"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No gentleman laughs like that." "'_Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to frequent it greatly. Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster, for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind. "I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a diversion. "Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay. "Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first." "He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think too much of themselves. They wouldn't bully _me_! There's good stuff in the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man." "Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?" "Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too far." He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities. It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink, just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends." When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a gentleman. When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him? The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future, in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought, what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk of his dirty soul to him!