“He never said a truer word,” said Rankin, “than when he said he couldna argue. I’m glad he has that much knowledge o’ himsel’. It was aye a wonder to me that the editor let him in wi’ his _disjectae membrae_ and hotchpotch o’ reasoning. I’m no surprised, for my pairt; but after this exheebition, I’m thinking it would be just as weel to tak’ the cratur away. It’s a’e thing to ha’e the gift o’ sound argument, which is no given to everybody, and it’s anither thing to be ceevil to a man in his ain house. Maybe, however, he thinks because I’m here in a cottage and no able for any exertion, that it’s no me. But I can gi’e him evidence that it’s me.” Rankin put up his hand to a box of papers fastened within his reach by the wall, and dived into it, much as, on the other hand, he dived into the nest of his dogs. “There’s the editor’s ain hand of write addressed to John Rankin, Esquire, which will maybe convince him. No that it matters a brass bodle to me, if a man, when he’s worsted in arguments, forgets his mainners. It’s just of as little consequence as the yelping of thae beasties of dogues.” Rankin took the puppies, who had been stumbling, with little whines and sniffs, over the heights and hollows of his own person, and dropped them one after another into what seemed some invisible pocket, their disappearance acting as a sort of energetic punctuation to his words. The letter, which he had flung towards the stranger, was indeed directed as he had said, and disclosed as it fell on the bed a number of proof-sheets or cuttings, very conclusive to the instructed eye. But Mr. Johnson did not look at them at all. He said, “What have I to do with the old--gentleman’s letters,” substituting that word for “fool,” which he had intended to use, on the compulsion of Eddy’s eye. “Then, good-bye, Rankin, I’ll soon come back,” said Eddy, shaking the old gamekeeper’s hand; “but, look here, I’ll bring no more of my grand friends to see you from the Universities, if you are going to crumple them up like this.” Rankin laughed the satisfied laugh of the controversialist who has demolished his adversary. “He hadna a word to say for himself, no’ a word. It’s one thing compiling nonsense out o’ books in a library, and meeting a man face to face. Ye just saw for yoursel’ that the beggar hadna a word to say.” “Eh me,” said Janet, who had gone out to the door to see the visitors fairly off, “that was an awfu’ like man to be one of your great scholars, as ye call them. I’ve seen the college gentlemen in my young days, and fine lads some o’ them were. I wadna have believed that was a college gentleman if it had been tell’t to me.”