er plunged wildly at the door and flung it open.
"Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.

A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him;
and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and
vindictive glower.

He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to
his mouth and bellowed "_Cock-a-doodle-do_!"

Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the
rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously--"you
there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end
of the hour."

There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the
stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them
at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his
rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate
silence took the room--the more impressive for the former noise. Every
eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.

If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been
cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the
company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies
would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by
surprise and fear.

Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more
sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery,
while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they
were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him
furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance
itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other
rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same
burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling
fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the
mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer,
he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others--the Snuffler took it
all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it
suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the
lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he
wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy
stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let
him punish all or none, for they had al