for a while, impressed, in
spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on
the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on
his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the
sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of
admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything.
And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact
of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller,
and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them,
was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but
he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by
bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.

"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.

"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
Dandy had his place."

"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
doctor or a minister or wha-at?"

"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"

"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
Provost.

Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
direction of their thoughts.

"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
his chin.

"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.

"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.

And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.

CHAPTER VII.

John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every
other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a
most appropriate _role_. If his father was not about he would hang
round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
"Bleach-the-boys"--as the master had been christened by his scholars.
"Mother, I have a pain in _my_ heid," he would whimper, and she would
c