he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't--he shook like a dog in a wet
sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz--it would blind ye
by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,'
said he, and he actually bocked himsell."

Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
off at such times--it was easy to slip out--and playing truant in the
byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.

For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
congenital horror of eerie sounds--he was his mother's son for that--and
he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
and forgot the world.

He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
was only the baker--the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
wonderful hearty manner with a boy.

"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time.