leep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a
fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I
trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got
to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!

"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.

He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the
white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain.
Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank
sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to
his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling in his body he lurched
off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had
changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky
gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That
stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."

He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear
garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a
malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
university class--which is many most moral individuals--has a similar
eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It
will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when
nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer,
who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the
condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly
every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most
portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last
triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to
account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom--bad cold!"
Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"--which no man seemed
to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their
feet.

The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.

Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It
was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink
still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his
morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The
morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.

At last the lectur