h School and the College; and Hermiston
looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of
interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he
was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, regarded sardonically,
sarcastically questioned. "Well, sir, and what have you donn with your
book to-day?" my lord might begin, and set him posers in law Latin. To a
child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite
invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He was not harsh to the
little scholar, having a vast fund of patience learned upon the Bench,
and was at no pains whether to conceal or to express his disappointment.
"Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet!" he might observe, yawning,
and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as not) until the time came
for separation, and my lord would take the decanter and the glass, and
be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on
his cases till the hours were small. There was no "fuller man" on the
Bench; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he had to
"advise" extempore, none did it better; yet there was none who more
earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the night, or sat at table and
forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of
recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise
is to have succeeded in life; and perhaps only in law and the higher
mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice to itself without
reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere
of his father's sterling industry was the best of Archie's education.
Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and
depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a
clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the boy's life.

But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper;
he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the
table to the Bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third
bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent,
the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less
formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited
from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with
potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own
companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at h