Hatter's Castle

"That's better," he encouraged, as he felt her relax. "Can you let me go a little deeper just once?" he queried. Again she nodded her head and, following his whispered injunction, tried to breathe quietly, whilst his long, firm fingers sent shivers of pain pulsating through her. "That was splendid!" He thanked her with a calm consideration. "You are very brave." Not by so much as the flicker of his eyelids could she have discerned that, deep in the tissues of

her body, he had discovered nodules of a wide-rooted growth which he knew to have progressed far beyond the aid of any human skill.

"How long have you had trouble?" he asked casually "Surely this Is not the first attack you've had?"

With difficulty she spoke.

"No! I've had it for a long time, off and on, Doctor, but never for such a spell as this. The pain used to go away at once, but this one is a long time in easin'. It's better, mind you, but it hasna gone."

"You've had other symptoms surely, Mrs. Brodie," he exclaimed, his speaking eye conveying a meaning beyond his simple words. "You must have known you were not right. Why did you not see about it sooner?"

"I knew well enough," she answered, "but I seemed never to have the time to bother about myself." She made no mention of her husband's intolerance as she added, "I just let it gang on. I thought that in time it would go away."

He shook his head slowly in a faint reproof, saying:

"You've neglected yourself sadly, I'm afraid, Mrs. Brodie. It may mean that you'll be laid up in bed for a little. You must make up your mind for a rest that's what you've needed for a long time. Rest and no worry!"

"What's wrong with me, then?" she whispered. "It's it's nothing serious?"

He raised himself from the bed and surveyed her kindly.

"What did I say about worrying?" he replied. "I'm coming again to-morrow for a fuller examination, when you have no pain. Just now you are going to have a good sleep. I've something here to give you relief."

"Can you ease me?" she murmured weakly. "I couldna bear yon again."

"You'll have no more of that," he comforted her. "I'll see to it."

She watched him silently as he picked up his bag, opened it and produced a small phial from which he measured some drops carefully into a glass; then, as he added some water and turned to her again, she placed her worn hand on his and said, movingly, "You're so kind to me. It's no wonder your name's on a' bodies' tongues. I canna but thank you for your goodness in coming to me to-night, and thank you I do with all my heart."

"You drink this, then," he murmured, gently pressing her dry, calloused fingers. "It's the very thing for you."

She took the glass with all the sublime trust of a young child and drained it to the dark dregs, forced even a faint, tragic smile to her pale lips as she whispered:

"That was bitter, Doctor. It maun be good medicine."

He smiled back at her reassuringly.

"Now rest," he ordained. "You need a good long sleep;" and, with her hand still in his, he sat down again beside her, waiting whilst the opiate took effect. His presence reassured her by its benign, magnetic power; the talisman that she clasped as though she feared to relinquish it, comforted her; occasionally her eyes would open to regard him gratefully. Then her pupils contracted slowly, the drawn lines of her features became erased, drowsily she murmured:

"God bless you, Doctor. 'Twas you saved my Mary's life and yell make me better too. Come to me again please." Then she slept.

Slowly he disengaged his hand from her now flaccid grasp, repacked his bag, and stood gazing at her dormant form. His face, wiped clean of its protecting film of sanguine assurance, was heavy with a sad knowledge, mingled with a pensive, human sympathy. He remained motionless for a moment, then he covered her more

warmly with the bedclothes, lowered the gas and went out of the room.

At the foot of the stairs Matt was awaiting him, his pale, apprehensive countenance shiny with the blanched pallor of a sickly moon.

"How is she?" he asked in a low tone. "Is she better?"

"She is out of pain now, and sleeping," answered Renwick. "That was the immediate necessity for your mother." He looked directly at the other, wondering how much he could tell him.

"Where is your father?" he asked finally. "I feel I ought to see him."

Matthew's glance wilted, his bruised eyes fell downwards, his body moved uneasily as he whispered:

"He's asleep in bed. I don't want to disturb him. No! We better not wake him. It wouldn't do any good."

Ren wick's face became stern at the other's abject look. What manner of house was this? he asked himself, and what manner of people?

The mother, the son, yes, even that poor child Mary, all were terrified of the one omnipotent being, the master of the house, this outrageous Brodie.

"I do not know," he said at length, enunciating his words with cold distinctness, "whether it will be desirable for me to continue the conduct of this case, but you may tell your father that I shall call to see him to-morrow."

"Is she going to be bad for long, then?" mumbled Matthew.

"For about six months at the outside."

"What a long time!" said Matt slowly. "She does all the work. How will we manage in the house without her?"

"You will have to manage," said the doctor severely. "And high time it is that you started to learn."

"What way?" asked Matthew stupidly.

"Your mother is dying of an incurable, internal cancer. She will never get out of that bed again. In six months she will be in her grave."

Matt collapsed as if the other had struck him; weakly he sat down upon the stairs. Mamma dying! Only five hours ago she had been running after him, had served him with a delicate meal cooked by her own hands, but now she lay stricken upon a bed from which she would never arise. With his head bowed upon his hands he did not see the doctor go out or hear the sound of the closing door. Prostrated by grief and remorse he looked, not forward, but backward; his mind swayed by memory, roamed through the whole period of his life; his vivid recollection strayed through all the pathways of the past. He felt the tender petting of her hands, the caress of her cheek, the touch of her lips upon his brow. He saw her coming to his room as he lay petulantly on his bed, heard her say soothingly, "Here's something nice for you, son." Her features appeared before him in every expression, coaxing, pleading, wheedling, but all bearing the same indefinable stamp of love for him. Then he saw her face finally composed in the calm, complacent rigidity of death, and in its serenity, he still observed upon the pale lips the smiling tenderness which she had always shown to him.

Alone on the stairs he broke down, and whispered to himself, again and again:

"Mamma! Mamma! Ye were aye so good to me!

XI

"WHERE'S my hot water?" shouted Brodie. "Hot water! My shaving water!" He stood upon the landing outside his room, dressed in his shirt and trousers, bawling to the regions below. For the first time since he could remember, his shaving water was not ready for him at his door at the precise second when he required it; he had, with the established action of habit, bent down to lift the jug and there had been no jug for him to lift. At this unprecedented and atrocious evidence of neglect, amazement had immediately given way to a sense of personal affront which had added to the bitter temper in which he had arisen from bed. This morning he had awakened to a different perception of the incidents of the previous night, and on turning over the matter in his mind, had slowly become infuriated to think that his son had stumbled on his intrigue with Nancy, had discovered the meeting place at the house in College Street. Resentment that such a weakling as Matt should have dared to interfere with the manner of his life made him forget the danger which he had survived; the unusual incident of the shooting faded into the realm of the unreal and it was the interference with his pleasure which now aroused his bitter anger. His head felt stuffed from the heaviness of his sleep; the ever-present worry of his failing business, lying perpetually in the background to greet him when he awoke, added to his bitter moody vexation; and now, when he wanted especially to get shaved and freshened up in order to adjust his tangled thoughts, he could not obtain his hot water. It was always the same, he told himself; a man could never get what he wanted

in this infernal house, and, with the full force of a legitimate grievance, he bellowed out once more, "Water! Bring it up at once! Damn it all, am I to stand here all day cooling my heels on your pleasure! Water, confound you!"

Nothing happened! To his bewilderment, Mamma did not come panting up the stairs in a paroxysm of abasement and haste, with the familiar steaming jug in her hand and a quivering apology upon her lips. An unusual quiet prevailed below. He sniffed with dilated nostrils like an angry bull scenting the wind, but could discern no appetising smell of cooking ascending from the kitchen. With a snort,

he was about to plunge downstairs to make his wants known more forcibly, when suddenly the door of Matt's room opened and, in response to the muffled sound of a parting injunction, Nessie came out and timidly advanced towards her father.

His anger moderated at the sight of her, the frown faded from his forehead, the bitter twist of his lips softened slightly. The inevitable effect of her presence was to soften the harshness of his nature and it was, indeed, for this reason she had been selected to break the news to him.

"Father," she said diffidently, "Mamma's not up this morning."

"What!" he cried, as though hardly able to believe his ears. "Not up yet? Still in her bed at this hour?"

Nessie nodded.

"It's not her fault though, Father," she murmured placatingly. "Don't blame her she's not well. She tried to get up but she couldn't move."

Brodie growled. He knew she was lazy, malingering, that the whole affair was a subterfuge to prevent him from getting his shaving water. Then he thought of his breakfast. Who was to get him that? Abruptly he took a step toward's Mamma's room to see if his presence would not make her forget her indisposition, liven her up to a more useful activity.

"Mamma was awful bad through the night," Nessie interposed. "Matt had to run out in the middle of the night and get a doctor."

He stopped dead at this new and startling information and exclaimed, in amazed displeasure:

"The doctor! What way was I not told? Why was I not consulted

about this? Is everything to be done in this house over my head,

without telling me about it? Where is Matt?"

Matthew, who had been listening to the conversation through the half-open door, emerged slowly upon the landing. From his streaked, haggard face he looked as if he had not slept and now he regarded his father uncomfortably in the broad light of day. Still, Nessie had done her part in imparting the petrifying news; it would be easier for him to explain.

"Why did ye not tell me about this this affair, sir?" repeated Brodie fiercely. He refused to refer to it directly as an illness; in his opinion the whole thing was a fabrication against his comfort, a conspiracy to annoy him. "Why did you not come to me first?"

“I didn't want to disturb you, Father," mumbled Matt. "I thought you would be asleep."

"You're gey considerate o' me all of a sudden," Brodie sneered. "You're not always so solicitous about my health, are ye?" He paused significantly and added:

"Ye brought Lawrie into the house well! What did he say about her?"

"It wasn't him," replied Matthew humbly; "I couldn't get him, Father. It was Renwick that came."

A thrill of anger ran through Brodie's frame.

"What!" he roared. "Ye brought that snipe to my house. What were ye thinking about, you fool! Do ye not know him and me are sworn enemies? Of course he would put Mamma to her bed. Certainly!" he jeered. "I suppose he wants to keep her there for a week. I suppose we've a' been killin' her here. I've no doubt it'll be chicken and champagne ordered for her now, whilst we've got to scrint to pay his bills."

"Oh! Father," entreated Matthew, "I don't think so. He said it was it was really serious."

"Bah!" snarled Brodie, "There's nothing I wouldna put past a thing like him and you're as bad for lettin' him in here behind my back. I'll pay ye for that as well. That's something else I owe ye."

"Anyway," faltered Matt, "he said he said he would come to examine her more thoroughly this morning that he would be seein' you."

"So!" said Brodie. He stood silent, his lips drawn back in an ugly sneer. Renwick was coming to his house this morning, was he? To start, maybe, a course of daily visits, thinking, no doubt, that with a soft, spineless creature like Mamma, he would have a grand, imaginary invalid to play about with. Brodie's fist clenched involuntarily, as it did always when a powerful resolution moved him, and he gritted his teeth together. "I'll wait on him myself," he said aloud, in a tone of concentrated animosity. "I'll see what he has to say for himself. I'll surprise him. It'll not be her that he'll see, but me."

Then, after a moment during which he gazed ahead of him into space, he turned.

"Nessie," he said, "you go and get your father some hot water. Take care not to scald yourself, pettie! Then get that old mother o' mine up. She maun get some kind o' breakfast made for us. If Mamma can lounge in her bed there's others that have work to do. Off you go now," and, patting her thin shoulders, he went back again into his bedroom.

The hot water arrived quickly and he began to perform the usual routine of his morning toilet. But his thoughts were not upon what he did. Every now and then he would stop short, his eye, glooming into space, would kindle with an angry fire and he would toss his head fiercely, contemptuously.

"He would keep my wife in bed," he muttered angrily, taking it now as a deliberate hit at him by Renwick that his wife should be in bed. "The infernal impudence of him. I'll learn him, though! I'll teach him to interfere with me again!"

Ever since the terrible illness of his daughter, he had borne Renwick a bitter grudge for the aspersions made during that memorable interview when he had refused to visit and assist his daughter in the crisis of her pneumonia. A fulminating antagonism now flared inside him as he considered, in advance, all the cutting insults he would fling at the other. Not for a moment did it occur to him that he should visit his wife; she was an insignificant pawn amongst the movements of this affair and when he had dealt successfully with Renwick she would unquestionably get up and cook his dinner an extra good dinner too, it had better be, to compensate for her defection of the morning.

"Yes! I'll settle him," he muttered repeatedly to himself. "I'll chuck his fee in his face and tell him to shift out o' my house."

He could scarcely swallow his breakfast for the surge of his resentment; not that the meal was tempting, in any case. The porridge was singed and watery and, gloomily, he looked at his old mother, with her skirt kirtled around her waist above her striped petticoat, as she made a great commotion of her preparations.

"These porridge are wasted," he flung at her moodily. "They're not fit for pigs to eat.”

Everything was wrong. The toast was soft and limp; his tea he was obliged to accept this instead of his favourite coffee was weak and made with water which had not reached the boiling point; his egg was like leather and his bacon like cinders.

"She'll need to get up!" he exclaimed aloud. "I can't stand this kind of thing. This meat is enough to poison a man."

The dirty fireplace stared at him, his boots were unbrushed, he had cut himself whilst shaving; flaming, he heaved himself up from the table and sat down in his chair to wait for Renwick. His eye followed with disgust the senile, inept movements of his mother, his ears were jarred by the clatter of a breaking dish which came to him from the scullery. Then, perceiving that Nessie hung about the room, he sent her sharply off to school. She was at least an hour late and had hoped in the rarity of the occasion to be overlooked, or perhaps excused, but he ordered her to go and, without attempt at protest, she departed. Matthew did not appear but remained invisible upstairs. No sound was heard from Mamma. Brodie could not settle. He looked at the clock, saw that it was half-past ten, became aware that he was at least an hour late for business, that his shop would be standing open, empty, untended, with only his stupid, careless boy to gape uselessly at any person who might come in; then he reflected bitterly that his absence was of little consequence, that actually it did not matter, so few people did come in to his business now.

He got up and restlessly moved about. The kitchen seemed somehow unfamiliar to him in this light; disturbed in his routine, he felt everything strange and unusual about him. The infringement of his daily custom, following so closely upon the unnatural events of the preceding night, gave to him a sensation of monstrous unreality which baffled his mediocre comprehension, and the irritation produced by this puzzled perplexity served like fuel to feed his flaming anger further. Restless as a caged tiger, he paced up and down the lobby. The longer he was obliged to wait the more his resentment swelled until, as if in an endeavour to hasten Renwick's arrival, he went into the parlour and gazed fretfully out of the window. Then the thought struck him that the doctor might see his peering face and take it as a sign of weakness upon his part, and at the hateful idea he drew away violently from the window and returned to the kitchen where he forced himself again into his chair, forced himself to a semblance of control. Outwardly impassive, but inwardly seething, he waited, the only sign of his hot impatience the quick action of his foot as it made a ceaseless, tapping movement through the empty air.

At eleven o'clock the doorbell rang. Like a runner who has long awaited the sound of the start, to unleash his restrained store of energy, Brodie leaped out of his chair, strode to the front door and with a defiant, sweeping gesture threw it wide to the wall. His huge bulk filled the opening, blocking the passage into the house.

"Well! What is it?" he growled. "What do ye want?"

Doctor Renwick stood upon the doorstep, dispassionately immaculate in his well-fitting morning coat, and dignified by the background of his man, his well-groomed cob and smart gig. Secure now in the possession of his large and lucrative practice, he made not the slightest motion towards coming in, but paused appreciably before replying pleasantly:

"Ah! Mr. Brodie himself, this morning, I see!"

"Never mind me," said Brodie loweringly. "What do ye want here?"

"Really," said Renwick tranquilly, "you are the epitome of courtesy. You have not altered since our last meeting at least, not for the better."

"Your purpose, sir?" breathed Brodie heavily. "Don't flash your glib tongue at me. Answer me straight."

"Well! Since you are so blunt, I will be equally so. I came last night at the urgent request of your son, and rather against my inclination, to see your wife, and despite your pretence of ignorance I am convinced that you know I was here." He paused and negligently flicked his sleeve with his glove before continuing. "This morning I had proposed to pay a final visit" he emphasised deeply the word final "in order to confirm, by a further examination, the melancholy diagnosis which I made last night."

Brodie glowered at him. Renwick's aloof imperturbability infuriated him infinitely more than any display of furious rage would have done. That he could meet with equal violence. But his clumsy wit was as useless against this quick coolness of mind as a bludgeon against a flashing rapier; he was pricked in a dozen places before he could swing the heavy weapon of his reply.

The other had, indeed, almost disarmed him by the assertion that he proposed to make no further calls, and he had aroused Brodie's attention by the veiled implication of his reference to Mamma's condition.

"What are ye makin' out to be wrong wi' her, then?" he sneered, unconsciously changing his attitude. "She's a graund subject for the bed."

Renwick raised his eyebrows delicately, without speaking, a slight gesture which had, nevertheless, the immediate effect of making the other feel the exceeding bad taste of his remark. Raging at this unspoken contempt, Brodie rushed on to his inevitable resort when all else failed him the descent to personalities.

"Don't mock at me like that with your creashy smirk," he cried, "it doesna improve the look of your ugly face, anyway."

Renwick continued to look at him dispassionately. Most men, from their physical stature, were compelled to look upwards to James Brodie and Brodie revelled in this fact; it gave him a sense of superiority and power to stand over a man. Renwick, however, was fully as tall as he, and from the slight eminence of the outer porch, he reversed the usual order of things, and he, instead, looked down

upon Brodie.

"I shall not waste my time here further," he said at last coldly. "If you are not a busy man, I am. In your state of mind you are not amenable to reason. You have a delusion of grandeur which makes you wish every one to be in awe of you. The unfortunate members of your family are, no doubt, afraid of you but I, happily, am not! Understand that clearly if you can. And now, good morning to you!" He turned on his heel and was about to descend the steps when the other caught hold of his arm.

"Wait! Wait!" shouted Brodie. The interview was not proceeding as he had anticipated, for he had visioned himself grudgingly permitting Renwick to have access to the house after he had been scraped and bowed to, after his offended dignity had been suitably appeased. In his heart he felt he must know what the doctor thought of his wife, and though he had desired, first of all, to make Renwick feel like a paid servant who could be discharged contemptuously with his fee, he did not wish to be left completely ignorant of Mamma's condition.

"Don't go like that," he cried. "Ye havena told me what's wrong wi' my wife. What are ye paid for if ye can't tell me what you came here for last night? You'll have to justify yourself in some way."

The other showed him a coldly contemptuous profile,

"The question of fee has not arisen, so far as I am aware. As to the other matter, I have already informed you that I shall give you my definite diagnosis only after a further and internal examination;" and he shook off Brodie's detaining hand and made to resume his exit.

"Damn it all, then," cried Brodie suddenly. "Come in and do what ye want. Since ye are here, we may as well make use of ye," Renwick came back slowly, and with a maddening suavity he said:

"Since you beg of me to come back I shall do so, but understand this, it is only for your wife's sake;" then he pushed past the bulky form before him and quickly mounted the stairs.

Brodie, fuming and nonplussed, was left standing in the hall.

He bent his brows angrily, rubbed his chin indecisively, stretched out his hand to shut the front door, then refrained from shutting it, as the thought crossed his insulted mind that it would amount almost to subservience for him to close the door for Renwick.

"Let him shut the door for himself," he muttered. "Anyway, he'll not be long. He'll soon be out again and then it'll be for good."

He gazed moodily out of the open door at the doctor's spanking turnout at his gate, his dark envious eye noting the fine legs of the cob, its muscled shoulders, its supple arched neck. He estimated clearly the money which lay in the splendid animal, in the sound coach-built gig, in the man's smart livery, even in the cockaded hat which sat jauntily upon his head, and this tangible vision of the other's prosperity was like gall to him. With a jerk he withdrew his gaze, began to pace up and down the hall. "Will he never come down?" he asked himself. "What does he think he's doin' up there a' this time?"

He reflected impatiently on what must be taking place upstairs, writhed at the thought of what the nature of the examination might be. Although he had finished with his wife in every aspect of his sexual life and had indeed cast her from him in contumely, the thought of another man interfering, as he mentally worded it, with her made him furious. Although his wife was old, jaded and worn out, yet she was still his property, his chattel, his possession. He would never need the possession nor use the chattel, yet she must remain wholly and subserviently his. That was his mentality and, had he lived in another age, he would surely have destroyed each mistress when he had tired of her in the perverted fear that she would fall into another's hands. Ridiculous and abominable thoughts now began to torment him.

"By God!" he cried out. "If he doesna come down I'll go up myself."

But he did not go up! Something in Renwick's cold disdain had chilled his animal mind and although, of course, he feared no one, yet the temper of the other's spirit so far surpassed his that it surmounted and even subdued him. Always a superior, fearless mind aroused in him a faint, lowering distrust, the prelude to hatred, to an unbridled antipathy that weakened, to his undoing, such reason as usually controlled his motives. And so he chafed and stamped about in the hall until, when he had been made to wait a full half-hour, he did at last hc.ir Ren wick come down. Watching the doctor descend the stairs slowly, he felt, uncontrollably, that he must voice his severe displeasure.

"Did you say you were busy ?" he girned. "What a time you were!"

"Not too long surely, for a last visit," said Rcnwick impassively.

"What's wrong with her then?” shot out Brodie. 'I’ve no doubt you've been puttin' some grand, fancy ideas in her head all this time."

"Which reminds me," continued the doctor tranquilly, ignoring the interjection, "that you must arrange for your own medical man to be called in without fail to-morrow. If you wish, I will communicate with him. Your wife must have constant and unremitting attention."

Brodie stared at him incredulously, then laughed sneeringly.

"Does she need a nurse next?" he exclaimed.

"Your good wife most assuredly does. That is," Renwick added quietly, "if you can afford it."

Brodie drew from the other's words a humiliating imputation.

"Be careful," he breathed. "I asked you what was wrong with her."

"Advanced, incurable cancer of the womb," said Renwick slowly.

Brodie's jaw dropped at the dreadful word.

"Cancer," he echoed. "Cancer!" Despite his iron control, his cheek blanched slightly; but he fought to recover himself.

"It's a lie!" he exclaimed loudly. "You're trying to get even with me. You're tryin' to frichten me with a demned lie,"

"I wish it were a lie, but I have satisfied myself, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that my diagnosis is correct," said Renwick sadly. "There is nothing to be done for the poor soul but to alleviate her pain and she will never leave the bed she now lies on."

"I don't believe you," snarled Brodie. "I don't give that for your opinion." He snapped his fingers in the other's face like the crack of a whip, caring, not so much for the dreadful affliction which might lie upon his wife, as for the humiliating position into which he imagined the doctor was trying to force him. "Ill have better advice than yours," he cried. "I'll have my own physician. He's head and shoulders above you in skill. If she's ill, he'll cure her!"

Renwick inclined his head.

"I hope sincerely that he does, and I must tell you," he added severely, "that in medicine the basis of any treatment is rest and freedom from anxiety."

"Thank ye for nothing," cried Brodie roughly. "Here! What is your fee for a' this tarradiddle? What do we pay you for tellin' her to lie in bed?" and he plunged his hand into his trousers pocket.

The doctor, on his way to the door, turned and said, with a penetrating look which revealed the fullness of his knowledge of Brodie's unhappy, financial position:

"Really, no! Not from you, in your present circumstances. I couldn't think of it." He paused and added, "Remember, I shall not call again unless I'm sent for" then he was gone.

Brodie, his fists clenched, stared impotently at the retreating figure. Only when the gig was out of sight did a suitable retort occur to him.

"Send for him again," he cried. "He'll never come into this house again! The infernal snipe! I don't believe a word of his damned lies. A pack of lies," he repeated, as if to convince himself.

As he stood in the lobby he did not know what to do, but through his indecision, despite his assumed contempt of Renwick's opinion, the word cancer kept beating into his brain with a dire significance Cancer of the womb! It seemed to him the most horrid manifestation of the dread disease. Although he had violently professed unbelief, now a seeping tide of conviction swept over him; bit by bit he began to piece evidence together which was in itself conclusive. Her ailing look had not, then, been assumed these secretive ways not an indecency, a reproach to him, but only a piteous necessity.

Suddenly a devastating thought struck him! Had the scourge been passed to him? Knowing nothing of the laws of contagion or infection, still he wondered if he himself might be contaminated, and immediately the recollection of her previous nearness to him, of past contacts, rushed over him, making him feel unclean. Involuntarily he glanced over his muscular body as if it might reveal already some sinister index of the malady. His glance reassured him, but following the thought came, inevitably, a small wave of resentment against his wife. "Could she no’ have watched herself better?" he muttered, as if she were in measure responsible for her own calamity.

He shook himself and braced out his barrel chest to rid himself of all the oppressive, conflicting ideas within him. Without realising it, he wandered into the cold, unused parlour and sat down in the inhospitable room where he again set himself to decide what he must do. Although he must, of course, justify his threat to Renwick and call in Doctor Lawrie, already he knew it to be useless. This had been merely the spiteful taunt of his inferior mind and, in his inmost heart, he knew Lawrie's skill to be far below the other's. He realised, too, that he must go up to his wife, but he had no heart for his duty, for under the stigma of this awful distemper she had become to him even more unwelcome and repugnant than before. He shrank equally from her and from his onerous duty to visit her. Shifting his mind quickly from her, he began to consider the domestic

situation. What a mess, he thought; and not unlike the state of his business! A look that was almost piteous in its perplexity slowly invaded the hard, massive face, softening its harshness, driving out the bitterness, lifting the frown from the brow. But that compassionate expression was for himself! He was thinking, not of his wife but of himself, sympathising with himself, pitying James Brodie for the troubles that beset him.

"Ay," he muttered gently, "it's a good job you're a man amongst a' this injustice. Ye have a wee thing or two to thole." With these words he rose and ascended the stairs as slowly and heavily as if clambering up a ladder; outside Mamma's room he paused, drew himself up, and went in. She had heard him coming up and already was turned to greet him with a pleading, ingratiating smile.

"I'm sorry, father," she immediately murmured. "I tried hard to get up but it was just beyond me. I'm real sorry ye've been so upset. Did ye get a decent breakfast?"

He seemed to be seeing her with new eyes, observing now that her face looked ghastly, with hollowed temples and jaws, that her form appeared to have become suddenly wasted. He did not know what to say. It was so long since he had addressed a kind word to her that his tongue refused to utter one, and in his hesitation he felt uncomfortable, incongruous, absurd. His motive in life was to drive, to demand, to chastise, to flagellate; he could not sympathise. He stared

at her desperately.

"You're not angry, I hope, Father," she said timidly, misconstruing his look. "I'll be up in a day or two. He says a bit rest is what I need. I'll see that you're not put about more than need be."

"I'm not angry, woman," he said hoarsely. Then after a pause, with an effort, he added, "Ye maun lie still till we see what Doctor Lawrie can do for ye."

Immediately she flinched.

"Oh! No! No! Father," she cried, "It's not him I want. I like Doctor Renwick so much I feel he'll make me well. He's so kind and so clever. His medicine made me feel better at once."

He gritted his teeth impotently as her protests rang on endlessly. Previously he would have rammed his intention in her teeth and left her to swallow it as best she liked, but now, in the novelty of her condition, and indeed, of his, he knew not what to say. He resolved that she would have Lawrie, that he would send him in, but modifying his retort with an effort, he exclaimed:

"Well see then! Well see how ye get on."

Mrs. Brodie gazed at him doubtfully, feeling that if he took Renwick from her she would surely die. She had loved this doctor's serene assurance, had expanded under his unusual gentleness. Unconsciously she was drawn to him as the one who had attended her daughter, and he had already spoken to her of Mary in terms that paid tribute to the patience and fortitude of her child under the trials of an almost mortal illness. Now she sensed at once that her husband was antagonistic to her desire, but she knew better than to argue; hastily she sought to propitiate him.

"What are we goin' to do about you, James?" she ventured. "Ye must be looked after properly. You must have your comforts."

"Ill be all right," he managed to say. "The old lady will do her best."

"No! No!" she urged. "IVe been thinkin' out plans all morning. I must get up as soon as I'm able, but in the meantime, could we not get a girl in, some one who would get your meals as ye like them. I could tell her tell her just what to do how to make the broth as ye like it, and how to season your porridge, and the airin' o' your flannels and "

He interrupted her by a definite, intolerant shake of his head. Could she not realise that it cost money to keep a servant ? Did she think he was rolling in wealth? He wanted to say something crushing that would shut off her silly twaddle. "Does she think I'm a helpless wean, the way she's going on?" he asked himself. "Does she think the house couldna go on without her?" Yet he knew that if he opened his mouth to speak he would blunder into some blunt rejoinder the niceties of expression were beyond him so he closed his lips and maintained a chafing silence.

She looked at him closely, encouraged by his silence, wondering fearfully if she dared to venture the subject nearest her heart. His unaccustomed placidity made her brave and, with a sudden gasp, she exclaimed:

"James! To mind the house now could we not could we not have Mary back?"

He recoiled from her. His assumed serenity was not proof against this, and losing control of himself, he shouted:

"No! We will not. I warned ye not even to lift her name. She'll not come back here till she crawls on her bended knees. Me as’ her to come back! Never! Not even if ye lay on your deathbed."

The last word rang through the room like a trumpet call and slowly a frightened look came into Mamma's eyes.

"As you say, James," she trembled. "But please dinna mention that awfu' word. I'm not wantin' to die yet. I'm goin' to get better, ye ken. I'll be up soon."

Her optimism exasperated him. He did not realise that the habits of half a lifetime had ingrained in her the feeling that she must always exhibit in his presence this spurious cheerfulness, nor did he understand that the desire to get up arose from an ever pricking urge to fulfill the innumerable demands that harassed her.

"The doctor didna say much," she continued propitiatingly, "beyond that it was a kind of inflammation. When that goes down, I'm sure I'll get my strength up in no time. I cianna bear this lyin' in bed. I've got so many things to think of." She was worrying about the payment of her debt. "Just wee bits o' things that nobody would bother about but me," she added hastily, as if she feared he might read her mind.

He looked at her gloomily. The more she glossed over her illness the more he became convinced that she would not survive it; the more she spoke of the future the more futile she became in his eyes. Would she be as inept when confronted by death as she had been in the face of life? He tried desperately to find something to say; what could he say to this doomed but unconscious woman?

And now his manner began to puzzle her. At first she had assumed gratefully that his quiet had betokened a forbearance in the face of her sickness, a modification of the same feeling which made her move throughout the house on tiptoes when she had nursed him, on such rare occasions as he had been ill. But a curious quality in his regard now perturbed her, and suddenly she queried:

"The doctor didna say anything about me to you, did he? He didna tell you something that he keepit from me? He seemed a long time downstairs before I heard him drive away."

He looked at her stupidly. His mind seemed, from a long distance off, to consider her question slowly, detachedly, without succeeding in arriving at an appropriate answer.

"Tell me if he did, James," she cried apprehensively. "I would far rather know. Tell me." The whole of her appearance had altered, her demeanour, from being calm and sanguine, had become agitated, disturbed.

He had come into the room with no fixed motive as to how he should deal with her. He had no sympathy, no tact, and now no ingenuity to lie to her. He felt confused, trapped, like a blundering animal before the frail, raddled creature on the bed. His temper flared suddenly.

"What do I care what he thinks!" he found himself saying harshly. "A man like him would say ye were dyin' if ye had a toothache. He knows nothing less than nothing. Haven't I told ye I'm goin' to get Lawrie to ye!" His angry, ill-chosen words struck her like a thunderbolt. Instantly she knew, knew with a fearful conviction, that her illness was mortal. She shivered, and a film of fear clouded her eyes like a faint, shadowy harbinger of the last, opaque pellicle of dissolution.

"Did he say I was dying then?" she quavered.

He glared at her, furious at the position into which he had been forced. Angry words now poured from his mouth.

"Can ye not shut up about that runt?" he cried. "Ye wad think he was the Almighty to hear you. He doesna ken everything. If he canna cure ye, there's other doctors in Levenford! What's the use o' makin' such a fuss about it a'?"

"I see. I see now," she whispered. "I'll no' make any more fuss about it now." Quiescent upon the bed she gazed at him and behind him; her gaze seemed to transcend the limits of the narrow room and focus itself fearfully upon a remoteness beyond. After a long pause she said, as though to herself, "I'll not be muckle loss to you, James! I'm gey and worn out for you," Then she whispered faintly, "But, oh! Matt, my own son, how am I to leave you?"

Silently she turned to the wall and to the mystery of her thoughts, leaving him standing with a sullen, glouting brow, behind her. For a moment he looked lumpishly at her flaccid figure, then, without a word, he went heavily out of the room.

XII

A SUDDEN burst of vivid August sunshine, penetrating the diaphanous veil hung by the last drops of a passing shower, sprayed the High Street with a misty radiance, whilst the brisk breeze which had thrown the fleecy, wool-pack clouds from off the pathway of the sun, now moved the rain slowly onwards in a glow of golden haze.

"Sunny-shower! Sunny-shower!" chanted a group of boys, as they raced along the drying street on their way to bathe in the Leven.

"Look," cried one of them importantly, "a rainbow!" And he pointed upwards to a perfect arc which, like the thin beribboned handle of a lady's basket, spanned glitteringly the entire length of the street. Every one paused to look at the rainbow. They lifted their eyes above the drab level of the earth and gazed upwards towards the sky, nodded their heads, smiled cheerfully, exclaimed with delight, shouted to each other across the street.

"It's a braw sight!"

"Look at the bonnie colours!"

"It puts auld Couper's pole in the shade, richt enough."

The sudden, unexpected delight of the phenomenon cheered them, elevating their minds unconsciously to a plane that lay above the plodding commonplace of their existence, and, when they looked downwards again, the vision of that splendid, sparkling arch remained, inspiring them for the day before them.

Out of the Winton Arms into this bright sunshine came James Brodie. He saw no rainbow, but walked dourly, with his hat pulled forward, his head down, his hands deeply in his outside pockets, seeing nothing, and, though a dozen glances followed his progress, saluting no one. As he plodded massively, like a stallion, over, the crest of the street, he felt that "they" the peering inquisitive swine were looking at him with prying eyes; knew, though he ignored it, that he was the focus of their atention. For weeks past it had appeared to him that he and the moribund shop that he tenanted had been the nidus of a strange and unnatural attention in the Borough, that townspeople, some that he knew and some whom he had never seen before, strolled deliberately outside his business to stare openly, curiously, purposely, into the depths within. From the inner obscurity he imagined that these empty, prying glance mocked him; he had cried out to himself, "Let them look then, the glaikit swine! Let them gape at me for all they're worth. I'll give them something to glower about." Did they guess, he now asked himself bitterly, as he strode along, that he had been celebrating celebrating the last day in his business? Did they know that, with a

ferocious humour, he had just now swallowed a liberal toast to the wreck of his affairs? He smiled grimly to think that to-day he ceased to be a hatter, that shortly he would walk out of his office for the last time and bang the door behind him finally and irrevocably. Paxton, from across the road, whispered to his neighbour:

"Look, man, quick, there's Brodie." And together they stared at the strong figure on the opposite pavement. "Man! I'm sorry for him somehow," continued Paxton; "his comedown doesna fit him weel."

"Na!" agreed the other, "He's the wrang man to be ruined."

"For a' his strength and power," resumed Paxton, "there's something blunderin' and helpless about him. It's been a fearfu' blow to him. Do ye mark how his shoulders have bowed, as if he had a load on his back."

His neighbour shook his head.

"I canna see it like that! He's been workin 1 for this for a lang, kag time. What I canna stand about the man is his black, veecious pride that grows in spite o' a' things. It's like a disease that gets waur and waur, and the source o't is so downright senseless. If he could but see himself now, as others see him, it micht humble him a wee."

Paxton looked at the other peculiarly.

"I wouldna talk like that about him," he said slowly; "it's a chancy thing even to whisper like that about James Brodie, and at this time more than ordinar'. If he heard ye he would turn on ye and rend ye."

"He's not listenin' to us," replied the other, a trifle uncomfortably; then he added, "He has drink in him again, by the look o' him. Adversity micht bring some men to their senses but it's drivin' him the other way round."

They both turned again and glanced at the slowly retreating figure. After a pause Paxton said:

"Have ye heard, lately, how his wife goes on?"

"Not a word! From what I can make out not a body sees her. Some leddies from the kirk took up a wheen jellies and the like for her, but Brodie met them at the gate and sent them a' richt-about turn. Ay, and waur nor that, he clashed the guid stuff they had brought about their ears."

"Do ye say so! Nobody maun tamper wi' him or his," exclaimed Paxton; then he paused and queried, " Tis cancer, is't not, John?"

"Ay! So they say!"

"What a waesome affliction!"

"Man!" replied the other, as he moved away, "it is bad, but to my mind 'tis no waur than for that puir woman to be bound body and soul to a man like James Brodie."

By this time Brodie had entered his shop, his footsteps echoing loudly through the almost denuded premises where only a tithe of his stock remained, the rest having been disposed of through the interest and consideration of Soper. The evanescent boy had finally vanished and he was alone in the barren, unhappy, defeated place, where the faint gossamer of a spider's web, spun across the remaining boxes on the shelves, mutely indicated the ebb to which his business

had failed - Now, as he stood in the midst of this dereliction, unconsciously he peopled it with the figures of the past, the past of those lordly days when he had walked with a flourish about the place, disdaining the humbler of his clients but meeting equally and agreeably all persons of importance or consequence. It seemed incomprehensible to him that they should now be merely shadows, entering only in his imagination; that he would no longer laugh and jest and talk with them in these precincts which had enclosed his daily life for twenty years. It was the same shop, he was the same man, yet slowly, mysteriously, these living beings had withdrawn from him, leaving only unhappy, unsubstantial memories. The few old customers, chiefly the county gentlepeople, who had still clung to him, had seemed only to prolong the misery of his failure, and now that it was finished a vast surge of anger and sorrow invaded him. With his low forehead contracted he tried abortively to realise how it had been accomplished, to analyse how all this strange, unthinkable change had come about.

Somehow he had permitted it! A convulsive, involuntary sigh shook his thick chest, then, as if in rage and disgust at such a weakness, he bared his lips over his pale gums, ground his teeth and went slowly into his office. No letters, no daily paper now cumbered his desk, awaiting his disdainful attention; dust alone lay there, lay thickly upon everything. Yet, as he stood within the neglected office, like the leader of a hopeless cause when he has finally abandoned it, a faint measure of sad relief tinctured his regret, and he became aware that he now faced the worst, that the suspense of this unfair fight

was at an end.

The money he had raised by mortgaging his house was finished; though he had eked this out to the last driblet his resources were now entirely exhausted. But, he reflected, he had discharged his obligations to the utmost; he owed no man a penny, and if he were ruined, he had scorned the ignominious refuge of bankruptcy. He sat down upon his chair, regardless of dust, scarcely noticing, indeed, the cloud that rose about him, unheeding of the powdery layer that settled on his clothing he had grown so careless of his person and his dress. He was unshaven, and against the dark, unkempt stubble on his face the white of his eyes glared savagely; his finger nails were ragged and bitten to the quick, his boots were unbrushed, his cravat, lacking the usual pin, was partially undone as though, desiring suddenly more liberty to breathe, he had unloosed it with a single wrench. His clothes, too, were flung untidily upon him, as he had dressed that morning regardless of anything but despatch. Now, indeed, his main concern was to leave as quickly as possible a house pervaded with sudden and disturbing cries of pain, filled with disorder and confusion, with unwashed dishes and the odor of drugs, a house wherein he was nauseated by ill-cooked and ill-served food, and irritated by a snivelling son and an incompetent old woman.

Sitting there, he plunged his hand suddenly into his inside pocket and drew out carefully a flat, black bottle; then, still staring in front of him, without viewing the bottle, he sunk his strong teeth in the cork and with a quick jerk of his thick neck withdrew the cork. The sharp, plucking report filled the silence of the room. Placing the neck of the bottle between his cupped lips he raised his elbow gradually and took a long gurgling drink, then with a sharp intake of breath over his parted teeth, he placed the bottle in front of him on the table and fixed his glance on it. Nancy had filled it for him! His eye lit up, momentarily, as though the bottle mirrored her face. She was a good one, was Nancy, an alleviation of his melancholy, the mitigation of his depression; despite his misfortunes he would never let her go; he would stick to her whatever happened. He tried to penetrate the future, to make plans, to decide what he must do; but it was impossible. The moment he set himself to think deeply, his mind wandered off into the remotest and most incongruous digressions. Fleeting visions of his youth revolved before him the smile of a boy who had been his playmate, the hot sunny wall in the crevices of which, with other boys, he had hunted for bumblebees, the smoke about his gun barrel when he had shot his first rabbit; he heard the swish of a scythe, the purling of cushat doves, the sharp, skirling laughter of an old woman in the village.

With a shake of his head he banished the visions, took another pull at the bottle, considering deliberately the immense solace that spirits brought to him. His depression lightened, his lip curled sneeringly, and "they", the unheard critics, the antagonists ever present in his mind, became more contemptible, more pitiful than ever. Then suddenly, through this new mood, a sparkling idea struck him, which as he considered it more fully, forced from him a short, derisive laugh.

With the eyes of the town upon him, peering sneakingly upon his misfortunes, expecting him to slink abjectly from the scene of his ruin, he would nevertheless show them how James Brodie could face disaster. He would provide a fitting climax for his exit with a spectacle that would make their spying eyes blink. Fiercely he drained the last of the whisky, pleased that his brain had at last given him an inspiration to spur him to motion, delighted to loose the confined brooding of his mind in a definite physical activity, no matter how inordinate it might be. He arose and, sending his chair sprawling on the floor, passed into the shop where, surveying with a hostile eye the remaining boxes stacked behind the counter, he advanced upon them and began rapidly to spill their contents upon the floor. Eagerly he tumbled out hats of all descriptions. Disdaining to open the boxes calmly, his huge hands gripped them fiercely and rent the cardboard like tissue paper, furiously ripping and tearing at the boxes

as though in frantic avulsion they dismembered the bodies of his dead enemies. He flung the tattered debris from him in every direction with loose, whirling movements, till the fragmentary litter filled the room and lay about his feet like fallen snow. Then, when he had thus roughly shelled each box of its contents, he gathered the pile of hats from the floor into his wide arms and, massing them together in his colossal embrace, marched triumphantly to the door of his shop. A wild exultation seized him. As the hats were useless to him, he would give them away, distribute them freely, spite his enemies next door and spoil their custom, make this noble offering of largess his last remembered action in the street.

"Here," he bawled, "who wants a hat?" The whisky had broken down the restraining barriers of his reserve, and the foolish extravagance of his act seemed to him only splendid and magnificent.

"It's the chance of a lifetime," he shouted, with a curl of his lip. "Come up, all you braw honest bodies, and see what I've got for ye."

It was nearly noon and the street was at its busiest. Immediately a crowd of urchins surrounded him expectantly, and outside this ring an increasing number of the passing townsfolk commenced to gather, silent, incredulous, yet nudging and glancing at each other significantly.

"Hats are cheap to-day," shouted Brodie at the pitch of his lungs. "Cheaper than you can buy them at the waxworks," he cried, with a ghastly facetiousness, hoping that they would hear the jibe next door. "I'm givin' them away! I'll make ye have them, whether ye want them or no'." And immediately he began to thrust hats upon the onlookers. It was, as he had said, something for nothing, and dumbly, amazedly, they accepted the gifts that they did not desire and might never use. They were afraid to refuse, and, seeing his dominance over them he gloated, glaring at them the more, beating their eyes to the ground as they met his. A deep-buried, primitive desire in his nature was at last being fed and appeased. He was in his element, the centre of a crowd who hung upon every word, every action, who looked up to him gapingly and, he imagined, admiringly. The fearful quality in his eccentric wildness made them forbear to laugh, but gazing in awed silence, ready to fall back should he run berserk suddenly amongst them, they stood like fascinated sheep before a huge wolf.

But now the mere handing out of the hats began to pall on him and he craved for less restrained, more ungoverned action. He began, therefore, to toss the contents of his arms to the people on the outskirts of the crowd; then, from merely throwing the hats, he commenced to hurl them violently at the onlookers in the ring, hating suddenly every one of the white, vacuous faces; they became his enemies and the more he despised them the more mercilessly he pelted them, in a growing, turbulent desire to hurt and disperse them.

"Here," he bellowed, "take them a'. I'm finished with them for good. I don't want the blasted things, although they're better and cheaper than you'll get next door. Better and cheaper!" he howled over and over again. "If ye didna want them before, I'll make ye take them now."

The mob retreated under the force and accuracy of his fusillade, and as they dispersed, with back-turned, protesting faces," he followed them with long, skimming shots.

"Stop it?" he shouted sneer ingly. "I'll be damned if I do. Do you not want them, that you're runnin' awa'? You're missing the chance of a lifetime."

He gloated in the commotion he was causing, and, when they were out of range, he seized a hard hat by its brim and sent it bowling down the hill where, with the full force of the following breeze, it rolled gaily like a ball in a bowling alley and finally skittled against the legs of a man walking far down the street.

"That was a good one!" cried Brodie, laughing with boisterous delight. "I aye had a grand aim. Here's another, and another." As he sent a further volley whizzing after the first shot, hats of all descriptions went madly leaping, whirling, dancing, swerving, bounding, as they pursued each other down the declivity. It was as though a hurricane had suddenly unbared the heads of a multitude; such an unparalleled and monstrous sight had never before been seen in Levenford. But at last his stock was almost exhausted, and with his final missle in his great paw, he paused selectively, weighing the last shot in his locker a stiff, boardlike straw basher which, by reason of its shape and hardness, he felt dimly to be worthy of a definite and appropriate billet. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he observed the pale, aghast face of Perry, his old assistant, peering from the adjacent doorway. He was there, was he, thought Brodie the rat that had saved his own skin by leaving the sinking ship; the beautiful manager of the Mungo Panopticon! In a flash he skimmed the flat projectile like a whirling quoit full at the sallow, horrified face. The hard serrated brim caught Perry full in the mouth, splintering a tooth and, as he saw the blood flow, and the terrified young man bolt back indoors, Brodie yelled with a roar of triumph at the success of his aim.

"That'll fit you to superintend the waxworks, you poor trash. That's something I've been owin' you a long time." It seemed to him the fitting and culminating achievement of a rare and remarkable display. Throwing up his arms into the air he waved them exultantly, then with an elated grin he turned again into the shop. Inside, as he gazed at the emptiness, complete but for the wreckage of the boxes, the smile on his lips stiffened slowly to a fixed, sardonic spasm; but he did not stop to allow himself to think. He walked through the scattered rubbish into his office where, in the continuance of his wild mood of destruction, he dragged out all the drawers in the desk, smashed the empty whisky bottle against the wall and overturned the heavy desk with a single, powerful heave. Surveying the scene with a moody, wanton satisfaction, he picked up the door key from its hook beside the window, lifted his stick and, with his head in the air, went again through and out of the shop, closing the outer door behind him. This last, single action affected him, suddenly, with a sense of such absolute finality that the key in his grasp became a foolish redundancy; when he withdrew it from the lock he looked at it senselessly as it lay in his palm, then suddenly drew back and hurled it far over the top of the building listening intently until he heard the faint splash as it dropped into the river behind. They could get into the place how they liked, he thought bitterly; he, at any rate, was finished with it.

On his way home he still could not, or at least refused to think, remaining without even a remote idea as to the conduct of his future. He had a fine stone house, heavily mortgaged, to maintain; an old decrepit mother, an invalid wife and a useless son to support, and a young daughter who must be educated, but beyond the fact that he was strong with a physique powerful enough to uproot a fair-sized tree, his assets towards these responsibilities were negligible. He did not actively consider in this fashion but, the abandon of his recent mood subsided, he felt dimly the uncertainty of his position and it weighed upon him heavily. He was affected chiefly by the lack of money in his pocket, and as he neared his house and saw standing outside a familiar high gig and bay gelding, his brow darkened.

"Damn it all," he muttered, "is he in, again? How does he expect me to pay the blasted long bill he's runnin' up?" It pricked him with an irritating reminder of his circumstances to see Doctor Lawrie's equipage at his gate and, thinking to spare himself the necessity of a tedious encounter by entering the house unobserved, he was more deeply annoyed to meet Lawrie face to face at the front door.

"Just been having a peep at the good wife, Mr. Brodie," said the doctor, with an affectation of heartiness. He was a pompous, portly man with blown-out cheeks, a small, red mouth and an insufficient chin inadequately strengthened by a grey, imperial beard, "Trying to keep her spirits up, you know; we must do all we can."

Brodie looked at the other silently, his saturnine eyes saying, more cuttingly than words, "And much good ye have done her, ye empty windbag."

"Not much change for the better, I'm afraid," continued Lawrie hurriedly, becoming a trifle more florid under Brodie's rude stare. "Not much improvement. We're nearing the end of the chapter, I fear." This was his usual stereotyped banality to indicate the nearness of death, and now he shook his head profoundly, sighed, and smoothed the small tuft on his chin with an air of melancholy resignation.

Brodie gazed with aversion at the finicking gestures of this pompous wiseacre and, though he did not regret having brought him into his house to spite Renwick, he was not deceived by his bluff manner or by his great display of sympathy.

"Ye've been tellin' me that for a long time," he growled. "You and your chapters! I believe ye know less than onybody what's goin' to happen. I'm gettin' tired of it."

"I know! I know! Mr. Brodie," said Lawrie, making little soothing gestures with his hands; "your distress is very natural very natural! We cannot say definitely when the unhappy event will occur. It depends so much on the reaction of the blood that is the crux of the question the reaction of the blood with regard to the behaviour of the corpuscles! The corpuscles are sometimes stronger than we expect. Yes! The corpuscles are sometimes marvellous in their activities," and satisfied with his show of erudition, he again stroked his moustache and looked learnedly at Brodie.

"You can take your corpuscles to hell," replied Brodie contemptuously. "You've done her as much good as my foot."

"Come now, Mr. Brodie," said Lawrie in a half -expostulating, half- placating tone, "don't be unreasonable. I'm here every day. I'm doing my best."

"Do better then! Finish her and be done wi't," retorted Brodie bitterly, and turning abruptly, he walked away and entered the house, leaving the other standing aghast, his eyes wide, his small mouth pursed into an indignant orb.

Inside his home, a further wave of disgust swept over Brodie as, making no allowance for the fact that he was earlier than usual, he observed that his dinner was not ready, and he cursed the bent figure of his mother amongst the disarray of dishes, dirty water, pots and potato peelings in the scullery.

"I'm gettin' ower auld for this game, James," she quavered in reply. "I'm not as nimble as I used to be and forbye the doctor keepit me back."

"Move your auld bones then," he snarled. "I'm hungry." He could not sit down amongst such chaos, and, with a sudden turn of his black mood, he decided that he would fill in the time before his meal by visiting his wife the good wife, as Lawrie had called her and give her the grand news of the business.

"She maun hear some time," he muttered, "and the sooner the better. It's news that'll not stand the keepin’” He had lately fallen into the habit of avoiding her room, and as he had not seen her during the last two days, she would no doubt find the unexpectedness of his visit the more delightful.

"Well!" he remarked softly, as he went into the bedroom. "You're still here, I see. I met the doctor on my way in and he was gi'en us a great account o' your corpuscles o' the blood they're uncommon strong, by his report."

She did not move at his entry, but lay passive, only the flicker of her eyes showing that she lived. In the six months that had elapsed since she had been forced to take to her bed she had altered terrifyingly, and one who had not marked the imperceptible, day-by-day decline, the gradual shrinking of her flesh, would now have found her unrecognisable, even as the ailing woman she had then appeared.

Her form, beneath the light covering of the sheet, was that of a skeleton with hip bones which stuck out in a high, ridiculous protuberance; only a flaccid envelope of sagging skin covered the thin, long bones of her legs and arms, while over the framework of her face a tight, dry parchment was drawn, with cavities for eyes, nose and mouth. Her lips were pale, dry, cracked, with little brown desiccated flakes clinging to them like scales, and above the sunken features her bony forehead seemed to bulge into unnatural, disproportioned relief. A few strartds of grey hair, withered, lifeless as the face itself, straggled over the pillow to frame this ghastly visage. Her weakness was so apparent that it seemed an impossible effort for her to breathe, and from this very weakness she made no reply to his remark, but looked at him with an expression he could not read. It seemed to her that there was nothing more for him to say to wound her.

"Have ye everything ye want?" he continued, in a low tone of assumed solicitude. "Everything that might be necessary for these corpuscles o' yours ? Ye've plenty of medicine, anyway plenty of choice, I see. One, two, three, four," he counted; "four different bottles o' pheesic. There's merit in variety, apparently. But woman, if ye go on drinkin' it at this rate, we'll have to raise another loan frae your braw friends in Glasgow to pay for it a'."

Deep in her living eyes, which alone of her wasted features indicated her emotions, a faint wound reopened, and they filled with a look of dull pleading. Five months ago she had, in desperation, been forced to confess to him her obligation to the money-lenders and though he had paid the money in full, since then he had not for a moment let her forget the wretched matter, and in a hundred different ways, on the most absurd pretexts, he would introduce it into the conversation. Not even her present look moved him, for he was now entirely without sympathy for her, feeling that she would linger on for ever, a useless encumbrance to him.

"Ay," he continued pleasantly, "ye've proved yourself a great hand at drinkin* the medicine. You're as gleg at that as ye are at spendin' other folks' money." Then abruptly he changed the subject and queried gravely, "Have ye seen your big, braw son the day? Oh! Ye have, indeed," he continued, after reading her unspoken reply. "I'm real glad to hear it. I thocht he michtna have been up yet,

but I see I'm wrong. He's not downstairs though. I never seem to be fortunate enough to see him these days."

At his words she spoke at last, moulding her stiff lips to utter, in a weak whisper:

"Matt's been a good son to me lately."

"Well, that's only a fair return," he exclaimed judiciously. "You've been a graund mother to him. The result o' your upbringing o' him is a positive credit to you both." He paused, recognising her weakness, hardly knowing why he spoke to her thus; yet, unable to discard

the habit of years, impelled somehow by his own bitterness, by his own misfortunes, he continued in a low voice, "Ye've brocht up a’ your children bonnie, bonnie. There's Mary now what more could ye wish for than the way she's turned out? I don't know where she is exactly, but I'm sure she'll be doin' ye credit nobly." Then, observing that his wife was attempting to speak, he waited on her words.

"I know where she is," she whispered slowly.

He gazed at her.

"Ay!" he answered. "Ye know she's in London and that's as much as we a' ken as much as ye'll ever know."

Almost incredibly she moved her withered hand, that looked incapable of movement, and lifting it from the counterpane stopped him with a gesture; then, as her shrunken arm again collapsed, she said weakly, and with many tremors:

"Ye mustna be angry with me, ye mustna be angry with her. I've had a letter from Mary. She's a good girl she still is. I see more clearly now, than ever I did that 'twas I that didna do right by her. She wants to see me now, James, and I I must see her quickly before I die." As she uttered the last words she tried to smile at him pleadingly, placatingly, but her features remained stiff and frigid, only her lips parted slightly in a cracked, pitiful grimace.

The colour mounted slowly to his forehead.

"She dared to write to you," he muttered, "and you dared to read it."

"’Twas Doctor Renwick, when you stoppit him comin', that wrote to London and told her I was not not likely to last long. He's aye had a great interest in Mary. He said to me that morning that Mary my daughter Mary was brave, ay, and innocent as well."

"He was a brave man himself to raise that name in my house," returned Brodie, in a low, concentrated tone. He could not shout and rave at her in her present state, prevented only by some shred of compunction from turning violently upon her, but he added, bitterly, "If I had known he was interferin' like that, I would have brained him before he went out the door."

"Don't say that, James," she murmured. "It's beyond me to bear bitterness now. I've had a gey and useless life, I think. There's many a thing left undone that should have been done, but I must oh! I must see Mary, to put things right between her and me."

He gritted his teeth till the muscles of his stubbled jowl stuck out in hard, knotted lumps.

"Ye must see her, must ye," he replied " that's verra, verra touchin'. We should a' fall down and greet at the thought o' this wonderful reconciliation." He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Na! Na! My woman, ye'll not see her this side o' the grave, and I have strong misgivings if ye'll see her on the other. You're never to see her. Never!"

She did not answer, but, withdrawing into herself, became more impassive, more aloof from him. For a long time her eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. There was silence in the room but for the drowsy drone of an insect as it circled around the few sprays of sweet-scented honeysuckle that had been gathered by Nessie and placed by her in a vase that stood beside the bed. At length a faint tremor ran through Mamma's wasted body.

"Weel, James," she sighed, "if you say it, then it maun be so that's always been the way; but I wanted, oh! I did want to see her again. There's times though” she went on, slowly and with great difficulty, "when me pain o' this trouble has been to me like the carryin' of a child so heavy and draggin' like and it's turned my mind to that bairn o' hers that never lived for her to see it. If it had been spared, I would have liket to have held Mary's bairn in these arms" she looked downwards, hopelessly, at the withered arms that could scarcely raise a cup to her lips "but it was the will of God that such things couldna be, and that's all there is about it."

"Woman, you're not squeamish to take such a notion into your head at this time o' day," scowled Brodie. "Have ye not had enough to do with your own children without draggin' out the memory of -of that."

"It was just a fancy," she whispered, "and I've had many o' them since I lay here these six long months so long they've been like weary years." She closed her eyes in a tired fashion, forgetting him as the visions that she spoke of rushed over her again. The sweet perfume of the honeysuckle flowers beside her wafted her thoughts backwards and she was out of the close sickly room, home again on her father's farm. She saw the stout, whitewashed buildings, the homestead, the dairy and the long, clean byre forming the three snug sides of the clean yard; she saw her father come in from the shooting with a hare and a brace of pheasants in his hand. The smooth, coloured plumage delighted her as she stroked the plump breasts.

"They're as fat as you are," her father cried, with his broad, warm smile, "but not near as bonnie."

She had not been a slut then, nor had her form been the object of derision!

Now she was helping her mother with the churning, watching the rich yellow of the butter as it clotted in the white milk like a clump of early primroses springing from a bank of snow.

"Not so hard, Margaret, my dear," her mother had chided her, for the quickness of her turning. "You'll turn the arm off yourself."

She had not been lazy then, nor had they called her handless!

Her thoughts played happily about the farm and in her imagination she rolled amidst the sweet-mown hay, heard the creak of the horses moving in their stalls, laid her cheek against the sleek side of her favourite calf. She even remembered its name. "Rosabelle," she had christened it. "Whatna name for a cow!" Bella, the dairymaid, had teased her. "What way not call it after me and be done wi' it?”

An overpowering wave of nostalgia came over her as she remembered long, hot afternoons when she had lain with her head against the bole of the bent apple tree, watching the swallows flirt like winged, blue shadows around the eaves of the white, sun-drenched steadings. When an apple dropped beside her she picked it up and bit deeply into it; even now, she felt the sweetly acid tang refreshing upon her tongue, cooling its parched fever. Then she saw herself in a sprigged muslin frock, beside the mountain ash that grew above the Pownie Burn and, approaching her, a youth to whose dark, dour strength her gentleness drew near. She opened her eyes slowly.

"James," she whispered, as her eyes sought his with faint, wistful eagerness, "do ye mind that day by the Pownie Burn when ye braided the bonnie red rowan berries through my hair? Do ye mind what ye said then?"

He stared at her, startled at the transition of her speech, wondering if she raved; here was he on the brink of ruin, and she drivelled about a wheen rowans thirty years ago. His lips twitched as he replied, slowly:

"No! I dinna mind what I said, but tell me, tell me what I said."

She closed her eyes as though to shut out everything but the distant past, then she murmured, slowly:

"Ye only said that the rowan berries were not so braw as my bonnie curly hair."

As, unconsciously, he looked at the scanty, brittle strands of hair that lay about her face, a sudden, fearful rush of emotion swept over him. He did remember that day. He recollected the quiet of the little glen, the ripple of the stream, the sunshine that lay about them, the upward switch of the bough after he had plucked the bunch of berries from it; now he saw the lustre of her curls against the vivid scarlet of the rowans. Dumbly he tried to reject the idea that this this wasted creature that lay upon the bed had on that day rested in his arms and answered his words of love with her soft, fresh lips. It could not be yet it must be so! His face worked strangely, his mouth twisted as he battled with the surging feeling that drove against the barrier of his resistance like a torrent of water battering against the granite wall of a dam. Some vast, compelling impulse drove at him with an urge which made him want to say blindly, irrationally, in a fashion he had not used for twenty years:

"I do mind that day, Margaret and ye were bonnie bonnie and sweet to me as a flower." But he could not say it! Such words as these could never pass his lips. Had he come to this room to whine some stupid phrases of endearment? No, he had come to tell her of their ruin and tell her he would, despite this unnatural weakness that had come upon him.

"Auld wife," he muttered, with drawn lips, "ye'll be the death o’ me if ye talk like that. When ye're on the parish ye maun give me a crack like this to cheer me up."

At once her eyes opened enquiringly, anxiously, with a look which again stabbed him; but he forced himself to continue, nodded at her with a false assumption of his old, fleering jocosity.

"Ay!" he cried. "That's what it amounts to now. I'll have no more fifty pounds to fling away on ye. I've shut the door of my business for the last time. We'll all be in the poorhouse soon." As he uttered the last words he saw her face change, but some devilish impulse, aroused by his own present weakness and moving him more fiercely because he knew that in his heart he did not wish to speak like this, made him thrust his head close to her, goaded him to continue, "Do ye hear! The business is gone. I warned ye a year ago don't you remember that wi' your demned rowan berry rot? I tell ye we're ruined! You that's been such a help to me, that's what ye've brought me to. We're finished, finished, finished!"

The effect of his words upon her was immediate and terrible.

When his meaning burst in upon her, a frightful twitching affected the yellow, weazened skin of her features as though a sudden, intense grief attempted painfully to animate the moribund tissues, as though tears essayed with futile effort to well out from the dried-up springs of her body. Her eyes became suddenly full, intense and glowing and, with a tremendous, shivering effort, she raised herself up in the bed. A stream of words trembled upon her tongue but she could not utter them, and as a dew of perspiration broke upon her brow in cold, pricking drops she stammered incoherently, stretched her hand dumbly before her. Then, as her face grew grey with endeavour, suddenly she spoke:

"Matt," she cried in a full, high tone. "Matt! Come to me!" She now stretched out both her quivering arms as though sight failed her, calling out in a weaker, fading tone, "Nessie! Mary! Where are ye?"

He wished to go to her, to start forward instantly, but he remained rooted to the floor; yet from his lips broke involuntarily these words, strange as a spray of blossoms upon a barren tree:

"Margaret, woman Margaret dinna mind what I said. I didna mean the hauf o't!"

But she did not hear him and with a last, faint breath she whispered slowly:

"Why tarry the wheels of thy chariot, O Lord? I'm ready to go to ye!"

Then she sank gently backwards upon the pillow. A moment later a last, powerful expiration shook the thin, withered body with a convulsive spasm and she lay still. Limp and flat upon her back, with arms outstretched upon the bed, the fingers slightly flexed upon the upturned palms, she lay, in shape and stillness, as if she had been crucified. She was dead.

XIII

BRODIE looked around the company assembled uncomfortably in the parlour with a brooding eye which passed over Nessie, Matthew and his mother, lit impatiently upon his wife's cousins Janet and William Lumsden and settled with a scowling finality upon Mrs. William Lumsden. They had just buried all that remained of Margaret Brodie, and the guests, clinging even in the face of Brodie's inhospitable frowns, to the privileges endowed to them by old established precedent, had returned to the house after the funeral to partake of refreshment.

"We'll give them nothing!" Brodie had exclaimed to his mother that morning. His momentary, belated tenderness towards his wife was now forgotten and he resented bitterly the threatened intrusion of her relations. "I don't want them about my house. They can go hame whenever she's ditched." The old woman had herself hoped

for a savoury high tea, but in the face of his remark she had modified her demands.

"James," she had pleaded, "ye maun gie them a sip o' wine and a bite o' cake for the honour o' the house."

"None o' our ain folks are left to come," he growled. "What does it matter about hers? I wish I had choked them off when they wrote."

"They're ower scattered for mony o' them to come," she had placated, "but ye canna get ower offerin' them something. It wouldna be decent to do otherwise."

"Give them it, then," he cried, and as a sudden thought struck him, he added, "Ay, give them it, then. Feed the swine. There'll be somebody here to lend ye a hand."

Now it gave him a saturnine pleasure to see Nancy enter briskly with cake, biscuits and wine and hand them around. He was his own man again, and it appeared a delicious stroke of satire for him to have her enter his house the moment his wife's body had been carried out; the two women the dead and the quick had, so to speak, passed each other at the gate; his eyes met hers in a glow of hidden buffoonery.

"Go ahead, Matt," he jeered significantly at his son, as Nancy handed the latter wine, with a pertly conscious air. "Take up a glass. It'll do ye good after all your greetin'. You'll be quite safe. I'm here to see it doesna fly to your head." He watched his son's trembling hand with disgust. Matt had again disgraced him by breaking down abjectly at the graveside, snivelling and whimpering before these relations of Mamma's and grovelling hysterically on his knees as the first spadeful of earth clumped heavily upon the coffin.

"Nae wonder he's upset," said Janet Lumsden, in a kindly voice. She was a fat, comfortable woman with a high, amiable bosom protruding above the upper edge of her ill-fitting corsets. Now she looked around the assembly and added agreeably, " 'Twas a merciful release, though, I'm led to believe. She'll be happier where she is now, I'll warrant."

" 'Tis a pity the puir thing wasna allowed a wreath or two," said Mrs. William Lumsden, with a sniff and a toss of her head. Her lips were tight and her mouth downturned beneath her long, sharp, penetrating nose; as she helped herself from the tray she looked intently at Nancy, then looked away again with a slow and upward twist of her head. "A funeral is never the same without flowers," she added firmly.

"Ay, they're sort o' comfortin' like," said Janet Lumsden placatingly. "They big lilies are bonnie."

"I had never been to a burial before, without flowers," replied Mrs. Lumsden acrimoniously. "The last interment I attended there was a full, open carriage of flowers, forbye what covered the coffin."

Brodie looked at her steadily.

"Weel, ma'am," he said politely, "I hope yell have a' the blossoms ye require when ye go to yer ain last repose."

The other looked along her nose at him doubtfully, not knowing exactly whether to accept the remark as a compliment or an insult; then, in her uncertainty, she turned commandingly to her husband for support. He, a small wiry man, uncomfortable in his stiff, shiny black suit, his starched dickey and tight "made" tie, magnificent, yet none the less still smelling of the stable, interpreted the familiar look and dutifully began:

"Flowers gang well at a funeral it's a matter of opinion, no doubt, but I would say they were a consolation to the bereaved. But the strangest thing to my mind is that they should gang well with a weddin' too. It's a fair mystery to me how they should suit such opposite ceremonies." He cleared his throat and looked sociably at Brodie. "Ye ken I've been to many a funeral ay, and to many a weddin' too. Ance I went as far as forty miles away from hame, but would ye believe me, man," he concluded triumphantly, "for thirty- two years I havena slept a nicht out o' ma ain bed."

"Indeed," said Brodie curtly, "I'm not interested."

At this rudeness there was an uncomfortable pause, a silence punctuated only by a small residual sob from the red-eyed Nessie. The two groups looked at each other distrustfully, like strangers on opposite sides of a railway compartment.

"It's a gey appropriate day for a funeral, anyway," said Lumsden at last defiantly, looking out at the drizzling rain; and at his remark a low conversation amongst the three visitors, and confined exclusively to them, again recommenced and slowly gained impetus.

"Ay! It's miserable enough for onything here."

"Did ye mark how heavy the rain cam' on at the graveside whenever the cords were lowered?"

" Tis remarkable to me that the meenister wouldna come back to the house to gie us a few words."

"He'll have his reasons, I have nae doubt."

"What he did say at the grave's heid he said unco' weel, onyway. It's a pity she couldna have heard it hersel', puir body."

"What was't he said, 'a loyal wife and a devoted mother,' wasn't no'?"

They looked out of the corners of their eyes at Brodie as though expecting him to confirm decently this last tribute, but he seemed not to have heard them and now gazed broodingly away from them out of the window. And now, seeing Brodie's apparent inattention, they grew bolder.

"I wad like to have seen the puir thing again, but I had the surprise o' my life when I heard she had been screwed down before we arrived."

"She must have altered sadly wi' sicca trouble, ay and a' the worry she cam' through."

"She was a bricht, lively kimmer in her young days. She had a laugh like the song o' a mavis."

"She was a' that," said Janet at last, with a reproachful look at the figure by the window, implying by her words, "She was too good for you."

There was a moment's pause, then, with a guarded look at Nessie that encompassed her blue serge dress, Mrs. Lumsden murmured:

"It fair affronts me to see that puir child without the decent mournin's to her back. It's nothing short of shameful."

" 'Twas the sma', sma' funeral that surprised me," returned Janet. "Only the twa carriages and not a single body frae the town."

He heard them, actually he had listened to every word only the heedlessness of his embittered humour had allowed them to proceed but now he turned to them coarsely.

" Twas my express wish that the funeral should be private and as quiet as might be. Did ye wish the town band out for her, and free whisky and a bonfire?"

They were frankly shocked at such brutality, drew more closely together in their resentment, began to think of leaving.

"Weelum! Do ye know ony where in Levenford we're likely to be able to get our tea before the train goes?" said Mrs. Lumsden, as an indication of departure, in a trembling but rancorous tone. She had expected, instead of this thin, sour wine and bought seed cake, a lavish display of hot and cold cooked meats, baked pastries, scones, tea bread, and other appropriate delicacies; coming from a distant village in Ayrshire they knew nothing of Brodie's failure and thought him well able to provide a more worthy and substantial repast than that of which they were now partaking.

"Will ye no' have another biscuit then, if ye're hungry?" said old Grandma Brodie, with a slight titter "they're Deesides I can recommend them." The wine was like nectar to her unaccustomed palate and she had partaken freely of it, so that a faint flush marked the yellow, wrinkled skin over her high cheek bones; she was enjoying the occasion immensely, making high festival of the return to earth of the poor remains of Margaret Brodie. "Have a wee drap mair wine, will ye not?"

"Thank ye! No!" said Mrs. Lumsden, compressing her mouth superciliously into the smallest possible compass and issuing her vords disdainfully from the diminutive aperture. "I'll not indulge, if ye don't mind. I'm not addicted, and besides I couldna fancy that vhat you're drinkin'. Do ye know," she continued, drawing on her lack kid glove, "that's a bold-looking quean ye have about the house it a time like this. Have ye had her long?"

As Grandma Brodie made to answer, a polite hiccough disturbed her.

"I dinna ken her," she replied confusedly; "she's juist come in low. 'Twas James sent her in to gie me a haund."

Mrs. Lumsden exchanged a significant glance with her cousin by narriage. Each nodded her head with a slight downward gesture of disparagement, as though to say, "Just what we thought," and both turned ostentatiously compassionate eyes upon Nessie.

"What in the world will ye do without your mother, dearie?" renarked one.

"Ye maun come doun to us, child, for a spell," said the other. Ye would like to play about the farm, would ye not?"

"I can look after Nessie," inserted Brodie icily; "she needs neitheir our help nor your pity. When ye do hear o' her she'll be shapin' for something that you and yours could never attain."

As Nancy entered the room to collect the glasses, he continued:

"Here, Nancy! These two ladies have just remarked that you're brazen was it quean ye said, leddies ay, a brazen quean. In eturn for this good opinion, would ye mind showin' them out o' tie house and I suppose this bit gentleman they've brocht wi’ ‘hem better go too."

Nancy tossed her head pertly.

"If it was my house," she said, with a bold look at Brodie, "they yould never have been in it."

The two women, scandalised, stood up.

"The language and the behaviour! In front of the child too," gasped Janet, on her way to the door, "and at such a time as this."

Mrs. Lumsden, equally shocked, but less intimidated, drew herself ip to her tall, angular height and threw her head back defiantly.

"I've been insulted," she shrilled from between thin, compressed lips, "in a house where I came a long and expensive journey to bring comfort. I'm goin', oh! indeed yes, I'm goin'; nothing would stop me, but," she added emphatically, "before I leave, I want to know what has been left to our side o' the family by my puir cousin."

Brodie laughed shortly in her face.

"Indeed now! And what had she to leave, pray?"

"I happen to know from Weelum that forbye the china, pictures, and the ornaments on the best bedroom mantelpiece, and her mother's watch and locket, Margaret Lumsden took a pickle siller wi' her into the house," she cried angrily.

"Ay, and she took a pickle out o' it," answered Brodie harshly. "Get away wi' ye! The sight o' your sour, graspin', avaricious face fair scunners me!" With whirling movements of his arms he herded them to the door. "Get away with ye a'; there's nothing for ye here. I'm sorry I let ye break bread in my house."

Mrs. Lumsden, almost in tears from rage and vexation, turned on the doorstep.

"We'll have the law on ye about it," she cried. "I'm not surprised that puir Margaret Lumsden withered out here. She was ower guid for ye, wi' your bold besoms. Ye've made a cryin' scandal out of the burial of the puir soul. Come awa' home, Weelum."

"That's right," shouted Brodie tauntingly, "take Weelum away hame to his bed. I'm not surprised he's so fond o' it, wi' such a tricksy ornament as yersel' below the blankets." He leered at her insultingly. "Ye're richt not to let him out it for a nicht, for if ye did ye might never get him back."

As she disappeared with the others, her head high, her colour flaming, he cried out after her:

"I'll not forget to send ye your flowers whenever ye require them."

But when he returned to the parlour his hard assumption of indifference had dropped from him and, wishing to be alone, in a different, quiet voice he bade them leave him. As they filed out he turned to Matthew and said to him meaningly:

"Away out and find work. I want no more of your useless, watery tear-bag nonsense. Get something to do. Ye'll not live off me much longer;" but as Nessie passed he patted her head and said gently:

"Don't greet any more, pettie; your father will take care of ye. Dry your eyes now, and run and take up a book or something. You needna worry. I'm goin' to look after you in future."

That, he considered, as he sat down again in the empty room, was the course towards which his life must immediately shape itself the vindication of himself through Nessie. She was his asset, clever yes, he told himself brilliant! He would nurse her, encourage her, thrust her forward to triumph after triumph until her name and his own should resound in the town. He saw in his colossal failure and in the recent misfortunes which had beset him only a temporary eclipse from which in time he must necessarily emerge. "Ye cannot keep a good man down," one of his frequently repeated maxims, occurred again to him comfortingly. He would be up again presently, more dominant than before, and in his own mind he considered it an almost masterly strategy to plan a return to his old, favoured position through Nessie. He heard in anticipation the name of Nessie Brodie upon every one's lips, became aware of himself sharing largely in the universal adulation. "There's been no holdin' him since his wife died," he heard them say; "she must have been a muckle hindrance to the man." How true that was! His main feeling, as he helped to lower the light coffin into its shallow trench, had been one of relief that he was at last free of a useless encumbrance, a drag upon both his patience and his purse. He remembered nothing in her favour, treasured nothing of her virtues, but dwelt only upon the weakness, the lack of physical attraction that she had manifested in her later years. No gentle sentiment, such as had faintly throbbed within him at her deathbed, no remembrance of the earlier days of their life together now stirred him; his memory was clouded like an overhung sky that refused to allow one single, relieving gleam to penetrate from the clearer air behind. He imagined that she had failed him in everything, in her companionship, in the oblation of her physical being, in the very geniture of her children. No credit was due to her for Nessie, whom he felt to be entirely of his substance, and such obituary as his consideration gave her was epitomised in the single word incompetent. As the irrevocable finality of her departure struck him with a sudden and forceful reality, a feeling of a strange emancipation came over him. The lightness of her restraint had been from its very feebleness galling to him. He was a young man yet, and virile, for whom many pleasures lay in store which might be tasted freely now that she was gone. His lower lip hung thickly forward as his thoughts dallied appreciatively upon Nancy, then roamed forward in anticipation amongst the lush, erotic pastures of his mind. Nancy must be always about him now she could remain in the house for good. There was nothing to prevent her being beside him, no possible objection to her serving him, cheering him and yes, a man must, after all, have a housekeeper!

Satisfied at this comforting decision, insensibly his meditations turned again upon his younger daughter. His mind, incapable of embracing any but one purpose at a time, pursued that purpose, when it had been adopted, with a relentless obstinacy; and now, he realised that in order to continue living in his house, to maintain Nessie and to educate her as he wished, he must quickly find some means of income. His lips tightened and he nodded his head profoundly, as he resolved to carry into effect, immediately, a plan which had for the last two days been maturing in his brain. He got up and entered the hall where he put on his hat, took his silk umbrella from the stand, and went slowly out of the house.

Outside it was cool and fresh, with a fine, impalpable rain soft and subtile as dew which misted his garments and touched his warm brow like a caress. As he filled his lungs with great draughts of the balmy, misty vapour, it felt good to him that he did not lie in a narrow, wooden box beneath four feet of dank earth, but walked in the air, invigorated, alive and free. Characteristically, in the constrained capacity of his intellect, the memory of his humiliation in business, even the final scene in the High Street when he had given that madly unrestrained exhibition, was now completely obliterated; his failure appeared to him in a different light; he was not crushed and beaten, but a gentlemanly victim of malicious circumstances. The ebullition of temper provoked by the Lumsdens had subsided and, his present mission filling him once more with a conscious dignity, he walked gravely through the streets, addressing no one, but

saluting seriously such of those he encountered as he felt to merit his recognition. He responded strongly to his own suggestion that, disencumbered of his wife, and with Nessie as the medium of his expression, a new and more important book of his life was beginning.

At the head of Church Street he turned at right angles and proceeded directly away from the High Street, towards the Newtown. Shops became infrequent; on his left lay a row of workmen's dwellings, mean houses which abutted, without gardens, directly upon the street, and upon his right a high stone wall ran continuously. Above this wall small, bristling forests of tall, branchless spars erected themselves, and from over its summit, carried on the salty breeze, a hundred graduations of noise reached his ears. Some few hundred yards along, he drew up opposite a block of buildings which, intersecting the smooth continuity of the lofty wall, fronted the street imposingly; there, opposite the main door, he paused. His appearance was that of one who studied carefully the inconspicuous brass plate before him the sign which said neatly above: Levenford Shipbuilding Yard and below: Latta & Co. but actually he was mustering all his forces to enter that doorway which confronted him. Now that he had arrived, an unusual vacillation possessed and weakened his purposeful determination; the sight, even, of the outer confines of the immense yard, the dim realisation of the immense wealth which it represented, impressed him, in his reduced financial situation, with a sensation of inferiority. Angrily he thrust this from him, assuring himself, in his own axiom, that it was the man, not the money that mattered, and, with a quick gesture, he swaggered his way through the imposing portals.

His precipitate entry carried him past the small, sliding window marked "Enquiries" without his observing it and immediately he became lost in a labyrinth of corridors. For some moments he moved about the corridors, blundering angrily like a trapped minotaur in a maze, until by chance he encountered a young man whom, front the short wooden pen that projected like a spit behind one ear, he correctly adjudged to be a clerk.

"I want to see Sir John Latta," he announced fiercely. He felt a fool in these corridors. "I want to see him at once."

The youth blenched at the august name. For him an impassable regiment of chief clerks, managers, heads of departments, and superintendents intervened upon his road of access to that supreme head.

"Have you an appointment?" he asked vaguely.

"No!" said Brodie, "I haven't."

"It's nothing to do with me, of course," replied the youth, disclaiming immediately all responsibility, "but you would have more chance if you had an appointment." He spoke the last word as though it were an emblem of high solemnity, like a key that was necessary to open a sacred door.

"Never mind your appointments. I must see him," cried Brodie, so fiercely that the young man felt compelled to offer another suggestion.

"I could see Mr. Sharp for you," he observed, mentioning his own particular demigod.

"Take me to him then," said Brodie impatiently, "and hurry up about it."

With surprising ease the youth threaded the corridors and, presenting him before Mr. Sharp with a few explanatory words, fled spontaneously, as though repudiating all consequences of his act.

Mr. Sharp was not sure, was, in fact, extremely doubtful of Sir John's ability to see any one to-day. The head of the firm was deeply engaged, had asked not to be disturbed, was shortly going out, and, in fact, unless the business was of the most important nature, Mr. Sharp was exceedingly distrustful of himself intruding upon Sir John with Mr. Brodie's name.

Brodie gazed at the other out of his small, angry eyes.

"Tell Sir John that James Brodie asks to see him," he exclaimed hotly. "He knows me well. He'll see me at once," Mr. Sharp departed in a huff but came back, after some time, to ask Mr. Brodie in a frigid tone to be seated and to say that Sir John would see him presently.

With a triumphant look at the other which said, "I told ye so, ye fool," Brodie sat down and waited, watching idly, as the moments passed, the hive of busy clerks that hummed around him, their activities controlled, apparently, by the waspish eye of Sharp. As the minutes dragged slowly on, whilst he cooled his heels, he reflected, in his suspense, that "presently" must mean a very considerable period, and the longer he waited the more his exultation faded, the more Mr. Sharp's obvious satisfaction increased; it was borne in on him that he could not enter Sir John's office in the easy fashion that Sir John entered his, that it was appreciably more difficult to interview the other here than it had been to accost him casually at the Cattle Show. A heavy depression settled upon him which was scarcely dispelled by the sudden, eventual summons to the office of the head of the firm.

Sir John Latta looked up quickly from his desk as Brodie was shown into the room and, silently indicating a chair, resumed his intent consideration of a plan that lay before him. Brodie lowered his ponderous bulk into the chair and glanced round the sumptuous room, observing the rich, teak panelling and softly tinted colours, the flowing marine paintings on the walls, the exquisite models

of ships upon their graceful pedestals; as his feet sank deeply into the many piles of the carpet and he viewed the buhl inlay of the desk and the gold cigar box upon it, his nostrils dilated slightly and his eye glistened with a deep sense of appreciation. "I like these things," his attitude seemed to say; "these are the manner of possessions that should be mine."

"Well, Brodie," said Sir John at last, but without looking up, "what is it?"

The other could scarcely have failed to observe the lack of warmth in the tone, but nevertheless he began eagerly:

"Sir John! I've come to ask ye for your advice. Ye're the one man in Levenford that I would approach like this. Ye understand me, and all that's to me, Sir John. I've felt that in the past, over and over again, and now I've come to ask your help."

Latta looked at him curiously.

"You are talking in riddles, Brodie," he retorted coldly, "and it is a form of speech that does not suit you. You are more suited to direct action than indirect speech;" then he added slowly: "and action does not apparently always become you."

"What do ye mean, Sir John?" blurted out Brodie. "Who has been speakin' of me behind my back?"

The other picked up a fine ivory ruler and, as he lightly tapped his desk with it, answered slowly:

"You are out of favour with me, Brodie. We cannot help but hear the news and bruit of the town at Levenford House and you have been making a fool of yourself or worse."

"Ye don't mean that nonsense about about skiting away the hats?"

Latta shook his head.

"That certainly was folly, but in you a comprehensible folly. There are other things you must know of. You have lost your wife and I believe you have lost your business. You have had dissappointments, so I- shall not say too much. Yet I hear bad reports of you. You know I never hit a man when he's down, but," he continued quietly, "I take interest in all our townspeople and I am sorry to hear ill things spoken even of the meanest labourer in my shipyards."

Brodie hung his head like a whipped schoolboy, wondering vaguely if it were Matthew's failure or the Winton Arms that lay in the background of Sir John's mind.

"You may have observed," continued Latta quietly, "that I have not patronised your establishment since the beginning of last year. That is because I heard then of an action of yours which I consider was both unjust and unmerciful. You behaved like a blackguard and a bully to your unfortunate daughter, Brodie, and though some might condone your act on grounds of outraged propriety, we can have nothing to do with you whilst you are under a stigma of this sort."

Brodie's hands clenched tightly and the frown deepened upon his pendent forehead. Latta, he thought bitterly, was the only person in Levenford who would have dared to address him like this, the only man, indeed, who could have uttered such words with impunity.

"I can do nothing," he said sulkily, restrained in his action only through a glimmering sense of his dependence upon the others good will. "It's all past and done with now."

"You can forgive her," replied Latta sternly. "You can promise me that she shall have refuge in your house if ever she might require it."

Brodie sat sullenly silent, his mind filled, not by Mary but, strangely, by the picture of Nessie. He must do something for her! It was, after all, easy for him to make an acquiescence of some description, and with his head still lowered and his eyes upon the carpet he blurted out,

"Very well, Sir John! It'll be as ye say."

Latta looked for a long time at the huge, lowering figure. He had at one time viewed Brodie, in the limited sphere of their mutual encounter, with the connoisseur's eye for the unusual; regarded him with appreciation as a magnificent mountain of manhood; smiled at his obvious conceit and tolerated, with a puzzled curiosity, his strange, bombastic and unfathomable allusions. He had observed him with the man of breeding's appreciation of a unique and eccentric specimen, but now he felt the other's presence strangely distasteful to him, thought him altered and debased, considered that some deeper explanation might exist of that bluff, yet pretentious assumption of dignity. Quickly he rejected the thought after all, the man had conceded his point.

"How can I help you then, Brodie?" he said seriously. "Tell me how you stand."

Brodie at last raised his head,, becoming aware that the interview had turned, though he knew not how, into the channel which he desired it to take.

"I've closed my business, Sir John!" he began. "Ye know as well as I do how I've been used by these" he swallowed and restrained himself "by that company that sneaked into the town and settled beside me like a thief in the night. They've used every low trick they could, stolen my manager from me; they've undercut me, sold rotten trash instead of honest goods, they've they've sucked the very blood

out o' me."

As memory stirred under his own words, his eye filled with self-sympathy and his chest heaved; he stretched out his arm demonstratively.

But Latta was somehow not impressed and raising his hand deprecatingly to stop the other, he remarked:

"And what did you do, Brodie, to combat these tactics? Did you branch out into new directions or or exert yourself more agreeably towards your customers?"

Brodie stared at him with a stupid, mulish obstinacy. "I went my own way," he exclaimed stubbornly, "the way I've always gone."

"I see," said Latta slowly.

"I fought them!" exclaimed Brodie. "I fought them like a gentle man and I fought fair. Ay, I would have riven them to bits with these two hands if they had shown the courage to meet me. But they skulked beneath me and how could I lower myself down to their level, the dogs?"

"And are you involved now in your affairs?" asked Sir John. "Are you in debt?"

"No!" replied Brodie proudly, "I'm not. I'm finished but I owe no man a farthing. I've bonded my house but, if I have nothing, I owe nothing. I can start fair, Sir John, if you've a mind to help me. That wee Nessie of mine must have her chance. She's the cleverest lass in Levenford. She's cut out for the bursary your own father founded if she only gets the opportunity."

"Why don't you sell that ridiculous house of yours?" considered Latta, impressed more favourably by the other's words. "It's too large for you now, anyway. Then you can clear your bond and start afresh in a smaller house with the balance."

Brodie shook his head slowly.

"It's my house," he said heavily. "I built it and in it I'll bide. I would

drag it down about my head sooner than give it up." Then after a pause he added sombrely, "If that's all ye have to suggest, I'll not take any more o' your time."

"Sit down, man," cried Latta. "You're as touchy as tinder." He toyed absently with his ruler, deep in thought, whilst doubtfully, uncomprehendingly, Brodie watched the quick passage of emotions over the other's face. At last Latta spoke. "You're a strange man, Brodie," he said, "and your mind puzzles me. I was of opinion, a minute ago, to let you whistle for assistance, but somehow I feel a drag upon me which I can't resist. I will make you an offer. Business is not for you now, Brodie. You are too big, too slow, too cumbersome. You would never succeed by opening up again in your own line, even if this were possible for you. You ought to be working with these great muscles of yours and yet I suppose you would consider that beneath you. But you can use a pen, keep books, reckon up figures. We might find a place for you here. As I say, I am making you an offer it is the most I can do you may refuse it if you choose."

Brodie's eye gleamed. He had known all along that Sir John would help him, that the strong tie of friendship between them must draw the other to help him, and help him royally; he felt that something large and important was looming near for him.

"Ay, Sir John," he said eagerly, "what do ye suggest? I'm at your disposal if I can assist ye."

"I could offer you," Latta continued evenly, "a position in the office as a clerk. It so happens that there is a vacancy in the wood department at this moment. You would have something to learn, yet, out of consideration for you, I would increase the salary slightly. You would have two pounds ten shillings a week."

Brodie's jaw dropped and his face crinkled into striped furrows of bewilderment. Hardly able to believe his ears, his eyes clouded with surprise and chagrin whilst the rosy visions which he had suddenly entertained of sitting in a luxurious room one such as this perhaps and of directing a bevy of rushing subordinates, faded slowly from his eyes.

"Think it over a moment," said Latta quietly, as he got up and moved towards an inner room. "You must excuse me just now."

Brodie strove to think. Whilst the other was out of the room he sat crushed, overcome by his humiliation. He James Brodie to be a clerk! And yet what other avenue than this could he possibly pursue. For Nessie's sake he must accept; he would take the wretched post but only only for the meantime. Later, he would show them all and this Latta more than any.

"Well," said Latta, coming into the office again, "what is it to be?"

Brodie raised his head dully.

"I accept," he said in a flat voice, and added, in a tone into which he strove to insert an inflection of satire, but which succeeded merely in becoming pathetic, "and thank ye."

Dazedly he saw Latta pull the bell beside his desk, heard him exclaim to the boy who instantly appeared:

"Send Mr. Blair to me."

Blair came, apparently as quickly and mysteriously as the boy, though Brodie hardly looked at the small, precise figure or gazed into the eye which outdid Sharp's in formal coldness. He did not hear the conversation between the two others, yet, after a period of time which he knew not to be long or short he felt himself being dismissed by Latta.

He stood up, followed Blair slowly out of the rich room, along the passages, down flights of steps, across a courtyard and finally through the door of a small, detached office.

"Though it is apart from the main department, I trust you will take no advantage of this fact. This will be your desk," said Blair coldly. It was clear that he regarded Brodie as an interloper and, as he proceeded to explain the simple nature of the duties to him, he infused as much icy contempt into his tone as he might. The two other clerks in the room, both of them young men, peered curiously from over the edge of their ledgers at the strange sight before them,

incredulous that this could be their new colleague.

"You have followed me, I trust?" exclaimed Blair finally. "I've made it clear."

"When do I begin ?" asked Brodie dully, feeling that some acknowledgment was expected of him.

"To-morrow, I suppose," answered the other. "Sir John did not exactly specify. If you wish to get a grasp of the books, you can begin now, if you choose;" and he added witheringly, as he passed out of the room, "But it's only half an hour till the horn goes. I should imagine it would take you longer than that to master the work."

Mutely, as if he knew not what he did, Brodie sat down upon the high stool before the desk, the open ledger a white blur in front of him. He did not see the figures with which, in the future, he must occupy himself, nor did he feel the staring eyes of the two silent youths bent upon him in a strange constraint. He was a clerk!

A clerk working for fifty shillings a week. His mind writhed from the unalterable fact yet could not escape it. But no! He would never stand this this degradation. The moment he was out of this place, he would plunge away somewhere and drink, drink till he forgot his humiliation, steep himself in forgetfulness till the memory of it became a ridiculous nightmare. How long had that other said? Half an hour till the horn went! Yes, he could wait until then! He would remain for that short space of time in this ignoble bondage; then he would be free. A tremor seemed to run through him as, blindly, he reached out for a pen and dipped it into the inkwell.

BOOK III

"THEY couldna wear such a thing out there, even if they do have black skins," said Nancy, with a slight titter. "You're just try in' to take a rise out of me." She cocked her head knowingly at Matt, as she surveyed him from her seat upon the kitchen table and swung her well-exposed ankles towards him to point her remark more emphatically.

"Sure as anything," he replied in an animated tone, whilst from his reclining position against the dresser he ogled her with his eye, his posture, his air of elegance. "That's what the native ladies a’ ye're pleased to call them wear."

"Get away, you," she cried roguishly; "you know too much. You'll be tellin' me the monkeys in India wear trousers next." They roared together at her joke, feeling that they were having a precious fine time; she, that it was good to break the monotony of her empty forenoon, to have a change from that dour black father of his; he, that the conversation was exhibiting his social graces to the best advantage almost as if he dazzled her as she sat behind a glittering saloon bar.

"You Ye a great blether," she resumed, in an admonishing yet encouraging tone. "After tellin' me that they niggers chew red nuts like blood and clean their teeth with a bit of stick, you'll be askin' me to believe that they comb their hair wi' the leg o' a chair like Dan, Dan the funny, wee man." Again they laughed in unison until, drawing herself up with mock modesty she resumed, "But I don't mind these kinds of fairy tales. It's when ye start a' these sly jokes o' yours that ye fair make me blush. You've got a regular advantage over a poor, innocent girl like me that's never been abroad you that's visited such grand, interestin' countries. Now tell me some more!"

"But I thought ye didn't want to hear," he teased her. She pouted her richly red lips at him.

"Ye know fine what I mean, Matt. I love hearin' about a' these strange things out there. Never mind the ladies. If I had been out there, I wouldna have let ye even have a glink at them. Tell me about the flowers, and the braw coloured birds and beasts, the parrots, the leopards, the tigers. I want to know about the bazaars, the temples, the gold and ivory images I just can't get enough about them."

"You're the lass to egg me on to it," he replied. "There's no satisfyin' you. What was I speakin' about before ye asked me about the about what I'm no allowed to mention?" He grinned. "Oh! I remember now, 'twas about the sacred cows. Ay! Ye mightn't be lieve it, Nancy, but the cow is a sacred animal to millions of folks out in India. They'll have images of the animal stuck up in all places and

in the streets of the native quarters you'll see great big cows slushing about, with flowers on their horns and garlands of marigolds around their necks, poking their noses everywhere like they owned the place, into the houses and into the stalls that's like the shops, you know and not a body says 'no' to them. I once saw one of the beasts stop at a stall of fruit and vegetables and before you could say 'knife' it had cleared the place from end to end, and the man what owned the shop was obliged to sit helpless and watch it eat up all his stuff, and when it had finished he could do nowt but put up a bit prayer to it or string the remains of his flowers around its big neck."

"Ye don't say, Matt," she gasped, her eyes wide with interest; "that's a strange thing you're tellin' me. To think they would worship the likes of a cow!"

"There's all kinds of cows though, Nancy," replied Matt, with a wink; but immediately he resumed, more seriously:

"Yes! But what I'm telling you is nothing. I couldn't describe all that I've seen to you; ye've got to travel to appreciate such marvellous sights that you would otherwise never dream of. And there's other places finer than India, mind you, where the climate's better, with less mosquitoes and just as much freedom."

She considered him deliberately as, carried away by his own enthusiasm, he talked; and, viewing the slender figure in the natty brown suit, the engaging neatness of his appearance, the inherent yet not unpleasing weakness of his pale face, she was amazed that she could ever have fled from him as she had done at their first encounter. During the six weeks that had elapsed since Mrs. Brodie's

funeral, when she had been formally installed as housekeeper to the Brodie menage she had gradually come to regard Matthew with favour, to protect him against his father, to look forward to his lighter conversation after the heavy taciturnity and laboured monosyllables of the elder man.

"You're not listening to me, you little randy," he exclaimed suddenly. "What's the good of a man using his breath and all his best adjectives if the bonnie lassie pays no heed to him? and you that i sked for it and all."

"Do you think I'm bonnie, then, Matt?" she replied, continuing to regard him in a dreamy manner, yet making her eyes more seductive, her whole saucy pose more provocative.

"I do that, Nancy," he cried eagerly, his glance lighting. "You're as bonnie as a picture. It's a treat to have you about the house. I've always thought that since ever I saw you."

"Ay," she continued musingly. "Ye were a richt bad boy the first time ye met me, but your manners have improved extraordinar' since then. In fact, when I came here I began to think ye were something feared to talk to me, but I see that's all gone now, and indeed I'm not sorry, though I wonder what your father would say to the change if he but knew."

He had raised himself slightly as though about to move towards her, but at her last words the kindling gleam in his eye was suddenly quenched, and relaxing his body again upon the dresser, he replied moodily:

"I don't know what a young thing like you can see in an old man like him, with his sour, crabbed ways. He doesn't seem to fit you like a younger man would."

"There's strength in him though, Matt," she replied reflectively, but still drawing him with her eyes, "and it pleases me to see that strength break down before me. The way things have turned out now I could have him like water in my hands. But don't forget," she added, with a change of manner and a sudden toss of her head, "I'm only the housekeeper here."

"Yes," he exclaimed bitterly, "you've got a grand post! You've settled down pretty well here, Nancy."

"And what about you?" she retorted pertly. "You've settled down no' so badly yourself, for all your fine talk of finding these grand positions abroad."

He laughed at her admiringly.

"Woman! I can't but admire that gleg tongue o' yours. You could strip a man with it if ye chose."

"I could do all that," she answered meaningly, "quick enough."

How she seemed to fire his blood, this coquettish baggage who belonged entirely to his father, who was so absolutely forbidden to him by the taboo of his father's possession.

"Ye know as well as I do, Nancy, that it's only a matter of time until I fix it up," he replied earnestly. "I've got my name down with half a dozen firms. The first vacancy is mine. I couldn't stay in this rotten hole of a town for the rest of my life. There's nothing to keep me here now since since my mother died. But I'm telling you to your face it'll be hard to leave you."

"I'll believe ye better when you've gotten the job, Matt," she remarked tartly. "But ye shouldna let the old fellow down ye so much. Stick up for yourself. Have more faith in your own powers. What I think ye need is a woman with a good level head on her, that would stiffen ye up and give ye a notion of how to face things

out."

"I'll get even with him, all right," he asserted sulkily. "My chance will come. I'll make him pay for all that he's done to me " he paused, and added virtuously, "ay, and for all that he made my poor mother suffer. He's drinking himself to death, anyway."

She did not reply, but throwing back her head, gazed upwards meditatively at the ceiling, exposing the fine, white arch of her throat and drawing her skirt almost to her knees by the graceful backward inclination of her body.

"You're wastin' yourself on him, I'm tellin' you," he continued eagerly. "He's nothing but a great, surly, big bully. Look what he's doing to Nessie driving her on at these lessons. Look what he did to Mamma! He's not worth it. Do you not see that yourself?"

A secret merriment shook her as she replied:

"I'm not feared, Matt. I can take care of myself. I'm only thinkin' one or two things all to my wee self. Just a secret between Nancy and me," she whispered captivatingly.

"What is it?" he cried ardently, aroused by her manner.

"I'll tell ye some day, if you're good."

"Tell me now," he urged. But she refused to enlighten him and, with a flirt of her head, looked at the clock, then replied, "Tuts! I was just thinkin' it was time to throw a bit dinner on the stove. I maun remember my official duties and not forget what I'm here for or I'll be gettin' the sack. You'll be out for lunch as usual, I suppose."

He, too, regarded the clock to estimate his margin of safety before he must clear out of the house to avert an encounter with his father; the policy he had followed since Mamma's death was to avoid his father as much as possible.

"Ay, I'll be out! You know it chokes me to eat at the same table as him not that I'm feared of him, for he's so changed he hasn't got a word in him but the more we keep out of each other's way, the better for everybody concerned. It's just a matter of good sense on my part."

As he moved his position with a great show of indifference and independence, she raised her hands behind her head as though to support its backward tilt and continued to smile at him faintly, enigmatically.

"Come here a minute, Matt," she murmured at length. He looked at her doubtingly as he came towards the table on which she sat, advancing so slowly that she urged:

"Closer, man, closer. I'll not bite ye."

He would, he thought, have willingly submitted to such desirable punishment as he caught the glint of her white, even teeth shining under the red, smiling lips, lips that grew more vivid against the pallor of her skin the nearer he approached to her.

"That's more like it," she said at length; "that shows more spunk. Ye know, Matt, your father's an awfu' stupid, senseless man to leave two young folks like us hangin' about this dreich house with time so heavy on our hands. If he had but a grain o' sense to sit down and reflect over the matter, he would never have allowed it. I havena been out of the house for days now, except for messages, and he would never think of takin' a lassie out for a bit entertainment. Now listen to me. There's a concert on in the Borough Hall to-morrow, Matt," she whispered, lifting her dark lashes enticingly. "What do you say if you and me take a turn down there? He'll never know a thing about it, and forbye, I'll get the money for our seats out of him somehow."

He gazed at her with a fascinated stare, thinking not of her words, which he hardly heard, but noting how because of her posture her firm breasts protruded eloquently towards him, and as not only he had seen how the faint, golden freckles dusted her small, straight nose and finally touched the softly rounded curve of her short upper lip. He knew now that he wanted her, although he was afraid to take her, and as he gazed deeply into her dark eyes some half -hidden flicker incited him to a rash, tempestuous action, made him blurt out unconsciously:

"Nancy! Nancy! You're a devil to draw a man!"

For a second her expression lost its enticing look and changed to one of pleased complacency.

"I'm beginning to see that now," she murmured, "and the next man that gets me is not goin' to get me cheap." Then immediately her voice altered and she resumed wheedlingly: "But what about the concert, Matt it's the McKelvie family they're grand. I'm just dyin' for a little amusement. You and I could hit it off fine at a concert like that. We've always had such good fun together and this'll brighten us both up. Come on, Matt, will you take me to it?"

He felt her breath fan his cheek with a warm intimacy as he blurted out awkwardly, oddly:

"All right, Nancy! I'll take ye! Anything you like you've just to say the word."

Her smile rewarded him; she leapt lightly from the table and touched his cheek airily with her finger tips.

"That's settled then," she cried gaily. "We'll have a rare time and no mistake. You leave it all to me, tickets and everything. We can arrange to meet at the Hall, but you maun come back that long dark road wi' me," she added slyly. "I would be feared to come home myself. I might need your protection." Then, with a sudden upward glance, she cried, "Sakes alive, will ye look at that clock! I've hardly time to fry up the sausages. Away out with ye, Matt, unless ye want to run slap into that big father o' yours. Away the now, but come back when the coast's clear and we'll have a tasty bite together just you and me."

She warmed him with a last glance and without a word he went out of the room, the inward struggle of his emotions binding his tongue, making his passage clumsy and his step ungainly.

When he had gone, she commenced her belated preparations for the midday meal, not with any degree of urgency but with an undisturbed and almost deliberate carelessness, flinging a pound of sausages into the frying pan and leaving them to cook themselves upon the stove whilst she spread a soiled cover upon the table, rattled some plates into their appointed places, and flanked each carelessly by a knife and fork.

The slovenly nature of her housewifery was markedly in contrast to her own trig, fastidious person but was further strongly evidenced by the general appearance of the kitchen. The dust which lay thickly upon the mantelpiece and shelves, the spotted, rusty grate, the unswept floor and hearth, the lax indefinite air of untidiness and neglect that hung upon the room, all became explained in the light of her present actions. The aspect of the interior had changed sadly since the days when Mamma had been unjustly maligned for her sluttishness, when her unappreciated efforts had at least maintained a spotless cleanliness inside the house; now, as the protesting sausages spluttered their grease over the adjacent walls, they seemed to smirch the room with a melancholy degradation.

Suddenly, above the crackle of this cooking, into the fat-drenched vapour that filled the scullery, came the sound of the front door opening and shutting, followed by a heavy but sluggish tread along the hall. This, however, although she recognised it as Brodie's step, did not in the least perturb the unprepared Nancy, who still maintained her unconcerned and wary survey of the frying pan. For her no frantic running with savoury broths, brimming coffee cups or Britannia metal teapots! As she heard him come ponderously into the kitchen and silently sit down at the table she waited a moment, then called out brightly:

"You're too early the day, Brodie. I'm not nearly ready for ye;" then, as he did not reply, she continued to shout out, addressing him who had never deviated a second from his routine "You're that uncertain these days I never know when to expect you, or else the clocks in this house o' yours are all wrong. Anyway, hold on and I'll be in the now."

He "held on", waiting without a word. In the short space of time which had elapsed since his entry into the offices of Latta and Company a change, more striking and profound than that of the room in which he sat, but shaped in a similar direction, had affected him. Now, as he sat, his eyes fixed downwards upon the plate before him, he seemed to have shrunken slightly so that his clothes appeared not to fit him but to have been made for some larger frame than his, while his upright, firm-chested and always belligerent bearing had been replaced by a faint yet clearly perceptible stoop. His features, from being rugged, had become morose; his eye, no longer piercing, was fixed, brooding, and shot with faint threads of blood, while his cheeks too were veined by a fine, reticulated network of reddish vessels. His lips were dry, compressed; his temples, and indeed his cheeks, gaunt, slightly hollowed, and upon his brow the

furrow of his frown had seared itself like a deep-grooved stigma.

It was as though the firm outlines of the man had become blurred, his craggy features corroded, the whole solidity of his being eaten and undermined by some strange, dissolving acid in his blood.

When Nancy entered, bearing the platter of sausages, he glanced up quickly, drawn by the magnet of her eyes, but as she placed the plate before him he looked at it and said, in a harsh voice that came like the note of a faintly warped instrument:

"Have ye no soup to-day for me, Nancy?"

"No," she replied shortly, "I have not."

"I would have liked a drop broth to-day," he replied with a shadow of displeasure. "There's a nip in the air already; still, if ye haven't got any, that's all about it. Where's the potatoes, then?"

"I hadna time to make any potatoes for ye to-day. I've been fair rushed off my feet. Ye canna expect me to do everything for ye a' days, and dippin' my hands in cold dirty water to peel potatoes is what I've never been used to. Ye were glad enough to get a simpler dinner than that when ye used to come in to see me at the Winton Arms, and things are no better off with ye now. Eat it up and be content, man!"

The pupils of his eyes dilated as he looked at her, his lips shaped themselves to an angry reply, but with an effort he restrained himself, helped himself from the plate before him, and, taking a slice of bread, began his meal. She stood beside him for a moment, her hands upon her hips, flaunting her figure near to him, filled by the conscious sense of her power over him until, as Grandma Brodie entered the room, she flounced back into the scullery.

The old woman came forward to the table with a half -bemused expression upon her sallow, wrinkled visage and as she sat down, murmured to herself, "Teh! these things again"; but at her scarcely perceptible words Brodie turned and, showing his teeth at her in his old manner, snarled:

"What harm have the sausages done ? If ye don't like plain, honest meat ye can go to the poorhouse, and if ye do like it then shut your auld girnin' mouth!"

At his words, and more especially at the accompanying glance, she at once subsided into herself, and with her tremulous hands began, but without much eagerness, to assist herself to the food she had so indiscreetly condemned. Her ageing, muddled brain, incapable of fully comprehending the significance of the changes around her, accepted only the fact that she was now uncomfortable, presented with scanty, unpalatable meals, and as her weak jaws champed with a dry disrelish she vented her displeasure in quick, darting glances towards the hidden presence in the scullery.

After a few moments during which the two ate in silence, Brodie paused suddenly in his indifferent mastication, raised his head slightly at the light sound of some one entering the house and, fixing his eyes upon the door leading to the hall, waited expectantly for the entry of Nessie. She came in immediately and, although Brodie resumed his eating mechanically, he followed her everywhere about the room with his eyes. She slipped the thin elastic from under her chin and released her plain straw hat, threw this upon the sofa, discarded her blue serge jacket and laid it beside the hat, fluffed out her light flaxen hair and finally subsided in her chair beside him. She sat back in her chair languidly, surveying the table with a faint childish air of petulance, saying nothing, but feeling in her own mind that the sight of the solidifying grease before her had removed what little appetite she had possessed, that though she might have eaten, and enjoyed perhaps, a little stewed mince or even a small lamb chop, now she turned from the very thought of food. At her present age of fifteen years she had reached that period of her life when her budding and developing body required an additional attention, a more selective dietary, and though she realised nothing of this she felt instinctively, with her slightly throbbing head and the onset of her significant though unmentionable malaise, that it was an injustice to present her with the food she now surveyed. As she rested thus, her father, who had observed her continuously since her entry, spoke; with an unchanged face but in a voice which he tried to render light, persuasive, he said:

"Come on now, Nessie dear, and get your dinner begun. Don't sit and let it get cold. A big lassie like you should be hungry as a hunter and dashin' in for her meals as though she could eat the house up!"

At his words she came out of her meditation and at once began to obey, murmuring in explanation, almost apologetically:

"I've got a headache, Father, just right on the front of my brow, like a strap goin' round it," and she pointed listlessly to her forehead.

"Come, come now, Nessie," he replied in a low tone which could not carry to the scullery, "you're aye talkin' about that headache. If you're always crying 'wolf, wolf well not be believing you when it does come to the bit. So long as ye don't have the strap on the palm o' your hand ye shouldna mind it on the front o' your head."

"But it ties my brow so tight sometimes," she murmured mildly; "like a tight band."

"Tut! tut! It's the brain behind that matters, no' the brow, my girl. Ye should be thankful that ye're so well equipped in that respect." Then, as she began negligently to eat, he continued with extravagant approval, "That's better. Ye canna work without food. Take your fill o' whatever is goin'. Hard work should give a young lass like you an appetite, and hunger's guid kitchen." He suddenly shot a rancorous glance at his mother as he added harshly, "I'm pleased ye're not so particular and fasteedious as some folks."

Nessie, gratified that she was pleasing him and unfolding to some extent at his praise, redoubled her flagging efforts to eat but regarded him from time to time with a strained look in her eye as he continued reminiscently:

"When I was your age, Nessie, I could have eaten an ox when I came rushin' in from the fields for my dinner. I was a hardy chiel ay ready for what I could get. I could never get enough, though, No! No! Things were different for me than they are for you, Nessie! I didna have your chance. Tell me," he murmured confidentially, "how are things goin’ to-day?"

"Quite well," she replied automatically.

"You're still top of the class,' he insisted.

"Oh! Father," she expostulated, "I'm tired of explaining to you that we don't have that sort of thing now. I've told you half a dozen times in the last three months that it all goes by quarterly examinations." With a faint note of vanity in her voice she added, "Surely you understand that I’m past that stage now."

"Ay! ay!" he hastily replied. "I was forgettin' that a big girl and a fine scholar like you wouldna have to be fashed wi' such childish notions. True enough, it's examinations that you and me are concerned with." He paused, then in a sly tone remarked, "How long have we now till the big one?"

"About six months, I suppose," she answered half-heartedly, as she pallidly continued her meal.

"That's just fine," he retorted. "No' that long to wait and yet plenty of time for ye to prepare. Ye can't say ye havena had warnin' o't." He whispered almost inaudibly:

"Ay! I'll keep ye to it, lass you and me'll win the Latta between us."

At this point old Grandma Brodie, who had been sitting expectantly for a second course to follow and who, regardless of the conversation, had been itching, but afraid, to say, "Is there nothin' else comin'" or "Is this a' we're to get", at last abandoned hope; with a resigned but muffled sigh she scraped back her chair from the table, raised her stiff form, and dragged disconsolately from the kitchen. As she passed through the door she was unhappily aware that little comfort was in her, that in the sanctuary of her room two empty tins awaited her like rifled and unreplenished tabernacles mutely proclaiming the prolonged absence of her favourite Deesides and her beloved oddfellows.

Wrapped in the contemplation of his daughter, Brodie did not observe his mother's departure, but remarked in a tone that was almost coaxing:

"Have ye no news at all then, Nessie ? Surely some one said something to ye. Did nobody tell ye again that ye were a clever lass? I'll warrant that ye got extra good marks for your home work," It was as though he besought her to inform him of some commendation, some pleasing attribute bestowed upon the daughter of James Brodie; then, as she shook her head negatively, his eye darkened to a sudden thought and he burst out savagely, "They havena been talkin' about your father, have they, any o' these young whelps? I daresay they listen to what the backbitin' scum o' their elders might be say in 1 , but if they come over a thing to ye, just let me know. And dinna believe it. Keep your head up, high up. Remember who ye are that you're a Brodie and demand your due. Show them what that means. Ay and ye will show them, my girl, when ye snap awa' wi' the Latta from under their snivellin' nebs." He paused; then, with a twitching cheek, bit out at her, "Has that young brat o' Grierson's been makin' any of his sneakin' remarks to ye?"

She shrank back timidly from him, exclaiming, "No, no, Father! Nobody has said anything, Father. Everybody is as kind as can be. Mrs. Paxton gave me some chocolate when she met me going down the road."

"Oh! She did, did she?" He hesitated, digesting the information; apparently it disagreed with him, for he sneered: "Well, tell her to keep her braw presents the next time. Say we have all we want here. If ye're wantin' sweeties, like a big saftie, could ye not have asked me for them? Do ye not know that every scandalmonger in the town is just gaspin' for the chance to run us down? 'He canna afford to give his own daughter a bit sweetie next that's what we'll be hearin' to-morrow, and by the time it gets to the Cross they'll be makin' out that I'm starvin' ye." His annoyance was progressive and he worked himself up to a climax, crying: "Bah! Ye should have had more sense. They're all against us. That's the way o't now. But never mind! Let them fling all the mud they like. Let the hand of every man be turned against me I'll win through in spite o' them." As he concluded, he raised his eye wildly upwards when, suddenly, he observed Nancy had come into the room and was watching him from under her raised brows with a critical and faintly amused detachmcnt. At once his inflated bearing subsided and, as though caught in some unwarrantable act, he lowered his head while she spoke.

"What's all the noise about! I thought that somebody had taken a fit when I heard ye skirlin' like that," and as he did not reply she turned to Nessie.

"What was the haverin' about? I hope he wasna flightin' at you, henny?"

With Nancy's advent into the kitchen a vague discomfort had possessed Nessie and now the skin of her face and neck, which had at first paled, flushed vividly. She answered confusedly, in a low voice:

"Oh! No. It was nothing nothing like that."

"I'm glad to hear it," replied Nancy. "All that loud rantin' was enough to deafen a body. My ears are ringin' with it yet." She glanced around disapprovingly and was about to retire when Brodie spoke, looking sideways at Nessie, and with an effort making his voice unconcerned.

"If you've finished your dinner, Nessie, run out to the front and wait for me. I'll not be a minute before I'm ready to go down the road with you." Then, as his daughter arose, picked up her things from the sofa and went silently, uneasily, out of the room, he turned his still lowered head; looking upwards from under his brows, he regarded Nancy with a strong, absorbed intensity, and remarked:

"Sit down a minute, woman. I havena seen ye all the dinner hour. Ye're not to be angry at that tantrum. You should know my style by this time. I just forgot myself for a minute."

As she sat down carelessly in the chair Nessie had vacated, his look drew her in with a possessive gratification which told more clearly than his words how she had grown upon him. So long without a fresh and vital woman in his house, so painfully encumbered by the old and useless body of his wife, this firm, white, young creature had entered into his blood like an increasing fever, and, by satisfying his fierce and thwarted instincts, had made him almost her slave.

"Ye didna give us any pudding, Nancy," he continued, clumsily taking her hand in his huge grasp; "will ye not give a man something to make up for't just a kiss, now. That'll not hurt ye, woman, and it's sweeter to me than any dish ye could make."

"Tuts, Brodie! You're always on at the same thing," she answered, with a toss of her head. "Can ye not think o' something else for a change? Ye forget that you're a burly man and I'm but a wee bit lass that canna stand a deal of handlin'." Although the words were admonitory she threw an inflection of seductiveness into them which made him tighten his clasp on her fingers, saying:

"I'm sorry if I've been rough with ye, lass. I didna mean it. Come and sit closer by me. Come on now!"

"What!" she skirled. "In broad daylight! Ye maun be mad, Brodie, an’ after last night too, you great lump. Yell have me away to shadow No! No! Ye'll not wear me out like ye did the other."

She looked little like a shadow, with her plump cheeks and solid form that had filled out more maturely from her six months of easy, indolent existence, and, as she regarded him with a substantial appreciation of his dependence upon her, she became aware that he was already losing his hold upon her, that the strange strength which had drawn her was being sapped by drink and her embraces, that he had now insufficient money to gratify her fancies, that he looked old, morose and unsuited to her. She had almost an inward contempt for him as she resumed slowly, calculatingly, "I might gie ye a kiss, though. Just might, mind ye. If I did, what would ye give me for it?"

"Have I not given ye enough, woman?" he answered gloomily. "Ye're housed and fed like myself and I've sold many a thing out this house to meet your humour. Don't ask for the impossible, Nancy."

"Tuts, ye wad think ye had given me a fortune to hear ye," she cried airily. "As if I wasna worth it, either! I'm not askin' ye to sell ony more tie-pins or chains or pictures. I'm only wantin' a few shillings for my purse to go out and see my Aunt Annie in Overtoun tomorrow. Give us five shillin's and I'll give ye a kiss."

His lower lip hung out sulkily.

"Are ye goin' out again to-morrow ? Ye're aye goin' out and learin' me. When will ye be back ?"

"Man! I believe ye would like to tie me to the leg o' this table. I'm not your slave; I'm only your housekeeper." That was one for him, she thought, as she delivered the pert allusion to the fact that he had never offered to marry her. "I'll not be away all night. I'll be back about ten o'clock or so. Give us the two half-crowns and if ye behave I'll maybe be kinder to ye than ye deserve."

Under her compelling eyes he plunged his hand into his pocket, feeling, not the handful of sovereigns that had once reposed there, but some scanty coins, amongst which he searched for the sum she asked.

"Here ye are then," he said eventually, handing her the money. "I can ill afford it but ye well know I can deny ye nothing."

She jumped up, holding the money triumphantly, and was about to slip away with it when he too got up and catching her by the arm, cried:

"What about your bargain! You're not forgettin' about that! Do ye not care for me at all?"

Immediately she composed her features, lifted up her face, opened her eyes wide at him with an ingenuous simplicity and murmured:

"I should think I do care for ye. Do ye think I would be here if I didna? Ye shouldna get such strange ideas in your head. That's the way mad folk talk. You'll be sayin' I'm goin' away to leave ye next."

"No, I wouldna let ye do that," he replied, crushing her fiercely against him. As he strained her small unresisting form against his own bulk, he felt that here was the anodyne to his wounded pride, forgetfulness of his humiliation, while she, turning her face sideways against his chest, looked away, thinking how ridiculous to her now was his infatuated credulity, how she wanted some one younger, less uncouth, less insatiable, some one who would marry her.

"Woman! What is it about ye that makes my heart like to burst when I have ye like this?" he said thickly, as he held her. "I seem to lose count of everything but you. I would wish this to go on for ever."

A faint smile creased her hidden features as she replied:

"And why should it not? Are ye beginnin' to get tired of me?”

"By God! You're fresher to me than ever ye were." Then after a pause he suddenly exclaimed, "It wasna just the money ye wanted, Nancy?"

She turned an indignant face to him, taking the opportunity to release herself.

"How can ye say such a thing? The very idea! Ill fling it back at ye in a minute if ye don't be quiet."

"No! No!" he interposed hurriedly. "I didna mean anything. You're welcome to it, and I'll bring ye something nice on Saturday." This was the day upon which he drew his weekly wage and with the sudden realisation of his subordinate position, of the change in his life, his face darkened again, became older, and looking down, he said, "Well, I better go then. Nessie's waitin' for me." Suddenly a thought struck him. "Where's that Matt to-day?" he demanded.

"I couldn't say." She stifled a yawn, as though her lack of interest made her positively languid. "He went out straight away after breakfast. He'll not be back now till supper, I expect."

He gazed at her for a moment then said slowly:

"Well, I'll away myself, then. I'm off!"

"That's right," she cried gaily. "Off with ye and mind ye come straight back from the office. If ye have a single drink in ye when ye come in, I'll let ye have the teapot at your head."

From under his heavy eyebrows he looked at her with an upward, shamefaced glance that sat ill upon his lined and sombre countenance; nodding his head to reassure her, he gave her arm a final squeeze and went out.

In the front courtyard, now thickly covered by sprouting weeds and denuded of the ridiculous ornament of the brass cannon which three months ago had been sold for its value as old metal - he found Nessie patiently awaiting him, supporting her unformed, drooping figure against the iron post of the front gate. At the sight of him she raised herself and, without a word, they set out together upon their walk to the point where their paths diverged at the end of Railway Road, where he would proceed to his work in the shipyard and she to hers at school. This daily pilgrimage had now become an established custom between Brodie and his daughter and during its course he had the practice of encouraging and admonishing her, of spurring her onward to achieve the brilliant success he desired; but to-day he did not speak, tapping along with his thick ash stick, his coat sagging upon him, his square hat, faded and unbrushed, thrust back in a painful caricature of his old-time arrogance, marching silently and apart, with an air of inward absorption which made it impossible for her to speak to him. Always, now, in the public gaze, he retired into himself, holding his head erect, looking directly in front of him and seeing no one, creating thus, for himself, wide depopulated streets filled, not with curious, staring, sneering faces, but by the solitude of his single presence.

When they reached their place of separation, he stopped an odd arresting figure and said to her:

"Away and work hard now, Nessie. Stick into it. Remember what I'm always tellin' you 'what's worth doin' is worth doin' well.' Ye've got to win that Latta that's a' there is about it. Here!" he put his hand in his pocket "Here's a penny for chocolate." He almost smiled. "Ye can pay me back when you've won the Bursary."

She took the coin from him timidly yet gratefully, and went on her way to face her three hours of work in a stuffy classroom. If she had taken no breakfast and little lunch, she would at least be sustained and fortified against her study by the ample nourishment of a sticky bar of raspberry cream chocolate!

When she had gone the faint show of animation in his face died out completely and, bracing himself up, he turned and continued his progress to the office which he hated. As he drew near to the shipyard he hesitated slightly in his course, wavered, then faded into the doorway of the "Fitter's Bar" where, in the public bar. filled bv workmen in moleskins and dungaiees. Yet to him tenanted by no one but himself, he swallowed a neat whisky, then quickly emerged and,retaining the fumes of the spirit by a compression of his lips, morosely entered the portals of Latta and Company.

II

ON THE evening of the following day, when Nancy had departed to visit her aunt at Overton, and with Matt, as he always was at this hour, out of the house, a sublime and tranquil domesticity lay upon the kitchen of the Brodie home. So, at least, it seemed to the master of the house as, reclining back in his own chair, head tilted, legs crossed, pipe in mouth, and in his hand a full glass of his favourite beverage, hot whisky toddy, he contemplated Nessie, seated at the table, bent over her lessons, her pale brows knitted in concentration, then surveyed his mother who, in the temporary absence of the hated intruder, had not retired to her room but sat crouched in her old corner beside the blazing fire. A faint flush marked Brodie's cheeks; his lips, as he sucked at his pipe, were wet and full; the eye, now turned meditatively upon the contents of the steaming tumbler, humid, eloquent; by some strange transformation his troubles were forgotten, his mind filled contentedly by the thought that it was a delightful experience for a man to spend an evening happily in his own home. True, he did not now go out in the evenings, or indeed, at any hours but those of his work, shunning the streets and the club; banned, too, from the small back parlour of the virtuous Phemie, and it should logically have been an event of less moment for him to hug the fire and one less productive of such unusual gratification. But to-night, recognising that he would not be called upon to account to his housekeeper for his lateness at the tea table, he had dallied by the wayside on his return from work and now, mellowed further by a few additional drinks and the thought of more to come, the sadness of his separation from Nancy tempered by the exhilaration of his unwonted liberty and by the consideration of their reunion later in the evening, his induced felicity had enveloped him earlier and more powerfully than on most nights. Viewed from his armchair, through the clear amber of the toddy, his position in the office became a sinecure, his subordinate routine merely an amusing recreation; it was his whim to work like that and he might terminate it at his will; he was glad to be finished with his business, an ignoble trade which had clearly never suited his temper or his breeding; he would, however, shortly abandon the hobby of his present post for a more prominent, more lucrative occupation, startling the town, satisfying himself and delighting Nancy. His Nancy ah! That was a woman for a man! As her image rose before him he toasted her, hoping enthusiastically that she might now be having a pleasant time with her aunt at Overton. Rosy mists floated through the dirty ill-kept room, tinting the soiled curtains, veiling the darker coloured square which marked the disappearance from the wall of Bell's engraving, sending a glow into Nessie's pale cheeks and softening even the withered, envious face of his mother. He watched the old woman's starting eyes over the edge of his glass as he took a long satisfying drink and, when he had

drawn his breath, cried jeeringly:

"Ye're wishin' you were me, ye auld faggot. Ay, I can see from the greedy look about you that you wish this was goin' into your belly and not mine. Well, take it from me, in case ye don't know, it's a great blend o' whisky, the sugar is just to taste and the water is right because there's not too much o't." He laughed uproariously at his own wit, causing Nessie to look up with a scared expression, but catching his glance, she immediately lowered hers as he exclaimed:

"On with the work, ye young limmer! What are ye wastin' your time for? Am I payin' for your education for you to sit gogglin’ at folks when you should be at your books."

Turning to his mother again, he shook his head solemnly, continuing volubly, "I must keep her at it! That's the only way to correct the touch o' her mother's laziness that's in her. But trust me! I'll make her a scholar in spite of it. The brains are there." He took another pull at his glass and sucked noisily at his pipe.

The old woman returned his glance sourly, dividing her gaze between his flushed face and the whisky in his hand as she remarked:

"Where is that where is she gane to-night?"

He stared at her for a moment then guffawed loudly. "Ye mean Nancy, ve auld witch. Has she put a spell on you too, that you're feared even to lift her name?" Then after a pause, during which he assumed a leering gravity, he continued, "Well, I hardly like to tell ye, but if ye must know, she's awa' to the Band of Hope meetin'.”

She followed the vehemence of his mirth, as he shook with laughter, with an unsympathetic eye, and replied as tartly as she dared:

"I don't see much to laugh about. If she had gone to the Band o' Hope when she was younger she might have " she stopped, feeling his eye upon her, thinking that she had gone too far.

"Go ahead," he gibed; "finish what ye were sayin'. Let us all have our characters when you're about it. There's no pleasin' some folk. Ye werna satisfied with Mamma, and now ye're startin' to pick holes in my Nancy. I suppose ye think you could keep the house yoursel' that maybe ye might get an odd pingle at the bottle that way. Faugh! The last time ye cooked my dinner for me ye nearly poisoned me." He considered her amusedly from his elevated position, thinking of how he might best take her down a peg.

Suddenly a wildly humorous idea struck him, which, in its sardonic richness, made him slap his thigh delightedly. She was grudging him his drink was she, eyeing it as a cat would a saucer of cream, gasping for it, ready to lap it up at the first opportunity. She should have it then, she who was so quick to run down other people! By Gad! She should have it. He would make her full, yes, full as a whelk. He realised that he had plenty of whisky in the house, that in any case it would take very little to go to the old woman's head, and as some foretaste of the drollery of his diversion invaded him, he rocked with suppressed hilarity and smote his leg again exuberantly. Losh! But he was a card!

Then all at once he cut off his laughter, composed his features and, narrowing his small eyes slyly, remarked cunningly:

"Ah! It seems hardly fair o' me to have spoken to ye like that, woman. I can see it's put ye right down. You're lookin' quite daunted. Here! Would ye like a drop speerits to pull ye together?" Then, as she looked up quickly, suspiciously, he nodded his head largely and continued, "Ay. I mean it. I'm quite serious. What way should I have it an no' you? Away and get yoursel' a glass."

Her dull eye lighted with eagerness, but knowing his ironic tongue too well, she still doubted him, was afraid to move for fear a burst of his derisive laughter should disillusion her, and moistening her lips with her tongue she exclaimed in a tremulous voice:

"You're not just makin' fun o' me, are ye?"

Again he shook his head, this time negatively, vigorously, and reaching down to the bottle conveniently beside his chair he held it out enticingly before her.

"Look! Teacher's Highland Dew. Quick! Away and get yoursel' a tumbler!"

She started to her feet eagerly, as though she were beginning a race, and made her way to the scullery, trembling at the thought of her luck, she who had not lipped a drop since the day of the funeral and then only wine, not the real, comforting liquor. She was back, holding out the glass, almost before he had controlled the fresh burst of amusement which her avid, tottering progress had afforded him; but as he poured her out a generous allowance, he remarked in a steady, solicitous voice:

"An old body like yersel' needs a drop now and then. See, I'm givin' you plenty and don't take much water with it."

"Oh, no, James," she protested. "Don't give me ower much. You know I'm not fond o' much o't just a wee drappie to keep out the cold."

At her last words a sudden memory cut across his jocularity like a whip lash and he snarled at her:

"Don't use these words to me! It minds me too much of somebody I'm not exactly fond of. Why do ye speak like a soft and mealy-mouthed hypocrite?" He glowered at her while she drank her whisky quickly, for fepr he should take it from her; then, urged by a more vindictive spirit, he cried out, "Come on. Here's some more. Glass about."

"Na! Na!" she exclaimed mildly. "I've had enough. It's warmed me nicely and gie'n my mouth a bit flavour. Thenk ye all the same, but I'll no' have any more."

"Ye’re not say no to me." he shouted roughly. "What are ye to refuse good spirits? Ye asked for it and you'll have it, even if I've to pour it down your auld thrapple. Hold out your glass; we'll drink fair."

Wonder ingly she submitted, and when he had given her another liberal helping, she drank it more slowly, appreciatively, smacking her lips and rolling it over her tongue, murmuring between her sips,

"It's the real stuff, richt enough. It's unco kind o' ye, James, to spare me this. I've never had so much afore. Troth. I'm not used to it." She was silent whilst the liquid in her glass dwindled, then all at once she burst out, "It's got a graund tang on your tongue has it no? 'Deed it almost makes me feel young again." She tittered slightly. "I was just thinkin' " she tittered more loudly.

At the sound of her levity he smiled darkly.

"Yes," he drawled, "and what were ye thinkin', auld woman? Tell us so that we can enjoy the joke."

She snickered the more at his words, and covering her wrinkled face with her knotted hands, abandoned herself to a delicious, inward humour until at last she coyly unveiled one senile, maudlin eye and whispered brokenly:

"Soap! I was just thinkin' about soap."

"Indeed, now; ye were thinkin' about soap!" he mimicked. "That's very appropriate. Was it a wash that ye wer wantin'? For if that's the case, I can assure ye that it's high time ye had one."

"Na, na," she giggled, "it's no' that. It just flashed into my heid what the wives used to do in my young days, when they wanted a drop o' speerits without the guid-man knowin' about it. They they wad go to the village grocer's for their gill and get it marked to the book as soap. Soap!" She was quite overcome by her enjoyment of this delicious subtlety and again buried her face in her hands; but she looked up after a moment to add, "Not that I ever did a thing like that! No! I was aye respectable and could scrub the house without that kind of cleanser!"

"That's right! Blow your own trumpet," he sneered. "Let us know what a paragon o' virtue you were. I'm listenin'."

"Ay! I did weel in these days," she continued reminiscently, losing, in the present fatuity of her mind, all awe of her son, "and I had muckle to put up wi'. Your father was as like you are now as twa peas in a pod. The same grand way wi' him and as touchy as gunpowder. Many the night he would come in and let fly at me if things werna to his taste. But I stood up to him in a' his rages! I'm pleased to think on that." She paused, her look becoming distant. "I can see it like it was yesterday. Man, he was proud, proud as Lucifer."

"And had he not reason to be proud?" he exclaimed harshly, becoming aware that the drink was not taking her the way he had expected, that she was ceasing to amuse him. "Do ye not know the stock he came from?"

"Oh, ay, I kenned a' about that, lang syne," she tittered spitefully, filled by a heady, rancorous imprudence. "He had the airs o' a duke, wi' his hand me this and reach me that, and his fine clothes, and his talk o' his forbears and what his rights were if he but had them. Oh! He was aye splorin' about his far back connection wi' the Wintons. But I often wonder if he believed it hisself. There's a' kinds o' connections," she sniggered, "and 'tis my belief that the lang syne connection was on the wrang side o' the blanket."

He glared at her, unable to believe his ears, then finding his tongue, he shouted:

"Silence! Silence, ye auld bitch! Who are you to talk like that about the Brodies? Ye bear the name yerser now. How dare ye run it down before me," and he grasped the neck of the bottle as though to hurl it at her.

"Now, now, Jims," she drivelled, quite unperturbed, raising one uncertain, protesting hand, "ye mustna be unreasonable. I'm not the kind o' bird that files its ain nest this is a' atween the family, so to speak and ye surely know it was a' gone intill and found out that the whole trouble began lang, lang syne, wi' an under-the-sky affair atween Janet Dreghorn, that was the heid gardener's daughter, and young Robert Brodie that cam' to the title mony years after. Na! Na! They were never bound by ony tie o' wedlock."

"Shut your blatterin' mouth," he roared at her. "If ye don't, I'll tear the dirty tongue out o' it. You would sit there and miscall my name like that! What do you think ye are? Ye were lucky my father married you. You you " He stammered, his rage choking him, his face twitching as he looked at her senseless, shrunken features. She was now completely intoxicated, and unconscious equally of his rage and of Nessie's frightened stare, continued:

"Lucky!" she babbled, with a drunken smirk, "maybe I was and maybe I wasna, but if ye kenned the ins and outs o' it all, ye might think that ye were lucky yoursel'!" She broke into peals of shrill laughter, when suddenly her false teeth, never at any time secure and now dislodged from her palate by her moist exuberance, protruded from between her lips like the teeth of a neighing horse, and impelled by a last uncontrollable spasm of mirth, shot out of her mouth and shattered themselves upon the floor. It was, in a fashion, a fortunate diversion, for otherwise he must certainly have struck her, but now they both gazed at the detached and scattered dentures that lay between them like blanched and scattered almonds, she staring with collapsed grotesque cheeks and shrunken, unrecognisable visage, he with a muddled amazement.

"They're lyin' before ye like pearls before swine," he exclaimed at last. "It serves ye right for your blasted impudence."

"My guid false teeth!" she moaned, sobered by her loss, yet articulating with difficulty, "that I've had for forty years! They were that strong too, with the spring atween them. What will I do now? I canna eat. I can hardly speak."

"That'll be a good job, then," he snarled at her, "if it keeps you from gabblin' with your lyin' tongue. It serves you right."

"They'll not mend," she whined, "Ye maun get me a new set." Her forlorn eyes were still fixed upon the floor. "I canna just suck at my meat. Ye don't get the good out o' it that way. Say you'll get me another double set, James."

"Ye can whistle for that," he retorted. "What good would new teeth be to an auld deein' thing like you? You're not goin' to last that much longer. Just look on it as a judgment on ye."

At his words she began to whimper, wringing her bony hands together and mumbling incoherently, "What a to do! I'll never get ower it. What's to become o’ me that's had them so lang. It was a' the fault o' the speerits. I could aye manage them fine. It'll mean the end o' me."

He regarded her ludicrous, whining figure with a scowl, then, moving his glance, he suddenly observed the drawn face of Nessie, watching the scene with a frightened yet fixed attention.

"What are you playin' at next?" he growled at her, his mood changed by his mother's recent remarks. "Can ye not get on with your own work ? You'll get a bra w lot done with that glaikit look about you. What's the matter with ye?"

"I can't get on very well with the noise, Father," she replied timidly, lowering her eyes; "it distracts my attention. It's not easy for me to work when there's talking."

"So that's it!" he replied. "Well! There's plenty of room in the house now. If the kitchen isn't good enough for you, we'll put ye in the parlour. You'll not hear a sound there. Then ye'll have no excuse for idlin'." He got up and, before she could reply, advanced with a slight lurch to the table where he swept her books into one disordered heap; clutching this between his two enormous hands,

he turned and stalked off, crying, "Come on. Into the parlour with ye. The best room in the house for my Nessie. You'll work in peace there and work hard too. If ye can't study in the kitchen you'll gang into the parlour every night."

Obediently she arose and followed him into the cold, musty room where, after stumbling about in the darkness, he flung her books upon the table and at length succeeded in lighting the gas. The pale light gleamed from its frosted globe upon the chilly, uncovered mahogany table, the empty, unused fireplace, upon all the cold discomfort of the neglected, dust-shrouded chamber and lit up finally the overbearing figure of Brodie and the shrinking form of the child.

"There you are now," he cried largely, his good humour partially restored. "Everything's ready and to your hand. Draw up your chair and begin. Don't say that I havena helped ye." He put two fingers upon the pile of books and spread them widely over the surface of the table, disarranging them still more and losing all her places. "See! There's plenty o' room for a' your orders. Can ye not say thank ye?"

"Thank you. Father," she murmured submissively.

He watched her with a complacent eye whilst she sat down and bent her thin shoulders in a pretence of study, then he tiptoed with heavy, exaggerated caution from the room, protruding his head around the door as he went out to say:

"I'll be back in a minute to see how you're gettin' on." As he returned to the kitchen, he told himself that he had done the right thing by Nessie, that he was the one to make her get on, and in a mood of self-congratulation he sat down again in his chair and in reward poured himself out another glass of whiskey. Only then did he become aware of his mother, still sitting motionless, stupid, like a bereaved woman, with a hollow look, as if some power had sucked her empty.

"Are ye still here?'' he shot at her. "You're far too quiet for one that had such a glib tongue in her head a minute ago. When I didna hear ye, I thought ye would be away to sleep off your exertions. Go on get away now, then. Away ye go; I'm sick of the look o' ye." And, as she was slow in moving, he shouted, "Quick! out of my sight."

While he had been in the parlour she had collected the wreckage of her dentures from the floor, and now, clutching these fragments tightly in her hand, she faded soberly from the room, her bowed, dejected carriage contrasting sadly with the gay eagerness with which she had rushed for the tumbler towards her own undoing.

Alone and untrammelled in the kitchen, Brodie addressed himself more assiduously to the bottle, washing away the unpleasant memory of her presence and the bitter recollections occasioned by her remarks. He knew, well, that unhappy truth lay at the foundation of her senile yet disconcerting reminiscences but now, as always, he chose to blind himself to their accuracy a process never difficult to his obtuse and lumbering mind and one now rendered easier than ever by the liberality of his potations. Soon he had forgotten the entire incident, except for the ludicrous remembrance of her sudden and embarrassing edentation, and reclining at ease in his chair and toping steadily, he mounted into the higher altitudes of intoxication. With the gradual elevation of his spirits he began to regret his solitary condition and with an impatient, swinging foot and eager glances at the clock, he sought to anticipate the return of Nancy. But it was only nine o'clock; he knew that she would not arrive before ten, and, as the hands moved with a regular and monotonous slowness despite his efforts to expedite their progress, he got up and began to walk about the room. A wild idea of promenading the streets of the town, of bursting in upon the assembly at the club and disconcerting them with a few, lurid and well-chosen words presented itself to him, but although he played with the appealing notion, he finally rejected it on the grounds that his Nancy would not approve. He had now lost his morose and gloomy oppression and, striding clumsily within the confines of the kitchen, his hair ruffled, his wrinkled clothes hanging more awkwardly upon him, his hands dangling like inactive flails, he felt he wanted to express the exultation of his mood in some definite and appropriate action. His past was for the moment forgotten and his outlook bounded only by the compass of the next few hours; he was himself again, yet from time to time, when the sound of his steps rang too loudly in his ears, he would pause with a profound concern for his student next door and, admonishing himself with a shake of his head, resume his pacing more silently, with a greater and more exaggerated caution.

At length the limits of the room became inadequate, failed to contain him. Insensibly he passed out of the doorway and began to wander about the house. He ascended the stairs, moved across the top landing, opened the door of his mother's room and flung an objectionable remark at her, chuckled to himself, entered Matt's bedroom, where he viewed with disgust the array of toilet lotions and hair pomades, and, having lit every gas jet so that the house blazed with light, finally he stood within his own room. Here, drawn by a hidden force, he went slowly forward to the chest of drawers where Nancy kept her clothing and, a sly leer mingling with his shamed consciousness, he commenced to pull out and examine the fine embroidered garments which she had bought with the money he had given her. He handled the smooth lace-edged vestments, touched soft lawn, fingered thin cambric, held the long empty stockings in his ponderous grasp, and his mouth curved with an upward slant while he invested the fragrant garments with the person of their owner. His shot eye, fixed upon the whiteness before him, saw actually the alabaster of her body, always to him a source of wonder and delight, and to his mind the texture of the stuff he handled seemed to have absorbed its colour from contact with that milky skin. As he remained there, displaying with stretched arms and for his sole enjoyment these flimsy articles of finery, he looked like some old and uncouth satyr who, stumbling upon the shed raiment of a nymph, had seized upon it and now, by contemplation, whetted his worn fancy capriciously.

At length he closed the drawers by a pressure of his knee and glancing sideways as he walked, moved stealthily from the room, shutting the door silently behind him. Outside, it was as though he had accomplished successfully and without detection some secret enterprise, for his shamed slyness dropped from him, he rubbed his hands noisily together, puffed out his cheeks, and heavily descended

the stairs. In the hall he opened the parlour door and cried, with a facetious assumption of gravity:

"Can I come in, ma'am? Or are ye not at home?" Then without waiting for the reply, which indeed she did not utter, he entered the parlour, saying in the same manner, "I've been round my house to see that everything's in order, so there'll be no burglars to trouble ye to-night. Lights in all the windows! A fine splore o' illumination to show a' the rotten swine that we're gay and bricht in the Brodie house." She did not in the least understand whar he meant but watched him with her blue, placating eyes that now seemed to be enlarged, to stand out from her cold, stiff face. With arms crossed and shivering, her thin-stockinged legs curled under her for warmth, having lost all sensation but that of numbness in her feet and hand and, her impressionable mind stamped by the scene she had witnessed in the kitchen, having failed completely to make headway with her study, she now regarded him fearfully.

"How are ye gettin' on?" he continued, looking at her closely. "Have ye enough quietness here to suit you? What have ye done since ye came in?"

She started guiltily, knowing that she had done nothing, unable to conceal anything from him.

"I haven't got on very well, Father," she replied humbly. "It's so terribly cold in here."

"What! Ye havena got on well and me that's been keepin' as quiet, as quiet for ye. What are ye thinkin' of?"

"It's the cold room.' she repeated again. "I think it must be freezing outside."

"The room!" he cried, raising his brows with a tipsy gravity. "Did ye not beg and beseech me to bring ye in here? Did I not carry in your books in my own hands, and light the gas for ye, and set you down to it? Ye wanted in here and now you turn on me and complain!" Here his flushed face indicated an aggrieved and exaggerated disapproval. "Not got on well, forsooth! Ye better get a bend on and look sharp about it."

"If there had been a fire!" she ventured diffidently, observing now that he was not in his severe vein towards her. "I'm all goose flesh and shivering."

Her words penetrated, struck some responsive chord in his soaked brain, for he started and, with a complete change of manner, cried with profuse pathos:

"My Nessie shiverin'! Here am I as warm as toast and my own, wee lassie freezin' and wantin' a fire! And what for no? It's reasonable. It's more than reasonable. Ye shall have a fire this minute, if I've got to get it with my own hands. Sit still now and wait and see what your father'll do for ye." He held up an admonishing finger to bind her to her seat and, moving un wieldily out of the room and into the cellar that adjoined the scullery, he fumbled in the dark amidst the coal and finally secured what he sought a long, iron shovel. Then, brandishing this like a trophy, he advanced to the kitchen fire and knocked down the front bars of the grate; thrusting the shovel under the glowing coals, he secured a flaming heap of red-hot cinders which he bore triumphantly back to the parlour, leaving a smoky trail behind him. Flinging the burning embers into the cold fireplace he cried, in a knowing voice, "Wait a minute! Just wait a minute! Ye ha vena seen it a' yet", and again disappeared, to return immediately with a huge bundle of sticks in one hand and the shovel, replenished this time with coal, in the other. Kneeling down clumsily, he laid the sticks upon the cinders and lying flat on his stomach, blew them stertorously until they blazed to his satisfaction. With a grunt he now raised himself and sitting within the confines of the hearth like a playful bull within its stall, he fed the flames sedulously with coal so that he achieved, eventually, a high crackling pyramid of fire. With both hands and one full glowing cheek grimed by smoke and coal dust, and his knees somewhat soiled by soot, he nevertheless surveyed his masterpiece with supreme approval, and cried, "Look at that, now! What did I tell ye! There's a fire for ye fit to roast an ox. Ye couldna be cold at a blaze like that. On wi’ the work now that ye’ve got your fire. There's not many a man would take such a trouble for his daughter, so don't let a’ my bother be wasted. On ye go. Stick into the lessons."

Following his exhortation he seemed loath to get up and remained gazing at the leaping flames appreciatively, murmuring from time to time, "A beautiful fire; It's a bonnie blaze!" But eventually he heaved himself up, and kicking the shovel to one side, muttered, "I'll away and bring my dram in beside ye", and went out of the room. As he departed, Nessie who fully realised from the unnatural manner of his conduct that her father was once again drunk threw a quick glance, deeply charged with apprehension, at his retreating back. She had not done a stroke of work all evening and was now becoming thoroughly alarmed at her father's extraordinary behaviour. Although his treatment of her had lately been more peculiar acts of sudden and unaccountable indulgence interpolating his perpetual coercion of her to study she had never seen him so odd as he appeared to-night. At the sound of his step, when he returned with the remainder of the bottle of whisky, she sat rigid, pretending, with pale moving lips, to be engrossed in her work, although she could not see the page which she held so closely before her.

"That's right," he muttered. "I see you're at it. I've done my bit for ye now you do yours for me. That's another thing doun on my account for ye to settle when ye win the Latta." He subsided in a chair by the fireside and began again to drink. It seemed to him now that the evening had been long, as long even as a year, during which he had experienced a variety of profound and moving sensations, a period which had been a delightful prolongation of accomplishment and anticipation to be capped shortly by his reunion with Nancy. He became more joyful than ever. He wanted to sing! Fragments of tunes ran deliciously through his head, making him nod extravagantly and beat time with his foot and hand to this internal harmony. His small eyes seemed to protrude from his head as the) roamed the room, seeking some outlet for his culminating beatitude. Suddenly they lit upon the piano. Laud's sake! He told himself, what was the good of that if it wasn't to be used, that fine burr walnut instrument that had come from Murdoch's bought and paid for these twenty years! It was a scandal to see it lying idle there, when a man had spent money on music lessons for his daughter.

"Nessie," he shouted, making her jump with fright. "You've got a' that book off by heart now. Put it away. You're goin' to have your music lesson now and I'm the teacher." He guffawed, then corrected himself. "No! I'm not the teacher- I'm the vocalist." He threw out his arm with a sweeping gesture. "We'll have some guid Scotch songs. Away away over and give us 'O' a' the airts the wind can blaw' for a start."

Nessie slipped off her chair and looked at him doubtfully, knowing that he had forbidden the piano to be opened for months, feeling that she must obey, yet fearful of doing so; but as she stood indecisively he cried vehemently:

"Come on! Come on! What are ye waitin' for? 'O' a' the airts the wind can blaw.' I tell ye! I ha vena felt like this for months. I'm ripe for a sang!"

It was after ten o'clock and, as it was past her bedtime and she was worn by the strain of the long evening, she felt exhausted, but she was too terrified, too much in awe of him, to protest; she went therefore, to the piano, opened it, found the Scottish Song Book that had been Mary's, sat down, and began to play. Her small trembling fingers brought out as best they could the air that he demanded, whilst from the seat by the fire, waving his pipe in undulating curves, Brodie sang the words boisterously.

"O' a' the airts the wind can blaw,

I dearly lo'e the west.

It's there the bonnie lassie lives,

The lassie I lo'e best."

"Louder! Louder !" he shouted. "Hit it harder! I'm singin' about my Nancy. We maun give it pith! 'By day and nicht my fancy's flicht is ever with my Jean!' " he roared at the pitch of his voice. "By God! That was good. If we call her Jean ye're none the wiser. Come on. Give us the second verse again and sing yourself. Sing! Sing! Are ye ready! One, two, three!

"I see her in the dewy flower."

She had never seen him like this before and in a panic of shame and fear she joined her quavering voice to his bellow so that together they sang the song.

"That was graund!" he cried, when they had finished. "I hope they heard us at the Cross! Now we'll have, 'My Love is like a Red, Red Rose', although mind ye she's more like a bonnie white rose. Have ye not found it yet? You're awfu' slow and clumsy the nicht. I'm as light as a feather though. I could sing till dawn."

She struck painfully into the song, which he made her play and sing twice, and after that she was forced through "The Banks and Braes", "O Rowan Tree", and "Annie Laurie", until, with her hands so cramped and her head so giddy that she felt she must fall from the stool, she turned imploringly and with tears in her eyes, cried:

"Let me go, Father. Let me go to my bed. I'm tired."

He frowned upon her heavily, her interruption cutting in rudely upon his blissful state. "So ye can't even play for your father," he exclaimed, "and after he's taken all the trouble to go and put on a fire for ye too. The minute it's on ye want away to your bed. That's gratitude for you. Well, if ye'll not do it for right, you'll do it for might. Play! Play till I tell ye to stop, or I'll take the strap to ye. Play my first song over again!"

She turned again to the piano and wearily, with eyes blinded by tears, began again, "O' a' the airts the wind can blaw," while he sang, emphasising every discord which her agitation led her to produce by a black look directed towards her bowed and inoffensive back.

They had proceeded halfway through the song when suddenly the parlour door opened and Nancy her eyes sparkling, the cream of her cheek tinted by a faint colour from the cold, her hair crisping under her attractive toque, the neat fur tippet setting off her firm bust to perfection Nancy his Nancy, stood before him. With mouth wide open and pipe poised in mid-air he stopped singing, regarding her stupidly, realising that he had failed to hear the opening of the

front door, and he continued to stare thus while the unconscious Nessie, as though accompanying his silent astonishment and admiration, played through the song to its end, when silence descended upon the room.

At length Brodie laughed, a trifle uncomfortably. "We were just singin' a wee song to ye, Nancy; and troth, ye deserve it, for you're lookin' as bonnie as a picture."

Her eyes sparkled more frostily and her lips tightened as she replied:

"The noise comin' up the road was enough to draw a crowd around the house and lights blazin' out o' every window. And you've been at your soakin' again and then ye've the impertinence to make me the grounds for it a'! You're a disgrace! Look at your hands and your face. You're like an auld coal-heaver. What a thing for me to come home to, after an elevatin' evenin' like I've had."

He looked at her humbly, yet drinking in, even at its coldest, the freshness of her young beauty, and in an attempt to change the subject, he murmured heavily:

"Did ye have a nice time at your aunt's? I've missed you, Nancy. It's like a year since I saw ye last. Ye were a long time comin' to me."

"And I wish I had made it longer," she exclaimed, with a hard glance at him. "When I want music I know where to get it. Don't bawl at me and don't drink to me ye black-faced drunkard."

At these terrible words Nessie, sitting petrified upon the piano stool, shrank back, expecting her father to rise and fling himself upon the madwoman who had uttered them; but to her amazement he remained passive, drooping his lip at Nancy and muttering:

"I tell ye I've been missin' you, Nancy. Don't turn on a man that's so fond o' ye."

Disregarding his daughter's presence entirely, he continued blatantly, with an almost maudlin' sentiment, "You're my white, white rose, Nancy. You're the breath in my body. I had to pass the time somehow! Away up and take off your things and dinna be cross wi' me. I'll I'll be up mysel' in a minute."

"Oh! you will!" she cried, with a toss of her head. "You're drinkin' like a fish, you rough, big bully. Go up any time ye like for all I care. It make no odds to me as you'll soon see," and she flounced up the stairs out of his sight.

With lowered head he sat quite still, filled by the melancholy thought that she was angry with him, that when he went upstairs he would have to appease her, pacify her, before she manifested her kindness towards him. In the midst of his dejected meditations he suddenly realised his daughter's presence and, considering moodily that he had betrayed himself to her, he muttered thickly, without locking up:

"Away up to your bed, you! What are ye sittin' there for?" And when she had slipped like a shadow from the room, he continued to sit by the rapidly dying embers of the fire until he adjudged that Nancy might be in bed and more amenable to his advances. Then, blind to the complete reversal of his position in the house since the days when he had left his wife to brood by the dismal remnants of a dead fire, anxious only to be beside his Nancy, he got -up and, having turned out the gas, passed slowly and as lightly as he could up the stairs. He was consumed by eagerness, eaten by desire, as he entered his lighted bedroom.

It was empty!

With unbelieving eyes he gazed around until it slowly dawned upon him that this night she had kept her word and forsaken him; then, after a moment, he turned and, moving silently across the dark landing, tried the handle of the door of that small room to which his wife had retired the room, indeed, where she had died. This, as he expected, was locked. For one instant a torrent of resentment surged within him and he gathered himself together to hurl himself against and through the door, to batter it down by the strength of his powerful and desirous body. But immediately came the realisation that such a course would not benefit him, that inside the room he would still find her bitter, more bitter and unyielding than before, more icy, more determined to oppose his wish. She had enslaved him, insidiously yet completely, and for that reason was now stronger than he. His sudden fury died, his hand dropped from the door and slowly he reentered his own room and shut himself within it. For a long time he remained in sullen silence, then impelled by an irresistible impulse he went to the drawer he had opened earlier in the evening, slowly pulled it out once more, and with a heavy brow stood staring inscrutably at the contents within.

Ill

MATTHEW BRODIE came out of Levenford Station, leaving the platform, splashed with its pale yellow lamplight, behind him and entered the cold, exhilarating darkness of the frosty February night with a lively feeling of elation. His steps upon the hard ground rang out quick and clear; his face, blurred in the surrounding obscurity, radiated nevertheless a faint excited gleam; the fingers of his unquiet hands twitched continually from the suppression of his pervading

exultation. He walked rapidly along Railway Road, through the tenuous low-lying haze above which the tops of trees and houses loomed like darkly smudged shadows against the lighter background of the sky. Towards his expanded nostrils came from across the open space of the Common, the faint aromatic odour of a distant wood fire and, as he sniffed it, filling his lungs deliciously with the tingling

savour of the air, he was permeated by a vivid sense of the zest of living. Despite the forward thrust of his mood, memories rushed across him at that acrid, yet spicy breath, and he became enveloped in a balmy dusk that was filled with strange quiescent sounds, fragrant subtle scents, and the white and liquid shimmer of a tropic moon.

His drab and evasive existence of the last six months fell away from his recollection, while he considered the glamour of his life abroad, and as if to answer the appeal of such a free and enchanting land, he further accelerated his pace and swung along the road with impetuous eagerness in the direction of his home. This haste in one who, when approaching the house in the evenings, displayed usually a flagging step, indicative of his disinclination to encounter his father, seemed to betoken an important change in the current of Matt's life. He was indeed, at this moment, bursting with the news of that change, and as he rushed up the steps, opened the front door of the house and entered the kitchen, he actually trembled with his excitement.

The room was empty except for Nancy, who slowly and tardily clearing the tea table of its dishes, looked up at his sudden appearance with an expression of surprise, mingled also with an unguarded and engaging familiarity which at once indicated to him that his father was not at hand.

"Where is he, Nancy?" he exclaimed immediately. She rattled a dish contemptuously upon the tray as she replied:

"Out for the usual, I suppose. There's only one thing takes him out at this hour and that's to get the black bottle filled up again."

Then she added slyly, "But if you're wantin' to see him, he'll be back soon-"

"I'm wantin' to see him, all right," he blustered, looking at her, significantly. "I'm not feared to meet him. I've got news for him that'll make him sit up and take notice."

She glanced at him quickly, noting now his slightly hurried breathing, the glitter in his eye, the general concealed importance of his bearing.

"Have ye news, then, Matt?" she said slowly.

"I should think I have!" he declared. "The best that I've had for nine months. I'm just this minute off the train. I've only had word o' the thing an hour ago and I couldna get back quick enough to tell it to fling it in that auld devil's face."

She left the dishes entirely and advanced deliberately towards him, saying ingratiatingly:

"Was it only your father ye wanted to tell, Matt ? Am I not to know first? I’m gey interested to hear."

A broad smile spread over his features.

"Of course you're to know! Ye ought to understand that by this time."

"What is it then, Matt?" she whispered.

As he saw her eagerness, he swelled the more and, determining to edge her curiosity, he suppressed his own excitement, moved to his favourite spot by the dresser, and reclining in his particular manner, surveyed her with a boasting eye.

"Come, come, now. Can ye not guess? Surely a clever wee body like yourself can guess? You haven't got that trig head on your shoulders for nothing."

She knew positively now what the purport of his tidings must be, but seeing that he was pleased to exhibit his air of consequence, it suited her to pretend ignorance, and with a charming assumption of simplicity, she shook her head and replied:

"No, Matt! I can hardly think. I'm almost afraid to say. Would it be about your father?"

He wagged his head from side to side portentously.

"No! Not this time, Nancy dear. Leave him out of the question. It's about another man altogether. Somebody younger, that can take a glass without soakin' in it, that can take a lass out to a concert and let her enjoy herself. Think on somebody that's fond of you."

"It's yourself, Matt! Oh!" she gasped, widening her eyes, "ye don't mean to say ye've got that post."

"Did I say I hadn't got it?" he leered at her.

"Have ye, though ? Tell us quick, Matt. I'm that excited about it I can hardly stand still!"

"Yes!" he cried, unable to restrain himself longer. "I have got it. The job's signed, sealed and delivered into my hands. It's me for South America passage paid free livin' and plenty of money in my pocket. To hell with this rotten town, and this blasted house and the drunken auld bully that owns it. It'll be something for him to smoke in his pipe when he hears."

"He'll be pleased enough, Matt," she replied, again advancing to him as he leaned against the dresser.

"Ay, glad to be rid of me, I suppose," he answered sulkily. "But I'm glad enough to go. And I’ll be even with him yet. He'll maybe get something he doesn't like before long."

"Never mind about him. He's just an auld fool. I'm as sick o' him as you are. I canna think what I ever saw in him." She paused, then added ingenuously, pathetically, "I'm real pleased too, that ye've got the job, Matt, although although "

"Although what," he replied largely, looking down at her soft, appealing eyes. "Surely I've waited long enough for it."

"Ay it was just nothing," she answered with a sigh, stroking his hand absently, almost unconsciously, with her soft finger tip. "It's a wonderful opportunity for ye. It must be grand for you to gang abroad like that. I can see the big boat drivin' through the blue sea, wi' the sun on it. I can just fancy the lovely place that you're goin' to Rio what was it ye called it again?"

"Rio de Janeiro," he replied grandly. "I'll only be a couple of miles out of it. It's a wonderful city and a beautiful climate. There's a chance for a man out there, a hundred times better than in India."

"I'm sure yell do well," she murmured, now holding his hard entirely in her soft clasp. "But I'll be that lonely without ye. I don't know whatever I'll do. It's hard for a young lass like me to be tied up here!"

He gazed at her as though his suppressed feeling had not entirely left him; as though, escaping only in part, it had left still an effervescence behind.

"You're not wantin' me to go," he remarked slyly. "I can see that!"

"Of course I am, you wicked man! I wouldn't for the world stop you. It's a grand chance." She gave his hand an admonitory squeeze and added, "And you said it was such good money too?"

"Yes! it's a handsome salary," he assented impressively, "and they've flung in a bungalow with it as well. I couldn't wish for more. My experience out East has done me a good turn after all."

She was silent, gazing with an appealing candour at his face, but seeing instead a strange mysterious city, shadowed by exotic trees, with cafes in its streets, a band in the square, with herself there smiling, dashing along gaily in a carriage, veiled in a lace mantilla, drinking red wine, happy, free. Her thoughts were so poignant, so touching, that without difficulty she pressed a tear from her swimming eyes and allowed it to steal slowly, entrancingly down the smooth curve of her cheek as, with a gentle movement, she leant against him and whispered: