ied
eagerly, "it would be the _cold_ would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
would go in!"

A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
the helm.

"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
all--that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
icicle!"

Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.

"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
me before the whole class for doing so little o't."

The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
rated quality higher than quantity.

"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
the session--"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"

"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.

"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"

A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.

"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
place to bray in."

The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.

"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman--he
has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
island of South Uist--has sent me in no less than a hundred and
fifty-t