hed look about his face that
you see in some wards up at the Infirmary.

[_Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. Their heads are bent eagerly towards
Chirnside_.

But I heard from other fellows that he still tried to work. He would
come out of a bad turn. Then he would doctor himself, Turkish-bath
himself, diet himself, and go at his books. But, as I am alive, fellows,
he had got himself into such a state that what he learned the night
before, he had forgotten the next morning. Ay, even the book he had been
reading and the subject he was cramming. Talk about no hell, fellows!
Don't you believe 'em. I know four knocking about Edinburgh this very
moment.

But right at the close of the session we heard that the end had come.
So, at least, we thought. Fenwick Major had married a barmaid or
something like that. "What a fool!" said some. I was only thankful that
I had not to tell his mother.

But his mother was told, and his father came to Edinburgh to find
Fenwick Major. He did not find the prodigal son, who was said to have
gone to London. At any rate, his father went home, and in a fortnight
there was a funeral--two in a month. Mother went first, then the old
man. I went down to both, and cursed Fenwick Major and his barmaid with
all the curses I knew. And I was a second-year medical at the time.

I never thought to hear more of him. Did not want to. He was lost. He
had married a barmaid, and I knew where his father and mother lay under
the sod. And my own old _mater_ kept flowers on the two graves summer
and winter.

One night I was working here late--green tea, towel round my head--oral
next morning. There was a knock at the door. The landlady was in bed, so
I went. There was a laddie there, bare-legged and with a voice like a
rip-saw.

"If ye please, there's a man wants awfu' to see ye at Grant's Land at
the back o' the Pleasance."

I took my stick and went out into the night. It was just coming light,
and the gas-jets began to look foolish. I stumbled up to the door, and
the boy showed me in. It was a poor place--of the poorest. The stair was
simply filthy.

But the room into which I was shown was clean, and there on a bed, with
the gas and the dawn from the east making a queer light on his face, sat
Fenwick Major.

He held out his hand.

"How are you, Chirnside? Kind of you to come. This is the little wife!"
was what he said, but I can tell you he looked a lot more.

At the word a girl in black stole silen