token, and shut him out, blacks and all. The memory of
his mother's life was still fragrant to hundreds, fresh and dewy in
love's unwithering morn; upon the tide of prayer had Geordie's infant
life been launched, and its gentle waves, faint but palpable, still
sought to lave his soul.

How many a Northern island-life, bleak and wild, is redeemed from utter
destruction by that great gulfstream, the prayers of a mother who was in
league with God! Thus it came about that Geordie Lorimer's life was a
muddy stream, still tinged with the crystal waters of its hill-born
spring. He had made the ghastly find, that when he would do good, evil
was present with him; to will was present with him, but how to perform
that which was good he found not. For Geordie had, alas! a stronger
thirst than that for righteousness. He was given to "tasting," a
homeopathic word which Scotsmen use to indicate a trough. I soon heard
of him as incorrigibly religious but incorrigibly dry.

Geordie was the best-known character in New Jedboro, as well known as
the town pump, the one famed for its outgiving, the other for its
intaking powers, but both alike for liquid prowess. His principal
occupation was in his wife's name, being a boarding-house whose inmates
were secretly and shamefully proud of Geordie's unique superiority in
his own particular line, for he could outdrink the countryside.

The very Saturday which preceded my Sunday as a candidate of St.
Cuthbert's (they afterwards told me) Geordie was in the kindly grip of
the town constable, who was bearing him towards the jail, his victim
loudly proclaiming to the world that the guardian of the law had
arrested him only when he, Geordie, had refused to treat for the
eleventh time.

"He tret the ainst, an' I tret ten times or mair," Geordie was
vehemently affirming to a sympathetic street. Turning a corner, they met
no less a personage than Sandy Weir, the session clerk.

"Sandy, dinna let him tak' me to the lock-up. There's to be a new
minister i' the kirk," he cried, "an' I maun gang to hear him preach the
morn. Sandy, wull ye no' bid him no' to tak' me to the lock-up?"

But Sandy was a man under authority, having elders under him, and he
refrained, knowing the boundaries of his power.

Passing along a quiet street some years after this, I beheld the
unreforming Geordie in a savage fight with a kindred spirit, who drew
his inspiration from the same source as his antagonist; for many a cork