of his brother
deity of the river. Why then should even his imagination fix upon me as
the source of the injury? Gentlemen, a foolish attachment to the
customs of a long line of ancestors has led me into what I find for the
first time to be a dangerous habit--that of wearing arms;--dangerous, I
mean, to myself; for now I am wounded with my own weapon. But the real
secret of the affair is--I am ashamed to say--jealousy. Mr Forbes knows
what I say to be true--that a lady whom he loves prefers me to him."

"Don't bring her name in, you brute!" roared Alec, starting again to
his feet, "or I'll tear your tongue out."

"You hear, gentlemen," said Beauchamp, and sat down.

A murmur arose. Heads gathered into groups. No one stood up. Alec felt
with the deepest mortification that his adversary's coolness and his
own violence had turned the scale against him. This conviction,
conjoined with the embarrassment of not knowing how to say a word in
his own defence without taking some notice of the close of his
adversary's speech, fixed him to his seat. For he had not yet fallen so
low as to be capable of even alluding to the woman he loved in such an
assembly. He would rather abandon the field to his adversary.

Probably not many seconds had passed, but his situation was becoming
intolerable, when a well-known voice rose clear above the confused
murmur; and glancing to the lower end of the room, he saw Cosmo Cupples
standing at the end of the table.

"I ken weel eneuch, gentlemen," he said, "that I hae no richt to be
here. Ye a' ken me by the sicht o' the een. I'm a graduate o' this
university, and at present your humble servant the librarian. I intrude
for the sake o' justice, and I cast mysel' upo' your clemency for a
fair hearin'."

This being accorded by general acclamation,

"Gentlemen," he resumed, "I stan' afore ye wi' a sair hert. I hae
occupied the position o' tutor to Mr Forbes; for, as Sir Pheelip Sidney
says in a letter to his brither Rob, wha was efterwards Yerl o'
Leicester upo' the demise o' Robert Dudley, 'Ye may get wiser men nor
yersel' to converse wi' ye and instruck ye, in ane o' twa ways--by
muckle ootlay or muckle humility.' Noo, that laddie was ane o' the
finest naturs I ever cam' across, and his humility jist made it a
pleesur to tak' chairge o' 'm baith mentally and morally. That I had a
sair doon come whan he took to the drink, I am forced to confess. But I
aye thocht he was strauchtforet, notwithsta