In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the
eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.

"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.

"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The
lassie's more smart--she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he
inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.

"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the
bottom of the class. Jimmy Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie
set him to teach John his 'counts the day--after he had thrashed him!"

She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears
in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.

"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt,
"have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"

John slunk from the room.

"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll
be back directly."

He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser.
He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump
it up _cold_," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a
mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by
Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no--ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't
lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple
he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out
to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.

To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the
fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the
intimate of John Gourlay--and then, sober as a judge himself, he would
drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the
pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By
a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for
years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump
to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.

But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started
to his feet.

"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered--and his unusual flutter of
refusal might have warned Gourlay--"noat to-night, if _you_ please; noat
to-night, if _you_ please. As a matter of fact--eh--what I really came
into the town for, doan't you see, was--e