s amiable as I could, and avoided controversy. I soon saw
that father and mother were not pulling well together, and I suspected
that the father's harshness to Geordie was often a weapon to wound the
fond mother. I saw that nothing I could say would do any good, and I
took my departure.

Later I went to see Dauvit, and found him alone. I asked him to tell me
about the Wylies.

"Tarn Wylie is wan o' the stupidest men in a ten mile radius," said
Dauvit. "But he's no stupid whaur money is concerned; they tell me that
he drinks aboot half his week's wages, and his puir wife has to suffer.
That laddie o' theirs, he was born afore the marriage, and they tell me
that Tarn wud never ha' married her if he hadna been fell drunk the nicht
he put in the banns."

This case of poor Geordie shows what a complexity there is in human
affairs. His father has a mental conflict, and he drinks so that he may
get away from reality. The father's drinking and the son's reading of
romances are fundamentally the same thing; each is trying to get away
from a reality he dare not face. No treatment of Geordie could be
satisfactory unless at the same time the parents were being treated.

V.

Carrotty Broon, one of my old scholars, came to Dauvit's shop to-night,
and he talked about his pigeons . . . his doos he calls them. He keeps
a pigeon loft of homers, and he spends a considerable amount in
training them.

"Some fowk think," he said, "that a homer will flee hame if ye throw it
up five hunder miles awa."

"I've read of flights of seven hundred miles," I said.

Carrotty Broon chuckled.

"I mind o' a homer I had," he went on. "He was a beauty, a reid
chequer. His father had flown frae London to Glasgow, and his mither
was a flier too. Weel, I took him doon to Monibreck on my bike, and
let him off. I never saw him again; five mile, and he cudna find his
way hame!"

"He must ha' been shot," said Dauvit, "for thae homers find their way
hame by instinct."

"Na, na, Dauvit," said Broon, "they flee by sicht. When ye train a
homer ye tak it a mile the first day, syne three miles, syne maybe
seven, ten, twenty, fifty, and so on. Send the purest bred homer fower
mile without trainin' and ye'll never see him again."

Carrotty Broon told us many interesting things about doos and their
ways. We listened to him because he was an authority and we knew
little about the subject.

"The only thing I ken aboot doos," said Dauvit