking, gesticulating with the rest. His opponent, having been with difficulty convinced that the game was over, manifested no regrets, but flung his arm tipsily around Matthew's shoulder.

"Did you see that shot of mine, cocky?" he kept repeating. "It was worth a pound worth five pounds. It was a a regular nor'easter a pickled ripsnorter. I'm true blue, I am," and he glared defiantly around, seeking for any one who might dispute it.

They all went back to the bar, where the whole assembly had beer at Matthew's expense. He was their hero; they toasted him, then dispersed into small groups throughout the room, discussing, stroke by stroke, the memorable achievement of the victor.

Matt swaggered about the room, lording it over them. He had no false reticence, no mock modesty, but visited each group, saying to this one, "Did you see that cannon of mine off the cushion? Pretty neat, wasn't it? Judged to a hair's breadth!" To another, "Dash it all, I've made a break of two hundred on my day more than two hundred!" And to a third, "The poor barnacle, what chance had he

against the likes of me? I could have beat him with my walking stick." He lauded himself to the skies and the more he drank the more his silly vanity ballooned itself, until the room seemed to him to become filled with a babble of voices all lifted up to him in honeyed, fulsome flattery. His own tongue joined in the paean, the light gleamed about him like a thousand candles lighted in his honour, his heart swelled with gratification and delight. He had never had a triumph like this before; he considered himself the finest billiards player in Levenford, in Scotland, in the Kingdom; it was something to be able to make a break of fifty like that; why did they want to degrade him by shoving him into an office when he could play billiards in such a marvellous fashion?

Suddenly, at the height of his jubilation, the fickle favour of the crowd waned; a heated argument had developed between two newcomers an Irish navvy and a bricklayer and the general attention left him and fixed itself upon the protagonists, whilst the mob goaded on each in turn in the hopes of provoking a fight. After all, he had only bought them beer the price of popularity was higher than that and almost at once he found himself alone, in a corner, friendless and forgotten. He almost blubbered with dismay at the sudden change in his condition, reflecting that it was always the same, that he could never maintain the centre of the stage for a sufficient length of time but was shoved, before he wished it, into the background. He wanted to run after them and recapture their errant favour, to shout, "Look! I'm the man that made the break of fifty! Don't forget about me. I'm the great billiards player. Gather around me again! You'll not see a player like me every day!" His vexation deepened, merged insensibly into resentment, and in his disgust he swallowed two large whiskies, then, with a last indignant look which swept scowlingly over them all, he then went out of the bar. No one noticed him go.

Outside, the pavements tilted slightly as he walked, moving like the deck of a liner in a mild swell; yet, cunningly, he adapted his balance to this gentle, regular roll so that his body swayed slightly from side to side but nevertheless maintained its upright poise. The exhilaration of the movement charmed him and soothed his wounded conceit. As he traversed the High Street he became aware that, in manoeuvring so skilfully amongst the intricate difficulties of this perpetually alternating plane, he was accomplishing a noted feat, one ranking equally, perhaps, with his remarkable achievement at billiards.

He felt that it was not late and with great difficulty he attempted to make out the time from the lighted dial of the town clock; with his legs wide apart and his head thrown back, he struggled with the abstruse dimensions of time and space. The steeple oscillated gently and wavered in harmony with the earth, the hands were indistinct, but he thought that it was just ten o'clock and his satisfaction at his cleverness was unbounded when, a moment later, the clock struck ten. He counted the chiming notes with sage, explanatory beats of his arm as though he himself were tolling the bell.

Even for a dead and alive town like Levenford it was too early for him to go home. A man like Matthew Brodie to return home at the childish hour of ten o'clock? Impossible! He rammed his hand into his trousers pocket and feeling the reassuring crackle of a pound note and the clinking touch of silver coins, he thrust his hat more firmly on his head and once more set off down the street. Disappointingly few people were about. In a real city he would have known what to do; it was the easiest thing in the world to fling himself into a cab and, with a knowing wink, tell the driver to take him to the bona robas; he had only to lie back luxuriously and smoke his cigar whilst the spavined horseflesh dragged him happily to his destination. But here there were no cabs, no excitement, no women. The one girl whom he discovered and addressed gallantly ran from him fear-stricken, as though he had struck her, and he damned the town for its blatant, bourgeois piety, cursed the female population in its enfefrefy

for the reputable habit of retiring early, for the unhappy integrity of its virtue. He was like a hunter after game who, the more it evaded him, became the more desperate in his pursuit and he swayed up the High Street and down again, fruitlessly essaying to find some means of combating the melancholy of drunken despondency which began slowly to settle upon him. At last, when he felt that he must enter another tavern to drown the sorrow of his failure, all at once he remembered! He paused abruptly, slapped his thigh extravagantly at his unaccountable lapse ot memory, and allowed a slow smile to expand his features as he recollected that house in College Street which, in his youth, he had always hurried past with averted eyes and bated breath. Rumours regarding this tall, dark, narrow house, sandwiched between the Clyde Dress Agency and the mean pawn- shop at the foot of the Vennel, had spread from time to time like tiny ripples on the flat, impeccable surface of Levenford's respectability, giving the house a mysterious but tacitly acknowledged reputation amongst the knowing youth of the town. Its curtains were always drawn and no one entered by day, but at night lights diy erectly appeared, footsteps came and went, sometimes music was heard. Such an iniquity, however veiled, must long ago have been expunged from so ancient and reputable a Borough, but a controlling hand of protection seemed to lie over the house, not perhaps sanctioning but rather concealing its inoffensively immoral existence; it was even hinted by malicious individuals that certain baillies and prominent citizens found a not infrequent occasion upon which to make use of this rendezvous, in, of course, an eminently sedate and genteel manner.

"That's the hidey-holc for you, Matt. You'll sec if ye were right or wrong. You've often wondered what's inside and now you're going to find out," he muttered to himself delightedly, as he lurched towards College Street, bent upon investigating the horrors at which his immature experience had shuddered. It struck him suddenly as the most ludicrous jest imaginable that he should be on his way to a bawdy house in Levenford and he burst into peals of laughter so that he was obliged to stop and roll helplessly against the side of a wall, whilst inane guffaws shook him and tears of mirth coursed down his face. When he was able to proceed, his despondency of a few short moments ago was gone and he felt with a delicious, inward appreciation that he was enjoying himself infinitely more than he had expected. The alcohol he had absorbed had not yet reached the zenith of its stimulation and, with every floundering step he took, he became more stupidly heedless and more sublimely hilarious.

He entered the Vennel. The narrow street seemed more full of life than all the wide main streets of the town together; it teemed with an unseen activity. From the pens and closes and from behind even the thin walls of the houses came an endless variety of sounds voices, laughter, the howl of a dog, the music of a melodeon, singing.

He perceived that they did not retire early here, felt that he was in his element, and outside a lighted window, from which emerged a roistering chorus, he stood rooted, then suddenly, like a provoked dog, he threw back his head and lifted his loud, inebriate voice in unison with the harmony within. The music ceased immediately and, after a pause, the window was thrown up and a stream of slops descended in a curving arch towards him. It missed him, however, by a foot, merely splashing slightly about his legs, and he retired down the street gaily, with the full honours of the encounter.

Halfway down, his nostrils dilated to the succulent odour of frying ham arising from the cooking of some belated supper in a house which he was passing, and reaching him through the night in a spicy, savoury vapour. Immediately he felt hungry and, looking around, discerned over the way a small shop still open, a nondescript eating- house devoted to the sale of such delicacies as pies, puddings, potted head, and tripe and onions. Moved by a sudden impulse, he strode across the street and muttering to himself drunkenly, "Ladies can wait. Matt needs little nourishment. Must keep strength up, m'boy," he entered the place magnificently. Inside, however, his whisky- hunger overcame his style and he shouted, "Throw us a meat pie quick, and swill in plenty of gravy."

"Penny or twopenny?" queried the greasy youth behind the counter.

"Sixpenny! you soor" replied Matthew, amiably. "Do you think I want any of your small trash, your bobachee? Pick me the biggest in the bunch and push it over here, jilde!" He slapped the coin down, took up the newspaper-wrapped package offered in return and, disdaining to consume the pie upon the premises, walked out. Down the street he went, tearing off the paper wrapping and stuffing handfuls of the delicacy into his mouth, eating voraciously, leaving behind him a track which became at once the joy and contention of all the starveling cats of the alley.

When he had finished, he breathed a sigh of content and, recollecting his manners, sucked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously upon his handkerchief. Then he hurried more urgently forward, full of meat and drink, ready now for the subtler and more piquant enchantments of the dessert. He came eventually to the house, found it indeed, without difficulty, for it was not easy to forget one's way in Levenford, and for a moment he stood outside, contemplating the narrow veiled illumination of the windows. As he remained there, momentarily a faint return of his adolescent awe touched him strangely, made him hesitate, but urged by the wild thought of the pleasure that lay therein for him, he seized the knocker and hammered loudly at the door. The clangour thundered up and down the street with a rude insistence, and, when he desisted, echoed to and fro across the narrow canyon of the lane, leaving, after the final reverberation had ceased, a startled silence which seemed to fall upon the outside, to grip even the inside of the house. There was a long pause, during which he stood swaying upon the doorstep and, when he had almost made up his mind to knock again, the door was opened slowly and for a small way only. Still, he was not dismayed by the inhospitable meagreness of this narrow aperture but, wise in his experience, immediately thrust his foot into the opening.

"Good evening, dear lady," he simpered. "Are you at home?"

"What do you want?" said a hard, low-toned, female voice from the interior darkness.

"The sight of your pretty face, my deah," he replied, in his best manner. "Come along now. Don't be so cruel and heartless. Give me a look at your bright eyes or your neat ankles."

"Who are you?" repeated the other harshly. "Who told you to come here?"

"I'm an old inhabitant, sweet creature, lately returned from abroad and not without the wherewithal." He jingled the money in his pocket enticingly and laughed with a short, empty laugh.

There was a pause, then the voice said firmly:

"Go away! You've made a mistake. This is a respectable house. We'll have nothing to do with you whatever," and she made as though to close the door in his face. In the ordinary way he would have been deterred by this rebuff and would undoubtedly have slunk off, but now his foot prevented the door from closing and he replied, with some show of bluster:

"Not so fast, ma'am. Don't be so high and mighty! You're dealing with a tough customer here. Let me in or I'll make such a hullabaloo you'll have the whole street at your door. Yes, I'll bring the town down about your ears."

"Go away at once or I'll get the police on you," said the other in a less firm tone, after a momentary silence that seemed fraught with indecision.

He winked triumphantly at the darkness, feeling that he was winning, realising proudly that he could always bluff the women.

"No, you won't," he replied craftily; "you don't want any police down here. I know that better than you do. I'm the gentleman you want to-night just wait till you see."

SiHe made no answer and, her silence encouraging him, her reticence serving to excite his lust, he muttered:

"I'll come and take a peep at you, Dolly," and, pressing his shoulder into the slight open space of the doorway, he forcibly insinuated himself into the hall. There he blinked for a moment in the light of the lamp which she held in her hand and which was now thrust forward into his face; then his jaw dropped and he stared boorishly, incredulously at her. Across the thrawn, forbidding face of the woman a gross purple narvus lay like a livid weal, stretching like a living fungus which had eaten into and destroyed her cheek and neck. It fascinated him morbidly with the attraction of a repulsive curiosity.

"What do you want?" she repeated in a rasping voice. He was disconcerted; with an effort, he removed his eyes from her face, but as he gazed around the wide, high-vaulted hall, his confidence returned at the thought that there were other rooms in the house, rooms sealed with an alluring mystery. She herself was only the bawd; there must be plenty of fun waiting for him behind one of these doors in the house. He looked at her again and immediately her disfigurement obtruded itself upon him so forcibly that he could not release his attention from it and, despite himself, muttered stupidly:

"Woman, that's an awful mark on your face. How did ye come to get it?"

"Who are you?" she repeated, harshly. "For the last time I ask you, before I have you thrown out."

He was off his guard.

"My name's Brodie Matthew Brodie," he mumbled in an absent, sottish voice. "Where are the young wenches? It's them I want to see! You'll not do!"

As he spoke, she in her turn stared at him and, in the flickering light of the lamp, it seemed as if amazement and agitation in turn swept across her grim features. At length she said slowly:

"I told you that you had mistaken the kind of house that this is! You'll not find much to amuse you here. Nobody lives in this house but me. That's the plain truth. I advise you to leave at once.”

"I don't believe you," he cried sullenly, and, his anger growing, he set up a great hubbub, shouting, "You're a liar, I tell you. Do you think I'm a fool to be put off with a yarn like that? I'll see you further before I go away. Do you think I'll let myself be put off by a thing like you? Me that's travelled to the other end of the world. No! I'll break into every room in this damned house sooner than be beat."

At the uproar which he created a voice called out from upstairs and immediately she thrust her hand over his face.

"Shut your mouth, will you," she cried fiercely. "You'll have the whole place about my ears. Who the devil are you to come in and disturb an honest woman like this? Here! Wait in this room till you're sober. Then I'll have it out with you. Wait until I come back or it'll be the worse for you." She seized him by the arm and, opening a door in the lobby, pushed him roughly into a small sitting room.

"Wait here, I tell you, or you'll regret it all your born days," she shot at him, with a forbidding look, as she shut the door and enclosed him within the cold, uninviting chamber. She was gone before his fuddled brain had realised it and now he looked round the small cold parlour into which he had been thrust with a mixture of disgust and annoyance. Luscious memories recurred to him of other houses where he had moved in a whirl of mad music and wild, gay laughter, where bright lights had danced above the rich warmth of red plush and eager, undressed women had vied with each other for the richness of his favours. He had not been three minutes in the room before his drunken senses collected themselves and, as his mind realised the absurdity of having permitted himself a man of such experience to be shut up out of the way in this small cupboard, his will shaped itself towards a fiery resolution. They would not close him up in this box of a place with fine sport going on under his very nose! He moved forward and, with a crass affectation of caution, opened the door and tiptoed once more into the wide lobby, where a faint murmur of voices came to him from upstairs. Surreptitiously he looked around. There were three other doors opening out of the hall and he surveyed them with a mixture of expectation and indecision, until, choosing the one immediately opposite, and advancing carefully, he turned the handle and looked in. He was rewarded only by the cold darkness of a musty, unoccupied room. Closing this door, he turned to the one which adjoined it, but again he was disappointed, for he discovered here only the empty kitchen of the house; and swinging around with a snort of disgust, he plunged heedlessly into the last room.

Immediately he stood stock still, whilst the thrill of a delicious discovery ran through him. Before his eyes, seated reading a news-paper beside the comfortable fire, was a girl. Like a frantic searcher who has at last discovered treasure he uttered deep in his throat a low exultant cry and remained motionless, filling himself with her beauty, fascinated by the warm reflection of the firelight upon the soft curve of her pale cheek, noting her slender body, the shapely curve of her ankles, as, still unconscious of him, she held her feet to the fire. She was attractive and, seen through the haze of his distorted, craving senses, she became to him at once supremely beautiful and desirable. Slowly he advanced towards her. At the sound of his step she looked up, her face at once became disturbed, and she dropped her paper, saying quickly, "This room is private, reserved."

He nodded his head wisely, as he replied:

"That's right. It's reserved for me and you. Don't be afraid; nobody will disturb us." He sat down heavily on a chair close to her and tried to take her hand in his.

"But you can't come in here!" she protested in a panic. "You've no right to do such a thing. I'll I'll call the landlady."

She was as timid as a partridge and, he told himself greedily, as smooth and plump. He longed to bite the round contour of her shoulder.

"No! my dear," he said thickly. "I've seen her already. We had a nice long talk outside. She's not bonny, but she's honest. Yes! she's got my money and I've got you."

"It's impossible! You're insulting me," she cried out. "There's been a mistake, I never set eyes on you before, I'm expecting some one here any minute."

"He can wait till I've gone, dearie," he replied coarsely. "I like the look of you so well I would never let you go now!"

She jumped to her feet indignantly.

"I'll scream," she cried. "You don't know what you're, about. He'll kill you if he comes in."

"He can go to hell, whoever he is. I've got you now," shouted Matt, gripping her suddenly before she could shriek.

At that moment, when he hugged her close to his rampant body, whilst he bent down to her face, the door opened and, as he raised his head furiously to vituperate the intruder, he gazed straight into the eyes of his father. For what seemed an eternity of time the three figures remained motionless, as though the three emotions of surprise, anger and fear had petrified them into stone; then gradually, as Matt's arm relaxed, the limp figure of the girl slipped silently out of his embrace. Then as if this movement induced him to speak, yet without for an instant removing his eyes from his son's face, and in words as cold and penetrating as steel, Brodie said:

"Has he hurt ye, Nancy?"

The pretty barmaid of the Winton Arms came slowly up to him and tremblingly sobbed:

"Not much. It was nothing at all. He didna hurt me. Ye just came in time."

His lips compressed themselves firmly and his gaze became more fixed as he replied:

"Don't weep then, lassie! Run awa' out."

"Am I to wait in the house for ye, dear?" she whispered. "I will, if ye wish it."

"No!" he exclaimed, without an instant's hesitation. "Ye've had enough to thole. Run awa' hame." His eyes dilated and his hands opened and shut as he continued slowly, "I want to have this this gentleman to myself entirely to myself."

As she brushed past him he stroked her cheek, without looking at her, without relaxing a muscle of his face.

"Dinna hurt him," she whispered fearfully. "He didna mean anything. Ye can see he's not himself."

He did not reply, but when she had gone he shut the door quietly and came close up to his son. The two men looked at each other. This time Matt's eyes were not beaten down for he immediately lowered them and gazed deliberately at the floor. Through his intbriated mind a wild succession of thoughts whirled. The immediate

sinking fear he had experienced was replaced by a contrary emotion which rushed upwards in a fierce and bitter resentment. Was his father inevitably doomed to thwart him? The memory of each humiliation, every taunt, all the beatings he had endured from the other throughout his life seethed through his pot-valiant brain like white fire. Was he to submit patiently to another thrashing because

he had unwittingly obtruded upon his father's low woman? Mad with drink and frustrated lust, inflamed by the hot tide of his hate, he stood still, feeling blindly that now, at least he was beyond fear.

Brodie gazed at the lowered head of his son with a burning passion which at last burst the bonds of his iron control.

"You dog!" he hissed from between his clenched teeth. "You dared to do that! You dared to interfere with me and with what is mine. I warned ye to keep out of my way and now I'll strangle you."

He put out his great hands to clutch the other's neck but with a jerk Matt broke away from him, staggering to the other side of the table, from where he glared insanely at his father. His pale face was bedewed with sweat, his mouth worked convulsively, his whole body shook.

"You're as bad as me, you swine!" he yelled. "Don't think you can come it over me any longer. You wanted that bitch for yourself. That was all. But if I can't get her, I'll see that you don't. I've suffered enough from you. I'm going to suffer no more. Don't look at me like that!"

"Look at ye!" roared Brodie. "I'll do more than look at ye! I'll choke ye till I squeeze the breath out of your worthless body."

"Let me see you try," shouted the other, with a heaving breast. "You'll choke me none you'll grind me down no longer. You think I'm feared of you, but by God! I'm not. I'll show you something you don't expect."

A more brutal rage surged in Brodie at this unexpected defiance and his eye glared but, without speaking, he began slowly to advance around the table towards his son. Yet, strangely, Matthew did not move. Instead, with a wild shout of delirious exultation he plunged his hand into his hip pocket and withdrew a small derringer which he clutched fiercely in his grasp and pointed directly at his father.

"You didn't know I had this, you swine," he shrieked. "You didn't know I had brought this from India. There's a bullet in it that's a keepsake for you. Take it now, damn ye. Take it now, you sneering bully!" And shutting his teeth behind his pale lips, he jerked back his forefinger and pulled the trigger. There was a bright yellow flash and a sharp explosion which sounded loudly within the confines of the room. The bullet, fired at close range, furrowed Brodie's temple and buried itself in the mirror of the overmantel, amidst a crashing of glass which tinkled upon the floor amongst the dying echoes of the shot. For a second, Brodic stood aghast, then, with a loud cry, he rushed forward and struck his son a fearful blow with his mallet fist full between the eyes. Matthew dropped like a pole-axed animal, striking his head against the table leg as he fell. He lay senseless upon the floor, bleeding from his nose and ears.

"You murderer!" panted Brodie, staring with glittering eyes at the insensate form beneath him. "You tried to murder your own father." Then, as he stood thus, a furious knocking came upon the door, and the woman of the house burst into the room, trembling, her gruesome face becoming more ghastly as she gazed at the pistol and the inanimate figure on the floor.

"My God!" she gasped. "Ye havena ye havena shot your own son?"

Brodie pressed his handkerchief to his raw, scorched temple, his face rigid, his chest still heaving painfully.

"Leave us," he commanded, still keeping his gaze upon Matthew. "It was him tried to kill me."

" Twas him fired at you, then," she cried, wringing her hands. "I kjiew no good would come o' him bustin' in like he did. Whatua noise that pistol made, too!"

"Get out o' here then," he ordered roughly. "Get out or there'll be more noise if that's all that concerns you."

"Dinna do anything rash," she implored him. "Remember the name o' the house."

"Damn you and your house! The only name it has is a bad one," he shouted, forcing his fierce gaze on her. "Don't ye know I was nearly deid," and seizing her by the shoulder, he thrust her out of the room. When he had closed the door behind her he turned and again grimly contemplated the prone figure, then advancing, he stood over it and stirred it with his foot.

"You would have murdered your father," he muttered. "By God! I’ll pay you for it." Then he moved slowly to the table, sat down and, folding his arms across his chest, patiently awaited the other's recovery.

For five minutes there was absolute silence in the room, except for the slow tick-tock of a clock that hung against the wall and the occasional fall of a cinder in the grate; then, suddenly, Matt groaned and moved. Holding his head in both hands, whilst blood still streamed from his nose, he tried to sit up but failed, and subsided again upon the floor with a low moan of pain. The blow which he had received had almost fractured his skull and now he felt sick with concussion. He had yet no consciousness of his father's presence as the room swam around him and a violent nausea affected him. He felt deathly sick, hiccoughed and then vomited. The disgusting accumulation of his stomach contents gushed from his mouth and mixed revoltingly with the pool of blood upon the floor. It appeared as if he would never stop retching, as though the reflex straining of his body would kill him, but at last he ceased, and after lying weakly upon his side, he rose, and staggered dizzily to a chair by the table. His face was pale and streaked with blood, his eyes puffed and swollen, but with such vision as was left to him he now saw and gazed dumbly at his father.

"You're still here, you see," whispered Brodie softly, "and so am I." He uttered the last words with a slow intensity as he drew his chair nearer to that of his son. "Just the two of us alone in this room. Isna' that grand? It's a rare delight for me to be with ye like this and to see ye so close to me." He paused for a moment, then snarled, "Your dear mother would love ye if she could only see you now. The sight o' your face would fair fill her heart with joy! The look o' these smart clothes that you've spewed such a braw new pattern ower would fair chairm her! Her big braw son!" Matthew was incapable of speaking, but speech was not required of him; Brodie picked up the pistol and, turning it over ostentatiously before his son's shrinking gaze, continued, in a more restrained and contemplative tone, "Man, when I see you there, I'm surprised that a thing like you had the courage to try to murder me. Ye're such a poor bit o' dirt. But although I'm not anxious to have a bullet in my brain it's a pity, in a way, that ye didna succeed. Ye would have danced so brawly at the end of a halter, swingin' from side to side with the rope around your yellow neck."

Matthew, now quite sober, turned a dead, piteous face towards his father, and, impelled by the instinct of flight, weakly tried to get up, in an endeavour to escape from the room.

"Stay where you are, you dog!" flared Brodie. "Do you think I'm done with ye yet? Ye'll leave here at my pleasure and there's just the chance ye might never leave at all."

"I was out of my head, Father," Matt whispered. "I didn't know what I was doin' I was drunk."

"So ye take a dram, do ye?" sneered his father. "The very idea, now! That's another gentlemanly habit ye brought back from abroad. No wonder ye have such a bonny aim wi' a gun."

"I didna mean to fire," whispered the other. "I only bought the pistol for show. Oh! I'll never, never do it again."

"Tuts, man!" jibed Brodie, "Dinna make such rash promises. Ye might want to murder somebody in real earnest to-morrow to blow their brains out so that they lay scattered on the floor."

"Father, Father, let me go," whined Matthew. "Ye can see fine I didn't mean it."

"Come! Come!" jeered Brodie. "This'll never do. That's no' like the big man you are that's not like your mother's dashin' son. Ye must have spewed a' the courage out o' ye by the look o' things. We maun gie you another drink to pull ye together." He seized the bell that lay on the table and rang it loudly. "Just consider," he continued, with a dreadful laugh, "a dead man couldna have rung that bell. Na! I couldna have given ye a dram if ye had murdered me."

"Don't say that word again, Father," Matt sobbed. "It makes me feared. I tell ye I didn't know what I was doing."

Here the landlady of the house came in and, with tight lips, silently regarded them.

"We're still a' alive, ye see," Brodie sang out to her gaily, "in spite of all the pistols and gunpowder and keepsakes from India; and since we're alive, we're goin' to drink. Bring us a bottle o' whisky and two glasses."

"I don't want to drink," Matt quailed. "I'm too sick." His head was splitting in agony and the very thought of liquor nauseated him.

"What?" drawled Brodie. "Ye don't say! And you the seasoned vessel that carries revolvers about wi' ye. Man, ye better tak' what's offered, for ye'll need a good stiffener before I hand ye over to the police!"

"The police!" gasped Matt in terror. "No! No! You wouldna do that, Father." His fear was abject. He was now, through the blow, the reaction of his feelings and the close proximity of his father, reduced to the level of an invertebrate creature who would have willingly crawled at the other's feet if he could thereby have propitiated him.

Brodie eyed his son repugnantly; he read his mind and saw the arrant cowardice staring from his bloodshot eyes. He was silent whilst the woman entered with the bottle and glasses, then, when she had withdrawn, he muttered slowly to himself:

"God help me! Whatna' thing is this to bear my name?" Then bitterly he took up the bottle and poured out two glasses of neat spirit.

"Here!" he shouted. "We'll drink to my big, braw son. The fine man from India! The lady's man! The man that tried to kill his father!" Fiercely he thrust the glass at his son. "Drink it, you dog, or I'll throw it in your teeth." He drained his glass at a gulp, then fixed a minatory eye upon the other whilst Matthew painfully forced himself to swallow his portion of the spirit.

"Now," he sneered, "we'll make a fine comfortable night o' it, just you and me. Fill up your glass! Fill it up, I say!"

"Oh! Father, let me go home," cried Matt the sight and taste of the whisky now loathsome to him "I want to go home. My head is bursting."

"Dear! Dear!" replied Brodie, in a broad mimicry of his wife's voice. "Our Matt has a wee bit headache. That must have been where I struck you, son. That's terrible! What shall we do about it?" He affected to think deeply whilst he again emptied his glass.

"Man, I can't think of anything better than a leetle speerits. That's the remedy for an honest man like you some good honest whisky."

He filled out another full glass of the raw liquor and bending forward, seized his son's jaw with vicelike fingers, prised open the weak mouth, then quickly tilted the contents of the glass down Matt's gullet; whilst Matthew gasped and choked he continued, with a frightful assumption of conviviality, "That's better! That's much better! And now tell me don't hesitate, mind ye, but be quite frank about it tell me what ye thought of Nancy. She's maybe no so weel born as your mother, ye ken, but she doesna stink in her person. Na! she's a clean wee body in some respects. A man canna have it both ways, apparently." Then dropping his assumed smoothness, he suddenly snarled, in a devilish voice, "Was she to your taste, I'm askin' you?"

"I don't know. I can't tell," whined Matthew, realising that whatever answer he gave would be the wrong one.

Brodie nodded his big head reflectively.

"Man, that's true enough! I didn't give ye enough time to sample her. What a pity I came in so soon. I might have given ye another ten minutes thegither." Deliberately he whipped his own imagination on the raw with a dark unconscious sadism, knowing only that the more he tortured himself the more torment he gave his son. The more he saw his son's painful thoughts revolt from the consideration of his recent excesses, the more thickly he thrust these repugnant

ideas upon him.

"Man," he continued, "I couldna help but admire the bold, strong way you handled her, although she couldna have refused anything to a braw callant like you. Ye would have thocht ye were fechtin' wi' a man the way ye gripped her."

Matthew could endure it no longer. He had reached the limit of his endurance and laying his head, which throbbed with the beat of a hundred hammers, upon the table, and bursting outright into weak, blubbering tears, he cried:

"Father, kill me if ye like. I don't care. Kill me and be done with it but, for God's sake, let me be."

Brodie looked at him with baffled, embittered fury; the hope he had entertained of taunting his son into another wild assault so that he might experience the delight of again battering him senseless to the floor died within him. He saw that the other was too weak, too broken, too pitifully distressed to be provoked into another outburst and a sudden, rankling resentment made him bend over and catch him a tremendous buffet on the head, with his open hand.

"Take that, then, you slabbering lump," he shouted loudly; "you haven't even got the guts of a sheep." All the refinement of his anger, the sneering, the sarcasm, the irony vanished, and instead his rage foamed over like a raging sea whilst his face grew black with rabid fury like the dark clouding of an angry sky. "You would lay your fingers on my woman! You would lift your hand against me! Against me!" he roared.

Matt raised his eyes weakly, imploringly. "Don't look at me," bellowed Brodie, as though a sacrilege had been committed by the other. "Ye're not fit to lift your eyes above the level o' my boots. I canna look at ye but what I want to spit on ye. Take that, and that, and that." With every word he cuffed the other's head like an empty cask, sending it banging against the table. "God!" he cried in disgust, "what are ye? Your head sounds like an empty drum. Have ye got to be drunk before ye can stand up for yourself? Have ye no sense of pride in the blood that's in ye? Have ye no pride to be heir to the name I gave ye?" Then, in the height of his fury, he suddenly seized Matt by the arm and, lifting him like a huddled marionette, dragged him to his feet. "For what am I wasting my time on ye here? We'll go home!" he cried. "I'll take ye home. Now we must deliver ye safely to your mother, out o' this wicked house. It's not the place at all for the son of such a godly woman." He linked his arm through Matt's and propped the staggering, half-insensible figure against his own; then, flinging some money on the table, he rammed his hat on his head. "Can ye sing?" he shouted, as he trailed Matt out into the drab, empty street. "We maun have a bit chorus on the way home. Just you and me to show folks what good friends we are. Sing, you dog!" he threatened, twisting the other's arms agonizingly. "Sing, or

I'll kill ye!"

"What will what will I sing?" came the panting, tormented voice of his son.

"Sing anything. Sing a hymn. Ay!" He gloated over the idea; "that's verra appropriate. Ye've just missed murdering yer faither ye maun sing a hymn o' praise and thanksgiving. Give us the Old Hundred, my big, braw man. Begin!" he ordered.

"All people that on earth do dwell," quavered Matt.

"Louder! Quicker!" shouted Brodie. "Give it pith! Put your heart into it. Pretend ye're just out o' the prayer meetin'." He marched the other off supporting him, dragging him, bolstering him up when he staggered on the uneven street, beating time to the tune and from time to time joining his voice in the refrain with a blasphemous satire.

Down the narrow Vennel they went towards their home, the words ringing sonorously through the stillness of the imprisoned air. Fainter grew their steps and more faintly came the sound until, finally, the last fading whisper was lost in the peaceful darkness of the night.

MRS BRODIE lay on the thin, straw mattress of her narrow bed, encompassed by the darkness of her room and the silence of the house.

Ncssie and Grandma were sleeping, but since Agnes had left her, she had remained strainingly awake for the sounds of Matt's return. Her mind, since the shock she had received earlier in the evening, was blank and dully incapable of thought, but, whilst she waited, she suffered physically. Her acute pain had returned to her! Restlessly she twisted from side to side, trying one position and then another in an effort to alleviate the boring volleys of pain which enfiladed the

entire length of her body. Her feet were cold and her hot hands moved constantly on the fretted surface of the patchwork quilt that covered the bed. Automatically, in the darkness, her fingers moved over each pattern as though she unconsciously retraced the labour of her needle. Dimly she longed for a hot bottle to draw the blood from her congested head into the icy numbness of her legs and feet, but she was too languid to stir and she feared, too, in a vague way, to move from the safe harbour of her room, dreading that some new misfortune might beset her, that she might perhaps encounter some fresh and terrifying experience on the stairs.

Slowly the seconds ticked into minutes, sluggishly the minutes dragged into hours and, through the peace of the night, she heard actually the faint distant note of the town clock as it struck twelve whispering notes. In effect, another day had begun when she must soon face again the melancholy round of the daylight hours and all that the new dawn would bring to her. But her introspection did not follow this course. As the significance of the hour broke upon her, she murmured only, "He's late; They're both awfu' late!" With the characteristic pessimism of a defeated spirit, she now sounded the abyss of melancholy possibility to its deepest extent, and wondered miserably if Matt had encountered his father in the town. Intangible contingencies following upon the chance of this meeting made her tremble, even as she lay passive upon the bed.

At length, when her anxiety had reached an intolerable pitch, she heard steps outside in the road. Desperately she wished to rush to the window to try to penetrate the gloom outside, but she could not make the effort and was compelled to lie still, waiting with anxious ears for the click of the front door latch. Soon, indeed, she heard this sound but with the opening of the door her perturbation increased, for, immediately, she distinguished the loud bawling voice of her husband, derisive, compelling, dominant, and in reply the cowed, submissive tones of her son. She heard the ponderous movement of a heavy body noisily ascending the stairs and the slurred footsteps of a lighter, less vital and more exhausted frame following behind. On the landing outside her room her husband said, in a loud, hectoring voice:

"Go to your kennel now, you dog! I'll be ready for you again in the morning." There was no answer but the quick scuffle of feet and the loud bang of a door. Comparative quiet again descended upon the house, penetrated only by an occasional sound from Brodie's bedroom, the creaking of a board, the scrape of a chair, the clatter of his boots as he discarded them upon the floor, the creak of the springs as he flung his huge bulk upon the bed. With this final sound, unbroken silence again completely enveloped the house.

The helplessness of her position seemed to intensify her perception and give her intuition an added force. She realised that the possibility she had dreaded had actually taken place and, in addition, that some crushing misadventure had befallen her son. She had at once sensed this latter fact from the shambling irregularity of his step and the hopeless impotence of his voice, but now her imagination ran riot and she began to fill the torpid hush of the night with distressing sounds. She thought she heard some one weeping. Was it, she asked herself, a faint movement of air around the house or, in truth, the subdued sobbing of her son? If it were he, what rash act might not such misery induce? She pictured him, the errant but still beloved child, contemplating some desperate means of self-destruction. Immediately the sobbing turned to soft sad music which swelled with the funeral insistence of a dirge. She tried, with all her power, to compose herself to sleep but could not. In the suspended state of

her mind, swinging between reality and dreams, the lament broke over her like grey waves upon a forgotten shore, mingling with the lost, desolate cries of sea birds. She saw, amidst pouring rain and the raw, wet clods of fresh-turned clay, a rough, plank bier upon which lay a yellow coffin, saw this lowered, and the heavy clotted lumps of earth begin to fall upon it. With a low cry she twisted upon her back. Her half-conscious visions suddenly became dissipated by a fierce

onset of bodily suffering. The excruciating pang, that had stricken her occasionally before, now flung itself upon her with a fierce and prolonged activity. It was unbearable. Hitherto this particular spasm had been, though of deadly intensity, only of short duration, but now her agony was continual. It was, to her, worse by far than the pangs of childbirth, and it flashed upon her that she suffered so fearfully because she had betrayed her daughter and allowed her to be cast headlong in her labour into the storm. She felt her enfeebled heart tremble with the stunning violence of the pain. "O God!" she whispered, "take it from me. I canna thole it longer." Yet it did not leave her but increased in strength until it was impossible for her to endure it; wildly she struggled up, clutching her long nightgown about her. She swayed as she walked, but her anguish forced her on; she tottered in her bare feet into her son's room and almost fell across his bed.

"Matt," she panted, "my pain is on me. It willna leave me run run for the doctor. Run quick, son!"

He had been hardly asleep and now he sat up, startled to be confronted by this new, terrifying apparition; she frightened him horribly, for he could discern only a long white shape that lay supinely across his bed.

"What is it?" he cried, "What do you want with me?" Then, as he perceived dimly that she was ill, he exclaimed; "What's wrong with you, Mamma?"

She could hardly breathe. "I'm dyin'. For the Lord's sake, Matt a doctor! I canna live wi' this pain. It'll finish me if ye dinna hurry."

He leapt out of bed, his head swimming with the residue of his own recent experience, and, as a passion of remorse gripped his already prostrate spirit, he became again a frightened, remorseful boy.

"Is it my fault, Mamma?" he whined. "Is it because I took your money? I'll not do it again. I'll get the watch for you too. I'll be a good boy!"

She scarcely heard him, was far beyond understanding his words.

"Run quick!" she moaned. "I canna thole this longer."

"I'll go! I'll go!" he ejaculated, in a passion of abasement. Frantically he struggled into his trousers, flung on his jacket and pulled on his shoes, then ran downstairs and out of the house. With long, lurching steps he raced down the middle of the road whilst the wind of his passage lifted the matted hair from off his bruised and swollen forehead. "O God!" he whispered as he ran. "Am I going to kill my mother next? It's all my fault. It's me that's to blame. I haven't done right with her." In the dejection following his debauch he felt himself responsible, in every way, for his mother's sudden illness and a gross, lachrymal contortion shook him as he shouted out to the Deity wild, incoherent promises of reformation and amendment if only Mamma might be spared to him. As he careered along, with head thrown back, bent elbows pressed against his sides, his shirt widely open over his panting chest, his loose garments fluttering about him, he ran like a criminal escaping from justice, with no apparent motive but that of flight. Though his broad purpose was to reach the town, he had at first, in the misery and conflict of his thoughts, no definite objective, but now, when his breath came in short, flagging puffs and he felt a "stitch" in his side, making him fear that he could run no farther, he bethought himself more urgently of finding a doctor. In the distress of his exhausted condition he perceived that he could not continue the whole way to Knoxhill for Doctor Lawrie.

It was too far! Suddenly he remembered that Mamma, in one of her voluminous letters, had mentioned a Doctor Renwick of Wellhall Road in a sense which he imagined to be favourable. With this in mind, he swerved to the left at the railway bridge and, after spurring on his jaded body to a further effort, he saw, to his relief, a red light outside one of the shadowy houses in the road.

Panting, he drew up at the door, searched in a flurry for the night bell, found it, and tugged at the handle with all his pent-up fear. So violent had been his pull that, as he stood there, he heard a long-continued pealing inside the silent house; then, after a few moments, a window above him was thrown up and the head and shoulders of a man protruded.

"What is it?" called out an incisive voice from overhead.

"You're wanted at once, Doctor!" cried Matthew, his anxious

upturned face gleaming palely towards the other. "My mother's ill. She's been taken very bad."

"What's the nature of her trouble?" returned Renwick.

"I couldn't tell you, Doctor," exclaimed Matthew brokenly. "I knew nothing about it till she just collapsed. Oh! But she's in awful pain. Come quickly."

"Where is it, then?" said Renwick resignedly. He did not view the matter from the same unique and profoundly disturbing aspect as Matthew; it was, to him merely a night call which might or might not be serious, the repetition of a frequent and vexatious experience the loss of a good night's rest.

"Brodie's the name, Doctor. You surely know the house at the end of Darroch Road."

"Brodie!" exclaimed the doctor; then, after a short pause, he said in an altered, interrogative tone, "Why do you come to me? Your mother is not a patient of mine."

"Oh! I don't know anything about that," cried Matthew feverishly. "She must have a doctor. Ye must come she's suffering so much. I beg of ye to come. It's a matter of life or death."

It was a different Renwick from two years ago, one to whom success had given the power of differentiating, of refusing work he did not wish, but he could not resist this appeal.

"I'll come then," he said shortly. "Go on ahead of me. I'll be after you in a few moments."

Matthew sighed with relief, poured forth a babble of effusive gratitude towards the now closed window, then turning, hurriedly made his way home. Yet, when he arrived at the house, he was afraid to go in alone and stood shivering outside, in his insufficient garments, feeling that he must wait for the doctor's support before he could enter. Although he buttoned his jacket to the neck and held it close about him, the chilly night air pierced him like a knife, yet the fear that he might make some terrible discovery, that he might perhaps find Mamma lying lifeless upon his bed, kept him standing indecisively at the gate, trembling with cold and fear. He had not long to wait, however, for soon the yellow blurs of two gig lamps came into sight around the bend of the road. Finally they drew into the side of the road and stopped with their full glare upon him and, from the darkness behind, Renwick's voice came crisply:

"Why haven't you gone in? It's folly to stand like that after running. You'll catch your death of cold hanging about there, with every pore of you open." He jumped out of his gig and, from the contrasting obscurity beyond, advanced towards the other in the circle of light. "Man alive!" he said suddenly; "what's happened to your head? Have you had a blow?"

"No!" stammered Matthew awkwardly. "I I fell down."

"It's an ugly bruise," returned Renwick slowly, looking at the other questioningly; yet he said no more but swung his bag forward in his hand and with it motioned the other towards the house.

They went in. Stillness and blackness immediately surrounded them.

"Get a light, man, for heaven's sake," said Renwick irritably. The longer he was with Matthew, the more his quick judgment estimated and condemned the other's weakness and indecision. "Couldn't you have seen to all this before I arrived? You'll need to pull yourself together if you want to help your mother."

"It's all right," whispered Matthew, "I have a box in my pocket." With a shaking hand he struck a match and lit the small gas jet in the hall, and in this dim wavering gleam together they moved forward, following their own flickering shadows as they mounted the stairs. The door of Mrs. Brodie's room stood half open and from within came the sound of quick breathing, at which Matthew broke down and sobbed, "Thank God, she's alive!"

By a miracle of heroic endeavour she had made her way back to her own room and now lay helpless, like a wounded animal that, by a last supreme effort, has reached its lair. The doctor took the matches from Matthew's useless fingers and, having lit the gas in the bedroom, guided him quietly out of the room, then closing the door, he turned and seated himself beside the figure upon the bed His dark, sombre eyes fixed themselves upon the outlines of her ravaged figure and, as he gently felt the quick, compressible pulse and noted the sunken hollows where emaciation had already touched her, his face shadowed slightly at the suspicion already forming in his mind. Then he laid his palm upon her body softly, with a sensitive touch which registered immediately the abnormal resistance of her rigid muscles, and simultaneously the concern of his face deepened. At this moment she opened her eyes and fastened them appealingly upon his, then whispered slowly:

"You've come!" Her words and her regard recognised him as her deliverer. He altered his expression, adapting his features, the instant she looked at him, to an air of kind and reassuring confidence.

"It hurts you here," he indicated gently, by a pressure of his hand. "This is the place."

She nodded her head. It was wonderful to her that he should immediately divine the seat of her pain; it invested him with a miraculous and awe-inspiring power; his touch at once seemed healing and his gently moving hand became a talisman which would discover and infallibly reveal the morbid secret of her distress. Willingly she submitted her racked body to his examination, feeling that here was one in whom lay an almost divine power to make her well.