some sort to
brace you up you might get along the road better. (Put this delicately.)
Get the whine out of your voice and breathe with a wheeze--like this;
get up the nearest approach to a deathrattle that you can. Move as
if you were badly hurt in your wind--like this. (If you don't do it
better'n that, I'll stoush you.) Make your face a bit longer and keep
your lips dry--don't lick them, you damned fool!-_breathe_ on them; make
'em dry as chips. That's the only decent pair of breeks you've got, and
the only shoon. You're a Presbyterian--not a U.P., the Auld Kirk. Your
mate would have come up to the house only--well, you'll have to use the
stuffing in your head a bit; you can't expect me to do all the brain
work. Remember it's consumption you've got--galloping consumption; you
know all the symptoms--pain on top of your right lung, bad cough, and
night sweats. Something tells you that you won't see the new year--it's
a week off Christmas now. And if you come back without anything, I'll
blessed soon put you out of your misery."

Smith came back with about four pounds of shortbread and as much various
tucker as they could conveniently carry; a pretty good suit of cast-off
tweeds; a new pair of 'lastic-sides from the store stock; two bottles
of patent medicine and a black bottle half-full of home-made
consumption-cure; also a letter to a hospital-committee man, and three
shillings to help him on his way to Palmerston. He also got about half
a mile of sympathy, religious consolation, and medical advice which he
didn't remember.

"_Now_," he said, triumphantly, "am I a mug or not?"

Steelman kindly ignored the question. "I _did_ have a better opinion of
the Scotch," he said, contemptuously.

Steelman got on at an hotel as billiard-marker and decoy, and in six
months he managed that pub. Smith, who'd been away on his own account,
turned up in the town one day clean broke, and in a deplorable state. He
heard of Steelman's luck, and thought he was "all right," so went to his
old friend.

Cold type--or any other kind of type--couldn't do justice to Steelman's
disgust. To think that this was the reward of all the time and trouble
he'd spent on Smith's education! However, when he cooled down, he said:

"Smith, you're a young man yet, and it's never too late to mend. There
is still time for reformation. I can't help you now; it would only
demoralize you altogether. To think, after the way I trained you, you
can't battle