ve as weel as antidote,
though maybe whusky's.....the verra broo o' the deevil's ain pot," he
concluded, altering his tone entirely, and swallowing the rest of his
glass at a gulp.

"What do ye want me to do?" asked Alec.

"To tak tent (care) o' Beauchamp. And meantime to rin doon for yer
Euclid and yer Hutton, and lat's see whaur ye are."

There was more ground for Mr Cupples's warning than Alec had the
smallest idea of. He had concluded long ago that all possible
relations, even those of enmity--practical enmity at least--were over
between them, and that Mr Beauchamp considered the bejan sufficiently
punished for thrashing him, by being deprived of his condescending
notice for the rest of the ages. But so far was this from being the
true state of the case, that, although Alec never suspected it,
Beauchamp had in fact been dogging and haunting him from the very
commencement of the session, and Mr Cupples had caught him in only one
of many acts of the kind. In the anatomical class, where they continued
to meet, he still attempted to keep up the old look of diadain, as if
the lesson he had received had in no way altered their relative
position. Had Alec known with what difficulty, and under what a load of
galling recollection, he kept it up, he would have been heartily sorry
for him. Beauchamp's whole consciousness was poisoned by the memory of
that day. Incapable of regarding any one except in comparative relation
to himself, the effort of his life had been to maintain that feeling of
superiority with which he started every new acquaintance; for
occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the
husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him
to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been
very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of
conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had
Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he
was no coward, though not quite so courageous as Hector, who yet turned
and fled before Achilles. Without the upholding sense of duty, no man
can be sure of his own behaviour, simply because he cannot be sure of
his own nerves. Duty kept the red-cross knight "forlorne and left to
losse," "haplesse and eke hopelesse,"

"Disarmd, disgraste, and inwardly dismayde,
And eke so faint in every joynt and vayne,"

from turning his back on the giant Orgoglio, and sent him pac