"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach _you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!" He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor. Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them. However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green Shutters. He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window, he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was Templandmuir who was speaking. "I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his," said the Templar. "D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have lost infernal!" "Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye. Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the need o' that." Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage. "Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that evening. She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow fondly. He was as tall as herself now. "No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house." "Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the times!" CHAPTER XV.