The whisky was measured out and placed before him. He did not look at it. He was standing a little apart. And now Meenie would be out by Pollokshields, in the whiter air; by and by she would pass through Paisley’s smoke; then through the placid pastoral country until she would come in sight of Dumbarton’s castled crags and the long wide valley of the Clyde. And then the breezy waters of the Firth; and the big steamboat; and Meenie walking up and down the white deck, and drawing the sealskin coat a little tighter round the slight and graceful figure. There would be sunlight there; and fresh sea-winds blowing up from Arran and Bute, from Cumbrae and Cantire. And Meenie— But at this moment his attention was somehow drawn to the counter, and he was startled into a consciousness of where he was and what he was doing. He glanced at the whisky—with a kind of shiver of fright. ’God forgive me—I did not want it,’ he said to the astonished youth who was looking at him, ’but here’s the money for ’t.’ He put down the few coppers on the counter and hurriedly left the place. But the sudden fright was all. As he sped away out to Pollokshaws he was not haunted by any consciousness of having escaped from danger. He was sure enough of himself in that direction. If a mortal craving for drink had seized him, he would almost have been glad of the fight; it would be something to slay the dragon, for Meenie’s sake. But he had naturally a sound and firm constitution; his dissipation had not lasted long enough to destroy his strength of will; and indeed this incident of the public-house, so far from terrifying him with any doubts as to the future, only served to remind him that dreams and visions—and brains gone ’daft’ with access of joy—are not appropriate to the thoroughfares of a business city. No; as he walked rapidly away from the town, by way of Strathbungo and Crossmyloof and Shawlands, what he was chiefly busy with was the hammering out of some tune that would fit the winter song he had chanced upon a few days before. And now he did not regard those gay and galloping verses with a stupefied wonder as to how he ever came to write them; rather he tried to reach again to that same pitch of light-heartedness; and of course it was for Meenie’s delight, and for hers only, that this tune had to be got at somehow. It was a laughing, glad kind of a tune that he wanted: _O then the warm west winds will blow,_ _And all in the sunny weather_ _It’s over the moorlands we will go,_ _You and I, my love, together._ _Chorus: And then the birds will begin to sing,_ _And we will sing too, my dear,_ _To give good welcoming to the spring,_ _In the primrose-time o’ the year—_ _In the primrose-time,_ _In the primrose-time,_ _In the primrose-time o’ the year—_ _To give good welcoming to the spring._ _In the primrose-time o’ the year._