."

"She will be very glad to see you, sir. Come and take a share of what
there is."

"I think I had better not, Alec."

"Do, sir. I am sure she will make you welcome."

Mr Malison hesitated. Alec pressed him. He yielded; and they went along
the road together.

I shall not have to show much more than half of Mr Malison's life--the
school half, which, both inwardly and outwardly, was very different
from the other. The moment he was out of the school, the moment, that
is, that he ceased for the day to be responsible for the moral and
intellectual condition of his turbulent subjects, the whole
character--certainly the whole deportment--of the man changed. He was
now as meek and gentle in speech and behaviour as any mother could have
desired.

Nor was the change a hypocritical one. The master never interfered, or
only upon the rarest occasions when pressure from without was brought
to bear upon him, as in the case of Juno, with what the boys did out of
school. He was glad enough to accept utter irresponsibility for that
portion of his time; so that between the two parts of the day, as they
passed through the life of the master, there was almost as little
connection as between the waking and sleeping hours of a somnambulist.

But, as he leaned over the rail of the bridge, whither a rare impulse
to movement had driven him, his thoughts had turned upon Alec Forbes
and his antagonism. Out of school, he could not help feeling that the
boy had not been very far wrong, however subversive of authority his
behaviour had been; but it was not therefore the less mortifying to
think how signally he had been discomfited by him. And he was compelled
moreover to acknowledge to himself that it was a mercy that Alec was
not the boy to follow up his advantage by heading--not a party against
the master, but the whole school, which would have been ready enough to
follow such a victorious leader. So there was but one way of setting
matters right, as Mr Malison had generosity enough left in him to
perceive; and that was, to make a friend of his adversary. Indeed there
is that in the depths of every human breast which makes a
reconciliation the only victory that can give true satisfaction. Nor
was the master the only gainer by the resolve which thus arose in his
mind the very moment before he felt Alec's tread upon the bridge.

They walked together to Howglen, talking kindly the whole way; to which
talk, and most likely to which kindness