your faither," grinned the Deacon.

"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
"Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."

"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
convenient opportunity."

He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
unpleasant manners.

Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
Importance" was one of his nicknames.

Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did
it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the