d at the janitor.

"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.

"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him--the fellow that runs
the business."

"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.

"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a
classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.

The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
world.

"I believe I pay _you_ to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
master.

"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.

"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay _you_ to teach that boy, and you allow
him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"

"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
deprecating hands.

The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.

"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach
_you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"

He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor.

Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
Shutters.

He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the
great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
Templandmuir who was speaking.

"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
said the Templar.

"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have
lost infernal!"

"Atweel has he that,