get as muckle
wark oot o' him as gin they did, and for half the siller. The body
hauds at onythiug weel eneuch a' day, but the minute he comes hame, oot
comes the tappit hen, and he jist sits doon and drinks till he turns
the warl upo' the tap o' 'm."

The next day, about noon, Alec went into the library, where he found Mr
Cupples busy re-arranging the books and the catalogue, both of which
had been neglected for years. This was the first of many visits to the
library, or rather to the librarian.

There was a certain mazy sobriety of demeanour about Mr Cupples all day
long, as if in the presence of such serious things as books he was
bound to be upon his good behaviour, and confine his dissipation to
taking snuff in prodigious quantities. He was full of information about
books, and had, besides, opinions concerning them, which were always
ready to assume quaint and decided expression. For instance: one
afternoon, Alec having taken up _Tristram Shandy_ and asked him what
kind of a book it was, the pro-librarian snatched it from his hands and
put it on the shelf again, answering:

"A pailace o' dirt and impidence and speeeritual stink. The clever
deevil had his entrails in his breest and his hert in his belly, and
regairdet neither God nor his ain mither. His lauchter's no like the
cracklin' o' thorns unner a pot, but like the nicherin' o' a deil ahin'
the wainscot. Lat him sit and rot there!"

Asking him another day what sort of poet Shelley was, Alec received the
answer:

"A bonny cratur, wi' mair thochts nor there was room for i' the bit
heid o' 'm. Consequently he gaed staiggerin' aboot as gin he had been
tied to the tail o' an inveesible balloon. Unco licht heidit, but no
muckle hairm in him by natur'."

He never would remain in the library after the day began to ebb. The
moment he became aware that the first filmy shadow had fallen from the
coming twilight, he caught up his hat, locked the door, gave the key to
the sacrist, and hurried away.

The friendly relation between the two struck its roots deeper and
deeper during the session, and Alec bade him good-bye with regret.

Mr Cupples was a baffled poet trying to be a humourist--baffled--not by
the booksellers or the public--for such baffling one need not have a
profound sympathy--but baffled by his own weakness, his incapacity for
assimilating sorrow, his inability to find or invent a theory of the
universe which should show it still beautiful despite of