"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"--he leaned over suavely--"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as usual? Eh?" There was no answer. "Eh?" "No," gulped the cowerer. "_Nae_ prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended surprise. "_Nae-ae_ prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?" Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who, when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks--"No," he pants; and "Are you sorry for being a bad boy?"--"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good boy now, then?"--"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay cared--when once he had bye with him. Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice, Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That!_" He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment. "Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to celebrate the occeesion!"