urlay's
father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More--the
going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
quick. Therefore he scowled.

Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his
heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away
across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and
came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held
out his hand.

Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"

Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not
in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi'
the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't."

"Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.

Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his
pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so
bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and
the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay
had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He
stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.

"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."

It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate
pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several
speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and
retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs,
that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are apt to do when
despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the
end of his resources.

Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had
sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at
any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay
attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of
his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would
have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at
least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the
whole