pleasure and there's just the chance ye might never leave at all.'
'I was out of my head, Father,' Matt whispered. 'I didn't know what I was doin' I was drunk.'
'So ye take a dram, do ye?' sneered his father. 'The very idea, now! That's another gentlemanly habit ye brought back from abroad. No wonder ye have such a bonny aim wi' a gun.'
'I didna mean to fire,' whispered the other. 'I only bought the pistol for show. Oh! I'll never, never do it again.'
'Tuts, man!' jibed Brodie, 'Dinna make such rash promises. Ye might want to murder somebody in real earnest to-morrow to blow their brains out so that they lay scattered on the floor.'
'Father, Father, let me go,' whined Matthew. 'Ye can see fine I didn't mean it.'
'Come! Come!' jeered Brodie. 'This'll never do. That's no' like the big man you are that's not like your mother's dashin' son. Ye must have spewed a' the courage out o' ye by the look o' things. We maun gie you another drink to pull ye together.' He seized the bell that lay on the table and rang it loudly. 'Just consider,' he continued, with a dreadful laugh, 'a dead man couldna have rung that bell. Na! I couldna have given ye a dram if ye had murdered me.'
'Don't say that word again, Father,' Matt sobbed. 'It makes me feared. I tell ye I didn't know what I was doing.'
Here the landlady of the house came in and, with tight lips, silently regarded them.
'We're still a' alive, ye see,' Brodie sang out to her gaily, 'in spite of all the pistols and gunpowder and keepsakes from India; and since we're alive, we're goin' to drink. Bring us a bottle o' whisky and two glasses.'
'I don't want to drink,' Matt quailed. 'I'm too sick.' His head was splitting in agony and the very thought of liquor nauseated him.
'What?' drawled Brodie. 'Ye don't say! And you the seasoned vessel that carries revolvers about wi' ye. Man, ye better tak' what's offered, for ye'll need a good stiffener before I hand ye over to the police!'
'The police!' gasped Matt in terror. 'No! No! You wouldna do that, Father.' His fear was abject. He was now, through the blow, the reaction of his feelings and the close proximity of his father, reduced to the level of an invertebrate creature who would have willingly crawled at the other's feet if he could thereby have propitiated him.
Brodie eyed his son repugnantly; he read his mind and saw the arrant cowardice staring from his bloodshot eyes. He was silent whilst the woman entered with the bottle and glasses, then, when she had withdrawn, he muttered slowly to himself:
'God help me! Whatna' thing is this to bear my name?' Then bitterly he took up the bottle and poured out two glasses of neat spirit.
'Here!' he shouted. 'We'll drink to my big, braw son. The fine man from India! The lady's man! The man that tried to kill his father!' Fiercely he thrust the glass at his son. 'Drink it, you dog, or I'll throw it in your teeth.' He drained his glass at a gulp, then fixed a minatory eye upon the other whilst Matthew painfully forced himself to swallow his portion of the spirit.
'Now,' he sneered, 'we'll make a fine comfortable night o' it, just you and me. Fill up your glass! Fill it up, I say!'
'Oh! Father, let me go home,' cried Matt the sight and taste of the whisky now loathsome to him 'I want to go home. My head is bursting.'
'Dear! Dear!' replied Brodie, in a broad mimicry of his wife's voice. 'Our Matt has a wee bit headache. That must have been where I struck you, son. That's terrible! What shall we do about it?' He affected to think deeply whilst he again emptied his glass.
'Man, I can't think of anything better than a leetle speerits. That's the remedy for an honest man like you some good honest whisky.'
He filled out another full glass of the raw liquor and bending forward, seized his son's jaw with vicelike fingers, prised open the weak mouth, then quickly tilted the contents of the glass down Matt's gullet; whilst Matthew gasped and choked he continued, with a frightful assumption of conviviality, 'That's better! That's much better! And now tell me don't hesitate, mind ye, but be quite frank about it tell me what ye thought of Nancy. She's maybe no so weel born as your mother, ye ken, but she doesna stink in her person. Na! she's a clean wee body in some respects. A man canna have it both ways, apparently.' Then dropping his assumed smoothness, he suddenly snarled, in a devilish voice, 'Was she to your taste, I'm askin' you?'
'I don't know. I can't tell,' whined Matthew, realising that whatever answer he gave would be the wrong one.
Brodie nodded his big head reflectively.
'Man, that's true enough! I didn't give ye enough time to sample her. What a pity I came in so soon. I might have given ye another ten minutes thegither.' Deliberately he whipped his own imagination on the raw with a dark unconscious sadism, knowing only that the more he tortured himself the more torment he gave his son. The more he saw his son's painful thoughts revolt from the consideration of his recent excesses, the more thickly he thrust these repugnant
ideas upon him.
'Man,' he continued, 'I couldna help but admire the bold, strong way you handled her, although she couldna have refused anything to a braw callant like you. Ye would have thocht ye were fechtin' wi' a man the way ye gripped her.'
Matthew could endure it no longer. He had reached the limit of his endurance and laying his head, which throbbed with the beat of a hundred hammers, upon the table, and bursting outright into weak, blubbering tears, he cried:
'Father, kill me if ye like. I don't care. Kill me and be done with it but, for God's sake, let me be.'
Brodie looked at him with baffled, embittered fury; the hope he had entertained of taunting his son into another wild assault so that he might experience the delight of again battering him senseless to the floor died within him. He saw that the other was too weak, too broken, too pitifully distressed to be provoked into another outburst and a sudden, rankling resentment made him bend over and catch him a tremendous buffet on the head, with his open hand.
'Take that, then, you slabbering lump,' he shouted loudly; 'you haven't even got the guts of a sheep.' All the refinement of his anger, the sneering, the sarcasm, the irony vanished, and instead his rage foamed over like a raging sea whilst his face grew black with rabid fury like the dark clouding of an angry sky. 'You would lay your fingers on my woman! You would lift your hand against me! Against me!' he roared.
Matt raised his eyes weakly, imploringly. 'Don't look at me,' bellowed Brodie, as though a sacrilege had been committed by the other. 'Ye're not fit to lift your eyes above the level o' my boots. I canna look at ye but what I want to spit on ye. Take that, and that, and that.' With every word he cuffed the other's head like an empty cask, sending it banging against the table. 'God!' he cried in disgust, 'what are ye? Your head sounds like an empty drum. Have ye got to be drunk before ye can stand up for yourself? Have ye no sense of pride in the blood that's in ye? Have ye no pride to be heir to the name I gave ye?' Then, in the height of his fury, he suddenly seized Matt by the arm and, lifting him like a huddled marionette, dragged him to his feet. 'For what am I wasting my time on ye here? We'll go home!' he cried. 'I'll take ye home. Now we must deliver ye safely to your mother, out o' this wicked house. It's not the place at all for the son of such a godly woman.' He linked his arm through Matt's and propped the staggering, half-insensible figure against his own; then, flinging some money on the table, he rammed his hat on his head. 'Can ye sing?' he shouted, as he trailed Matt out into the drab, empty street. 'We maun have a bit chorus on the way home. Just you and me to show folks what good friends we are. Sing, you dog!' he threatened, twisting the other's arms agonizingly. 'Sing, or
I'll kill ye!'
'What will what will I sing?' came the panting, tormented voice of his son.
'Sing anything. Sing a hymn. Ay!' He gloated over the idea; 'that's verra appropriate. Ye've just missed murdering yer faither ye maun sing a hymn o' praise and thanksgiving. Give us the Old Hundred, my big, braw man. Begin!' he ordered.
'All people that on earth do dwell,' quavered Matt.
'Louder! Quicker!' shouted Brodie. 'Give it pith! Put your heart into it. Pretend ye're just out o' the prayer
