Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland) young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother (who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed) often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind him.