ts; and "Are
you sorry for being a bad boy?"--"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good
boy now, then?"--"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one
with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own
nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not
asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay
cared--when once he had bye with him.

Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice,
Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be
such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt
at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand
talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the
brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung
mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John
Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop
for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my
dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That!_"

He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.

"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and
I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he
sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to
celebrate the occeesion!"

The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort
to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of
the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he
was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious
constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression.
They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in
a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and
checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface.
Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter,
a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond
himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the
escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was
that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his
disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a
desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would
spoil the sport he had set his mind o