write,
and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to
ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be
delivered. I'm glad you invited me--to get away from the confounded
thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a
monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow
of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but
'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a
big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."

"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."

"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much
in trying to be small.--Tozer, what do you think?"

"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.

"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.

Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.

"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere
show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run _at_ him and he
runs."

He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage
that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in
young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a
hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from
piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he
equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A
bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and
it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan
give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.

To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk
was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard
ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show
that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.

"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said
Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full
swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the
invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the
"good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on,
"and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a
dram. You remember what a friend he used to