him, close upon the brink of tears.

She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the
fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was,
"Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a
flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last
few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of
it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling
flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.

John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she
sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did
not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was
callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was
ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and
older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them
apart to dree a separate weird.

In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their
dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end;
they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall
asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of
herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate--as was he--and
could think of nothing.

Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of
whisky.

It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and
dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance.
There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the
earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence.
John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a
tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like
a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At
word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads,
keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste,
not waiting till he passed ere they peeped--which was their usual way.
Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him
advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind
him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not
see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and
through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining