nts
looking at each other, with various emotions. It was, perhaps, fortunate
for Dewhurst that the little sermon, contrary to the practice of the
courts, came after, in place of preceding the condemnation, for he had
been rendered all but insensible by the formidable monosyllable. He saw
there was some mystery overhanging his present position. He doubted,
and he did not doubt the lady; but he heard the boy use the word, and
he took up the impression that he was, by some mistake on his part, to
be punished for the flaying of the bird. The lady's eye, red and angry,
had been fixed upon him, and now, when she was gone, he still saw it.
But there were more lurid lights, playing round certain stern facts
connected with his fortunes. He must pay this L100 on the decision of
her who had burned him with her scorn. There was no relief for him. The
club at the College had no mercy, and he had enraged Hamilton, whose
spirit was relentless. He had been under rebuke from his father, who had
threatened to cut him off; and, worse still, the remnant of the last
yearly remittance was L110 in the Royal Bank, while debts stood against
him in the books of tailors, confectioners, tavern-keepers,
shoemakers--some already in the form of decrees, and one at least in the
advanced stage of a warrant. To sum up all, he was betrothed to Miss
M------- sh, the sister of a writer to the signet, who had already
hinted doubts as the propriety of the marriage. He saw himself, in
short, wrecked on the razor-backed shelving rocks of misery. In his
extremity, he clutched at a floating weed: the woman, the lady, did not
speak the truth. He had ears, and could hear, and he would trust to
them. The boy could not be wrong.

"Campbell," he cried, "dog her home--she lies!" Hamilton and Campbell
burst out into a laugh, but Campbell had been taken aback by the lady's
answer: he had not L10 to pay Cameron, and the fear of the club was
before him, with its stern decree of the brand of caste and rejection by
his associates. Since the moment of the lady's answer, he had been
conscious of obscure doubts as to her truthfulness, clustering round the
suspicion that she might have known, by hearing something, that
Dewhurst, the gull-flayer, was on the side of the maternity, and that
she wanted to punish him--a notion which seemed to be favoured by the
somewhat affected manner of her expressing her little sermon. These
doubts, fluid and wavering, became, as it were, crystal