on entering the kitchen was his son--sitting
muffled in his coat by the great fender.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Stot_, a bullock; _to stot_, to bound.

CHAPTER XXV.

Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and
glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and
significance, filling the doorway in his silence.

The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers,
his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil
his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return
for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out
of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden
sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap
on him at once and glut his rage--a madness which only a will like his
could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.

To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out
of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it
is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a
violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and
again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking
beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness.
Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him,
till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye.
Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its
contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward--and a coward
had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as
he slunk away. "_Ha!_" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and
the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a
man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he
lives, send him slinking away _animo castrato_--for that is what it
comes to--is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape
of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost--derives from
it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his
son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less
than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a
loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man
like a wriggling urchin on the floor.

As he stood glower