s which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of
thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he
observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly
depressed--the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life,
though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings
which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his
timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street
in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of
its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning
foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen
fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after
he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and
made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and
manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them
unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting
woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an
unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls
wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming
black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground.
Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of
gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed.
He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead
fire in sullen apathy.

He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no
means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received
a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.

CHAPTER XVII.

That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky
that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient
chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives
an idea--which is slightly mistaken--of Jock Allan, and an idea--which
is very unmistakable--of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place
of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all
the honour in one's power.

"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman--so the hearty Allan dubbed
him--"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a
grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a
great how-d'ye-do.