they had released together. The two men fought like tigers, abandoning
themselves the more cheerfully to the combat they both knew would end in
a renewal of brotherhood and beer. This thought lent a sanguine
enthusiasm to their every effort, for each felt it a point of honour to
make the engagement worthy of the "treaty" (a fitting word) that awaited
them at the Travellers' Rest.

Above the din of battle I heard a voice emerging from Geordie's head,
which head emerged from his opponent's oxter--

"Dinna mark me, Jock, dinna mark me; for we're gaun to hae the bairn
baptized i' the kirk the morn," and I knew not which to admire more,
Geordie's moral versatility, or the beautiful comity of war.

Geordie did appear in the kirk with the bairn the next morning,
unmarked, except by unusual solemnity. He did not take the vows, of
course--these were assumed by his long-suffering and devoted wife; but
Geordie felt he should be there as collateral security.

I coveted Geordie's soul, and longed to add his regeneration to the new
Acts of the Apostles. No opportunity to speak with him was ever allowed
to slip, and one came to me whose details I must recount. There had been
an election for the town council, which had, half in joke and half in
jealousy, returned Geordie as the councillor of his ward; for our
glorious manhood suffrage, as some one has pointed out, makes Judas
Iscariot as influential at the polls as the Apostle Paul.

Returning, the night of the election, from a sickbed visit, I overtook
the jubilant Geordie, full of emotion and other things. His locomotion
was irregular and spasmodic, his course original, picturesque, and
variable. Geordie was having it out with the law of gravitation.

He was as a ship returning from Jamaica, a precious cargo of spirits in
its hold, and labouring heavily in the trough of the sea. I essayed to
take his arm, intending to be his wheelsman home, but it was like trying
to board a vessel in a storm; for Geordie had at least a hundred routes
which he must traverse with impartial feet. After I had somewhat managed
to adopt his swing, I sought to deal faithfully with him, though it was
like preaching from the plunging deck of a ship at sea, while the breath
of my swaying auditor suggested that the aforesaid cargo had sprung a
leak.

He was raising a double paean to voice a twofold joy: the first, the joy
of triumph in the recent contest; the second, the historic and
imperishable joy th