eyes, that he saw flashes of fire between
him and Kate. He could not remain in such a false position, with Kate
taking him for her lover. But what an awful shock it would be to her
when she discovered the truth! How was it to be avoided? He must get
her home before she recovered quite. For this there was but one chance,
and that lay in a bold venture. Mr Fraser's door was just across a
corner of the quadrangle. He would carry her to her own room. The
guests must be gone, and it was a small household, so that the chance
of effecting it undiscovered was a good one. He did effect it; in three
minutes more he had laid her on her own bed, had rung her bell, and had
sped out of the house as fast and as quietly as he could.

His gratification at having succeeded in escaping Kate's recognition,
bore him up for a little, but before he reached home his heart felt
like a burnt-out volcano.

Meantime Mr Cupples had been fretting over his absence, for he had come
to depend very much upon Alec. At last he had rung the bell, knowing
that Mrs Leslie was out, and that it would be answered by a dirty girl
in nailed shoes turned down at the heel; she would be open to a bribe.
Nor did she need much persuasion besides. Off she ran with his empty
bottle, to get it filled at the grocer's over the way.

When Alec came home, he found his friend fast asleep in bed, the room
smelling strongly of toddy, and the bottle standing on the table beside
the empty tumbler. Faint in body, mind, and spirit, as if from the
sudden temptation of an unholy power, he caught up the bottle. The
_elixir mortis_ flowed gurgling from the narrow neck into the tumbler
which Mr Cupples had lately emptied. Heedless and reckless, he nearly
filled it, and was just lifting it to his lips, when a cry half-moulded
into a curse rang from the bed, and the same instant the tumbler was
struck from his hand. It flew in fragments against the grate, and the
spirit rushed in a roaring flame of demoniacal wrath up the chimney.

"Damn you!" half-shrieked, half-panted Mr Cupples in his night-shirt,
at Alec's elbow, still under the influence of the same spirit he had
banned on its way to Alec Forbes's empty house--"damn you, bantam!
ye've broken my father's tumler. De'il tak' ye for a vaigabon'! I've a
guid min' to thraw the neck o' ye!"

Seeing Mr Cupples was only two-thirds of Alec's height, and one-half of
his thickness, the threat, as he then stood, was rather ludicrous.
Misera