do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy
flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never
make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. _I_
can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily--"anything
I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before
me."

"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan.
"I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."

He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and
panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while
airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay
took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud
mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed
it meekly.

Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man,
with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood
was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows,
whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish
blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the
Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who
soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that
account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready
for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring
nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours,
taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they
"couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day
he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had
heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and
liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.

He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by
the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat
smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing.
When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the
door.

"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round
to the Howff for a while?"

"The Howff?" said Gourlay.

"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where
some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en.