I could
see that his head was buzzing with her beauty and her kindly words.
I thrilled with pride to think that he should think so well of my kin.

"Isn't she fine, Jim?" I could not help saying when we stood outside
the door, he lighting his pipe before he set off home.

"Fine!" he cried; "I never saw her match!"

"We're going to be married," said I.

The pipe fell out of his mouth, and he stood staring at me. Then he
picked it up and walked off without a word. I thought that he would
likely come back, but he never did; and I saw him far off up the brae,
with his chin on his chest.

But I was not to forget him, for Cousin Edie had a hundred questions to
ask me about his boyhood, about his strength, about the women that he
was likely to know; there was no satisfying her. And then again, later
in the day, I heard of him, but in a less pleasant fashion.

It was my father who came home in the evening with his mouth full of
poor Jim. He had been deadly drunk since midday, had been down to
Westhouse Links to fight the gipsy champion, and it was not certain that
the man would live through the night. My father had met Jim on the
highroad, dour as a thunder-cloud, and with an insult in his eye for
every man that passed him. "Guid sakes!" said the old man. "He'll make
a fine practice for himsel', if breaking banes will do it."

Cousin Edie laughed at all this, and I laughed because she did; but I
was not so sure that it was funny.

On the third day afterwards, I was going up Corriemuir by the
sheep-track, when who should I see striding down but Jim himself.
But he was a different man from the big, kindly fellow who had supped
his porridge with us the other morning. He had no collar nor tie, his
vest was open, his hair matted, and his face mottled, like a man who has
drunk heavily overnight. He carried an ash stick, and he slashed at the
whin-bushes on either side of the path.

"Why, Jim!" said I.

But he looked at me in the way that I had often seen at school when the
devil was strong in him, and when he knew that he was in the wrong, and
yet set his will to brazen it out. Not a word did he say, but he
brushed past me on the narrow path and swaggered on, still brandishing
his ash-plant and cutting at the bushes.

Ah well, I was not angry with him. I was sorry, very sorry, and that
was all. Of course I was not so blind but that I could see how the
matter stood. He was in love with Edie, and he coul