the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
withered little man.

That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
session at the University.

* * * * *

All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
mester; and hardy, too--infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.

But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day
after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
with.

It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day--a day
when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw--which seemed strange and
unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
were gurgling and _rookety-cooing_, mating for the coming year. He fell
to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
aside--"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
moistened his lips