ission you to look after me, Mr Cupples?" he asked,
and could have dashed his head against the wall the next moment. But
the look of pitying and yet deprecating concern in Mr Cupples's face
fixed him so that he could say nothing.

Mr Cupples turned and walked slowly away, with only the words:

"Eh! bantam! bantam! The Lord hae pity upo' ye--and me too!"

He went out at the door bowed like an old man.

"Preserve's, Mr Cupples! What ails ye?" exclaimed his landlady meeting
him in the passage.

"The whusky's disagreed wi' me," he said. "It's verra ill-faured o' 't.
I'm sure I pay't ilka proper attention."

Then he went down the stairs, murmuring--

"Rainbows! Rainbows! Naething for me but rainbows! God help the
laddie!"

CHAPTER LXXII.

It may appear strange to some of my renders that Alec should fall into
this pit immediately upon the solemn warning of his friend. He had
listened to the story alone; he had never felt the warning: he had
never felt the danger. Had he not himself in his own hands? He was not
fond of whisky. He could take it or leave it. And so he took it; and
finding that there was some comfort in it, took it again and again,
seeking the society in which it was the vivifying element.--Need I
depict the fine gradations by which he sank--gradations though fine yet
so numerous that, in a space of time almost too brief for credit, the
bleared eye, the soiled garments, and the disordered hair, would reveal
how the night had been spent, and the clear-browed boy looked a sullen,
troubled, dissatisfied youth? The vice had laid hold of him like a
fast-wreathing, many-folded serpent. He had never had any conscious
religion. His life had never looked up to its source. All that was good
in him was good of itself, not of him. So it was easy to go down, with
grief staring at him over the edge of the pit. All return to the unific
rectitude of a manly life must be in the face of a scorching past and a
dank future--and those he could not face.

And as his life thus ebbed away from him, his feelings towards
Beauchamp grew more and more bitter, approximating in character to
those of Beauchamp towards him. And he soon became resolved to have his
revenge on him, though it was long before he could make up his mind as
to what the revenge should be.

Beauchamp avoided him constantly.

And Mr Cupples was haunting him unseen. The strong-minded, wise-headed,
weak-willed little poet, wrapped in a coat of dar