They informed me that Fabian Scott had also travelled up by the night mail, but in another compartment; so I went to meet the train, which came into Ballater at 5.50, and found both Fabian and Mr. Maurice Browne disputing so violently that they had forgotten to get out. Fabian had indeed taken advantage of the stopping of the train to stride up and down the confined area of the railway carriage, gesticulating violently with his hatbox, rug, gun, and various other unconsidered trifles. I guessed that they could only have travelled together from Aberdeen, for there had been no bloodshed. They had been having a little discussion on realism in art, of which Maurice Browne was an ardent disciple. They were still hard at it, in terms unfit for publication, when I mounted the step and put my head in at the window. Excitable Fabian, with his keen eyes still flashing indignation with 'exotic filth,' shook my hand till he brought on partial paralysis of that member, while he fired a last shot into his less erratic opponent. 'No, sir,' he protested vehemently, 'I deny neither your ability nor your good faith, nor those of your French master; but I have the same objection to the fictions of your school, as works of art, as I should have to the performance of a play written by cripples for cripples. It would be a curiosity, sir, and might attract crowds of morbid-minded people, besides cripples; but it would be none the less a disgusting and degraded exhibition, antagonistic to nature and truth, to which the feeblest "virtue victorious and vice vanquished" melodrama would be as day unto night. With minds attuned to low thoughts, you seek for low things, and degrade them still further by your treatment. You have a philosophy, I admit, sir, but it is the philosophy of the hog.'