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 MRS. DRUMMOND'S VOCATION. 
 
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 THE MAGIC OF THE HILL. 
 
 By DUNCAN SCH W AN N, Author of " The Book of a Bachelor," etc. 
 
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 BURNING DAYLIGHT. 
 
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 By JOHN GALSWORTHY, Author of " Fraternity," etc. 
 
 JANE OGLANDER. 
 
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 THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. By c. G. COMPTON 
 YOUNG LIFE. 
 
 By JESSIE LECKIE HER BERTSON, Authorof " Mortal Men," etc. 
 
 JOHN CHRISTOPHER. By ROMAIN ROLLAND 
 
 i ii 
 
 Dawn and Morning;. Storm and Stress. 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C, 
 
A 
 
 Portentous History 
 
 By 
 
 Alfred Tennyson 
 
 London 
 
 William Heinemann 
 1911 
 
Copyright, London, IQII, by William Heinemaax 
 
 and Washington, U.S.A., bv Duffitld& Company 
 
PR 
 
 PART I 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THERE is a land, which has inspired many masters 
 of song a land of lofty mountains and deep arms 
 of the sea of gloomy ravines and impetuous torrents 
 of naked rocky islands, against which the full force of the 
 Atlantic breaks a land of silent valleys and summits 
 where the wind moans perpetually. It was here that 
 the celebrated James Macdonald first saw the light. His 
 actual birthplace was a little hamlet of not more than two- 
 score cottages straggling between a sea-loch and the moun- 
 tains. It was a lonely, edge-of-the-world, gull-haunted 
 sort of hamlet, inhabited only by poor and ignorant quarry- 
 men, whither not even the insatiable angler penetrated, 
 much less telegraph, railway, or daily paper, and its three 
 presiding deities were the Dominie, the Rev. Simon 
 McManus, and Dr. Spens. 
 
 Dr. Spens had been but three years in the neighbour- 
 hood and lived in the House by the Road the road 
 that first clambered past the Stone-Quarries, dived after- 
 wards into the Valley of Calder, and finally surmounting 
 the great pass of Ballandarroch reached at last the seaport 
 of Duke's Ferry. 
 
 As it was this Doctor who ushered James into the world, 
 a few words concerning him will not seem impertinent. 
 He was, as his name indicates, of Northern extraction, but 
 with a youth spent in England. It may appear curious 
 that a medical man of undoubted intelligence (for the 
 Doctor's face was the face of a clever and thoughtful man) 
 should choose to lose himself so irretrievably, but the truth 
 was that Dr. Spens met with tragedy on the threshold of 
 
 3 
 
4 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 his career. By the age of thirty he had been the most 
 promising young man on the staff of St. Peter's Hospital 
 in London one of those upon whom destiny seemed 
 determined to smile a future baronet and favourite of 
 Royalty. Before his thirty-first birthday he was settled 
 in Tuchan with back for ever turned on London and 
 ambition. 
 
 It was, in a way, his extraordinary promise which brought 
 about his downfall. A very rich lady had to be operated 
 on immediately and, as the seniors at the Hospital were all 
 engaged, Spens was sent. He performed the operation 
 with the utmost success but unfortunately for him 
 one of the nurses was distracted by a love-affair. She 
 left a pair of arterial forceps in the very rich lady's body 
 and the patient not unreasonably died. Alas! how 
 involved in each other's fates are we poor mortals. 
 ; Spens might, in time, have lived down, worked down 
 the tragedy of that first operation, but his impulse was to 
 run away, hide his shame and disgrace. He followed it, 
 lacking either resolution or insensibility enough to court 
 Fortune till she smiled again. 
 
 No one in Tuchan at any rate had heard of his blasted 
 fame. In that little Scotch village he need fear no looks 
 askance, no mortifying repulses; could forget even that 
 he had ever wished to be celebrated, or that a world existed 
 in which men struggled and battled. His house-windows 
 gave a wide prospect over the Valley of Calder, that colos- 
 sal amphitheatre around which the hills lay like giant 
 shepherds watching their flock below, their immane pccus, 
 the huge grey ancient boulders . . . over the Valley of 
 Calder to where those mighty mountains Ben More and 
 Ben Moich guarded the mouth of the Ballandarroch Pass, 
 eternal sentinels. 
 
 The Pass led to Duke's Ferry, to the life of ambition 
 and energy, success or defeat, to all the rewards for which 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 5 
 
 we poor mortals strive, but Dr. Spens had no desire to 
 climb it. 
 
 He was content to remain, with the few hundreds a year 
 that were his by inheritance, in the House on the Road 
 between the Stone-Quarries and Tuchan. He was con- 
 tent to be out of life, to own himself beaten, and nothing 
 now, after three such remote years, seemed worth having 
 save the valley's silence and the majesty of the mighty 
 mountains. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IT was New Year's Eve, bitter cold, with a continual 
 driving snow. The Doctor had just finished dinner 
 and was enjoying a pipe, when his housekeeper, a middle- 
 aged dame from the village, tapped at the door and, put- 
 ting her head into the room, said: 
 
 "Please, Doctor, Alexander Macdonald was wishing to 
 speak wi' ye, him whose wife Euphemia is expectin'." 
 
 "Very well, show him into the consulting-room," he 
 said a trifle irritably. "I'll be there in a minute." 
 
 The Doctor rose from his chair, pipe in mouth, with a 
 slight look of petulance. Another maternity case! His 
 housekeeper's news was certainly enough to disturb the 
 placidity of a tired man expecting a few quiet pipes and 
 then an early bed. No chance of that now at any rate 
 and every probability of another night without any sleep 
 at all. He knew the case. Euphemia had been ill since 
 November, unaccountably ill for one already the mother 
 of six. The good Doctor, as I say, rose grumbling, but then 
 remembered how, but for his own want of resolution, 
 he should have been calling comfortably in carriage and 
 pair on millionaire patients, and with that his mood of 
 half-humorous self-depreciation returned. Shaking his 
 head over his own and other people's follies, with a gentle 
 smile on his lips the while, he entered the consulting-room 
 and, with every trace of ill-humour gone, gave good even- 
 ing to Alexander. 
 
 The quarryman was a middle-sized thick-set person with 
 a decided and deeply-lined face framed on the cheek-bone 
 with a little sandy whisker. 
 
 6 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 7 
 
 "I'm fashed to ca' upon ye at sic an hour, Doctor," 
 said he, in a sulky tone, "but the wife is ta'en ower bad 
 and Maggie (the quarryman made a wry face) said I maun 
 step up and fetch ye at ance." 
 
 "Ah!" said Spens, "I've been expecting you to come for 
 me any day this last week. Your wife's a week overdue, 
 you know, Macdonald." 
 
 "I ken that fine, Doctor," replied the quarryman in 
 the same sulky tone. "I'm not exac'ly blamin' Euphemia 
 for her behaviour, but I canna help sayin' to masel' that 
 it's ower rough on a man, when his wife has a bairn on 
 the day o' the year itsel'." 
 
 "Come, come, Macdonald," said the Doctor, laughing in 
 spite of himself, "I'm sure your wife would be the first to 
 be sorry that she was spoiling your holiday and besides 
 you mustn't be so selfish. You ought to be sorry for 
 your wife, not thinking about yourself at such a time. 
 Think what she will be going through in having a child." 
 
 "Aweel," answered the quarryman. "I'm thinkin' we 
 hae eneuch bairns without the ane that's comin'. But 
 weemen's never reasonable. Aebody wad think it was 
 the first frae the clammer Euphemia is making." 
 
 "Very proper, too, in a mother," said the Doctor rather 
 sternly, for the man's egoism disgusted even while it amused 
 him. "I'll get my instruments and come with you at 
 once. Did your sister-in-law say when she thought the 
 child would be born?" 
 
 "Maggie (here the quarryman made another wry face) 
 didna say onything save that I was to step up and fetch 
 ye at ance," he replied, "but I'm thinkin' as she's ta'en 
 this unfortunate turn, that the bairn winna be born before 
 the morn." 
 
 The Doctor, agreeing with Macdonald that such a thing 
 was not wholly unlikely, fetched his instruments and 
 after bidding his housekeeper, a resolute rawboned dame 
 
8 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 accustomed to be left alone, not to expect him back that 
 night, sallied forth with Euphemia's husband. 
 
 "I spaed this wad happen at the beginning o' the week," 
 continued Alexander gloomily as soon as they were on the 
 way, "I sort o' kenned I wad lose ma holiday. It's ower 
 rough on a mon." 
 
 The Doctor struck ahead into the cold and dark without 
 listening unduly to the quarryman's complaints. His 
 mind was already occupied with the trouble before him 
 and, besides, to one of his temperament such lamentations 
 seemed rather comical than otherwise. Alexander, how- 
 ever, did not seem to mind the Doctor's silence, but went 
 on grumbling half to himself, half to his companion. 
 
 "I kenned weel it wad happen, and, Doctor, ye've no 
 notion what it is to hae a wumman like Maggie in the 
 hoose. She makes a mon fair sick. Sic a clamjamfry 
 frae dawn to nicht. I hate an excitable wumman. I 
 wush the whole business was ower." 
 
 With Alexander thus continually bemoaning himself they 
 hurried down the hillside road and after some five and 
 twenty good minutes' walking reached his little white-walled 
 cottage. The excitable Maggie must have been on the alert, 
 for their feet were hardly on the doorstep ere the door was 
 flung open and they found themselves facing her. 
 
 "Alexander, the time ye've been," she cried reproach- 
 fully to her brother-in-law. 
 
 "Doctor, it's lucky ye were at hame. Phemie's ower 
 bad. Ye maun come and look to her at ance." 
 
 Dr. Spens followed Maggie upstairs but could not help once 
 more smiling to himself as she called to her brother-in-law. 
 
 "Donald an' Roderick and Mary are in the kitchen. 
 Ye maun bide wi' em, Alexander, till Phemie L 's through 
 her troubles and see they come to nae hairm.", 
 
 So Alexander sat him down and watched, ignorant of 
 the strange portent that Destiny was bringing, ignorant 
 
9 
 
 that for great portents great preparations must be made. 
 What sorrows were not endured to bring the "old heroes" 
 into the world? But then Alexander, naturally enough, 
 was not acquainted with either Scandinavian or Greek 
 or any other mythology. Euphemia, that tiny woman, 
 lay in sore trouble upstairs. Childbirth had never before 
 caused her any but the ordinary inconveniences. This 
 helplessness, these strange flights of imagination, these 
 cloudbursts of tears, endured by him for nigh on two 
 months were new. "What ailed the wumman?" 
 
 Alexander was no seer could not foretell that from 
 great travails are born those at whom awe-stricken human- 
 ity marvels never thought from what inmost miseries of 
 spirit sprang the sweetest melodies from what mighty 
 convulsions of struggle emerge the great doers that the 
 seventh child is like the seventh wave the greatest. 
 
 The Alexanders do not realise these things. All he did 
 realise was that everything had been extremely incon- 
 venient; that this baby about to make its appearance 
 - was more of a nuisance than all the others put together; 
 that he had, in fact, a distinct dislike to it already. 
 
 Tiny Euphemia lay moaning on the bed of pain, half- 
 alive, white with agony, dripping with perspiration, racked 
 with intolerable cramps. Tiny chicken-brained Euphemia 
 bore her horrible trial with the brave dignity of maternity. 
 
 "Onyway," thought she, whenever the power of think- 
 ing lucidly came back to her, " I'm bringin' a bairn into the 
 world. My pains are for a guid end." 
 
 Tiny chicken-brained, plucky Euphemia was at her best, 
 but did any premonition of the great Destiny of the coming 
 child haunt, in these anguished moments, her half delirious 
 mind? Did a flash from the future strike her as she hovered 
 on the brink of eternal darkness? 
 
 No. 
 
 How strange! 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE three elder children had been taken by a neigh- 
 bour for the night, but luckless Alexander felt suffi- 
 ciently ill-used in having to rock the cradle of the little 
 baby-girl Mary and keep an eye on the boys Roderick 
 and Donald, whose bed had been made up in a corner of 
 the kitchen. From time to time it may be that he fell 
 into a doze, but the fact that little Mary whimpered when- 
 ever her cradle stopped rocking prevented him from taking 
 any but the merest snatches of sleep, and moreover from 
 overhead came muffled footsteps, mysterious mutterings, 
 occasional groans. Sometimes (worst of all) there was 
 silence. 
 
 The hours dragged on towards early morning, and as yet 
 neither Maggie nor Dr. Spens had appeared in the kitchen 
 to announce that another child had been born to the quarry- 
 man; the hours dragged on, taking with them the last hope 
 of his New Year Holiday. With a dumb anger against 
 everything and everybody Alexander submitted to the 
 inevitable. Why should the child make its appearance on 
 this very day? Why hadn't it come a week ago when it 
 was expected? Well, from the beginning of the week he'd 
 known this would happen. Destiny. Always the way. 
 Damn it! The hours dragged on, and by degrees his own 
 grievances became forgotten in the lingering suspense. 
 Was there really some difficulty? But how could Euphemia, 
 already the mother of six, be actually in danger? Alex- 
 ander sat before the ashes of the kitchen fire, himself grey 
 as ashes and almost immovable. And still the hours 
 dragged on. Suddenly he jumped from his chair with 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 11 
 
 every nerve a-twitter. Maggie's blubbered countenance 
 peered thro' the half-opened door. "Alexander, Phemie's 
 in a sair state. The Doctor canna say either way." With 
 these words she disappeared. Phemie in danger of her 
 life? Phemie, the mother of six without trouble, hanging 
 in the balance? Alexander was in his own way devoted 
 to his wife, and till then had not realised her situation, but 
 now, when an hour later Dr. Spens came down the stairs 
 with tired, heavy tread and put his nose out of doors for 
 a little fresh air, he hardly recognised in the quarryman 
 the same man, as he stopped rocking the cradle with his 
 foot for a moment and called softly to the Doctor. 
 
 "How is she the noo?" 
 
 "She's under the anaesthetic, Macdonald," answered 
 Spens. "We must hope for the best. At any rate she'll 
 not suffer any more." 
 
 Then he, too, went upstairs again to the bedroom. 
 
 But what is this strange dishevelled, blowsy, tear-be- 
 dewed, lead-footed, Dervish-dancing tornado of skirts, arms, 
 and hair that flings itself almost without heed of direction 
 or perception of tune or space into Alexander's kitchen 
 about noon of New Year's Day as he sits in the extremest 
 stages, bereft even of children, removed by another kind 
 neighbour for their breakfast, that sheds weepings like a 
 tropical thunderstorm, shakes itself in ecstacy by its own 
 hand, vociferates utterly incoherent babbles? Is it not 
 Maggie in the most distraught conditions of Maggie-ness? 
 Maggie with tidings? Maggie in almost uncommunicable 
 triumph? "Alexander, Alexander," she laughs in frenzied 
 jubilation, "she's safe. They're baith safe. It's an enor- 
 mous bairn, an' och! Alexander man, it's a boy." 
 
 Then suddenly, ere her brother-in-law could divine her 
 intention, this terrible Maggie bent down, kissed him, and 
 twirled from the kitchen as tempestuously as she had 
 
12 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 twirled in. Many were the outrages which Alexander 
 had suffered at her hands but tlu's was . . . this was the 
 summit of everything. For a minute the enraged quarry- 
 man was rooted to his chair. Then starting up and raising 
 both clenched fists to the ceiling, cried: 
 
 "Och! Maggie. The day I can get yeoot o' ma hoose." 
 
 And this is all the philosopher can tell you about the 
 birth of James Macdonald. Considering his celebrity 
 in after life it is indeed little enough. We are informed 
 however that even the gentle Spens felt a certain amount 
 of irritation at having been kept at it again all night. 
 
 "Well, Macdonald," he said, "we've pulled her through. 
 We've managed it, but it's been a tough job, a very tough 
 job. You and Maggie will have to watch her carefully 
 to-day and, if she takes worse, come for me at once. I never 
 saw such a monstrous child. That must have been the 
 trouble all along. I hope he won't prove such a nuisance 
 in the future as he has been in making his appearance in 
 the world. No holiday for either of us to-day, I'm afraid. 
 This is the second night in succession I've been up. I 
 must go home and rest." 
 
 A monstrous child! This much also the records tell us. 
 A monstrous child! The quarryman picked disconsolately 
 at his little sandy side-whiskers. Maggie, a monstrous 
 child, and no New Year's Holiday! From this the philoso- 
 pher guesses that with Euphemia (barring complications) 
 now out of the wood, our quarryman's sense of personal 
 annoyance and discomfort returned with quadrupled force. 
 
 "Monstrous, is he!" cried Alexander, remembering the 
 phrase with a peculiar bitterness of heart and furthermore 
 denying any sense of obligation to His Hugeness. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EUPHEMIA gradually recovered from her ordeal. 
 As the phrase goes "mother and child did well"; but 
 Alexander found the time of convalescence pass slowly 
 for, with her sister incapacitated from ordinary household 
 duties, Maggie still remained beneath the roof Maggie, 
 the enemy of quiet, the excitable, the freckled, the abhorred. 
 In less equivocal circumstances he might have throbbed 
 with paternal joy at sight of Euphemia pale, proud, with 
 bairn at breast, but alas! the feeling that James was an 
 intolerable nuisance still dominated the quarryman. It 
 certainly was a child enormous. None born within gossip's 
 memory had ever even approached it in size and weight. 
 Chicken-brained Euphemia, far from sharing her lord's 
 resentment against the phenomenon, nearly burst with 
 pride and received a regular procession of matrons at her 
 bedside. 
 
 She imparted strange tidings to her astonished audi- 
 ence. 
 
 "There never was a bairn to eat sae hearty, I'm assurin' 
 ye," and here would plunge into the mysteries of young 
 Jim's diet, whither it is unseemly to follow. 
 
 All this "clamjamfry" served but to prejudice Alexander 
 still further against James, for he was a lover of quiet 
 besides being a trifle selfish. Often he would exclaim with 
 sense of deepest ill-usage: 
 
 "Why couldna Phemie hae a bairn o' rational dimen- 
 sions? Ony mon would be fashed to hae a conteenual 
 pack o' weemen in the hoose and sic endless talk aboot 
 naething mair important than a bairn." 
 
 13 
 
14 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Or again, 
 
 "I'm no partial to the extraordinair! There was'na 
 sic a pother wi' the ithers." 
 
 There is however no time of trouble utterly unrelieved, 
 and it was a joyful day enough for Alexander when Dr. 
 Spens pronounced Euphemia well enough to get out of 
 bed, and Tuchan forthwith knew the excitable Maggie no 
 more. 
 
 One can guess in what an atmosphere she departed 
 an atmosphere of tears and kisses and huggings, especially 
 of the reluctant James whom she had assisted into the 
 world. Was not the gratified Euphemia assured times out 
 of number that he would become a credit to kin and to 
 Scotland? Was not each prophecy signal for a fresh out- 
 burst of tears? Alexander consoled himself during these 
 dewy manifestations of "Maggie-ness" with the ineffable 
 thought that they were the last of her, portending a return 
 to normal conditions. "Sae far, sae guid" said he (pig- 
 headed Alexander), and thereby intimated that James 
 should (as was high time) begin to take a back-seat. 
 
 And now the philosopher turns up his cuffs, settles his 
 blotting-pad, dips his pen in the ink, and prepares in 
 good earnest to tackle the great task before him the 
 biography of the celebrated James Macdonald. Jim has 
 been brought into the world not without trouble, and, 
 huge, hairless, unconscious of anything definite save pap 
 tho' he be, we have him fairly started on life's tortuous 
 and mysterious journey. The reader may find various 
 apologies for Jim in the course of the narrative, but will 
 he be charitably disposed towards the biographer? Before 
 embarking therefore on the story proper, when interference 
 with the course of the narrative would doubtless be justly 
 resented, willingly would this same biographer say some- 
 thing on his own behalf. Like the immortal fiddler he has 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 15 
 
 done his best. The materials for such a biography were of 
 the slightest. Jim, as anyone in the course of a few chap- 
 ters may see, tho' of an amiable and obliging disposition 
 towards his friends, is not endowed with the most exquisite 
 sample of grey matter in his cerebellum, slow of speech, 
 incapable of accurate self-expression. What he did actually 
 bring forth was extracted with groans, head-scratchings, 
 and much twisting of the body, and even that much seemed 
 very slender information when compared with the mass 
 of material at the service of most compilers of great 
 men's lives. How came the initial impulse, you may 
 ask? The truth is that the sight of James Macdonald 
 inflamed this biographer in one of his mad moments to 
 attempt this work, one considerably longer and more 
 ambitious than he has ever before attempted, and a subse- 
 quent acquaintance with our amiable friend (whom so many 
 of you have seen with an exquisite and refined pleasure) 
 confirmed him in his first impressions. It was not there- 
 fore till he had so thoroughly imbued his mind with the 
 spirit of undertaking that withdrawal seemed hardly pos- 
 sible, and already paid a visit to the little Scotch village, 
 our James' birthplace, that this same foolish biographer 
 remembered how he had but the slightest acquaintance 
 with Scotch and Scotchmen. Without a doubt the history 
 of Jim should have been written by a compatriot, and had 
 a native of North Britain come forward, as was meet, the 
 biographer would willingly have surrendered his task and 
 such materials as he had already collected to the Volunteer, 
 but as none ever presented themselves in the face of 
 many difficulties and discouragements (not the least being 
 his almost complete ignorance of the Scotch language) he 
 has persevered. With the sincere hope therefore that 
 the proud and independent natives of that country will 
 pardon him for so many inaccuracies and absurdities in 
 rendering their speech, the philosopher dips his pen in the 
 
16 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 ink, and brings you, in the course of the story, to James' 
 christening. 
 
 It was Euphemia led the procession to the kirk stagger- 
 ing under the burden of the gigantic James, whom she had 
 insisted on carrying herself. Behind her, a pace or two, 
 came Alexander "in his blacks," a somewhat sulky and 
 unwilling figure, and after that an admiring body of female 
 neighbours, eager to view the ceremony of His Hugeness's 
 christening, and hauling along with them the other Mac- 
 donald children. Our quarryman (amongst his other 
 defects as an erring mortal) was nothing if not obstinate, 
 and we are thoroughly justified, writing as we do from a 
 philosophical standpoint, in again calling him "pigheaded 
 Alexander." A notion once stuck in his head could not 
 be got out by ordinary means. And now, walking with 
 sour and covert glances, he grumbled: "A' they weemen! 
 Why canna they bide at name and mind their ain business? 
 The world's gane gyte ower Jim." In truth this admiring 
 bevy of female neighbours put him in an ill-suppressed 
 frenzy. Was Jim never to be treated as an ordinary in- 
 fant? Had not even the Minister, whose patronising airs 
 irritated him so much, gone so far as to congratulate him 
 on His Hugeness's arrival in his usual patronising way? 
 It was a regular conspiracy to impair his ease (thought 
 Alexander) as he trudged along, and the worst of it all 
 was that this universal excitement over Jim seemed justi- 
 fied. The bairn was not an ordinary bairn. Whenever 
 he looked at him, Alexander saw trouble trouble distinct 
 and inevitable. 
 
 Down through the village passed the little procession, 
 down to the shores of the loch where stood the kirk. Over 
 against it on a hillside, with agreeable garden surrounded by 
 red walls and shadowed by scattered clumps of fir-trees, was 
 the Manse residence of the Reverend Simon McMunub. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 17 
 
 "So here is our young prodigy," said the Reverend 
 Simon (a square-shouldered man with a square white face 
 and a square white hand) as Mrs. Macdonald withdrew 
 the shawl from the countenance of her last-born. " Blessed 
 is he that has his quiverful!" The Reverend Simon rolled 
 his eyes up to the roof. "He is a fine boy a wonder- 
 fully fine boy." 
 
 Euphemia curtsied and kissed the slumbering James, 
 who promptly gave vent to a terrific yell. Mr. McManus 
 frowned slightly and performed the function of receiving 
 James into the Church to the accompaniment of that 
 ceaseless obligato. When the ceremony was over the 
 Reverend Simon, who always attempted to comport him- 
 self with the benignity incumbent on members of his pro- 
 fession, said in a hearty voice, and with a smile that 
 creased his white face: 
 
 "He has fine lungs, Mrs. Macdonald. I hope he'll be 
 a comfort to you. I'm glad to see the other bairns look- 
 ing so well." 
 
 James' brothers and sisters bobbed uneasily and grinned 
 at each other. 
 
 "I hope you're well, Alexander." 
 
 "Weel eneuch, Meenister," replied the quarryman with 
 the same sulky air that had characterised him throughout 
 the ceremony. 
 
 "Well, well. That's all over," said the Reverend Simon 
 in the same hearty tone but with a suspicion of a frown 
 at Alexander's want of manners. "It's always a pleasure 
 to me to welcome a newcomer into this beautiful world, 
 especially such a fine boy as that. He is a fine boy, a 
 remarkably fine boy. I feel that he'll be a credit to you. 
 Good-bye, Mrs. Macdonald! Good-bye Alexander!" 
 
 The little procession went slowly back. Euphemia 
 dandled her son in her arms, with tears of joy rolling down 
 her still pale cheeks. James had once more fallen to sleep 
 
18 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 and over the unconscious infant poured his mother's per- 
 petual croon. 
 
 "Ye sudna hae greeted in the kirk, Jamie, my wee Jim. 
 Fie on ye, ye sudna hae greeted sae sair. But a' the 
 same the Meenister thocht fine o ; ye, Jim. He said ye'd 
 be a credit to the family, Jamie. Sae mind ye grow up 
 an honest, God-fearing laddie and a'ways heed what that 
 guid mon the Meenister tells ye." 
 
 Thus did she murmur, as she hugged him close to breast, 
 but upon her sweet and foolish moans broke Alexander's 
 rough voice: 
 
 "Mebbe that bairn'll be a credit to us, but it seems to 
 me he's mair likely to be a disgrace." 
 
 Euphemia squeezed the accused child even nearer her 
 bosom as if to defend him from accusation. 
 
 "An' what's wrang with him the noo?" she cried shrilly. 
 "Is he no the prettiest sicht asleep?" 
 
 "There's mebbe naethin' wrang the noo," replied Alex- 
 ander, "but whiles agae in the kirk he greeted sae loud that 
 I was fair shamed for him." 
 
 "He was frichted, puir laddie," said his wife with a 
 fond glance at Jim. 
 
 "It wasna sae with the ithers at ony rate," replied her 
 husband. "I'm no a fancifu' mon as a rule, but I canna 
 ding it oot o' ma heid there's something verra queer aboot 
 that laddie. For why did ye suffer sae with him and no 
 with the ither six? For why did he choose the day o' the 
 year itsel' to be born? For why is he sic an enormous size, 
 gey oot o' the ordinair for a babe five weeks auld? A 
 trouble he's been to us sae far an' I'm thinking he'll . . ." 
 
 "For shame, for shame, Alexander, your ain bairn!" 
 cried Euphemia. "Onyway the Meenister thocht fine of 
 ye, Jim, did he not, my wee mon?" 
 
 "Och* the Meenister " exclaimed Alexander with 
 violence. "I canna bide that mon wi' his patronisin'." 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 19 
 
 "Losh! Alexander what ails ye?" cried his wife in 
 surprise. 
 
 "I'm no Alexander to him. I'm Mr. Macdonald." 
 
 "Eh?" asked Euphemia, slow at the uptake. 
 
 "The Meenister ca'd me Alexander again. I'm fair 
 sick o' his patronisin'." 
 
 "And if he does patronise, who has mair richt than that 
 guid man," answered Euphemia shrilly. "He thocht 
 fine of oor Jim. Fie, Alexander, wad ye quarrel wi' the 
 Meenister on sic a day as this the day oor Jamie is 
 received intae the kirk ? Oh ! ye ungratefu' man." 
 
 Alexander kicked sulkily at a stone. 
 
 "Onyway I'm no fond o' bein' ca'd Alexander by the 
 Meenister, " he muttered. " Aweel, Phemie, " he continued, 
 "a' this fuss and flummox is ower and we can set doon to 
 a quiet life ance mair. 'Deed, it's to be hoped Jim'll turn 
 out weel after a'." 
 
 Even Euphemia's habitual mildness was impaired by 
 her husband's last remark. 
 
 "Fuss and flummox! Fuss and flummox!" she cried, 
 laughing satirically. "An' wha's had the maist of it? 
 Not you, I'm thinkin', Alexander. Oh! ye men ye 
 ungratefu' men. Donald, ye little muck, come awa' frae 
 the gutter! How daur ye spoil your braw claes? Jim, 
 my mannie, listen to what I'm tellin' ye and mind ye graw 
 up and be a comfort to your auld mither." 
 
 Alexander sniffed as he followed his wife into the house. 
 
 He wished Jim had been a girl. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 IT is at such an early stage as this in our "Portentous 
 History" that we begin to realise how Alexander's hope 
 that the fuss about his son Jim might subside and the 
 Macdonald family retire once more into the obscurity of 
 a quiet life was from the beginning doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Jim might have been brought into the world for the 
 special purpose of plaguing the worthy quarryman out of 
 his senses. 
 
 He was born the babe enormous, and, as he grew older, 
 his size increased out of all proportion to his age. Every- 
 thing was on a gigantic scale in his case including his 
 infant war cry. 
 
 Old friends congratulated Alexander on being father to 
 a prodigy, but the quarryman shook his head dismally 
 over such congratulations. He reflected that in all prob- 
 ability "the prodigy" would fill his capacious lungs and 
 set up a cataclysmal bawling directly he set foot in his 
 cottage, continuing till exhaustion made him stop. He 
 was undoubtedly the sire of six, but till this Jim came on 
 the scene, never had he realised how much parents might 
 have to put up with. 
 
 Decidedly he found no cause for jubilation and would 
 exclaim with deepest feeling as he surveyed the grinning 
 faces of his friends, in a kind of melancholy abstraction, 
 
 'Deed, I've no partiality for the extraordinair'." 
 
 Then the foreman of the quarry, a noted wag, kept on 
 insisting, with pawky humour, that Alexander must have 
 persistently shirked for years. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 21 
 
 "Ony ane capable of producin' sic a bairn should be 
 capable of wark oot o' the usual." 
 
 In truth, while Jim was in this bawling and howl- 
 ing stage, there was little peace in Alexander's cottage. 
 Euphemia, after the way of womankind, was genuinely 
 proud of Jim's exceptional talents for yelling and really 
 seemed to feel no inconvenience in being kept awake half 
 or more than half the night. 
 
 "Bless his heart, it shows his lungs are guid, " she said. 
 "The Meenister noticed them. Eh! Jim, it's fine." 
 
 But Alexander's only hope was that when the first in- 
 fantile tendency to bawl ceaselessly unless asleep or 
 receiving nourishment had in due course of time left Jim, 
 he might perhaps become fonder of his youngest son. 
 There are those who relate that His Hugeness's appetite 
 was indeed insatiable, and these gossips are almost cer- 
 tainly right, for his mother, as we have seen, told of his 
 early feats in gastronomy with pride. 
 
 When he reached the age of a year and a quarter, how- 
 ever, Mrs. Macdonald noticed one day with alarm that 
 Jim's usually enormous appetite had failed him. He 
 could not digest anything, and she told her husband the 
 same evening that she feared he was going to be ill. 
 
 "He can eat naethinV 
 
 "Sae much the better," replied Alexander a trifle causti- 
 cally. "It'll do no hairm if he's a trifle off his feed. He 
 eats as much as twa bairns o' his size a'ready." 
 
 Euphemia, however, was anxious about her favourite and 
 got up two or three times in the night to look at him. 
 Jim was sleeping restlessly with a flushed face, and once 
 or twice he coughed ominously. By the time morning 
 came he was in a high fever and was making a peculiar 
 sound from time to time, like the roop of a fowl. 
 
 "I dinna like the looks o' him, " said Euphemia. "Alex- 
 ander, wad ye be a guid man noo and step in at the Doctor's 
 
22 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 on the way to the quarries. I sad like him to hae a look 
 at oor Jim. The bairn's wee haunds is as cauld as pud- 
 docks an' his heid's flamin' hot." 
 
 Alexander had a glance for himself. There was no 
 doubt the child was ill, and he left the house with an objur- 
 gation. It seemed indeed as if Jim was always in some 
 kind of trouble; as if he was born to be a nuisance. 
 
 Dr. Spens pronounced the malady to be whooping 
 cough and said it was a bad attack. 
 
 Alexander thoroughly agreed that it was a bad attack. 
 It was a terrific attack. The strong suffer more than the 
 weak. Never, in all his experience (and he was the 
 father of six) had Alexander heard a baby make such 
 sounds. It was like like the rooping of ten thousand 
 cocks followed by the roaring of ten thousand bulls. At 
 least Alexander (in a moment of despair) told a crony so. 
 For four or five weeks Jim filled his lungs, choked, rooped, 
 shattered himself with coughing and then howled. 
 
 "Eh! mon, it was a dismal affair," said Alexander to 
 the same sympathiser. 
 
 All this time Euphemia had been beside herself. 
 
 "Am I to lose my bonny big bairn," she kept on crying, 
 as she watched by Jim's cradle. "Oh! Dr. Spens, tell me 
 he'll no dee." 
 
 The Doctor endeavoured to comfort the distracted 
 mother. Is it not one of the advantages of the medical 
 profession that listening to and looking after other folk's 
 troubles prevents doctors from thinking of their own? 
 
 "We'll pull him through all right, Mrs. Macdonald," 
 he would tell her cheerfully. "Why, bless my soul! this 
 is nothing. What a rascal your Jim is! It's only just 
 over a year since he gave us all that trouble to get him into 
 the world. He can't be wanting to get out of it again, 
 as soon as this. We'll pull him through all right." 
 
 Once more the good Doctor exerted himself and Jim 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 23 
 
 was hauled back out of the jaws of death. Nobody 
 except a baby of enormous strength could have been 
 saved, and it was at least three months before Jim could 
 breathe easily and naturally without waking up purple in 
 the face and then rending the air with convulsive barking. 
 Moreover I am of the opinion that Jim's lungs never 
 wholly recovered. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 JIM was now convalescent, and Alexander noticed with 
 a kind of stupefaction that his appetite was more 
 enormous than ever. Illness had wasted him terribly, but 
 now he began rapidly to pick up strength, and with every 
 new day the child's lust for food became more abnormal. 
 
 "Bless him, it shows his stomach's guid," said Euphemia. 
 
 "I'm no dooting his stomach's guid," answered the dis- 
 consolate Alexander, watching his wife feed the gigantic 
 Jim, who devoured spoonful after spoonful of his bread 
 and milk with no sense of satiety but apparently, if any- 
 thing, increasing avidity. "I'm no dooting his stomach's 
 guid, Phemie; I'm dooting how we're gaein' to fill it." 
 
 "A' gane," said Euphemia, chuckling and waving the 
 spoon at Jim, who stared at her with round eyes and open 
 mouth preparatory to a yell. "A' gane, Jim." 
 
 The quarryman in his turn stared at Jim. What an 
 enormous child he had become since his illness! He was 
 not two years old, but yet as big as any child of five. His 
 jolly round face was red with health and over his big 
 round head the red hair curled in thick clusters. At the 
 present moment the corners of his mouth were turned 
 down. The desire to yell (much to his father's relief) 
 seemed to have passed away, and a quiet melancholy at 
 the thought that he was to get no more food to have 
 taken its place. Then a happy little laugh proceeded from 
 those infant lips. Jim crowed once or twice at his father 
 and mother and fell instantaneously into a sound and 
 refreshing sleep. 
 
 Euphemia watched all these changes on the countenance 
 
 34 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 25 
 
 of His Hugeness in an ecstacy of admiration, the bread- 
 and-milk spoon in her hand, and her own meek face trans- 
 figured with pleasure. Then she turned to Alexander. 
 
 "Is he no a bonny bairn," she cried "and wad ye grudge 
 him his meat? Fie, Alexander! Did ye not hear what 
 the guid Meenister said, the Sabbath gane? Did the 
 Lord ever let a bairn gae hungry?" 
 
 Alexander shook his head gloomily. He knew better 
 than to argue with his wife on a question of metaphysics, 
 and, in the recesses of his heart, lurked a notion that Jim, 
 if he continued to grow in the same manner, would eat 
 him out of house and home. No the quarryman had 
 never been able to rid himself of the idea that their 
 youngest son was a child of misfortune. Moreover he was 
 nothing if not practical and sentiments of this kind (to 
 which the Reverend Simon was very prone) irritated him 
 profoundly. The question how he was to feed his family, 
 and the enormous Jim in particular, was one not to be 
 dealt with in such a summary and sentimental manner. 
 
 "Mebbe the Meenister's richt and mebbe not," he (the 
 pig-headed) answered. "It isna for the like of us to 
 say, but I'm still of the opeenion that there's somethin' 
 extraordinair' aboot oor Jim." 
 
 Once more Euphemia rose up in arms. She could not 
 bear to have her youngest and favourite son traduced in 
 any way. 
 
 "Why are ye sae unfair to the bairn?" she sobbed; 
 "there's naethin extraordinair aboot him. He's juist 
 big, bonny, sonsy, beautiful, little Jim. How can he help 
 bein' a wee thing big? It isna his fault, Alexander. Ye 
 sad think shame o' yoursel' for talking sae. Jim's juist 
 the same as ony ither bairn, on'y a wee thing bigger, 
 mebbe, for his age. There's naething extraordinair aboot 
 him naething ava. The Meenister a'ways asks after 
 ye, Jim, and he wadna do that guid man if he didna 
 
26 A PORTENTOUS H1ST'RY 
 
 ken ye were the aipple of your mithcr's ee. Oh! Jim, 
 when ye graw up to be a man, a'ways do what the Meenis- 
 U-r tells ye, and be guid to your mither, who lo'es ye so 
 well." 
 
 With a shake or two of his head and a few stifled excla- 
 mations Alexander betook himself to the Quarries. It 
 was incredible that Euphemia continued so blind. Some- 
 thing warned him from the very beginning to "look out" 
 for Jim. Why could she not see it as well? "I'm no 
 a fancifu' mon in ordinair/'. thought he, "but I canna rid 
 masel' o' this feelin." Yes, from the beginning he had 
 foreseen, prophesied trouble, and trouble of one kind or 
 another there had always been. But if he so much as 
 mentioned the fact to Euphemia, what was the result? 
 A flood of protestations that she was an ill-used woman, 
 a torrent of appeals to the Rev. Simon. Alexander was 
 rent now by the conflict of two emotions one a gloomy 
 satisfaction that his prognostications were so far correct, 
 the other a monstrous feeling of indignation that the child 
 was not of the same calibre as the other six. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT is impossible to give more than a rough sketch of 
 Jim's boyhood, to do more than lightly indicate the 
 salient points, for these early days fade from the memory 
 and only a general impression remains. 
 
 For several years (our record tells us) he continued to 
 have a defender in his mother, and a critic in his father. 
 The latter, as time went on, was more and more driven to 
 the conclusion that of all the babies he had ever known, 
 Jim was the biggest, clumsiest, noisiest, and most un- 
 manageable most boisterous and most expensive. 
 
 Indeed there was ample justification for this last con- 
 clusion for Jim's appetite continued prodigious, and he ate 
 as much as any two other members of the family, where 
 none were naturally abstemious. Then again in the 
 matter of clothes! It was the rule in the Macdonald 
 family (as indeed in all families except those of the very 
 rich) that the coming-ups should wear the cast-off gar- 
 ments of their elders, but as that big, clumsy, red-headed 
 Jim was (at the age of three) a size and a half too large, if 
 we go by ordinary standards of infant measurement, he 
 couldn't be got into the cast-offs of Roderick and Donald, 
 and seeing that his two elder brothers had not yet grown 
 out of their own clothes, which certainly would have con- 
 tained him more or less adequately, if not elegantly, Alex- 
 ander (putting one more bad mark to his account) was 
 obliged to make a special expenditure on his behalf. 
 
 So far, perhaps, no special complaint, no tangible ob- 
 jection could be lodged against the youngest Macdonald, 
 but alas! it seemed to the thrifty and anxious parents 
 that hardly was Puppy Jim supplied with garments, than 
 
 27 
 
28 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 hey presto! he was out of them grown out or burst 
 ou t _ ft were impossible to say which. 
 
 There never was a child so incapable of keeping himself 
 even moderately clean and decent (our records tell us). 
 He was ten times clumsier and more puppy-like than the 
 ordinary boy, forever falling down and cutting his knees 
 (his breeches into the bargain you may be sure), tumbling 
 into fenders, upsetting and breaking, sliding down steep 
 places to the detriment of the aforesaid breeches, chucking 
 mud, getting mud chucked at him in short being "boy" 
 on the exaggerated scale, which characterised everything 
 connected with him. Now things were already fairly 
 desperate when the last addition to the Macdonald family 
 was made, and Euphemia gave birth to a daughter, to the 
 huge delight of Alexander, who had wanted a girl instead 
 of Jim, it may be remembered. But the consequences of 
 the arrival of this baby-girl, tho' natural, were yet fraught 
 with further misfortune (sartorial and otherwise) to Jim, 
 who, now that there was a younger member of the family, 
 ceased, at a fatal time (a time fatal to his clothes at any 
 rate) to have the largest share of his mother's attention, 
 occupied as she was with baby and house, and no longer 
 able to perform that duty (so dear to a mother's heart) of 
 mending. In fact, to put it briefly, Jim, in the matter of 
 scandalous attire, went from bad to worse. 
 
 To worse! say I? What a flaccid term to give an 
 idea of the boy's appearance! Alexander bore with this 
 crescendo of disreputability for two or three months, even 
 replaced a garment or two, ruined beyond repair. Then 
 came a sudden explosion. 
 
 "I'll be damned if I buy the bairn ony thing mair," he 
 exclaimed one day with sudden fury. "He's a pairfect 
 disgrace." 
 
 Euphemia, nursing the baby, raised a tearful face and 
 said to her youngest son; 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 29 
 
 "Oh! Jim lad, why canna ye mind your claes likeaguid 
 laddie! Hear what your faither says. Ye've angered him 
 sair, my bairn. Be a guid bairn and tak' mair care o' 
 them in the future." 
 
 Tears, puppy-like embraces, promises from Jim, and the 
 mother's heart was won over for the time. Even Alex- 
 ander began to hope that perhaps he might amend his 
 behaviour. But alas! the lad was too big and clumsy. 
 With the best will in the world he could not keep either 
 himself or his garments out of trouble. 
 
 Then Alexander ceased to buy him anything else, even 
 as he had threatened, and the first bad mark was put 
 against him in his mother's memory. 
 
 You must try to picture to your mind our hero, Jim, 
 as he ran about the streets of the little Scotch village of 
 Tuchan, that cluster of four-score houses under the shadow 
 of the mountains. He wore nothing but a very short 
 woollen undergarment and a very dirty and nondescript 
 overgarment, which looked like a petticoat in reduced 
 circumstances but might equally well in remote days 
 have been a sack. This was confined to his waist by a 
 cord and gave him the appearance of a diminutive monk. 
 His red hair, very long, curly, and uncombed, tumbled 
 over his eyes or blew behind him as he scampered down 
 the village street on wild employment. He was forever 
 bawling at the top of his lungs, cuffing his companions 
 playing the Scotch "tipcat" in front of people's doors and 
 thereby endangering the eyes of old folk; forever throwing 
 stones at cats and fowls, rolling in the dirt, teasing the queer 
 old lady who kept the "sweetie-shop," forever an animated 
 compendium of animal spirits and mischief careless, 
 heedless, and happy, except when he got a scolding from his 
 parents. Then to be sure came an impulse towards better 
 behaviour, but nature was too strong for him. The others 
 were of course, in a way, the same as he. In Jim, though, 
 
30 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 everything was magnified five or ten times. His animal 
 spirits were that much greater than those of ordinary boys. 
 Ho was that much more restless, that much more clumsy 
 and wilful. Where many would escape, fie was always 
 detected. Concealment was as impossible to Jim as good 
 behaviour. Had it not been that his father was set against 
 him from the moment of his birth and that his mother had 
 now the little baby-girl to look after instead of lavishing all 
 her care on him, it is possible that he might have reformed 
 and so saved all the tragedies of his early life, for his was, 
 at bottom, a simple and affectionate nature. Fate, how- 
 ever, decreed that he should journey the thorny path 
 .... Think of him tearing down the main street of 
 Tuchan, the most unkempt and ragged of all the children 
 a ringleader after a fashion half-admired and half- 
 feared great, big, puppy-like, red-headed Jim with the 
 round, good-humoured face and the bawling voice, which 
 betrayed his presence hundreds of yards away .... 
 
 Think of him and be sorry for him! This wild time of 
 mud-pies and stone-fights and tipcat is perhaps the happiest 
 time of his life. He is careless and free. He gives other 
 people pain his mother for instance but then he is too 
 young to realise it. He gets plenty of hard words and 
 spanks from village matrons, but then he takes' them all 
 in good part. For the moment too he is quite indiffer- 
 ent as to whether he wears a coat as smart as Johnny 
 Findlater's, the postmistress' tidy son, or a sack with a 
 cord round it, or runs about naked. 
 
 He would run about naked, if you gave him the slightest 
 encouragement. Did you ever hear the story of the day 
 when Mrs. Findlater brought the letters? I must not 
 tell it here, it is too shocking. Yes, Jim was a happy, 
 healthy, jolly young rascal in those days. 
 
 His bad moments were short, few, and far between. 
 
 He becomes more unhappy in the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ONE day the Reverend Simon McManus noticed our 
 hero fighting with another boy in the main street of 
 Tuchan that imposing thoroughfare, which he considered 
 should be sacred to all the proprieties. Now the Minister 
 kept an eye on everyone in the village and from report 
 and observation had already begun to suspect Jim of being 
 a bad character. Judge of his dismay therefore when he 
 perceived in Jim's opponent none other than Tuchan's 
 best boy, the Dominie's most promising pupil, his own 
 favourite, the tidy impeccable Johnny Findlater, and guess, 
 if you can, at his indignation when, even as he approached 
 with all the speed he could muster, red-haired rascality, 
 carrying off the victory, laid white-haired angel-faced 
 virtue dusty and bleeding on the cobbles. 
 
 "Jim Macdonald!" thundered the Reverend Simon, at 
 the same time catching hold of the culprit, "you wicked 
 boy! How dare you fight? What do you mean by it? 
 Tell me at once!" 
 
 Jim had been so much absorbed in gloating over his 
 adversary's prostrate form that he had not heard the Min- 
 ister coming, and seeking now, when too late, to dodge 
 away under the arm of Authority, found himself too firmly 
 held. 
 
 "I dinna ken, Sir," he gave the time-honoured answer 
 of all boys and perhaps of all grown-ups too caught 
 doing something which they ought not to be doing. 
 
 "Oh! you don't know, don't you," said the Reverend 
 Simon, his white face scowling with anger. "We shall 
 have to see if we haven't a way of making you know, my 
 
 31 
 
32 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 young friend. Oh yes! I've heard of your doings and I've 
 had my eye on you for some time." 
 
 His big white square hand shook Jim violently from side 
 to side, while with its fellow he helped Johnny Findlater 
 to his feet. Jim's slender, delicate-looking foe was in tears, 
 and one of his innocent blue eyes seemed rather the worse 
 for wear. 
 
 "Are you much hurt, Johnny?" inquired the Reverend 
 Simon tenderly. 
 
 "Ma neb's bleedin,'" replied young Findlater abruptly 
 and with a sob. 
 
 "Don't cry, my little man," said the Minister. "Run 
 away home and tell them it wasn't your fault that you're 
 in such a mess." 
 
 Johnny, knuckling his eyes, turned to go. "Wait a 
 moment!" cried the Reverend Simon to him. "Wait a 
 moment! Here's a ha'penny for you. Now run away 
 home and wash your face and have tea and you'll be all 
 right again in no time at all." 
 
 He smiled the smile which creased his white cheeks and 
 then, with startling suddenness, turned all sullen anger, 
 as onqe more he shook Jim Macdonald to and fro. 
 
 "Now, my lad," he said, "what have you got to say for 
 yourself? I've heard a good many complaints of you. They 
 tell me you're the noisiest and worst behaved boy in the vil- 
 lage. You're a big lad. Why don't you behave better?" 
 
 "I'm sure I dinna ken, Meenister," answered Jim, 
 wriggling. 
 
 "Nobody minds a high-spirited lad having a little fun," 
 said the Reverend Simon, "but you go too far, Jim Mac- 
 donald. You're always shouting and fighting and making 
 a nuisance of yourself." 
 
 Mr. McManus examined his captive attentively. 
 
 "Bless my soul," he exclaimed. "The boy's positively 
 indecent." 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 33 
 
 To tell the truth Jim's unconventional costume was 
 calculated to display all the mysteries of his anatomy at 
 every violent movement, and the Reverend Simon had 
 ample justification for objecting to it on the grounds of 
 public propriety. 
 
 "Positively indecent!" continued he, gazing at his cap- 
 tive with every symptom of abhorrence. "Positively 
 indecent!" The ring of disgust in his voice grew stronger 
 the longer he looked. Compared with the neat and 
 scrupulous Johnny Findlater, Jim was indeed a deplorable 
 object, and the Rev. Simon revolted at him in every 
 fibre of his body, finding in this red-haired obstreperous 
 child the anarchist of the village the rebel against law 
 and order the infallible symptom of trouble in times 
 to come, and deeming it a matter of absolute necessity to 
 get him under the control of authority before it became 
 finally too late. 
 
 "What an object the boy is," he said with anger still 
 rising. " I'm going to take you back to your home, Jim, and 
 have a talk with your mother about you. It's really im- 
 possible that you should be allowed to go on in such a 
 state quite impossible. Don't wriggle now. It's no 
 good trying to escape. I've got hold of you and I'm not 
 going to let you go." 
 
 In such a way the Minister hauled along the red-headed 
 recalcitrant Jim, who stubbed his bare toes into the ground, 
 made himself as heavy a weight as possible, did everything 
 except weep, but all in vain. The Reverend Simon held 
 him fast and would not release him. 
 
 They found Mrs. Macdonald at the wash-tub. She 
 was already in a flurried and suddy condition and, when she 
 saw her son approaching under the custody of the Minister, 
 she waved her bare arms in a manner reminiscent of her 
 excitable sister Maggie and cried dolefully, "Guid sakes! 
 Whatever has the bairn been doin'?" 
 
34 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "I found him fighting in the street with a smaller boy," 
 answered the Reverend Simon in his most impressive 
 manner. 
 
 "Fechtin'," said Euphemia with something like an air 
 of relief. "Eh! Jim. Ye naughty bairn. Why canna 
 ye be a peaceable laddie? See, ye've angered the guid 
 Meenister ! " Jim made an indistinguishable noise, and the 
 Reverend Simon, who was still holding his collar, stood with 
 a frown on his smooth white face and his lower lip pro- 
 truding ominously. 
 
 "It's not the first time this boy has been a nuisance, 
 Mrs. Macdonald," said he. "I've heard several complaints 
 from your neighbours of his having stoned their cats and 
 broken their windows. Your boy must not be allowed to 
 become a public inconvenience, Mrs. Macdonald." 
 
 As our records inform us over and over again, Mrs. 
 Macdonald had an unqualified reverence for Mr. McManus. 
 The seal of authority was on that square white forehead; 
 that protruding lower lip balanced words of ineffable 
 wisdom; whatever he said must be right (oh! no wonder 
 that Alexander felt moments of irritation against the 
 Minister) and so now, with this determined accusation 
 launched, she fell into a kind of despair from which only 
 an emphatic recantation from the same quarter could have 
 rescued her. Even on her own part she had felt certain 
 misgivings of late and begun to fancy that Jim by his wild 
 behaviour flouted her mild authority. Had not Alexander 
 too always said he was a troublesome lad, and here, on the 
 top of all these doubts, suspicions, uneasinesses, and fears, 
 came the wise and good Minister with a declaration to the 
 same effect? Euphemia looked in a distracted manner 
 from her boy to the frowning white face of the accuser. 
 
 "Oh! Jim, why canna ye be a guid bairn?" she said. 
 
 "I'm no waur than the ither laddies," replied Jim sul- 
 lenly. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 35 
 
 "That is preposterous, my lad," said Mr. McManus 
 pompously. "Perfectly preposterous. If you hadn't been 
 worse than the other boys, why should I have had so many 
 complaints about you ? Besides I saw you saw you 
 with my own eyes fighting in the street caught you 
 red-handed. It is preposterous indeed for you to say 
 that you are no worse than the others." 
 
 This reasoning of the Reverend Simon was perfectly 
 convincing to Euphemia. If there were all these complaints 
 about him, Jim must indeed be a bad boy. He must be 
 a bad boy, if the Minister said so. He must be a 
 bad boy, if Alexander said so. Her thoughts went back to 
 the time when she was in travail, to the night when she 
 nearly gave her life for him; she remembered her pride 
 in her huge baby boy and the envy in other mothers' eyes; 
 she remembered how they lugged him almost by force 
 through his attack of whooping-cough; she remembered 
 how nearly she had lost her "bonny big boy." The tears 
 came into her eyes and flowed unrestrainedly down her 
 cheeks (poor worried, stupid Euphemia!) and after all her 
 "bonny, big boy" had become a "bad boy," the trouble 
 not the envy of the neighbours, a nuisance abroad as well 
 as at home, he she hoped would grow up a comfort to his 
 "puir auld mither." Jim was turning out a rascal. Oh! 
 dear, oh! dear. 
 
 She cried, "Oh! why canna ye be a guid laddie?" 
 
 "I'm nae waur than the ither laddies," replied Jim in 
 the same sullen voice. His childish mind felt that he was 
 being treated unjustly. As yet he had not sufficient power 
 to tell why. Only he knew that, for some reason or another, 
 it was always he, Jim Macdonald, who was caught 
 always he who was made the scape-goat always he who 
 was punished. 
 
 In those early days Jim was still soft-hearted. He had 
 half a mind, if he could have escaped from the clutch of 
 
36 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 the Reverend Simon, to bury his head in his mother's 
 
 him fast, and his presence was an effectual bar against 
 any overtures. Moreover a certain obstinacy which was 
 undoubtedly his, resenting the confusion which surrounded 
 urn and everything connected with him, clamoured that 
 tuddle had precipitated him into misfortune, that muddle 
 was mishandling him now. "If I could but explain some- 
 how " thought Jim ... but alas! muddle was equally 
 the state of his own brains. The moments for reconcilia- 
 tion and explanation slip by ere they can be retrieved, and 
 the little rifts grow wider and wider till each and every one 
 becomes a chasm. 
 
 "Now," continued the Reverend Simon in his pulpit 
 voice, " there is one more thing I wish to speak to you about. 
 I feel it my duty to draw attention to Jim's costume. It 
 isn't decent, Mrs. Macdonald. There isn't another boy 
 in Tuchan goes about dressed as he is, if you can call 
 such a mere covering a dress. He's very nearly naked. 
 Can't you find him some proper clothes?" 
 
 "Meenister," replied Euphemia wearily, "Alexander and 
 I arena rich folk. Time was when Jim was as neai 
 dressed as ony bairn in Tuchan, but what does the laddie 
 do wi' his claes? He graws oot o' them sae fast that we 
 canna be ever buying him new anes. He either graws oot 
 o' them or spoils them wi' his pranks. Sae what are we 
 puir folk to do? There's the ither bairns to be considered 
 and Jim maun tak' his share wi' them. If he canna 
 manage to keep as neat as they (an' there arena neater 
 bairns in Tuchan) he must juist pit up wi' ony shift we 
 can mak' him. His faither said whiles syne he wadna 
 buy him mair claes seem' the laddie did naethin' but 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 37 
 
 destroy them as soon as bought, and sae it came aboot 
 that Jim gaes abroad in sic a condition." 
 
 The Reverend Simon frowned and released his captive, 
 who, without waiting for further parley, ran away. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he answered, "of course the boy cannot 
 help his growth. He is indeed a very big lad. He was a 
 big lad in the cradle, I think." 
 
 "Yes, Sir," replied Euphemia, "a'ways a big laddie, oor 
 Jim." 
 
 "I remember him well, but this does not excuse his 
 behaviour. If he behaved better I'm sure he could keep 
 his clothes in better repair. I feel he is a great cost and 
 trouble to you. You have my warmest sympathy, Mrs. 
 Macdonald." 
 
 "Oh! Sir, you're verra kind." 
 
 "I know you try to shield him from me. It does infinite 
 credit to your good motherly heart, Mrs. Macdonald, 
 infinite credit. I wish all mothers were as good as you. 
 I'm afraid tho' it's impossible to conceal the fact that 
 Jim's a bit of a rascal." 
 
 "Och! Sir." 
 
 "Mind I do not mean to say anything very bad of him 
 at present. He's only a child after all, but I must say, I 
 think it would be a good deal better if, instead of spoiling 
 him at home, you sent him off to school." 
 
 "Eh! Meenister, Mr. McManus," cried Euphemia in 
 sore distress at the suggestion (it was the first time that 
 such an idea had been put into her head). "Send Jim 
 to the schule! He's but a bairn yet. He's ower young 
 to gae to the schule." 
 
 "Plenty go as young as he," said the Reverend Simon. 
 "He must be well seven and a half?" 
 
 "Losh! Meenister, he's nobbut five and a bittock." 
 
 The Reverend Simon opened his eyes wide in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
38 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Five and a bit! He's the biggest lad I've ever seen 
 for that age." 
 
 "Ou aye," responded Euphemia, ''he's a weel-grown 
 laddie." 
 
 She felt some of her original pride in Jim return. Poor 
 Jim a year of constant escapade and punishment had 
 rather dimmed his original glory. He was no longer 
 admired as a prodigy of anything except naughtiness. 
 
 "He's a bit young for school certainly, " said the Reverend 
 Simon, "but I wish you would talk my advice over with 
 your husband, and see what he says. Good-day, Mrs. 
 Macdonald." 
 
 "Good-day, Sir," said Euphemia, curtsying. The 
 Reverend Simon held out his square white hand. 
 
 "Surely between friends, " said he with his creased smile. 
 Euphemia wiped her suddy palm on her coarse apron. 
 
 "Och! Sir," she said. 
 
 The Reverend Simon's hand clasped hers with a cold 
 firm clasp. 
 
 "Jim, Jim," cried his mother, as soon as the Minister 
 was well away down the road. 
 
 There was no answer. Jim had bolted. 
 
 Euphemia, in great distress of mind, waited for her hus- 
 band and her bairn to come home. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 JIM was sitting behind a heap of stones and tin cases and 
 rubbish of other kinds, which lay under the shadow of 
 an old wall by the road to the Stone-Quarries, prey to an 
 overwhelming desire for complete solitude. "Oh! soli- 
 tude!" cries the philosopher, "balm of . . . ' But hold 
 hard, unworthy pen of mine, it is not your duty to launch 
 into praises of even such an admirable and lyrical state as 
 that of Solitude. Your task, in fact, is clear enough, 
 namely that of chronicling the adventures and sensa- 
 tions of the Scotch giant from the moment of his birth to 
 the time when . . . but neither must you anticipate the 
 story and baulk his countless admirers of their entertain- 
 ment. No, let us start fair together again and relate, as 
 movingly as possible, how Jim sat behind this heap of 
 stones under the shadow of the old wall, loathing from the 
 bottom of his heart the society of the human race. Pres- 
 ently (I happen to know and do you, oh! pen, therefore 
 take it down) there came the sound of shouting, and within 
 a few yards of him swept a train of his young friends. 
 He peeped over his little hill of stones, cautiously raising 
 his red head, and beheld a hoop-race a form of sport 
 that he adored. Why therefore did he not burst out of 
 his lair and join the rout? Why indeed? Because a horrid 
 something, stronger even than the desire to run in a hoop- 
 race, made him duck his red head down again and sit 
 miserably alone. 
 
 No no no To-day he felt too unhappy, too 
 ill-used to join the sport. 
 
 Followed a patter of light feet and the shrill voice of 
 
 39 
 
40 A rolJTKNTOUS HISTORY 
 
 a young girl asking the clamouring children in front to 
 stop. 
 
 At the sound of this voice Jim cowered lower down 
 under his heap of stones lower down, as if the youthful 
 owner of it might discover him in spite of his efforts to 
 remain hidden. 
 
 He clenched his hands in rage and shame and banged 
 his red head against the stones. Lower and lower down 
 under his heap of stones cowered Jim. He seemed to 
 dread lest some eye should behold the agonies of his childish 
 rage. 
 
 The voices and running feet died away as the children 
 turned at the foot of the hill towards the village. The 
 silence of evening brooded over the road. A little burn 
 chuckled to itself with a kind of melancholy chuckle. But 
 a short time ago, what a splendid play it had, for it leapt 
 down the mighty sides of Ben More with a score of com- 
 panions. Yet here it was now wandering alone through 
 the evening. It chuckled bravely indeed, making the best 
 of a bad job, but all the time the inner voice of it seemed 
 to be saying, "How sad it is to be alone!" 
 
 Far away Jim heard, through the still air, the mooing 
 of cows. They were being driven home for the night. 
 Another access of rage seized him as he caught the peace- 
 ful friendly sound. They were farmer McLure's cows, 
 he knew, and farmer McLure was the father of dark-eyed 
 mischievous Jessie, at the sound of whose voice he had but 
 a few moments ago cowered down and banged his red 
 head. What was there in the mooing of her father's 
 cows or the sound of her voice to drive him to such despairs? 
 Why was everything that jogged memory in that direction 
 a gadfly of the imagination? Such dignified and stately 
 diction as this must be used in describing even the earliest 
 experiences of great men, and would that space would 
 allow us to picture in rolling periods (ere the above question 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 41 
 
 answers itself) how the uncouth and tattered boy gam- 
 bolled puppy-like before her to gain her attention; shyly 
 gave her apples or tops won by his own prowess; at "pris- 
 oner's base" would never allow her to be taken! The 
 very sight of her indeed touched strange chords, and she 
 found her big clumsy ally of the utmost service; knew very 
 well how to make the best use of him! 
 
 Thus for a time Jim continued as happy as a king, 
 and found Jessie, pretending, all he could desire. Had 
 he heard indeed how she made fun of him to Johnny 
 Find later, it might have come to blows with that young 
 gentleman sooner. 
 
 But he never did. 
 
 For a time, I repeat, our Jim continued happy as a 
 king. Then an unexpected blow fell not from Jessie 
 herself (he had no reason to suspect her yet) but from 
 Jessie's mother. 
 
 Report had reached this lady, a lady with high ideas of 
 her own importance her husband's importance the 
 importance of Calder's Farm the importance of every- 
 thing connected with or depending on her, that the two 
 were great friends, and the sight of a red-headed, bare- 
 footed urchin, clad in nothing but a sack, tearing down the 
 street after a clucking, scuttering fowl struck her into an 
 access of maternal apprehension. 
 
 The outcome was that her daughter was forbidden to 
 speak to the disreputable overgrown one except under 
 absolute necessity forbidden at any rate to be friend 
 any more ally and continual playmate. 
 
 "So-ho, gently!" cries the philosopher, laying down his 
 pen and putting a puzzled hand to his forehead; "what is 
 this we're coming to? Is our overgrown friend a senti- 
 mentalist at such an early age? Is it this maternal edict 
 that proves the source of his woes?" In very truth we 
 discover, sorrowfully enough, that this suspicion is well- 
 
42 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 founded, that our Jim, in unvented emotions, begins to 
 blame not Jessie but her father and mother, begins even 
 to hate them and become a prey to such loneliness as 
 he has never felt before. Do we not further learn that 
 in his progress thro' the confusions of disappointment 
 the cloud that had settled over him ever since Mrs. 
 McLure's fiat, broke after a not very long duration of 
 these psychological ineptitudes and let the sun come 
 shining through? 
 
 Oh! happy, happy Jim. Jessie disobeyed her mother 
 and played with him the whole afternoon. It was the 
 happiest afternoon he had had for weeks. All his old 
 fondness for Jessie welled back into his heart. He could 
 have done anything for her, given her anything. 
 
 All that Jessie wanted, however, was a particularly 
 lustrous blue marble of which he was the owner. She 
 wished to give it to fair-haired, blue-eyed Johnny Findlater, 
 yclept by all, virtue incarnate. 
 
 A little wheedling, a little flattery, a few promises to 
 soft-hearted Jim and, after such an afternoon of happiness, 
 the marble was hers. 
 
 No wonder that after such an easy victory, Jessie pre- 
 sumed a little on her power. The next time they met he 
 was humble, shy, and adoring as ever and Jessie con- 
 temptuous. 
 
 At first he could not understand the sudden change, 
 thought he must somehow have offended Jessie, asked 
 her and got nothing but scornful derision for his pains. 
 Then suspicion began to get hold of him, heightened when 
 he saw the new alliance with Johnny new at any rate 
 to him suspicion (oh! Furies of Hate and Revenge!) and 
 then hideous conflagrating certainty when Master Findlater 
 showed him the marble, boasted, and ran away as fast as 
 his legs would carry him. 
 
 From that moment (oh! Death and Destruction!) he 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 43 
 
 knew that Jessie had betrayed him, and his soul thirsted 
 for revenge, illogical revenge, not on her, but on his fortu- 
 nate rival. 
 
 He found him alone that very afternoon and indulged 
 in mortal combat. Victory was his indeed, and for the 
 instant glorious, but yet, after all, he had to pay a bitter 
 price, for as it seemed, victory had turned everyone against 
 him Jessie, the Reverend Simon, and his mother. 
 
 If poor Jim felt lonely and deserted, when cut off for 
 the first time from Jessie, he felt ten times lonelier and 
 more deserted now. These were perhaps childish griefs, 
 you may say, not to be compared to a man's griefs. Yet 
 they were the keenest young Jim had ever known and he 
 could hardly bear them. Or you may say, "No child 
 could have felt so keenly." Remember, he was not as 
 other children. Everything in him was exaggerated and, as 
 it were, premature. Are these not always penalties which 
 exceptional mortals pay for being different from their 
 fellows? 
 
 So he lay brooding under the shadow of the old wall, 
 behind the heap of stones and rubbish, with his red curls 
 in the dust and his honest, fat, freckled face buried in his 
 hands. 
 
 Tears, which he wished no one to see, stole thro' his 
 fingers on to the ground. He felt angry, humiliated, and 
 sad all at once. He felt lonely and deserted. He felt 
 unjustly treated. 
 
 Many of us have felt like that and many times in our 
 lives but it was so with Jim for the first time. 
 
 He had lain there for an hour or more. The evening 
 star had begun to burn on the forehead of the dusk, the 
 mountain-ashes had ceased to shiver at the breeze, which 
 blows in the gloaming, even the solitary, half -melancholy 
 chuckle of the burn seemed to have grown more subdued, 
 while Jim passed thro' his agony. 
 
44 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Then, once again, footsteps sounded on the upland road 
 and rough homely speech. The scent of tobacco-pipes 
 came to him in his lair. He started up, as if from a dream, 
 dried his eyes, and put his head over the stones. His 
 father and four or five companions came swinging towards 
 him from the Quarries. 
 
 Alexander caught sight of the red head. 
 
 "Is that you, Jim?" he cried. "What are ye doin' 
 there, my man?" 
 
 "I juist came to meet ye, faither," answered the boy, 
 "and I was settin' here waitin' for ye." 
 
 "Come awa hame then, laddie," said his father. "Its 
 ower late and mither winna ken what's happened to ye. 
 Ye sudna bide oot sae late." 
 
 "Faither," said Jim, slipping his hand into Alexander's, 
 "I've been fechtin." 
 
 "Eh? "asked Alexander. 
 
 "Fechtin wi' Johnny Findlater an' the Meenister's 
 found us and tuk me hame, and I'm feared mither's gotten 
 a notion I'm a a bad ane. 'Deed, faither, I didna 
 mean t t tae 
 
 Alexander took his hand away from Jim's. 
 
 "Jim, " said he, " I'm fashed to ken it. I thocht the last 
 week or twa ye meant to behave better. Nae mair till 
 we reach hame. I'll hear what your mither hass to say." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 \ LEXANDER took a few days to consider Mr. Mc- 
 JL\. Manus' suggestion. 
 
 "What d'ye think aboot Jim gaein' to the schule," said 
 Euphemia, who was in a sad state of indecision, over and 
 over again to her husband. "I'm wae to send the bairn. 
 I tauld the Meenister I dooted he was ower young an' he 
 said I maun tak' your opeenion." 
 
 "I'll smoke a pipe or twa ower it," replied Alexander. 
 "It strikes me, Phemie, Jim wad be nae waur for a trifle 
 mair correction than he has at name. I'm dootin' we hae 
 spoiled the bairn. He's a big laddie, gin he is a wee bit 
 young, a verra big laddie." 
 
 Perhaps Alexander would have made up his mind earlier 
 if the suggestion had come from anyone except the Reverend 
 Simon. 
 
 "He wasna patronisin'?" he took care to ask. 
 
 "No no," replied Euphemia, "juist kind and inter- 
 ested. He thocht Jim was ower big and wild to be rinnm' 
 aboot the street doin' naethin' ava." 
 
 "I'm thinkin' for once in a way he may be richt," 
 answered Alexander. 
 
 And after some two dozen pipes he came to the con- 
 clusion that Jim should begin his education. 
 
 Euphemia wept a good deal and submitted to a decision 
 that she would have been unable to make herself. 
 
 She had however the joy of seeing Jim once more decently 
 clothed in order that he might begin his school life. 
 
 45 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE school-house and the manse and the kirk were 
 all at one end of the village. Consequently the 
 Dominie and the Reverend Simon were close neighbours 
 and, in a way, close friends that is to say as close friends 
 as it is possible for two self-satisfied people to be. 
 
 Except Dr. Spens, who lived in a state of retirement 
 on the road to the Stone-Quarries, there was no one in 
 Tuchan equal to them in mental attainments and so they 
 made a somewhat formidable alliance to be coped with 
 by one overgrown, red-headed urchin. 
 
 Jim's arrival at the school was preceded by his reputa- 
 tion for unruly conduct. 
 
 "His parents have had to put him under your care, 
 my dear Maitland," said the Reverend Simon to the 
 Dominie, "because he was becoming a regular nuisance at 
 home. He appears to be most wilful and obstreperous. 
 His father thinks it would be a good thing if he had more 
 correction. Look after the lad, Maitland, otherwise I 
 fear he will be worse than a nuisance when he grows up." 
 
 "Dinnafear, McManus, I'll look after him to rights," 
 was the Dominie's answer, and that somewhat brutal and 
 sarcastic personage began to set about Jim the first day 
 he came to school. 
 
 That first day was but an earnest of all Jim suffered 
 during his five years under the Dominie's care, or rather 
 want of care. 
 
 Tho' he was so precocious bodily, he seemed, to those 
 brought into contact with him, to have no mind at all, 
 and if he had any brain under those tangled red curls, the 
 
 4 6 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 47 
 
 Dominie was hardly the man to find it. Mr. Maitland 
 was naturally unsentimental about small boys, and his 
 profession had long ago taught him that it was necessary 
 to take the upper hand before it was taken from him. 
 Moreover he, like a great many others, found the world go 
 round so fast that he had no time to examine more than 
 the surface of anything. Now Jim was extremely sensitive, 
 and a certain amount of vanity made him very susceptible 
 to personal slight. Therefore, as, from the moment he 
 entered the school, the Dominie began to flash his humour 
 upon him, he cut a ludicrously poor figure, and with a 
 gesture of amusement to the other pupils the school- 
 master consigned him to the lowest place in the lowest 
 class. 
 
 I admit it is a question whether Mr. Maitland had any 
 intention of being especially brutal, but he undoubtedly 
 regarded Jim as lazy, sullen, and obstreperous, and so, with- 
 out troubling to enquire further, treated him accord- 
 ingly. In fact he discovered in him an excellent target for 
 scholastic wit the wit of the stronger at the expense of 
 the weaker the most despicable wit in the world and 
 thereby gave the children in the school a lead, for when 
 they saw Jim to be helpless and unresisting, in spite of his 
 size, tho' not particularly prejudiced in favour of the 
 Dominie in other directions, they followed his example 
 and combined to bully the newcomer, who found the forces 
 arrayed against him too strong and fell into a hopeless 
 lethargy. 
 
 The days, when bare-legged and clothed in nothing 
 but a sack, he had galloped joyously down the street driving 
 hens and cats before him, were gone forever. 
 
 Before he went to school, he had been in some degree 
 a ringleader. Now he soon became a miserable butt 
 with hardly any joy in life. 
 
 He might perhaps have had a reasonably happy time, 
 
48 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 altered the Dominie's attitude towards him, and become a 
 less helpless creature, had it not been for Jessie McClure 
 and Johnny Findlater. These two children were his in- 
 veterate enemies and they had great influence with the 
 others, Johnny because he was the head-boy, Jessie because 
 she was the prettiest girl in the school. 
 
 Jessie had always despised Jim, even when she allowed 
 the great puppy to fawn on her. She thought him hideous 
 and clumsy and his devotion to her a thing to be ridiculed, 
 even though it warmed her vanity. Johnny had never 
 forgiven him for a certain blow of the fist and the humilia- 
 tion to which he, Johnny, the admired of all, had been 
 consequently put. 
 
 So the dark-haired girl and the fair-haired boy did 
 everything they conceivably could to make Jim's life a 
 torment. 
 
 A TYPICAL DAY 
 
 Jim was inches taller than any other child in his class, 
 but his place was at the bottom of it. There he sat with 
 his great red head all tousled, his tongue in his cheek, and 
 one eye shut, scribbling more or less cabalistic signs on his 
 slate. 
 
 It is true he cut a disastrously poor appearance in school, 
 but the Dominie, by always making him a figure of fun to 
 the other children, spoiled whatever chance he may have 
 had of using his small modicum of intelligence. 
 If he was in good humour he would cry : 
 "Brobdignag, bring up your writing exercise." 
 Then, standing by his desk, with the luckless Jim at 
 his side, he would hold out the slate at arm's length and go 
 into fictitious ecstacies of admiration at the performance, 
 seeming to add a peculiar point to all his sarcasms by the 
 aiming of his long flexible nose. 
 
 "Grand! wonderful! marvellous!" he used to ex- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 49 
 
 claim. "Jim, lad, ye've done fine this time. Here's a 
 raibbit and here's one of Farmer McLure's coos and here's 
 our gracious Queen on her throne. Eh! Jim you're an 
 airtist born, laddie. Ye draw fine, but, my auld hippopot- 
 amus, I'm no wantin' ye to draw these pictures. I'm 
 wantin' you to put your ABC on the slate, just your 
 ABC, Jim." 
 
 Then he would wink at the schoolroom who, in duty 
 bound, burst into applause at the Dominie's imaginative 
 wit. 
 
 If, however, as very often happened, he was in a bad 
 temper, he would catch Jim a smack on the side of his 
 flaming head and say: 
 
 "Of all the ugly, freckled, useless brawns I've ever had 
 to deal with, you're the worst, Jim Macdonald. How many 
 times have I told you that 'rat' is spelt with only one *t.' 
 Let the class see if you can spell 'Jim.'" Jim, honestly 
 trying his best, sits down at a desk, squares his elbows, puts 
 his tongue in his cheek, closes one eye, buries his flaming 
 head over his slate, and writes laboriously G I M. 
 
 Then the wrath of the Dominie would boil over. 
 
 "Come here! Jim Macdonald," he would roar in a 
 voice like an infuriated bull's! "I'll pit a wee bit sense 
 in your thick hide, if I canna pit it into your thick heid." 
 
 The class, half in delicious terror and half in amazement, 
 saw the spectacle, which never palled, the spectacle of 
 the Dominie flaying Jim. 
 
 ANOTHER DAY 
 
 After a bit, the Dominie, despairing of making Jim a 
 scholar and wishing to find an outlet for his own ill-humour, 
 would put him to stand in the corner with the "Dunce's 
 cap" on his head. To the self-conscious, sensitive Jim 
 this was perhaps the worst of all his tortures, because it 
 was the most protracted. How he loathed standing in 
 
60 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 that dark corner, the cynosure of every eye, with the tall 
 white cone of paper on his head! The very touch of the 
 abhorred tiling sent a thrill of pain through him. 
 
 Very often, great, continuous tears splashed down on 
 either side of his quivering mouth. Poor Jim was too 
 sensitive to cruelty. As the daylight filtered through the 
 narrow windows of the classroom and palely illumined the 
 ancient, wooden, battered desks, dusty floor, dirty white- 
 washed ceiling, and rows of boys and girls bending over 
 their work, hustling and nudging each other, or surrepti- 
 tiously pointing in sarcasm at himself, he used to wonder 
 why he had become the butt of the Dominie and the whole 
 school. 
 
 If he stared through the windows he could see the twin 
 peaks of Ben More and Ben Moich, those sentinels that 
 guarded the Ballandarroch Pass. How jolly it would be 
 to run about on their mountain-sides instead of standing 
 under the Dominie's sarcastic eye with the "Dunce's 
 cap" on his head! 
 
 "Someday," he thought, even in those early times, "I'll 
 rin awa' from hame, rin awa' up the Ballandarroch Pass 
 and see whether there arena kinder folk on the ither side. 
 Oh! how I wish I was aulder! There canna be mony 
 people in the world as cruel as the Dominie." (Oh! 
 ignorant, innocent Jim!). Or again, "Perhaps there are 
 children somewhere, who play instead of calling names and 
 pointing fingers and laughing. (Are there, Jim?) Why 
 sudna I be like the ithers? I sud so like to be." 
 
 Alas! his happy days seemed to fly faster than the tears 
 rolled down his cheek. 
 
 "What's the price of blubber?" called the Dominie. 
 
 To AND FROM THE SCHOOL 
 
 Johnny Findlater, who was destined by the Dominie 
 for a scholarship in one of the principal Scotch Universities, 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 51 
 
 was hand-in-glove with his preceptor, and so there was no 
 one to put a check on the habit of gibing at Jim gradually 
 fostered in the school. The Dominie himself set the fash- 
 ion by calling him "Brobdignag" or in some Homeric 
 reminiscence "Earthquake producer" or in a less subtle 
 phrase "our elephantine natural," and his pupils, especially 
 the head boy, were not slow in following suit. 
 
 Jim was saddled with a variety of opprobrious and 
 humiliating names, derived from the general amusement at 
 his personal appearance and lack of intelligence. : 
 
 For nearly all of these Johnny Findlater was responsible. 
 Fair-haired, blue-eyed Johnny was not only gifted with a 
 nasty, sarcastic tongue, which he did not scruple to use at 
 our strange vagabond's expense, but also with a natural 
 turn for drawing, and Jim, whose appearance gradually 
 degenerated under misfortune, becoming wilder and more 
 unkempt every day, made him an apt model. 
 
 He hit the hulking clumsy figure to the life the 
 tangled red head the tattered clothing all too short for 
 the continually sprouting limbs. The idea was popular 
 and there came to be a conventional "Jim" well within 
 the scope of the least accomplished artist or the youngest 
 children. Moments, gleefully seized from work in school 
 or, owing to any reason, fortuitously unoccupied, could 
 always be pleasantly spent in drawing "a Jim." 
 
 More than once there was a contest in the school and 
 the prize was awarded to the happiest delineator (Johnny 
 barred) of our hero's characteristics. Jessie distributed 
 the prizes! 
 
 In a very short time "Jims" made their appearance on 
 every blank wall fronting the route to the school farcical, 
 brutal, hideous "Jims." 
 
 Our unfortunate hero, as he pursued his lonely way to 
 and from the school, often determined to look doggedly 
 in front of him so that he might not see these cruel counter- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 feits of himself determined, we say, but his resolution 
 never lasted long. It was not in human nature to pass 
 without looking at them, however much they might hurt. 
 Sometimes he looked with a dull feeling of rage, some- 
 times with choking throat and hot tears dimming his 
 vision, and as his hulking form lumbered along even the 
 tiniest tots mocked him from the gutter with their shrill 
 little voices, while from every white-washed surface on the 
 road, those ludicrous and ill-natured presentments of him- 
 self robbed him of his self-respect. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 I HAVE made this truthful attempt to write the life of 
 Jim, alias James Macdonald, alias the Scotch Giant, 
 for several reasons, but one of these is certainly not the 
 mere glorification of that celebrated personage. 
 
 We are but as we are made. 
 
 James is nothing if not modest, like all big men. He 
 leaves it to dwarfs and similarly cramped creatures to play 
 the arrogant and would be the first to protest if I used my 
 poor pen for the mere purpose of extolling him. 
 
 No, my purpose is infinitely more subtle and perhaps 
 as humble as James himself, tho' it must be left to the 
 reader, who reaches the end of the story, to discover. 
 
 For this reason, tho' I feel it unnecessary to do more 
 than sketch the various miseries which he endured during 
 his childhood (there is surely no need to dwell too minutely 
 upon unhappiness) , I, at the same time, shall endeavour 
 not to neglect my points. Were I to fail in making them, 
 that moral, to which I have referred above, would be in 
 a great degree lost, and the purpose of writing this biography 
 remain unfulfilled. Were I to fail, James would not seem 
 that which he now is, a comparatively happy and useful 
 member of the human race. Were I to fail, this apology 
 for the family of titans, gigantics, and kindly monsters 
 would fail too, and the reader pray that our earth might 
 never again breed any but mortals of decent, sober, average, 
 reasonable, comfortable, unremarkable size. 
 
 Therefore, tho' certain incidents of minor interest may 
 have occurred between the day on which Jim first went to 
 the school and the day he left, I think, and Jim, with 
 
 S3 
 
54 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 whom I have had the pleasure of consulting more than once 
 upon the management of these memoirs, thinks with me, 
 that it were best to comprise this period of his life in a 
 brief summary. I hope thus to hit the gold with one arro* 
 well-aimed, instead of using a quiverful. 
 
 Therefore oh! my longbow, do thou fail me not; therefor* 
 speed arrow, and prithee, O feather of gray-goose, guide 
 it to the mark! 
 
 It was after two or three such years of persecution, that 
 our young friend fell into a kind of hypochondria. 
 
 Anyone who is temperamentally lonely, or whom cir- 
 cumstances have bereft of friends, knows that this habit 
 is easily acquired. Jim's reverse of fortune had the worst 
 effect upon him, and tho' he probably had no real enemies 
 in the school except Johnny and Jessie, their influence 
 made the others give him the cold shoulder. 
 
 So, our Jim, from loneliness, fell into a hypochondriacal 
 way of thinking; thinking, it may be, too much about 
 himself; thinking instead of doing; thinking subjectively, 
 instead of using his mind objectively, and acquiring like 
 Johnny Findlater, the first boy in the school, various 
 useful items of information, not to mention such sciences 
 as Latin, geography, the mathematics, caligraphy, and 
 history; thinking with gloom, derision, pathos, anger, 
 jealousy, melancholy of his own preposterous size, which 
 showed no sign of increasing more slowly than in previous 
 years; thinking with envy of Johnny Findlater because 
 he was of graceful proportions, blue-eyed and fair-haired, 
 and because he was admired by Jessie McLure. 
 
 " Why does she dislike me? " he asked himself. (Oh ! Jim, 
 incapable of independence.) Surely because of this very 
 same absurd and clumsy body! It was this absurd body 
 that originally brought him into trouble, when other chil- 
 dren escaped notice; sent him, while a mere bairn, to school, 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 55 
 
 while other children of his own age were playing in the 
 street; made him an object of derision to the sarcastic 
 and overbearing Dominie; the butt of his school-fellows. 
 (True, Jim, but the grateful camel does not sneer at his 
 hump, he makes use of it.) 
 
 At last he came to such a pitch that he hardly dared look 
 into a pool or a glass for disgust of his huge body. (The 
 rhinoceros, when he drinketh in the river and beholdeth his 
 camous countenance and horned snout, grumbleth not but 
 rejoiceth in the strength of that horn and the toughness of 
 his hide.) 
 
 Naturally, under such conditions, he was far from being 
 a success at school (indeed, he never rose from the lowest 
 place in the lowest class, but sat staring moodily before him 
 biting his nails or drawing cabalistic figures on his slate) 
 and naturally too the Dominie, whose offensiveness in- 
 creased by a kind of arithmetical progression, wielded a 
 vocabulary grown every day more acidulated, until at last 
 a season arrived when he ceased to take any notice of him 
 whatever. He had come to consider him hopeless. 
 
 And now the world had turned into a place of torment for 
 Jim, when he should still have remained a happy child. 
 He was in perpetual anguish, fearing ever the eye of sur- 
 prise, the finger of scorn, imagining that everyone either 
 laughed or sneered at him, always at war with himself, a 
 most disastrous war indeed. Poor enormous and stupid 
 Jim! He was incapable of helping himself, and there is 
 no one to help those who cannot help themselves. The 
 little pin-pricks he received at school were indeed such as 
 less sensitive boys might never have minded at all, but to 
 him to him they were darts fatally poisoned. He had 
 in fact by now utterly degenerated. 
 
 The Reverend Simon went about darkly prophesying 
 and saying that he always knew the boy would come to 
 no good (a hit a palpable hit for the Reverend Simon), 
 
53 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 the Dominie, as we have seen, gave him up as hopeless, 
 while rumours of the sullen scape-grace reached Dr. Spens 
 in his lonely house on the road between Tuchan and the 
 Stone-Quarries. I wonder if he recalled those words of his, 
 spoken at the time of Jim's birth: 
 
 "I hope that boy won't be such a nuisance in after-life 
 as he has been in coming into the world." 
 
 If he did, he must have thought his foreboding justified. 
 
 Alexander and Euphemia were not unnaturally disturbed, 
 disheartened, nay, alarmed at their son's career, if such an 
 expression could be applied to his condition of stagnation 
 at school. 
 
 His father turned from bellowings of wrath at his huge 
 and shrinking offspring to dreary and melancholy fore- 
 bodings, while even his mother felt that the case of Jim 
 was very trying to poor and hard-working parents. Often 
 she would say to him in despair, after every kind of exhorta- 
 tion had apparently proved useless and he still remained 
 at the bottom of the whole school: 
 
 "Eh! Jim, we canna guess what will come to ye." 
 
 Once Jim lost all his hyper-sensitiveness and cried in 
 return. 
 
 "And oh! mither, why wasna I made the same as ither 
 laddies!" 
 
 Alexander and Euphemia looked at him in surprise and 
 Jim at once repented of having spoken. 
 
 "What d'ye mean, lad?" asked the quarryman. 
 
 Jim stood shuffling his feet, running his hand thro' his 
 red curls, and opening his mouth several times before 
 speaking. At last he said: 
 
 "I'm sae big, faither." 
 
 "It's no your size that matters, Jim," replied his father, 
 "tho' it's certainly extraordinair. It's the fac' that every- 
 body says you're a guid-for-naethin' laddie. It's a sair 
 trial to your mither and me. I dinna ken what to mak' 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 57 
 
 of ye, Jim. No, it isna your size is the principa' matter, 
 but the fac' that ye mak' no exertion ava'." 
 
 At that Jim cursed himself for having spoken. There 
 seemed to be an insuperable barrier between his parents 
 and himself. Insuperable. They did not understand 
 what misery this huge, overgrown body of his caused him. 
 He was sure that it was the cause of all his misfortunes. 
 Oh! if he had been the same as other laddies. Oh! if he 
 had been fair-haired, slender, and blue-eyed like Johnny 
 Findlater! Oh! If he had been anyone except himself, 
 one of the usual, decent, average, reasonable, comfortably 
 sized boys, then he might have got through his time at 
 school, if not with the distinction of the gifted, yet at the 
 placid level of the stupid. 
 
 Can you believe this? It is a little pathetic, it seems to 
 me. All this time our hero had a secret hope at the back 
 of his mind that he would stop growing in a short time and 
 at last be no taller than anyone else. How ironical for a 
 budding giant to think this! How ironical for him to 
 wish this! Yet he did, for he told me so himself. Jim, 
 like a great many others, had to learn how to make the 
 best of himself, instead of wishing to be something different. 
 
 At that time Jim, tho' he was only ten, looked at least 
 fifteen. 
 
 Poor old, clumsy, Redhead. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SO much for our Jim at school. 
 I do not think it necessary to dwell any longer on 
 those days of misery, rather farcical misery, perhaps. 
 
 Now dawned the last morning that was to watch Jim 
 thro' the narrow dirty windows of the school-house, as he 
 sat tongue-in-cheek, with one eye closed and head bowed 
 over the slate. 
 
 As fortune would have it, Johnny Findlater, in a particu- 
 larly aggressive mood, had been hard at work tormenting 
 him all thro' school-time. The Dominie also, kept awake 
 till the morning hours by a cough, proved particularly 
 irritable, and bade Jim for the first tune in many months 
 put on the "Dunce's cap." 
 
 This was the ignominious punishment which his soul 
 detested and, as Mr. Maitland had been more lenient to 
 him lately, out of lack of interest, he felt the dreadful hour 
 very bitterly. Moreover at the end of lessons the school- 
 master dilated with scarifying verbosity on his morals and 
 manners to the delight of all the other children. "And 
 now, my intellectual Brobdignagian friend," said he, 
 "rin awa' wi' ye into the yard and cool that massive fore- 
 head, fevered by sae much study, wi' the air of heaven. 
 Ye needna take the 'Dunce's cap' wi' ye unless ye par- 
 ticularly wish it." 
 
 In his eagerness to be quit of the Dominie's pungent 
 scholastic humour, Jim had for the moment forgotten tlie 
 thing on his head. With a suppressed fury, that only con- 
 tributed a little more to the general mirth, he dashed it 
 
 58 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 59 
 
 into a corner and flung into the yard which served the 
 children as a playground. 
 
 He had a headache and a backache and something 
 like a heartache. Really and truly he felt more miserable 
 even than usual. Gibe, gibe, gibe and nag, nag, nag 
 were beginning to wear out his patience. At least it was 
 hardly "patience" that made him submit to the tor- 
 menting of Johnny and his friends, rather some weakness 
 in his organisation, which prevented him from retaliating. 
 Our friend had not been stitched together with strong 
 fibre in spite of his big body. 
 
 He slouched moodily along with hands in trouser pock- 
 ets, looking miserable and unkempt. His cap was pulled 
 over his freckled face, and from underneath it fuzzed 
 out on all sides wisps of uncombed red hair. His dirty 
 grey shirt, grown long ago too small, was open at the neck 
 and chest, for all the buttons had dropped off it. Too 
 small also was his tattered coat, the sleeves of which came 
 half-way down his forearm, even as the coat came half-way 
 down his back. If however these garments were too small, 
 the knickerbockers were as much too large, being the 
 ancient corduroys of a certain stalwart quarryman. Indeed 
 they almost reached his ankles; enveloped him, as it were, 
 in a bag. So a degenerated, hopelessly degenerated Jim, 
 hating all the boys and girls for playing happily around 
 him, while he was feeling miserable, he slouched along. 
 
 (Envy and hatred, my dear Jim! Hatred and envy! 
 What very uncomfortable companions to carry about with 
 you !) The very picture of sullen discontent, our hero took 
 up his stand, apart from the others, against a little shed in 
 the corner of the yard. His back was to the wall; his 
 eyes on his clumsy boots. Occasionally he watched the 
 games for a moment or two, and then relapsed into dark 
 abstraction. 
 
 The other children were too much occupied to pay 
 
60 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 particular attention to the youthful misanthrope, but 
 Johnny Findlater, being in a particularly cruel mood that 
 morning, tired of play, cast his eyes round in search of sport. 
 Where was Jim? He was not a moment in discovering him, 
 back against the wall, eyes moodily bent on the ground. 
 
 "Come awa', Jessie," cried Johnny. "Lets gae an' 
 mock at Jim. I've a new idea." 
 
 "Oh! ye clever laddie, " replied Jessie in an ecstacy at 
 his powers of invention. "Come awa' all of ye," cried 
 Johnny again to the other children, and the cry drew most 
 of the school from their play. It was quite a long time 
 since any new way of diverting themselves at Jim's expense 
 had been discovered. 
 
 Johnny and Jessie, attended by the little troupe of 
 children, made their way across the yard. O! spectacle 
 foreshadowing the courses in which all these young lives 
 will run, and arousing all sorrowful emotions in the 
 philosopher's breast who must philosophise at any cost 
 interrupt the story to do so if necessary 0! little cloud 
 of children, clattering across the schoolyard in thick 
 juvenile boots, Tarn o' shanters and bonnets, who go home 
 to thick bread-and-butter and milk, at present your skins 
 are thick as childhood's boots and childhood's bread-and- 
 butter. You have no thought in following your two leaders, 
 blue-eyed, fair-haired Johnny and black-haired passionate 
 Jessie, but the entertainment of the moment. You cannot 
 put yourselves in Jim's place for, lucky children, you are 
 ignorant of life. So far, life has spared you any pain and 
 therefore you do not know what pain means. O! children 
 without imagination and without intuition, you are the 
 luckiest. You need only feel your own sorrows, and they 
 will probably be heavy enough; you will never have to 
 feel the sorrows of others. So, clattering, laughing, light- 
 hearted children, you follow your leaders with all the 
 ignorant and joyous cruelty of youth, joyous and cruel 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 61 
 
 because of ignorance. Your lives will be as happy, perhaps, 
 as it is possible for human lives to be. You will plough 
 the valleys, fish the sea, hew the stone, breathe the purity 
 of open air till an obscure grave holds you with a rough 
 headstone to commemorate your simple virtues and 
 obliterate your simple defects. Girls and boys, your lives 
 will be the happiest, because you will think the least about 
 life. You are all nice, healthy, rather cruel children, and 
 you follow your two leaders, not suspecting that in them 
 and Jim Macdonald, whom you are going to torment, are 
 sterner, deeper, and wilder passions than any to be found 
 in your own natures. 
 
 Once again let the philosopher cry aloud! Where is he 
 that does not feel sorrowful at the sight of children, as he 
 notes the little warps, so slight in youth, which must turn 
 into great obliquities with the grown tree! What will 
 become of the sensitive shyness of Jim, the clever cruelty 
 of Johnny Findlater, the passionate egotism of Jessie? 
 What will become of those three natures which have clashed 
 together in early youth? With strange futility cries the 
 philosopher, "What is the life of a human being from child- 
 hood to the grave?" and the answer comes, "Even as the 
 flight of a stone through the air, even as the flight of the 
 stone, which Jim throws in the next quarter of an hour, 
 even as a missile regulated by vast forces which operate 
 automatically." 
 
 Far better is it, cries the philosopher once more, to hew 
 the stone and fish the sea and plough the valley, to do the 
 work under your hand than to sit aside and watch the stage 
 of life with a sentient heart. 
 
 So clatter on, children, leaving that absurd creature 
 the philosopher to his profitless musings, clatter on to the 
 scene about to be unfolded. 
 
 Be thankful O! children, you are cast for small parts 
 in the drama. The humblest are the happiest. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AS the little crowd of tormentors approached, Jim 
 turned half round with one knee lifted against the 
 wall, and knowing only too well what to expect from the 
 scornful look in Johnny's bright blue eyes, gazed at them 
 in despair. It was the fact that everyone was against 
 him which cowed him. 
 
 "I was readin' the noo, Jim," said young Findlater, 
 "I do not think ye care for readin'." 
 
 A burst of laughter came from the children at this 
 humorous interlocution. Did not everyone know that 
 Jim had considerable difficulty in spelling out the letters 
 of the alphabet, that a book of the simplest description 
 would have been beyond his powers? He made no reply, 
 but gazed at the little crowd of children and their two 
 leaders, gloomily and savagely. "Tell us if ye like readin', 
 Jim," said Johnny. Still no reply. 
 
 "Wull ye no answer, ye daft hulk? Tell us or it'll be 
 the waur for ye." 
 
 Johnny advanced a step, clenching his fist. Jessie 
 McLure watched him eagerly, all her pretty dark face 
 alight at his bravery in taunting the huge, the silent Jim. 
 But however much our oppressed hero might resolve to 
 be silent and stubborn, it always ended in his giving way 
 in the end, and so at last he answered like one whose spirit 
 is broken: 
 
 "Ye ken I canna read, Johnny." 
 
 "Ye idle, guid-for-naethin' idiot, ye fat-headed loon, 
 every bairn here kens ye canna read a line, mair shame to 
 ye. Anyone o' they bairns could write a taunt on the 
 back o' your coat, if it were clean eneuch, and ye wouldna 
 
 62 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 63 
 
 be able to read it." A shout of laughter and applause 
 came from the little band of children, for at the present 
 moment Jim's back was actually decorated with an insult- 
 ing inscription. He pressed himself further against the 
 wall at the sound of the exulting cry. Was it not the fact 
 that everyone was against him that cowed him? 
 
 "Awed, Jim," continued Johnny. "I'm tellin' ye that 
 I was readin' the noo a thing which it seems ye canna 
 do and it's mair than likely ye never will be able to do 
 and I was readin' aboot they enormous beasties that 
 lived on the airth lang syne, thousands and thousands of 
 years ago, Jim. Enormous big and fulish they were, Jim, 
 the same as you every bit. Their bodies were bigger than 
 the kirk, and they hadn't mair sense than a maggot. Sae 
 they just lumbered and clumbered up and doon the airth. 
 An', at first, Jim, a' the ithers was frichtened at them be- 
 cause they were sae big, an' the wee anes hid in their holes 
 and stood ahint the trees while the enormous monsters 
 went howling and roaring thro' the forest. But they big 
 beasties were sae fulish that they was aye bein' droonded 
 or killin' ane anither or fallin' into the fire, an' at last the 
 wee anes luked oot frae their bit holes and keeked oot frae 
 ahint the trees and smiled to theirselves to see sic huge 
 hairmless meeserable fules. An' after a lang, lang time, 
 Jim, the wee anes grew bauld and were not frichtened ony 
 mair at the big anes. Sae they chivied them into the sea 
 or onto the tops of the mountains or into the deepest place 
 of the forest or made sairvants of them. An' noo, Jim, 
 it's the big anes that are frichtened of the wee anes, just 
 as you are frichtened o' me, Jim." 
 
 "Please, let me bide," said Jim dolefully, "let me bide, 
 Johnny." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I dinna meddle wi' you. Will ye no let me bide?" 
 
 "Fancy Jim meddlin' wi' us! The notion!" 
 
Ci A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "The notion," echoed the other children. 
 
 "Ye daurna meddle wi' anyone!" 
 
 "Jim daurna!" came the faithful cruel echo. 
 
 "Coward Jim!" cried Jessie with her dark face aflame. 
 
 "That's richt, Jessie," cried Johnny Findlater. "Jim's 
 a huge hulkin' coward like they big beasties lang syne. 
 Ye canna deny it, Jim." 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "Ye canna deny it," said Johnny. 
 
 "Ye canna deny it," repeated Jessie. 
 
 "Ye canna deny it," came the cruel echo. 
 
 Still no answer. The gloomy and morose look had gone 
 from the big red-headed boy's eyes. They were soft, 
 pleading, and miserable now. One of his knees was drawn 
 up into his stomach as if to preserve himself from possible 
 attack. He was pressed right into the wall. 
 
 "Did ye understand my story, Jim?" 
 
 "Did ye understand the story?" 
 
 "Did ye understand, Jim?" 
 
 Again and again came the monotonous questions from 
 Johnny, Jessie, and the cruel echo. However much Jim 
 might determine to be silent, he had to answer at last. 
 
 "I didna understan'," he said mournfully. "I canna 
 understan' muckle, ye ken." 
 
 "Jim canna understan' muckle. Jim canna understan' 
 muckle." 
 
 The exquisite humour of this admission made Johnny 
 smile, but it filled Jessie's dark face with disdain. 
 
 "Do ye understan' this?" said Johnny, walking towards 
 Jim and lifting his pretty insolent features up into the other 
 boy's big freckled face. " Do ye understan ' this? " You're 
 big and I'm sma', and yet you're frichtened o' me. Do 
 ye understan' why that is, Jim? It's because you're a 
 coward." 
 
 " Coward, Jim," repeated Jessie. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 65 
 
 " Coward," chorused the other children. 
 
 "Deny that you're frichtened o' me, Jim." 
 
 No movement or word from the tormented one. 
 
 ''You're scared to touch me." 
 
 No reply from Jim. 
 
 "If I was to dunt ye, ye wudna dunt me back." 
 
 No answering look. 
 
 "Ye big, cowardly stupid fule, you're twice my size 
 and yet ye daurna touch me." 
 
 " Jim daurna touch Johnny, "chorused the children as they 
 stood watching the pair with interest vivid in their faces. 
 
 "Oh! Johnny, Johnny, you're fine," cried Jessie. She 
 jumped with tossing black hair and clapped her hands. 
 
 Young Findlater turned his head at the words and 
 found in the sight of her shining eyes, tossing hair, and 
 slim erect figure a new inspiration. He leant forward and 
 caught her arm. For a moment she was rather scared. 
 "Let go," she cried, struggling to free herself; but Johnny 
 pulled her towards him without attention to her protests, 
 while the other children, possessed one and all by the 
 excitement of cruelty, showed a circle of glittering eyes and 
 compressed lips. 
 
 "Jim, ye great hulking coward," he said, "let's see if 
 you're frichtened o' a lassie." 
 
 Whatever were the sentiments of the victim of oppression 
 towards the black-eyed daughter of the McLures, he at 
 any rate found no expression for them but merely stared 
 in an uncomprehending way at her as she hung back, with 
 a new light already glinting in her eyes. 
 
 "Jim," continued Johnny, with a ring of concentrated 
 insult in his voice, "you're not worth hitting. If it wasna 
 for that I'd hit you myseP. You're no game for lads, 
 only lassies. Jessie, you're no feared to hit Jim, are ye?" 
 
 Jessie's big black eyes flashed scorn and hate, and she 
 moved a little nearer to the unkempt figure leaning against 
 
66 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 the wall. "See, Jim," cried Johnny, "e'en a wee bit deli- 
 cate lassie's no frichtened at ye. Gae on, Jessie." 
 
 The girl screwed her lips into a thin, cruel line, tossed back 
 her black hair, and moved forward amidst absolute silence. 
 
 " Gae on, Jessie," said Johnny again. 
 
 She came right up to Jim, who looked down upon her 
 with a bewildered, frightened look that seemed to argue 
 him powerless to resent even this last ignominy, and, even 
 as he looked at her, the girl, drawing a short breath like a 
 hiss between her clenched white teeth, struck him a quick 
 little blow in the ribs with her fist. For an instant he did 
 not seem to realise that she had given him a blow, but 
 continued to stare at her in the same bewildered, cowed 
 fashion. Then, all of a sudden, he sprang forward as if 
 propelled by the recoil of a powerful spring, roaring inco- 
 herent passionate words with all the full force of his lungs. 
 He touched Jessie as he bounded forward, and she fell to 
 the ground half stunning herself, but he paid no atten- 
 tion to her; indeed, did not notice she had fallen, as with 
 great strides and quivering, outstretched hands he leapt 
 forward in the direction of Johnny Findlater. 
 
 His heart was still tender towards Jessie (oh! foolish, 
 sentimental Jim), but Johnny he hated at that moment, 
 hated with a murderous hatred. 
 
 Now no one had ever before seen Jim make an offensive 
 movement, and thus no one was on the lookout. So un- 
 expected therefore was the result of Jessie's blow that 
 Angel-faced Virtue was nearly caught by infuriated Brawn. 
 Had he been actually caught, he might have been killed, 
 but as it was he ducked under one of Jim's arms, for the 
 latter was too blinded by passion and too clumsy to be 
 difficult to elude, and ran as fast as his legs would move 
 in the direction of the yard door with Jim heavily wheel- 
 ing and bounding after him. The other school-children, 
 terrified and screaming, scattered in every direction. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 JOHNNY FINDLATER, conscious that he alone was 
 in danger, threaded his way with much skill thro' the 
 scattering children, thereby gaining on the subject of our 
 biography (who insensibly slackened speed in order to 
 avoid knocking down the younger ones) and almost reached 
 the door before Jim extricated himself. He ran nimbly 
 and well, looking back from time to time to see how his 
 pursuer was faring, and now only a few yards remained 
 before he could slam the door, bolt it (for it bolted on the 
 further side) and escape at leisure. Swiftly Jim realised 
 this. All the insults and ignominies, to which he had been 
 subjected during his years at school, came back to him in 
 one flash. He was in a white heat of fury, wanted an 
 immediate, satisfying revenge, thought of no consequences, 
 had eyes blind to everything save the flying Johnny. 
 Mad, mad, mad was red-headed Jim, and in a paroxysm 
 of madness, stopped running, stooped, and picked up a 
 round, smooth stone. . . . Straight and true flew the 
 stone, and struck young Findlater, luckily for all concerned 
 not at the base of the skull but on the top of the head, 
 with such force however that, without another movement, 
 he flung up his arms and fell face-downward to the ground. 
 A groan arose from the children who witnessed the catas- 
 trophe, and there was a terrified silence. 
 
 At that moment Mr. Maitland, entering the yard to 
 ring the cracked bell which called his pupils to school, 
 almost stumbled over the body lying in the doorway. 
 "What's the meaning of this?" said he, looking at it in 
 amazement and then with still greater amazement at Jim, 
 
 67 
 
68 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 standing with wild red hair, flushed freckled face, teeth 
 bared in the fury of madness, and great raw fists clenched. 
 "What do I see here?" 
 
 And Jim, what did he see? What would he have done if 
 the Dominie had not come so pat? So ungovernable was 
 the fury of his rage that he might have killed Angel-faced 
 Virtue, as he lay upon the ground, but for this unexpected 
 recruit to the rebellion of his passions, but now, at the 
 sight of the man who had made his life at school intolerable, 
 called him outrageous names he did not understand, put 
 the "Dunce's cap" on his head that he might be despised 
 by all, lavished unrelenting sarcasm upon him and given an 
 extra point to it by the aiming of that long, hateful, flexible 
 nose, a new tide of insults swept into his memory. Desire 
 for revenge flew from the fallen foe to the one who now 
 confronted him and, amidst a hammering of pulses and 
 throbbing of temples, he saw him, as it were, thro' a Red 
 Mist, in a haze blood-coloured, while that hateful flexible nose 
 seemed to project itself as an especial incentive to vengeance. 
 
 "What's the meaning of this?" asked the enemy, looking 
 from the prostrate Johnny towards Jim, fierce and deter- 
 mined, and then away to the other children with their 
 startled, frightened faces. There was no answer to the 
 question, for a sense of guilt tied their tongues, dimly con- 
 scious as they were perhaps that their behaviour towards 
 Jim had been largely responsible for the catastrophe and 
 thinking as they all did at that moment, from the biggest 
 to the smallest, that Johnny Findlater was dead. "What's 
 the meaning of all this? Who is this lying here?" said the 
 Dominie once more as he stooped and lifted the unconscious 
 boy in his arms. The curly fair hair was stained with 
 blood oozing from a wound in the head, and the long fair 
 eye-lashes had closed over the blue eyes. "Johnny Find- 
 later!" cried the Dominie in a voice which showed the 
 anxiety he felt for his favourite. "Johnny Findlater!'* 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 69 
 
 "Who was it hurt him?" he said, furiously facing Jim, 
 with the limp body in his arms. "Do you ken anything 
 about it, Jim Macdonald?" 
 
 Jim did not answer a word but stared at him with the 
 same fierce flushed face, drawing his breath in great gasps. 
 At that moment Jessie McLure, who, tho' half-stunned by 
 her fall, had seen the whole occurrence, rushed up to the 
 Dominie like a little fury. 
 
 "Is Johnny deid?" she sobbed convulsively, looking 
 at the still, white face of the boy. "Say he isna deid," 
 she cried. Then tossing back her black hair and pointing 
 with quivering ringer, she exclaimed, "It was him, Jim 
 Macdonald, who threw a stone at Johnny. See, here it 
 is." She picked it up from the ground. 
 
 "Is this true, Jim Macdonald?" asked the Dominie in 
 a voice of thunder, and Jim, confronting the enemy amidst 
 breathless silence, with flushed scowling face, his short 
 tattered coat, and knickerbockers flapping over ankles, 
 a grotesque petrified into a figure of terror, knew that his 
 moment had come. In the silence his quick heavy breath- 
 ing could be heard. 
 
 "It was you then, Jim Macdonald," said Mr. Maitland. 
 "Just wait a minute, my lad. Mrs. Jones!" he cried, and 
 the gaunt and angular person who kept the school in a 
 state of moderate uncleanliness appeared, mop in one 
 hand, pail in the other. "Mrs. Jones, look after this boy 
 till the Doctor comes. You, Angus," he said to one of 
 the small boys standing in the yard, "rin as fast as your 
 legs will cairry you and find Dr. Spens. I saw his cairt 
 at Mrs. Simpson's door not five minutes ago." Mrs. 
 Jones carried the still unconscious Johnny into the school- 
 house and then the Dominie advanced on Jim. 
 
 "Now," he said, "you wicked, godless, murderous lad, 
 I'll give you a welting that you'll remember to the end 
 of your days." 
 
70 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Yes, yes, Jim knew that his time had come as, reckless 
 of all save revenge, he awaited the approach of the enemy, 
 feeling no longer a boy's strength, young tho' he was, but 
 a foretaste of that almost superhuman strength which was 
 to be his in days to come, that strange gift of the gods 
 which singled him out from among his fellows and doomed 
 him to loneliness all his life long, that gift of the gods 
 which he must accept with all the disadvantages, all the 
 sorrows accompanying it. But now he felt it for the first 
 time, and for the first time felt glad. 
 
 He stood immovable amidst the same breathless silence 
 that had prevailed since young Findlater's fall, and the 
 Dominie ^came closer to him and closer. For many a year 
 Mr. Maitland had ruled the roost and his self-confidence 
 was supreme; but nevertheless, as he drew near to Jim, he 
 felt somewhat daunted. For the first time he realised 
 something, and that was that Jim Macdonald was an 
 uncommonly big and probably an uncommonly strong 
 boy. "And yet pooh!" his thoughts ran, "it's only a 
 boy after all, a boy to be thrashed, a boy who can be 
 intimidated by authority." Yet that fierce ironical scowl 
 on Jim's face was new to him. True however to his 
 pedagogic theories of intimidation he advanced, and, as 
 he felt self-confidence going for the first time in his scholas- 
 tic career, tried bluster. 
 
 "So you want me to come for you, Jim Macdonald," 
 he said. "Very well, my lad, very well indeed. We'll 
 see who's to be master." Jim eyed the long flexible nose 
 with his fierce scowl unchanged. 
 
 . A dangerous little light played in his eyes. When he 
 was within a yard of Jim, Mr. Maitland stopped. 
 
 For almost a minute the two confronted each other in 
 silence. 
 
 Then, pulling his failing courage together and stepping 
 forward, the schoolmaster seized Jim smartly by the collar. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 71 
 
 All the devils of revolt and revenge screeched in the boy's 
 ear at the Dominie's touch. Turning a half-turn and letting 
 his right shoulder go well into the blow, he struck his 
 sarcastic preceptor straight on the end of his jutting fleshy 
 nose. The Dominie staggered back three or four paces 
 holding the fingers of both hands to his injured face, but 
 Jim, with the miseries and ignominies of five long years 
 wiped out by the spurting blood of Mr. Maitland's nose 
 and an insane whoop of triumph, sprang for the yard door 
 and liberty. 
 
PART II 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 TO achieve a reputation is something, even if it is 
 only a reputation for wickedness. And yet how 
 many reputations, including Jim's, are utterly unde- 
 served! 
 
 Our red-headed friend, whose career up to the present 
 time we have followed with considerable attention, was 
 indeed a gross fraud. He might be labelled "dangerous" 
 but under that stalwart chest, whose exact measurement 
 at the age of fifteen years is not recorded, beat a heart of 
 ridiculous tenderness. 
 
 In compiling his biography for the public (the fashion 
 of editing living celebrities, whether political, musical, or 
 dramatic, has now completely won the day), I have fallen 
 into the habit of visualising my hero at all stages of his 
 existence, while he was running about in the absurd sack- 
 petticoat which Mr. McManus thought so reprehensible, 
 while he scrabbled inarticulate at school, and during the 
 intervening period between the blow on the Dominie's 
 nose and the return of Jessie McLure to Tuchan, while 
 he was working in the Stone-Quarries. 
 
 I see him there, a boy among grown men, sitting on a 
 boulder and staring, as if with a prophetic instinct, down 
 the huge valley of Calder, where the great grey stones 
 lay like sleeping cattle, towards the Pass of Ballandarroch 
 and the two huge sentinels More and Moich. One can 
 form no guess as to the actual thoughts which passed 
 through the brain under that tangled red head, cannot 
 say whether the remotest idea came to him that Destiny 
 called him away from the little village, where he had been 
 
 75 
 
70 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 so unhappy, to the great world, which lay beyond the Pass 
 and which Dr. Spens had renounced, whether as yet he 
 (however dimly) realised how much honour this same 
 great world would one day pay him. 
 
 Doubtless, had you told him that ten years hence his 
 name would be known from Moscow to Minnesota, from 
 Rouen to Rio Janeiro, he would naturally enough not have 
 understood one word you were saying, and yet an intangible 
 foreboding of his fate and the unalterable decree, that by 
 the very nature of things sets abnormal beings apart from 
 all real companionship, however much more than their 
 ordinary fellow-creatures they may ache and long for it 
 (the unrealisable), had begun to fix the melancholy, which 
 would never leave it henceforth, in his soul. 
 
 O Jim Giganticule, soft-hearted Monsterlet, Titan-in- 
 Trousers to be, take the pick and hew the stone from 
 the living rock, bedew your young brow with honest sweat, 
 do a man's work with a boy's hands, and think perhaps 
 that your bones will be laid to rest in Tuchan churchyard 
 with a rough head-stone to commemorate your simple 
 virtues and obliterate your simple defects. Cling with 
 all the tenderness of your soft nature to the hills you 
 have known from boyhood, wander sadly through the 
 village streets that scorn you (0! these cruel Jims drawn 
 upon the white-washed walls), wince as the little children 
 fly shrieking from your lumbering form, try to live down 
 that reputation for wickedness which covers you more 
 than your own ragged garments, it is all in vain. Forces 
 within you, Forces outside you, the network of Circum- 
 stance, the long arm of Fate are combined against you. 
 However much you love home and the hills down which 
 the torrents run shouting in the time of rain, whose vener- 
 able sides are scored with innumerable watercourses, upon 
 whose summits the clouds rest and the wind moans per- 
 petually however much your natural shyness impels 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 77 
 
 you towards a desire to remain obscure and happy (and 
 you are now just at an age when you are beginning to 
 think of these things), there is deep buried within you 
 a force of which you are yet hardly cognisant, a force 
 that makes those who possess it, always unhappy and always 
 restless. O Jim, miserrime Giganticule! The Red Mist 
 came into your eyes for the first time when Jessie 
 McLure struck you; that is three years ago, nearly four 
 now. Since then you have worked amidst the Stone-Quar- 
 ries and the fatal Red Mist has not once dimmed your 
 vision; hardly has your heart given one really tumultuous 
 thump during the time in which your body and mind 
 have both developed. Let us survey these years. 
 
 In the first place the Dominie's nose v/as a sight for 
 days. In the second, there was no school the afternoon 
 that Jim struck Autocracy on its one vulnerable point, 
 for even Mr. Maitland could not keep order with with 
 an "idjured dose"; even his powers of sarcasm were not 
 equal to such a feat. Besides, Johnny Findlater lay, 
 sadly wounded, on the pedagogic bed and needed all 
 attention. Dr. Spens was at Mrs. Simpson's, and the 
 small boy Angus, deputed to find him, had no difficulty 
 in accomplishing his task. "Dr. Spens, you're wanted at 
 the schule-house." 
 
 "Some one ill?" inquired the Doctor casually. 
 
 "Ou aye," answered the urchin, and as he trotted 
 along by the Doctor's side, Angus, with all the small boy's 
 love for imparting news, especially news of a dreadful 
 character, told the story in his own way. 
 
 "I'm thinkin' Johnny Findlater 's dead the noo," he 
 said suddenly. 
 
 "Dead!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Good Heavens! 
 What's the matter?" 
 
 "He was a' white and his heid was a mass of bluid," 
 said the urchin triumphantly, "an' he never spoke a word 
 
78 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 a' the time an' when Mrs. Jones cairried him into the 
 schule-house, my, his airms and legs were as limp as rags. 
 An' Jessie McLure said he was deid, sure as death, she 
 did, an' she was greetin', an' " 
 
 "Steady, Angus, my man," said the Doctor as he hurried 
 on as fast as his legs would carry him, "steady and 
 begin with the right end of the stick. What's happened? 
 How did Johnny meet with his accident? " 
 
 "Jim Macdonald broke his heid wi' a stane," replied 
 the urchin carelessly and reverted once more with enthu- 
 siasm to the horrors of the spectacle, "an' his mouth 
 was open like a bit fush's (he made a grimace to show 
 what he meant) an' he luked gashly white, an' an' 
 I'm sure he's deid." He drew in his breath with a whistle 
 at the recollection. 
 
 "Jim Macdonald broke his head with a stone," cried 
 the Doctor horror-struck. 
 
 "Ou aye," replied the urchin carelessly as before. 
 Now Dr. Spens was as unprejudiced as most men, and had, 
 for the sake of old times (you remember he had helped 
 Jim into the world with considerable trouble to himself 
 and certainly saved his life in the whooping-cough), a 
 certain tenderness for our red-headed Giganticulus, but 
 rumour of Jim's sullen disposition and obvious inutility, 
 if not worse, had reached as far as the House on the Road 
 to the Stone-Quarries. Perhaps, owing to the circum- 
 stances mentioned above, he took more interest in Jim 
 than in the other village boys, and certainly his was a figure 
 you would not overlook if you once saw it; at any rate 
 the idea that he was a bad character, or developing into 
 one, stuck in his mind with a certain amount of sorrow. 
 He had been thinking over it that very day, the good 
 Doctor, and now the very worst confirmation of all his 
 fears and a dreadful tragedy to boot! Fair-haired, blue- 
 eyed Johnny Findlater was the show-boy of the village. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 79 
 
 He was to do great things, and here he was seriously 
 injured apparently, if not dead, and his injury was at the 
 hands of the wicked Jim. Little things have serious con- 
 sequences, and it was just this careless statement of a 
 small boy acting on the perturbation of the Doctor's mind 
 that lost Jim his only supporter in Tuchan. Little Angus 
 was too much interested in the catastrophe itself to explain 
 the causes of it. Probably his infantile mind could not 
 anyhow have given a connected and intelligible account, 
 but the first news of it came to the Doctor that way and 
 his initial impressions were wholly to Jim's detriment. 
 
 They hurried down the road towards the school-house, 
 Angus keeping up with the Doctor's strides with difficulty, 
 and at a bend of the road met a cloud of children, laughing 
 and shouting joyously. 
 
 At the sight of the Doctor and his anxious face their 
 spirits were a little dashed. 
 
 "How's Johnny?" he asked. 
 
 "We dinna ken. We hae na seen him. He's in the 
 Dominie's room lyin' doon." 
 
 The Doctor pressed forward once more. Little Angus 
 turned round to the departing boys and girls. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked. "Where are ye 
 gaein?" 
 
 "There's nae mair schule the day. Angus ye sud see 
 the Dominie's neb. It's swelled like a tomaty an' Jim 
 Macdonald's rin awa'." 
 
 The band passed, joyous once more, down the road, 
 happy, egotistical, unimaginative children. For an instant 
 Angus wavered. Should he join his playfellows there 
 could be splendid games on this unexpected holiday or 
 should he go forward with the Doctor? His appetite for 
 horrors gained the day. There was a chance of seeing 
 "a corp" and, at any rate, the Dominie's "neb swelled 
 up like a tomaty, " the reason of which fascinating occur- 
 
80 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 rence he could not guess. In another moment the Doctor 
 opened the door of the yard and passed into the ill-lit 
 classroom with it's grimy windows and battered desks. 
 
 "Maitland!" he called. 
 
 The Dominie made his appearance at the door behind 
 his desk which led into his private quarters. Angus stared 
 at him fascinated. 
 
 The long flexible nose, which always seemed to give an 
 extra point to the Dominie's sarcasms, was bulbous at the 
 end and still dripped blood every other second, which Mr. 
 Maitland vainly endeavoured to staunch with a crimsoned 
 pocket handkerchief. 
 
 "Good Heavens!" exclaimed Dr. Spens, as this sorry 
 spectacle met his eyes. "What has happened to you, 
 Maitland?" 
 
 "A trifling accident," answered the Dominie with a 
 flinch. "But first of a' come and see Johnny Findlater. 
 I'm thankfu' to say he's no as sairously hurt as I thought. 
 The boy 's recovered consciousness and feels no evil effects 
 forbye a headache." 
 
 Angus followed the pair into the sacred quarters whither 
 he had never penetrated before, his eyes fixed in admira- 
 tion on the "Dominie's neb." However much he might 
 be disappointed to find that Jimmy Findlater was "not 
 deid" or even seriously hurt, his appetite for horrors was 
 momentarily satisfied by that bulbous dripping nose. 
 Moreover the mystery of it was shortly to be explained. 
 In truth it had been a wild and exciting day in the school 
 annals (thought Angus), which had, owing to the recent 
 slump in "Jim-baits," been rather tame lately. As for 
 Dr. Spens, he found a severe cut in Johnny's head, the boy 
 himself sick and dizzy, but otherwise little the worse. At 
 the foot of the Dominie's bed Jessie McLure was sitting, 
 her pretty dark face streaked with tears. She was holding 
 Johnny's hand. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 81 
 
 "There's not much the matter with him," said the 
 Doctor cheerily, and at that Jessie's face lighted up. "I'll 
 send him back home in my gig. Who'll run and tell 
 Donald to bring it round? You, Angus? you, Jessie?" 
 
 "I'll gae, Dr. Spens," said the little girl, as she jumped 
 off the bed with tossing black hair. "I'll rin as fast as I 
 can." She disappeared with all the swiftness of her impul- 
 sive nature, much to the relief of Angus, who, with one 
 eye fixed on the pale face of Johnny Findlater and the 
 other on the red nose of the Dominie, determined to see 
 the situation through and hear all there was to be heard. 
 
 "And now," said the Doctor, "pray what has happened? 
 Angus, here, told me something of the story but I find 
 it hard to believe. Was Jim Macdonald really wicked 
 enough to fling a stone at Johnny's head? Why, he 
 might have killed him!" 
 
 Johnny gave a sympathetic sniff at this reminder of his 
 mortality, and Mr. Maitland replied: 
 
 "Likely enough, Spens. Angus told you the truth. 
 Jim Macdonald is an utterly worthless boy, a thorough- 
 paced young scoundrel." 
 
 He told the story of the catastrophe to Johnny as briefly 
 as possible, with every now and then an appeal for con- 
 firmation to one of the two boys. Johnny was naturally 
 not going to give away his own part in the affair and 
 Angus was still too much fascinated by the sight of the 
 "Dominie's neb" to throw in more than a casual "ou aye." 
 
 "And so you see, Spens," continued the Dominie, 
 "the boy is utterly worthless, hopeless, untidy, sullen, an' 
 dangerous. He winna work and he winna play. He never 
 joined in the other children's games but a'ways stood 
 scowling in a corner. Didn't he, Johnny?" 
 
 "Yes, Sir," with a sniff. 
 
 "Ou aye," from Angus. 
 
 "An' I tell you the sicht of him to-day when I came 
 
82 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 into the yaird and found puir Johnny there lying on the 
 ground (another sniff), face downward (two sniffs), at 
 Jim Macdonald's maircy (a sob), if I hadna chanced to 
 come in, fair frichtened me. I never saw such a look on 
 a boy's face yet in my experience of boys flushed face, 
 glittering eyes, convulsive breathing. He's not safe to 
 mix wi' other laddies. He's wicked, mad, cairried awa' wi' 
 his ane evil nature. I've done my best for him. Five 
 years he's been under my control and I can say truth- 
 fully he's become waur every year. Isna that the truth, 
 Johnny?" 
 
 "Yes, Sir." (Another sob.) 
 
 "H'm H'm " muttered Dr. Spens, very much 
 distressed at this dreadful story and the unanimity of 
 opinion regarding Jim. "Wretched lad! I heard some- 
 thing of the kind before. I'm sorry, very sorry he has 
 such bad tendencies. Very sorry, indeed. And now, 
 Maitland, you must let me have a look at your nose. It 
 seems to be still bleeding. How in the world did ?" 
 
 The sarcastic Dominie flushed up to the roots of his 
 grizzled hair. He was a little man with a long nose, and 
 little men with long noses are always vain. Never, if his 
 own wishes had been consulted, need the subject have been 
 referred to again, but with the damage self-evident and the 
 question repeated point-blank, apart from the unimpeach- 
 able evidence of five and thirty school-children, how was 
 any attempt at concealment possible? Best out with 
 the truth at once! He could show the most flattering case 
 for himself, if he was the first to tell the story. 
 
 "It was (a pause) was Jim," said he, flushing once 
 more. 
 
 Angus drew in his breath till it whistled. He was in 
 ecstacy. 
 
 "Jim again!" cried the Doctor. 
 
 "When I tried to tak' him into custody," said the 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 83 
 
 Dominie rapidly, "tried to punish him for his abominable 
 behaviour, his cruelty to Johnny, his monstrous uncon- 
 trollable temper, his attempted crime, what do you think 
 the wicked revengeful boy had the the the unpair- 
 alleled insolence to to do " 
 
 "He dunted ye on the neb," shrieked Angus in an 
 outburst of unrestrainable excitement. "My, the laddies 
 were richt. It's swelled up like a tomaty, sure as death." 
 
 Alas ! we all have to pay for our pleasures, if we plunge 
 into them too headlong. Poor Angus suffered dreadfully. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WHILE the last remnant of Jim's reputation was 
 being torn to shreds in the school-house, our 
 friend, Giganticulus ferox, was having more adventures. 
 
 You remember how, mad with rage, wild with triumph, 
 and sick with misery in all this chaos of emotions 
 and with his red hair in tangled unkempt masses, his 
 eyes glittering, and his freckled face inflamed, he burst 
 through the yard door, whooping, and turned away from 
 Tuchan. He ran and whooped, whooped and ran for 
 about a quarter-of-a-mile of road. For the present, in all 
 this chaos of emotions, the feeling of triumph was upper- 
 most. That punch on the Dominie's long flexible nose 
 had left him with a delicious sensation, both physical and 
 mental, and the sight of Johnny lying on the ground, felled 
 by his hand after all the petty cruelties and insults of 
 five years, was actually present to him as he ran whoop- 
 ing. That well-aimed stone had destroyed the illusion 
 of time. He flung it over and over again in the next ten 
 minutes and again and again saw angel-faced Virtue 
 throw up his arms and fall to the ground. His vengeance 
 was complete. 
 
 For the moment he even forgot about Jessie McLure, 
 forgot that this vengeance-carrying stone has struck her 
 as well as Johnny, that Jessie will never forgive, how- 
 ever long the years, even if Johnny may. 
 
 The Red Mist still shrouded his vision and he was still 
 conscious of an almost superhuman strength. So he 
 ran, whooping, and, round the bend, came plump on the 
 Rev. Simon McManus. 
 
 8 4 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 85 
 
 The Minister stopped astonished as the tattered, red- 
 headed hobbledehoy (Jim looked a good five years older 
 than his age), drunken with the power of its own emotions, 
 came towards him, shouting. The Minister's white face 
 frowned] stern disapproval, his lower lips protruded omi- 
 nously, balancing rebuke, his square white hand made a 
 peremptory gesture. 
 
 v "Stop, Jim Macdonald," he said. "Stop at once. 
 Where are you off to at this hour, when you should be at 
 school? What are you shouting about?" 
 
 Jim came to a halt, swaying from side to side. He was 
 really drunken with the strong wine of vengeance. He 
 smiled derisively at the white-faced, frowning McManus. 
 
 "I'm gaein' as I please, an' I'll shout as I please." 
 
 The Minister was nearly a head taller than Jim, and so 
 he looked down upon him a little. When, however, he saw 
 the glittering eyes and inflamed face and noticed the 
 convulsive breathing, he drew back a step, and when he 
 heard the defiant answer, still another. 
 
 "Are you mad, Jim Macdonald?" he said, poising 
 the words on his lower lip in his habitually impressive 
 manner. 
 
 Jim put his hands on the haunches of his baggy corduroy 
 breeches and smiled still more derisively with a wicked 
 light in his eyes. 
 
 "Mebbe," he said. "I dinna ken. Onyway, Meenister, 
 ye'd better tak' heed." 
 
 The Reverend Simon became very angry, so angry 
 that for a moment he forgot that a certain quiet dignity 
 befits the priestly frock best, unless the owner is in a 
 position to support strong words by strong deeds. 
 
 "You rebellious, insolent young rascal," he shouted. 
 "I'll teach you to give me any of your impertinence." 
 Moving forward he stretched out his hand to seize Jim's 
 collar, even as the Dominie had done. "Come back to 
 
86 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 the school at once and I'll tell Mr. Maitland to give you 
 a taste of the tawse you shall remember." 
 
 "Hands off, Meenister," cried Jim, with that first sense 
 of his power still strong upon him, the power upon the 
 hour. "The Dominie's got a bluidy neb 'twas me 
 that gave it him. I've half-killed Johnny Findlater and 
 I'm dangerous. If ye touch me, by God, I'll sairve ye 
 the very same way. Hands off, forbye ye want a bluidy 
 neb too. Hands off, by God!" 
 
 The oath, the infuriated face of the boy, the sudden 
 rebellion struck the Minister aback and, as he hesitated, 
 Jim passed him and ran up the road. The Reverend 
 Simon watched him go in a state of stupefaction. He, 
 the Minister, had been defied, defied by the boy who he 
 had always said would turn out knave and rascal, defied 
 in sight of the Manse. Tho' by no means partial to Alex- 
 ander, a sullen impertinent man, he had borne his inso- 
 lence in the quiet Christian spirit enjoined on Ministers 
 of the Gospel. "Jim Jim Jim, however," the name 
 was stuttered aloud in his fury. Well, well, that should 
 be seen to, and such a wilful and monstrous defiance of 
 sacred authority punished with all the severity it deserved. 
 And then, as if with the force of a sudden revelation, Jim's 
 tidings struck him motionless. "Maitland . . . young 
 Findlater . . . injured . . . half -killed. What! . . . How! 
 . . . Impossible." He stood with lip shot forth and white 
 forehead furrowed. Incredible! Yet . . . what defiance 
 and assurance lay in the rascal's great bawling voice! If 
 it was true .... Oh! Jim Macdonald. . . . 
 
 As for the culprit, still Giganticulus ferox, he ran down 
 the road, passed the red walls of the manse garden with 
 its little wood of firs, turned up a narrow track between 
 stone walls and thin pastures, and made straight for the 
 hills. Triumph still sang her song within him and he 
 vibrated with the strong music like a harp to the wind. It 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 87 
 
 was his habit, in the stress of any vital emotion, to make for 
 the hills. Upon the hills he breathed, got for a little while 
 out of the inimical atmosphere of Tuchan. There was a 
 place whence could be viewed, on one hand, the great valley 
 of Calder as far as the Pass, and the track like a little thread 
 climbing through the forests of firs; on the other, the 
 village of Tuchan with, beyond it, the still, narrow waters 
 of the loch, the ragged island of Ruish with its bare precip- 
 itous bluffs and sparsely clothed slopes, and again beyond, 
 in his imagination, the Atlantic. Thither, to this lofty 
 place, under the shadow of a birch-wood, he had often 
 taken his sorrows. From the height and amidst the vast 
 mountainous country and shining lochs, with the immeas- 
 urable Atlantic in hail, the village looked absurdly insig- 
 nificant. How could a thing so petty hurt one who was 
 in communion with the great hills and sea, he would ask 
 himself, and thus, from a kind of childish philosophy, 
 managed to gain comfort when his child's world went hard. 
 So, to-day, whither so many times he had climbed dolefully, 
 should he not also climb rejoicing? He laid himself down 
 therefore in the accustomed place, with his tangled red 
 head between his hands; but lo! as he gazed down upon 
 the straggling little village of cottages with white-washed 
 walls and thatched roofs, the triumph, which had seemed 
 to him so great, suddenly became small, as everything 
 connected with Tuchan did, when seen from that great 
 height. 
 
 Foolish Jim, or perhaps wise Jim wise in the natural 
 simplicity which was always and still is' part of your char- 
 acter had you been a hair-splitting, futile philosopher 
 like him who writes your biography, you must have known 
 this would be the only and inevitable result of your triumph- 
 wander to the eyrie in the hills. Had you wished your 
 revenge to loom large in your memory, overshadow your 
 boyish years with gloomy conquering wings, you should 
 
88 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 have stayed in the narrow untidy ways of Tuchan, among 
 small-minded men and women, boys and girls of nice, 
 ordinary, comfortable, unremarkable size. You should 
 not have lifted up your eyes to the hills or walked with 
 your feet upon the mountains. 
 
 And now the Red Mist faded before his eyes; the feeling 
 of unnatural strength left him; and he became as weak as 
 water. That fire of triumph in his heart turned to ashes, 
 and once more he became shy, sensitive, stupid Jim with 
 terrors thronging in upon him and clamouring. So for a 
 long tune he lay there helpless, and then, as the evening 
 sun began setting through banks of crimson and green 
 over Ruish, arose staggering and went down the hillside 
 to Tuchan. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE sun was set before he came to the end of his 
 path, and turned into the road which ran along 
 the lochside to the village. He passed the Manse and 
 saw a light shining in the windows, glowing, a bright red 
 spark, amidst the surrounding dark of the firs. The road 
 led uphill and, with the heaviness of his spirit, it seemed 
 steeper than it really was. He was going back to the old 
 life of shame and insult without the sense of superhuman 
 strength that had given him courage that afternoon, with- 
 out the Red Mist before his eyes. 
 
 He saw everything, felt everything under more crushing 
 relations than the old; had become, as it were, completely 
 subordinate to circumstance instead of master of it; for the 
 very fact of having known the strange power which had 
 come for the first time into his life, made him doubly feeble 
 and inert now it had deserted him. 
 
 Giganticulus ferox was tamed and, like an imprisoned 
 lion, he must henceforth be half-content with memories of 
 the desert and ancient freedom and the forgotten strength 
 of mVtawny limbs. Jim was going back to his cage. 
 
 Henceforward the dreamy look into measureless spaces is 
 always in his eyes and a remote inexplicable melancholy 
 in his soul always, that is, until the Red Mist veils his 
 vision again and the feeling of superhuman strength fills 
 him once more. 
 
 One sees how it was that Jim did not run away to sea 
 or enlist as a drummer-boy or do any of the things that 
 a more energetic lad might have done. Without the Red 
 Mist and the accompanying sensations, which lifted him, 
 
 89 
 
90 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 as it were, above the common herd, he had no initiative at 
 all, was a powerless, submissive, utterly useless Gigan- 
 ticulus, one even completely dependent on the people he 
 hated and who hated him, one who had no strength to tear 
 himself away from the surroundings he had known since 
 memory began, one who must go back and be a useless 
 encumbrance to peevish hard-working Alexander and 
 feeble, querulous Euphemia. Between them and him the 
 rift seemed to have so widened that it was now become 
 a chasm. 
 
 Jim blundered heavily up the road, feeling utterly 
 exhausted in body and mind, too tired for any sensation. 
 He did not even pause as he came to the entrance of the 
 village. Destiny was driving him back and he was too 
 tired, too tired to do anything but submit and blunder 
 heavily home. 
 
 Supper was just over in the cottages. It was a warm 
 evening in June and, while the wives and grown-up daugh- 
 ters washed up in the kitchen, the quarrymen were sitting 
 in the doorways smoking their pipes and talking from 
 house to house. There was but one topic of conversation 
 -Jim. The evening was propitious to romance. The 
 evening star burnt low in the blue vault and almost alone 
 in the heavens. No wind blew, and there was an absolute 
 silence of nature, except for the far-away wash of the 
 Atlantic against the rockbound coast of Ruish. It was a 
 night indeed to stir even the most infinitesimal imagina- 
 tion, and remember please that the natives of Tuchan 
 were nearly all Celts. 
 
 The school-children had carried the story through the 
 village and wives and daughters had all been bursting to 
 impart it in turn to husbands and brothers, when they 
 came home from the Quarries. Once generally hinted 
 it ran like wild-fire down the long thin street of Tuchan, 
 was the only topic of conversation at supper, smoked 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 01 
 
 too in silence with the first after-supper pipe. Each 
 quarryman sat in the lighted quadrilateral of his doorway 
 staring at Hesperus diamond-bright in the dark-blue west 
 and occasionally ejaculating, "Heuch," or "Sakes," as 
 the marvellous story of Jim attained to greater heights of 
 the marvellous in his mind. Once more our Giganticulus 
 had become a prodigy, the prodigy of an hour. Thus 
 the story, lifted by the beauty of that blue evening into 
 a strange romance, shaped itself in each astonished 
 mind. "Jim had tried to kill Johnny Findlater in a 
 sudden, violent fit of madness, broken the Dominie's nose, 
 grossly insulted and threatened the Rev. Simon McManus, 
 whom he had escaped by superior speed of foot, and run 
 away high into the mountains. The Minister had seen 
 him climbing the hills behind the Manse and jouking in 
 among the firs with the agility of one possessed. He had 
 always been a moody, bad-tempered bairn and the mad- 
 ness must suddenly have seized him. How lucky he had 
 injured none of the little anes! Every mother ought to 
 be thankful that the wicked, sullen wretch had not struck, 
 kicked, pushed, mauled, maimed, or otherwise ill-treated 
 one of her own children. He was not a bit sorry for his 
 attempted crime, had even seemed to glory in it when 
 talking to the Minister, who had heard him shouting in 
 his great bawling voice on the hilltops. What an unex- 
 pected and terrible event in the quiet annals of Tuchan! 
 Jim had probably run away to Duke's Ferry, to find a place 
 as cabin-boy on board a ship. A good riddance too! 
 (cried all the mothers). He wouldn't be able to bully 
 anybody on board ship but get the welting he thoroughly 
 deserved. He did deserve it certain. Johnny Find- 
 later could give no reason for Jim's brutality, neither could 
 Jessie McLure. Before going home to Calder's Farm 
 in her father's gig, she had flung far and wide words 
 eloquent of Jim's wickedness. He could not submit to 
 
92 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 even a little good-humoured fun, but with all the sudden 
 malignity of his disposition tried to murder Johnny and 
 would probably have tried to murder some of the others, 
 if the Dominie had not come back in the nick of time. 
 He had pushed her down and cut her elbow. Oh! no, 
 it didn't ache much now, but she scorned a hideous great 
 lout like Jim, who was not content with flinging stones at 
 other boys, but must also push about and hurt girls. It 
 was very sad for Macdonald and his wife to have such a 
 bairn, the others were all peaceable and good-tempered. 
 Alas! there were black sheep in most families, though 
 Tuchan was on the whole a well-behaved little village. 
 Had anyone been to the Macdonalds' cottage? Yes. 
 Mrs. Mclntosh had looked in with a few words of consola- 
 tion ready, but Alexander seemed as glum as a pick-axe 
 and Euphemia was grcetin' sair No wonder, puir body! 
 The Minister and the Doctor had both been there, wanting 
 to know if Jim had come home, and, if so, demanding 
 that he should be delivered for punishment. They had 
 gone away, the Minister in great anger, the Doctor a 
 hantle downcast, when they discovered that Jim had not 
 returned. Did Alexander say anything? He shut the 
 door in Mrs. Mclntosh's face (ou aye), and told her to 
 go to the deil. Mrs. Mclntosh was sair affrontit." 
 
 Aweel (thought everybody), Jim was off, off on the 
 high seas most likely, off to America and everyone was 
 well rid of him, including his family. Romance played 
 the deuce with Celtic imaginations: nothing less than the 
 "high seas" could be the fate of Jim after his strange 
 defiance of order, authority, and morals. "Aweel, Jim's 
 awa'," thought the quarryman in the last cottage, as he 
 sat in his lighted quadrilateral of a doorway, and knocked 
 out the ashes of his pipe before rilling a second. Suddenly, 
 however, he became aware of a big, shambling, but youth- 
 ful figure lumbering up the road, lifting each foot as if it 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 93 
 
 had a weight on it, staggering with a kind of inhuman 
 fatigue. The quarryman stared. The shambling figure 
 came nearer and he saw it was that hero of romantic vil- 
 lainy, Jim, coming back to Tuchan at nightfall. 
 
 "He is come back," cried Mclntosh to the kitchen. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Who if it was not Jim Macdonald, " replied the quarry- 
 man. Dish-cloth in hand, Mrs. Mclntosh ran out and 
 stared at the unconscious Jim, lumbering along under the 
 great weight of Destiny, too tired to feel sorrow, anger, 
 fear, or remorse, too tired for anything. "He is come 
 back," cried Mclntosh to his next door neighbour, a 
 fisherman. "Who?" "Who if it was not Jim Macdonald." 
 In his voice, his trumpet-toned voice, with which he con- 
 tended against the roar of wind and waves, the fisher- 
 man shouted the news down the main street of Tuchan. 
 Every lighted quadrilateral filled with men, boys, and 
 women; the little children, Jim's school-fellows, Angus 
 still smarting under the Dominie's rod, heard in their 
 beds and rushed out, shirted or otherwise; Mrs. Findiater 
 at the Post Office, sitting by the injured Johnny's bed, 
 rose and crossed to the doorway; the narrow mounting 
 street filled with wondering folk, but, still unconscious 
 that anyone watched him, Jim lumbered on, turning 
 his head neither to the right or to the left. Men, 
 pipe in hand, followed him with their eyes but spoke no 
 word; women whispered and chuttered to each other, but 
 spoke no word aloud; children, awed by the silence of 
 their seniors, spoke no word; only Mrs. Findiater, a short 
 brisk little woman, as Jim hove in sight with down-bent 
 head and painful walk, cried in a shrill voice, "Kill my 
 bairn, wad ye? " and picking up the nearest weapon handy, 
 a toasting-fork dashed upon him with all the speed of her 
 strong, short little legs. "Kill my bairn, wad ye?" she 
 cried again, lifting the toasting-fork, and the village looked 
 
94 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 on silent and motionless. "Kill my bairn, wad ye?" she 
 cried again with the toasting-fork lifted. Jim stopped 
 (the tangled red curls were bare) and looked down on the 
 little woman with an indescribably mournful and vacant 
 expression, which had in it no vestige of recognition, 
 "What was ye wantin' ?" he asked in a feeble voice. 
 
 "Did ye try to kill my bairn?" said Mrs. Findlater, "ye 
 wicked, cruel, murderous lad!" 
 
 "I dinna ken," replied Jim. Mrs. Findlater in a fury 
 brought down the toasting-fork with all the strength of 
 her strong thin arm, swack raised it again swack. 
 Shrieking shrill abuse, she belaboured Jim. With hands 
 at side and red head bent our mournful Giganticulus 
 stood passive, motionless, as the blows descended and 
 the wire toasting-fork coiled, biting, round his unwieldy 
 body. The village looked on. No one came between 
 the outraged mother and the boy who ^urt her son. No 
 one moved or said a word as the dim woman's figure be- 
 laboured with sounding blows the dim, big, hobbledehoy 
 figure. Hesperus, diamond-bright in the forehead of the 
 dark-blue vault, twinkled exquisite peace over the little 
 ugly scene of strife. Swack swack swack came 
 Mrs. Findlater's blows. A sound of running feet pattered 
 nearer and nearer thro' the still night air and another 
 woman's figure came swiftly down the hill. 
 
 Jim heard nothing, saw nothing, did not even feel 
 the toasting-fork writhing cruelly round him. Mrs. Find- 
 later, absorbed in her vengeance and shrilling abuse, heard 
 nothing. Only the village saw the approaching figure and 
 remained motionless. It was Euphemia, breatnless, rain- 
 ing tears, choking with sobs. "Jim my son you 
 come home Jim, lad Jim Oh! my bonny big bairn." 
 Feeble, chicken-brained Euphemia, Euphemia filled for 
 once with a great passion, the passion of the mother who 
 thought her son lost and has found him again. With her 
 
95 
 
 left hand she struck Mrs. Findlater's chest and pushed 
 her away, toasting-fork and all it fell with a tinkle on 
 the dimly shining road and then flung her arms round 
 Jim's neck, as, hardly conscious, he bent his mournful eyes 
 on the ground. 
 
 "Jim lad," she choked, as she hung upon him, "we 
 a' (sob) thocht ye'd (sob) rin awa'. Winna ye speak? 
 Tell your puir auld mither ye love her." 
 
 Had he not been tired to death, too tired for any feel- 
 ing, had he not temporarily lost all his sensations with 
 the departure of the new strength that had been his for 
 a while, shy, sensitive Jim would have been overwhelmed 
 by something worse than confusion, even 'plunged into 
 the abyss of shame by such a public display of maternal 
 feeling. Women, however, especially mothers, do not under- 
 stand this modesty natural to the male sex, whether sons, 
 husbands, or brothers. Women let loose their feelings of 
 every kind coram puUico, whether they are inflamed by 
 ire like Mrs. Findlater or overcome with joyful sorrow like 
 Euphemia. Women (God bless 'em or but it is not the 
 intention of the present scribe to state whether he adores, 
 execrates, despises, or views with gentle tolerance the sex. 
 A wise man once said, "I keep my religion and my opinion 
 of women to myself and every other wise man in the world 
 does the same and holds the same views as I do) women 
 (to resume) let the steam escape with a rush and cannot 
 keep it to drive the engine, and so they are apt to think 
 men hard-hearted, whereas but we must really follow 
 our sage's example and stick to narrative. Jim, then, 
 would normally have been overcome with confusion, if 
 not worse, at the overwhelming pathos of Euphemia's 
 welcome. As it was he just lifted a lack-lustre eye and 
 whispered: 
 
 "Mither." 
 
 "Aye laddie laddie Jim your mither who's hairt 
 
% A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 is filled with joy to see you ance mair. Come awa' hame, 
 dearest laddie." With flashing eyes and heaving bosom, 
 burning with the fury of the mother who fights for her 
 offspring, the chicken-headed Euphemia turned on Mrs. 
 Findlater, whose sentiments were oddly enough just the 
 same as her own. But there was no room for a philosophi- 
 cal outlook in those two maternal brains. "Mrs. Find- 
 later," cried Euphemia, drawing herself up to her full 
 height of five feet three inches. "Mrs. Macdonald," 
 answered the post-mistress, erecting all her five feet two 
 and a half inches of stature. Euphemia spurned the 
 toasting-fork with her foot, as she wound an arm round 
 Jim's waist, pressed the ungainly overgrown body in tat- 
 tered clothing to her own. "Mrs. Findlater," she cried in 
 a voice as shrill as that of the woman she addressed, and 
 making the most of the extra half inch of height, "I 
 daur ye to lay finger on my bairn again. Chastise your am 
 snivelling, whey-faced, tow-haired, lassie of a bairn, if ye 
 wull. He'd tak' nae hairm from bein' treated mair like 
 a lad and less like a lassie. I wad be shamed to have a 
 bairn wha could anely paddle about wi' books and writin' 
 and sic-like trash. Huh! sic a clamjamfry for a wee cut 
 o' the heid. It makes me fair shamed. Huh! nae spunk 
 ava' a lassie not a lad a tow-haired lassie." 
 
 The village still looked from its doorways waiting to 
 see if the quarrel would end in blows, while Mrs. Findlater, 
 unable to find any answer to this unexpected attack for a 
 moment or two, toised the hysterical Euphemia up and 
 down, feeling the disadvantage of that extra half inch of 
 height. She, unabashed, returned glances of equal scorn, 
 while our Giganticulus remained an inert lump as if wholly 
 unconscious of this almost Homeric feminine combat. 
 Silence reigned for a few moments, tho' each woman seemed 
 itching to pull the other's hair and the village prepared 
 to separate the two, if necessary. "Come awa' hame, Jim 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 97 
 
 laddie," said Euphemia at last, "an' leave Mrs. Findlater 
 to daut on her beautiful, precious Johnny. There's a nice 
 bit o' supper I'll pit on for ye." She took Jim's arm and 
 mother and son passed up the village street towards their 
 own cottage, leaving Mrs. Findlater breathless and momen- 
 tarily outmatched. "It wasna that Jim minded your 
 fulish little cuts wi' the fork," shouted back Euphemia, 
 "truth he hardly felt them. He isna like your Johnny, 
 he's a grit, strong, weel-grown laddie wi' bluid in his veins, 
 not milk not milk." A hysterical laugh rang down the 
 street as the cottage-door of the Macdonalds closed behind 
 her. " and naethin' ava' in his heid, " shrieked Mrs. 
 Findlater too late, "forbye a peck of idle, useless, wicked, 
 fashious, unchancy pliskies; a doited red-heided cuif! 
 a skellum fit for naethin' but tae pit meat in his kyte and 
 spoil his duds! clarty and crankous an' dirty! wha'll jauk 
 and squattle wi' callets and louns an' gawkies an' gangrels 
 an' dyvors an' live to be hangit. That for your snash, 
 Mrs. Macdonald." With all her fine and lady-like manners 
 forgotten, the post-mistress shrilled abuse in the broadest 
 Scotch, of which, with all due apologies to that hardy race, 
 a rendering is attempted above. But the door of the Mac- 
 donalds' cottage was closed and nothing answered but an 
 echo of mocking laughter. 
 
 Thus ended the combat over the body of the returned 
 prodigal. For the next three-quarters of an hour the 
 village expended its energies in wordy argument, the con- 
 clusion of which was that Jim was everything Mrs. Find- 
 later miscalled him and would end as she prophesied. 
 Upon which charitable judgment the village bade itself 
 good-night and went to bed. 
 
 Overhead in the dark blue vault legions of stars twinkled 
 with unalterable beauty, waiting for the rising of the 
 moon. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT rose swiftly close upon midnight, bathing hills and 
 rivers, islands and lochs in a wonderful half-light 
 more romantic than that of day, till all save the larger 
 stars at the limits of the horizon vanished, and from 
 its stronghold in the middle heavens surveyed the tiny 
 hamlet of Tuchan where all fears and hopes and pas- 
 sions were now laid to rest. Alexander had grumbled 
 himself into unconsciousness some two hours ago. Euphe- 
 mia, worn out with the hysteria of joy and anger, was 
 uneasily asleep dreaming that Jim, once more a baby, but 
 in cocked hat and epaulettes, had knocked down Mr. 
 McManus beside the font and was saying good-bye before 
 taking command of the Fleet. As for Jim, himself, too 
 tired to eat, he had thrown himself into bed, unconscious 
 of the past, heedless of the future. Dominies, ministers, 
 Mrs. Findlater's toasting-forks, grumbling gloomy fathers, 
 excitable weeping mothers, faded away after one flash as 
 he drowned helplessly in the great sea of annihilation 
 called sleep. 
 
 The moon shed its wan searching light through the 
 narrow window under which he lay and palely illumined 
 the tired freckled face with tangled red locks falling all 
 round it. Then, as if fearing that the light might wake 
 him from the rest he needed so much, a cloud, an inky 
 black cloud, which had been gradually creeping over the 
 heavens, covered the inquisitive face of Lady Moon, and 
 Jim, who had stirred uneasily once or twice, relapsed into 
 absolute, almost breathless quiet. Sleep, sleep, freckled 
 Endymion ! A little wind began to moan round the chim- 
 
 98 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 99 
 
 neys of the hamlet and a few drops of rain pattered down. 
 The voice of the wind grew stronger and the inky black 
 cloud came on till it stood right over Tuchan, covering 
 three-quarters of the sky with a pall. Down came the rain 
 in good earnest it was now about five o'clock in the morn- 
 ing hissed over the waters of the loch, whipped the 
 street with countless arrows, struck, in a moment, the 
 last glimmering distances from view. 
 
 When the various households rose for the business of 
 the day, the spell laid upon them by the romantic blue 
 and silver of yesterday evening had passed. Everything 
 was clinging-damp and misty-grey. The violence of the 
 storm had gone, but a drizzling veil obscured the moun- 
 tains from view and seemed to shut the inhabitants of 
 Tuchan in upon themselves, without a hint of the majesty 
 of opened heavens, lonely heathery mountains, a larger, 
 mysterious world. Even the waters of the loch below 
 the village looked dreary. 
 
 The mind of Tuchan was changed with the changed 
 mind of Nature. Everyone felt glum, uncomfortable, 
 stupid, and fretful. Jim certainly any romance con- 
 nected with him was forgotten. His adventures had 
 become almost commonplace and insipid. The Mac- 
 donald family woke like the rest of the village: Alexander 
 peevish and gloomy, gloomier than ever about Jim; 
 Euphemia with the first hysterical gladness at finding the 
 lost turned into drab anxiety as to the future of the found; 
 Jim with a sickly katzenjammer upon him. It seemed 
 almost incredible to our Giganticulus, restored to his ordi- 
 nary mild and innocuous disposition, that the events of the 
 previous day could have been real. Jim was, I suppose, 
 something of a coward. At any rate he was without the 
 power of continuous, unhesitating, ruthless action. He 
 always had to look back! And now he wondered whether, 
 after all, the petty oppressions, which he suffered at school, 
 
100 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 warranted such a mad outburst on his part, whether they 
 were not due to his own feeble nature. 
 
 For a moment he fairly shivered with apprehension in 
 the clear morning sanity of his mind, the sanity that 
 came with a body cooled a little below blood-heat, by the 
 unnatural fatigues of the previous day. 
 
 That vague sense of the unreality of everything, of the 
 absence of necessity for anything, that was to haunt him 
 henceforward till the day when the Red Mist came before 
 his eyes again and the sense of unnatural strength filled 
 him once more, was strong upon him, when he awoke. 
 
 Something had, perhaps, been torn from him in the 
 stress of that fierce outburst of passion, but yesterday 
 seemed a dream, to-day another dream, to-morrow the 
 shadow of a dream. 
 
 Euphemia called him that morning with everything 
 practical in her nature awake and nearly everything 
 romantic vanished. 
 
 She remained affectionate, but for such a feeble, queru- 
 lous body was almost stern. Jim must begin to pay for 
 his sins and misdemeanours (that much was evident to 
 her with the others). Yet, even as she informed him, 
 "Your farther wushes to speak wi' ye afore he goes to the 
 Quarries," she thought the lad looked very tired still, and 
 determined to make a specially good breakfast. It was 
 a meal taken, but without that phenomenal appetite 
 which continued to be Alexander's despair. In fact only 
 two bowls of porridge, three slices of bacon, and four bits 
 of bread were absorbed. 
 
 "Jim, my man, you're no eating," said his mother; 
 "are ye no weel?" 
 
 "Hoots! He's lucky to hae ony kind of a meal," said 
 his father, fixing a gloomy eye on the culprit. "Was I 
 not hearing somebody last nicht talking about an idle 
 skellum guid for naethin* but crammin' his kyte." 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 101 
 
 The allusion was lost upon our young friend, but melan- 
 choly surged over him as he remembered his ineffectiveness. 
 The old sorrowful question began to haunt him once more, 
 "Why was he not the same as everyone else? If he had 
 been an ordinary bairn with average, capable intelligence, 
 all this need never have happened." 
 
 As it was he was just clumsy, overgrown, red-headed 
 Jim, at a loss for an answer, helpless, useless. What his 
 father said was true. He could do nothing except devour 
 food. A great resolution came to him. Henceforward he 
 would eat no more than anyone else. No one could accuse 
 him then of "crammin' his kyte." Shyness, his powerful 
 enemy, forbade him to speak, but, Jim, it was a great 
 resolution though undoubtedly on the wrong lines, a resolu- 
 tion horse-after-cart, as if one should determine to walk 
 upon his hands, because he paced quicker than all others. 
 Yet, in some ways, it was a great resolution. 
 
 The Giganticulus remained thus silent, but pondering 
 mighty things. To a father, however, who expected his 
 son to make some humble confession of bad behaviour, 
 such silence seemed only sullenness and obstinacy. Yet 
 speak this strange fellow could not, however much he 
 tried, and Alexander lost the little patience that remained 
 to him. 
 
 "Ye sit there like a gawkie an' say naethin'," he cried 
 in a sudden burst of anger, "but tell me now what are we 
 to do wi' ye? Ye winna work at the schule and, my 
 sakes, can ye gae back after yesterday? Ye've half-killed 
 a bairn, struck the Dominie, abused the Meenister. Iss 
 there onything ye havena done except your duty? I canna 
 think sic a bairn is oors. What are we to do wi' ye?" 
 
 "I dinna ken," replied Jim, and bowed his head lower 
 as he felt the tears well into his eyes, and realised how 
 useless and helpless he was. "Ye dinna ken! Ye dinna 
 ken!" cried Alexander violently. "I hate the wumman 
 
102 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 but I overhaird some of her observations last nicht an' 
 I'm thinkin' they may be no sae far wrang. Mrs. Find- 
 later" 
 
 "Wheesht," said Euphemia, firing up in -her turn, "I'll 
 no hear that wumman's name mentioned in my hoose. 
 Of a'" 
 
 "I'll mention who I please," rejoined Alexander, red 
 in the face and with whiskers bristling. 
 
 "No before me," replied Euphemia and burst into tears. 
 Alexander sat furious at the interruption and furious with 
 his wife for "greeting." He glowered and thumped the 
 table; inarticulately, explosively stuttered. As for Jim, 
 the Giganticulus sat plunged in deeper despair than ever. 
 Wherever he came, thought he, there was discord. The 
 tears poured down his freckled cheeks, and yet his ridicu- 
 lous, phenomenal shyness, shyness quite and absolutely 
 proportioned to that phenomenal frame, forbade him saying 
 one single tiny word of either contrition, apology, or excuse. 
 Suddenly, after one peremptory knock upon the door, the 
 Reverend Simon McManus burst in upon this pleasant 
 family party. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE Minister bore evident signs of haste. His white 
 cheek was unshorn, and his white brow wet with 
 perspiration. 
 
 "So," he said, addressing the culprit without a word 
 of greeting to Euphemia or Alexander. "So, Jim Mac- 
 donald, you're home at last. Happily, the stone-breaker 
 told my cook you came back last night. Wicked boy, I 
 suppose you thought to escape the punishment you deserve 
 by running away. I suspected as much, but I'll answer 
 for it you don't escape again." 
 
 The Reverend Simon's lower lip protruded ominously. 
 
 "Tell me," he said, "was that not your intention, Jim 
 Macdonald?" 
 
 "I dinna ken," answered Jim, raising his blubbered 
 freckled face for a moment. 
 
 "Ah! tears, I see," replied the Reverend Simon tri- 
 umphantly. "Jim Macdonald is in a humble mood this 
 morning. Tears! but they, let me tell you, my young 
 friend, won't get you off. Tears ! they are the refuge of the 
 coward, but the coward must pay the penalty for his ill- 
 deeds just as much as the brave man, Jim Macdonald. 
 Don't you think so?" 
 
 "I dinna ken," answered Jim in the same helpless way 
 as before. 
 
 "He must come back to the school with me," said the 
 Reverend Simon turning to Jim's parents, "come back at 
 once. I'm sure you both agree with me that he should 
 be thoroughly well punished for the breaking of all the 
 school rules, his wicked temper, which might have ended 
 
 103 
 
104 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 in another boy's death, and his unparalleled insolence to 
 Mr. Maitland and myself. " 
 
 Euphemia, overawed as usual by the presence of the 
 Reverend Simon, could only nod and make faces of assent 
 through her streaming tears. Alexander had risen and 
 looked very sulky. 
 
 "I'm glad you're sensible enough to agree with me," 
 said the Reverend Simon, "I'm glad your fond mother's 
 heart is not so partial as to wish Jim to avoid the chastise- 
 ment that will be healthy both for his body and his soul. 
 I'm glad, very glad, Mrs. Macdonald. Mrs. Findlater 
 (Euphemia stiffened and began to sniff instead of sob) 
 says, and you'll be pleased to hear it, I'm sure, that 
 Johnny (Euphemia's air grew quite pugnacious) has had 
 an] excellent night's rest and is little the worse this morn- 
 ing for his accident." 
 
 "Huh!" replied Euphemia with an imperceptible snort, 
 "excuse me, Meenister, your umbrella's drippin' on the 
 flur. May I put it on the mat? " She took the offending 
 article from the Reverend Simon's hand and deposited it 
 by the door. 
 
 "Huh!" she muttered to herself, "sic a flummox for a 
 wee bit scratch. It's naethin' but a lassie ava." 
 
 "And now, Alexander!" continued the Reverend Simon, 
 taken somewhat aback by Euphemia's action (the quarry- 
 man stiffened in the same way his wife had done). "I 
 need not fear that, where the gentle heart of Mrs. Mac- 
 donald has agreed to a painful necessity, the sterner and 
 more practical heart of the father will - 
 
 "Eh! Meenister," interrupted Alexander cautiously, 
 but with a mighty red face, "I'm thinkin' the preecise 
 manner in which oor Jim sud be punished is a matter 
 which is requirin' a ver-r-ra careful deleeberation on 
 the pairt of Mrs. Macdonald an' ma'sel." 
 
 Nothing could exceed the infinite slowness with which 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 105 
 
 Alexander drawled out the above sentence. The Reverend 
 Simon heard him with anger growing more and more 
 marked in his white face. His lower lip shot further and 
 further out. Black furrows of a frown knotted themselves 
 on his square white forehead. 
 
 "Tut tut tut, Alexander," he cried, when the 
 quarryman had ended. "This is not what I expected 
 not what I expected at all oh! no indeed. Jim must 
 be punished by the proper authorities the proper author- 
 ities oh ! yes Mr. Maitland and myself each in his 
 proper sphere not a doubt of it. You must bring your- 
 self to realise that, my man. It's highly important you 
 should realise that highly important. Jim must come 
 back with me at once. Mr. Maitland " 
 
 Alexander looked sulkier than ever: his little whiskers 
 quivered with animosity: his face was the picture of 
 obstinacy. 
 
 "Mr. Maitland, " he said in the same slow drawling 
 voice, "Mr. Maitland's the Dominie, I'm thinkin', but 
 the Dominie's no the faither of the bairn. I'm the 
 faither, Meenister, and I'm gaein' to punish him in my 
 ain way." 
 
 "Macdonald!" exclaimed the Reverend Simon, "do you 
 mean ?" 
 
 "I mean what I say, Meenister," replied the quarryman 
 inflexibly. "An' now, if you'll excuse me, Meenister, I 
 maun gae to the Quarries. I'm ower late as it is." 
 
 The Minister glowered, holding his temper hard. 
 
 "Mrs. Macdonald?" he cried, knowing his influence 
 over Euphemia, "cannot you persuade your husband? I 
 assure you " 
 
 To his surprise Euphemia looked as inflexible as Alex- 
 ander. 
 
 "A'm thinkin' my man's the best judge," replied Euphe- 
 mia, "its no a case where a wumman sud interfere. " 
 
106 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Do as you like," thundered the Minister, losing all 
 control of himself, and the consequences be on your own 
 head. Do not blame me if the boy goes to the bad, as 
 I'm sure he will," he said viciously, turning on Jim, who was 
 standing stupefied and helpless in a corner of the room. 
 "But let me tell you one thing for certain, and I'm sure I 
 speak for Mr. Mailland as well as for myself, the boy 
 shall not enter the school, till he comes back with a written 
 apology from you and an undertaking that he shall submit 
 to the school discipline." 
 
 "I was no intendin' he sud r-r-etur-rn to the schule," 
 replied Alexander in the same slow drawl. 
 
 Without another word the Reverend Simon turned his 
 broad back, caught up his umbrella, left the house, and 
 slammed the door. 
 
 "Ohl Alexander," said Euphemia in a timorous voice. 
 
 "Peace, wumman," replied her husband, "I'll hae no one 
 patronisin' me, comin' into my hoose without a word, 
 tellin' me what to do wi' my ain bairn, calling me 
 Alexander. " 
 
 "And," said Euphemia with a certain spirit, "I'm no 
 wushin' that Mrs. Findlater an' an' her precious Johnny 
 sad be pit doon ma throat ony mair." 
 
 Thus did the vagaries of that singularly unphilosophical 
 couple, his parents, save Jim from a further spell of slavery 
 under the Dominie's rule. 
 
 "An* now, Jim, my man," said Alexander, "I'm gaein 
 to gie ye the biggest weltin' ye've ever had. To-morrow 
 ye shall come and work wi' me in the Quarries." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IT is a curious reflection that our lives seem to run in 
 cycles. A period of comparative quiescence is suc- 
 ceeded by a burst of feverish activity, a period of resigna- 
 tion followed by a year or two of undreamt of joy or 
 undreamt of sorrow. That conglomeration of activities, 
 yclept "a man," has to reserve its energies, during these 
 periods of quiescence, in order to extract all the essence of 
 the approaching climax. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the outward appearance of "the 
 man" may seem equable, and he may think to himself 
 that he has at last attained the coveted calm attained by 
 a few of the greater sages, somewhere in the depths new 
 activities are stirring, waiting to clash with new experi- 
 ences, stirring restlessly, ceaselessly, giving "the man" no 
 peace, even though he may be almost unconscious of them. 
 
 At the beginning of Part II of my biography, I wrote 
 how our friend the Giganticulus found a great calm in his 
 manual labour on the hills, but I also told how often and 
 often, as he sat on a boulder, his red head in his hands, 
 he would stare far away over the great valley of Calder 
 towards the Pass of Ballandarroch, where the narrow track 
 ran like a thread through forests of firs, climbing between 
 the snow-topped peaks of More and Moich, and at length 
 vanishing into an unknown country. Those were his rest- 
 less hours. Some hint of Fate must have warned him 
 that on a day to come his feet would tread the lofty path 
 and carry him into the unknown. 
 
 Yet, after his miserable lustrum at school, Jim, for at 
 least a year following the incidents described in the pre- 
 ceding chapters, enjoyed that delightful feeling of calm. 
 
 107 
 
108 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 All the enmities, hatreds, jealousies, and violence that 
 had racked him, faded away into a shadowy past. 
 
 Fair-haired, blue-eyed Johnny Findlater was only part 
 of a dream. 
 
 Black-haired, passionate Jessie McLure, part of a dream. 
 
 The long-nosed, sarcastic little Dominie, part of a dream. 
 
 That fateful blow, which tapped Maitland's claret, part 
 of a dream. 
 
 The terrific welting received from Alexander and endured 
 with something like philosophic fortitude, part of a dream. 
 
 In fact, it was only in real dreams that Jim lived the past 
 vividly once more. By this we see that secret energies 
 were stirring in him the whole time, which gained power 
 only when his conscious personality no longer assumed 
 direction. 
 
 To begin with, and during the first year at least, he 
 seemed to have put the past entirely behind him, neither 
 to regret it, nor hate it, nor wish to think on it, nor feel 
 it, nor want to examine it. It appeared to have entirely 
 escaped from him in that fierce outburst of passion, when 
 the Red Mist came into his eyes for the first time. 
 
 Then, though he hardly noticed them, vague and uneasy 
 feelings began to haunt him, an indefinable ache, the desire 
 for something, which he could not express, though I do 
 not suppose he ever tried. There was nothing tumult- 
 uous in these feelings, nothing to make him really un- 
 happy, as he had been before, but with them came for the 
 first time the dreams in which he lived the past so vividly 
 again the dreams in which he saw Jessie, with her black 
 hair flying and her dark face aglow in which he heard 
 the cutting taunts of Johnny Findlater and writhed in 
 which his miserable hours in the ill-lit narrow schoolroom 
 came back with almost ah* their old intensity in which 
 he once more hit the Dominie's long nose and felt it 
 deliciously squash under his fist. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 109 
 
 These dreams would, for an hour or two, leave him 
 curiously moved, but the pure air of the mountains and 
 the strenuous labour of the Quarries availed to banish his 
 emotion and leave him healthily tired. 
 
 The foreman, a good-humoured fellow, and a friend to 
 Alexander, was kind to our Giganticulus. So were the 
 men with whom he worked and gradually, among the little 
 company at the Quarries, Jim's reputation began to be 
 rehabilitated. But then I doubt whether he had ever 
 seemed very black to the easy-going, generally well-disposed, 
 rough-and-ready quarrymen. After all Jim's were only 
 school-boy crimes, and schoolmasters are schoolmasters, 
 ministers ministers all the world over. 
 
 Jim's principal enemies had left Tuchan. First of all 
 the Dominie went. His authority had been undermined 
 by Jim's blow. His nose was indeed twisted forever and 
 not even a double quantity of undiluted sarcasm could 
 carry off the effect. 
 
 Then Mrs. Findlater, to the great delight of Euphemia, 
 migrated to a big Scotch town, at a grammar-school in 
 which her Johnny had gained a scholarship. 
 
 Last of all Farmer McLure left Calder's Farm. His 
 wife, that woman with ideas on the importance of her 
 family, urged him to move nearer a country town, where 
 Jessie could get a better education. 
 
 Though these three, Jessie, Johnny, and Mrs. Maitland, 
 had left Tuchan, there were not wanting those in the 
 village who were unwilling to let Jim restore himself to 
 popular favour. The principal fermenter of this agitation 
 was, of course, the Reverend Simon McManus. He used 
 his influence with the women of Tuchan to have Jim 
 declared outlaw, told the little children to beware of him. 
 
 The art of drawing Jims, that form of pictorial tor- 
 ment invented by Johnny Findlater, had not been for- 
 gotten. Every blank wall in the village was covered with 
 
110 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 them, and it has not been discovered that the Reverend 
 Simon ever took any pains to have them washed out. 
 
 I even believe that Jim was used as a kind of bogey to 
 scare naughty infants into obedience. It is certain that, 
 if they saw him coming, the tots of the village would burst 
 into yells unquenchable, till their mothers came out and 
 took them into the house. Thus among the female and 
 infant population of Tuchan, the Jim-myth revolved in a 
 vicious circle, like a wounded snake, which moves round 
 and round, biting its back and at every bite inflames the 
 original source of pain. No one, after a short time, remem- 
 bered whether Jim had actually maimed, mauled, threat- 
 ened, frightened, or otherwise ill-treated a helpless child 
 or whether it was only practically certain that he would, 
 if he could. All women, however, agreed with singular 
 unanimity that Jim was a dangerous character, living, 
 even as Mrs. Findlater prophesied, "to be hangit," and all 
 the little ones howled as he went by. 
 
 Two or three years turned them from infants to teach- 
 able children, and when they went to the school, where 
 Mr. Maitland's successor reigned, they found the Jim- 
 myth in its most lurid form. Heaven knows what singular 
 tales of this red-headed desperado were whispered from 
 child to child in the narrow grimy classroom! 
 
 It is the nature of human beings to accustom themselves 
 to anything, and, although, as we have seen, this cruel 
 treatment had for many years humiliated and hurt Jim 
 beyond any words, after a time, strengthened as he was 
 by the air and labour of the Quarries, he became com- 
 pletely resigned, no longer even noticed it, shot up longer 
 and leaner every day. His overgrown body did not look 
 so clumsy as in the days of his childhood, his freckled 
 face was healthily tanned. The grey-brown eye was, how- 
 ever, rather melancholy and wistful in expression, and 
 he was fond of gazing into distances, such as the great 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 111 
 
 Calder Valley, for instance, till the foreman would say to 
 him good-naturedly: 
 
 "Eh! Jim lad, wauk up! Dreamin' waunt mak' a quar- 
 ryman. Tak' the bausket and off wi' ye." 
 
 Thus in Tuchan the Jim-myth grew from day to day 
 among the children, women, and newcomers, and thus life 
 in the Stone-Quarries, rude, rough, healthy, rather lonely, 
 (he was a boy among men), quasi-comtemplative like all 
 life in the mountains, and strengthening began, as far as 
 the body went, to make a man of Jim. He put on inches 
 as other people put on their hats. 
 
o 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 NLY he could not take them off again. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 / 
 
 I THINK I have mentioned further back that there 
 always lurked in Jim's mind a wonderful idea that his 
 growth was merely temporary, a premature shooting of 
 the limbs to cease in due course and leave his coevals to 
 creep up to his shoulder, his head next, and then (oh! 
 exquisite thought), perhaps even finally overtop him. 
 
 This idea, nursed as a sorrowful and yet not entirely 
 hopeless secret, continued to delude our Giganticulus. 
 
 Though he had become more or less resigned to a lonely 
 existence, he could never persuade himself to do anything 
 but hate his huge body and still longed with all the 
 dormant force of his passionate nature to be ordinary a 
 boy of decent, average, unremarkable size. That vow to 
 eat no more than boys of decent, average, unremarkable 
 size was made indeed without any ulterior view as to its 
 effect on growth, but, after keeping it religiously for a few 
 days, he was struck with this lightning-flash of an idea. A 
 meagre diet,"meagre for him, might really curtail his shoot- 
 ing powers. 
 
 It was another delusion. Jim went hungry to no pur- 
 pose, if we except Alexander's satisfaction and Euphemia's 
 anxiety. She asked him: 
 
 "Hae ye nae stomach for your meat, laddie? Are ye 
 no feelin' weel?" 
 
 Jim could not explain his motives. He knew from old 
 experience that Euphemia would never understand. There 
 the matter stood and after a bit the Macdonald family 
 became accustomed to a less voracious Jim. 
 
 As for the lightning-flash that illumined Jim's mind 
 
 "3 
 
Ill A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 with hope, it died away as quickly almost as it came, leav- 
 ing him in a deeper darkness of despair. 
 
 He continued to shoot up and up and up, like the 
 bamboo in a damp tropical night, like the beanstalk 
 planted by Jack of the fairy-tale ('twas a portent). He 
 became bigger and broader and stronger every day; his 
 hands and feet were especially enormous, the badge of his 
 future gianthood, for, as everyone knows, they come to 
 their full size long before the rest of the body reaches 
 maturity. What hands! 
 ,. What feet! ('twas indeed a portent!) 
 
 Alexander would now fall into the way of looking at 
 that enormous palm and those enormous fingers, as if they 
 aroused in him a strange and direful suspicion, which yet 
 he could not quite put into words. He watched them 
 sometimes at meals as Jim plied knife and fork, sometimes 
 at the Quarries, as he fell into one of his fits of abstraction. 
 
 Alexander could not keep his eyes off those hands. One 
 day Jim caught him looking, brow-knitted, face puzzled. 
 
 Jim's freckled cheeks became incarnadined. He felt as 
 if he shared with his father a dreadful secret, some fate 
 hovering over him imminent and yet indescribable. 
 
 From that day the comparative calm of the last three 
 years began to desert him. 
 
 Our Giganticulus was now fifteen, a curious boy to 
 see. On the top of him was still those tangled masses 
 of red hair and then a small innocent face with roundish 
 tanned cheeks and, as it were, a puzzled doubtful expres- 
 sion changing, in moments of abstraction, to one decidedly 
 mournful. His neck was long and thick. His shoulders 
 sloped rather, giving promise of great strength, and were 
 from point to point of extraordinary breadth. Jim was 
 still lanky and clumsy, a hobbledehoy from the soles of his 
 enormous feet to the topmost lock of his red hair, and one 
 did not realise the thickness of his back, thickness of his 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 115 
 
 arms and legs, thickness of his loins, thickness of his neck, 
 till one compared him with, say, oneself. 
 
 Then one stood gaping, if one knew his age. "Only 
 fifteen! no more?" anyone everyone cried. 
 
 (See Jim draw into himself! How he longs to be ordi- 
 nary just ordinary not a thing for sight-seers.) 
 
 The eye of critical measurement ran once more from 
 top to toe, heedless, in the brutality of egotistical astonish- 
 ment, whether Jim winced or flushed, and endeavoured to 
 take in the portent. It was undoubtedly something not 
 seen before, rather ridiculous perhaps. (Jim would read 
 this in the tell-tale eyes. Such are the sorrows of budding 
 giants.) One would perhaps smile a little. The spectacle 
 was fantastic, verra strange something to be remem- 
 bered with other tales of curiosity and wonder over the 
 cottage fire, when the brew went round and the pipes were 
 lit, a cap to another's yarn, as, for instance: 
 
 "Ance I was seein' a dog twenty- three years auld, and, 
 mon alive, I'm tellin' the truth," or "Ance I met a mon 
 wha knew a mon wha said he'd seen a ghaist" or "a sea- 
 sairpent" or "the king" or "London." So an old weather- 
 beaten fisherman could call out, "Ance I was fushin' off 
 Ruish, the simmer before last, an' we pit into Tuchan, an' 
 mon alive I'm tellin' ye the truth, I was seein' a laddie 
 fifteen years auld, walking in the street " and then no 
 doubt the tale, like other fisherman's tales, and Jim would 
 grow in the process of telling. 
 
 All this Jim could read in the eyes of the few, the very 
 few strangers who saw him, for few strangers visited 
 Tuchan, and so gradually came more and more to the con- 
 clusion that the greatest happiness for him would be to 
 remain a quarryman, to work all day in the open air 
 and then to return to sleep, sound except when the dreams 
 haunted him. That would indeed be the greatest happi- 
 ness, to live and clie in Tuchan, not to go further abroad 
 
116 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 where the tell-tale eyes and following glances of strangers 
 would rack every tender susceptibility in his great body. 
 
 Let him even pretend to himself, a fiction which 
 surely (oh! Jim) could harm no one, that he was a boy 
 of just ordinary, average, decent, unremarkable size. It 
 was easy to pretend this, very easy, till a strange eye saw 
 him, and opened wide with astonishment, or till Alexander, 
 looking at him in a kind of bewilderment, cried: 
 
 "Losh! whathaunds!" 
 
 Then the agreeable fiction would take wings and leave 
 Jim miserable till, by a gentle course of self-deception, he 
 coaxed it back again. Thus wavered he between peace 
 and unhappiness, being indeed on a balance, but oh! how 
 vain is it to attempt an escape from truth. Jim might 
 gloze, cozen, cheat, beguile himself, but, in spite of these 
 fraudulent snatches at the summum bonum, he spurted 
 still, grew unceasingly out of his jerseys and corduroys, 
 overtopped at length all his companions at the Quarries, 
 though he was only fifteen years old. 
 
 He was not yet a gigas, in good truth, only a giganticulus, 
 but he was growing, growing, growing, as if he would never 
 stop, and knew it. Deep down in his heart he knew it, 
 but, still cowardly, wished to blind himself to the fact, if 
 possible. He had the body of a gigas, but not yet the mind 
 of a gigas, not yet the mind of even a giganticulus. He had 
 no mind and no courage to speak of. 
 
 Some day, perhaps, he will have a heart as big as his 
 hands and feet. 
 
 And what huge, huge hands and feet they were. 
 
 Losh! 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 JIM, then, bore the appearance of a youth moderately 
 content and Alexander, what with one thing and 
 another, began to forget the grudge he had felt against 
 him ever since his birth, aye, and before it. 
 
 He was puzzled, astonished, sometimes even worried by 
 the portentous size of his youngest son, but it cannot be 
 said a thing so personal to Jim himself, as this abnormal 
 growth, caused the quarryman any very serious qualms 
 for the present. Even he did not realise that Jim would, 
 in a very few years, become a full-blown giant, but even 
 had he done so, he could never have been capable of enter- 
 ing into the sensations of a human being set apart from 
 his fellow-mortals by such a mysterious dispensation. 
 Only giants can sympathise with giants. I have already 
 given Jim all the sympathy at my command, but how can 
 a mere pigmy of some five feet nine inches put himself 
 into the shoes of a colossal ? I have a pair of James Mac- 
 donald's shoes, as a matter of fact, which the amiable 
 fellow presented to me on his departure to the Court of 
 Tokio (what a sensation he will cause amongst our tiny 
 allies!) and I often, for the fun of the thing, try standing 
 in them. 
 
 You cannot conceive what an eerie feeling the situation 
 produces. In my own pair of highlows, patched and indif- 
 ferently polished though they may be (literary work is 
 very indifferently remunerated), I have at any rate the 
 comfortable sensation of being well planted on my own 
 basis, of being capable of steering my own course whether 
 in town or country, of rinding these somewhat ancient 
 
 117 
 
118 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 fabrics a decidedly serviceable appendage to the foot. 
 Directly, however, I step into James' shoes, my legs, and 
 consequently myself, seem at the entire mercy of queer 
 ungovernable forces. If I try to walk, I stagger and reel. 
 It is all very well in my modest parlour, where nothing 
 can molest me. There, of course, I am safe. If, however, 
 I were to try a walk abroad in James' shoes, heaven knows 
 what would become of me! All those passengers and 
 vehicles thro' which I tread my way so neatly and briskly, 
 when I have "my own" on, would become intensely, 
 horrifyingly formidable obstacles. I should get shouted 
 at, cursed, jostled, punched, bewildered, frightened, and 
 finally, in all probability, knocked down and killed. That 
 is to say, if I attempted to take the main routes. Or sup- 
 pose, for the sake of argument, I foresaw these dangers 
 and elected to go by an unfrequented way, where the travel- 
 lers were few and the traffic practically non-existent, ten 
 to one that these accursed, eccentric, immeasurable shoes 
 of the Scotch Giant would lead me utterly astray. There 
 would be no one on those unfrequented roads to point out 
 my path to me and I should be lost forevermore. 
 Oh! no, decidedly, one cannot wear a giant's shoes. 
 
 To return however to Alexander and Jim! They were 
 at that time on fairly friendly though not intimate terms. 
 Alexander did not perhaps feel this lack of intimacy. It 
 was very different in the case of Euphemia. Jim was her 
 youngest and her biggest son. 
 
 Through all the mutations of his life he had remained her 
 favourite, even though the little girl Effie had, at a critical 
 moment, if you remember, unavoidably taken the larger 
 part of her attention. 
 
 Yet the birth of the little girl had made a rift between 
 mother and son, the interference of the Reverend Simon 
 widened the rift, and the peculiar circumstances of our 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 119 
 
 big fellow's boyhood broadened it into something like a 
 chasm. 
 
 Euphemia looked sorrowfully across this chasm. How 
 she longed to be able to convey herself over it and take 
 Jim to her breast! Many a time she tried the crossing, 
 only to be baffled. He was almost a man now and she 
 thought that sometime or other she could be useful to 
 him. 
 
 Yet there on the other side stood Jim, lonely and some- 
 times moody. The mother's eye saw that much. They 
 could not even touch hands across the chasm. It was too 
 far. Jim, in some intuitive fashion, felt that it was too far, 
 though he did not know in those days that he must 
 always be alone, "alone without anie companie." 
 
 Poor feeble, querulous Euphemia! She always hoped to 
 be Jim's mother, his mother in earnest, in the truest sense 
 of the word, yet, by the very nature of things, she never 
 could be. 
 
 Euphemias cannot stand in the shoes of giants any more 
 than the humble writer of this biography. Euphemias 
 cannot understand the isolation of the colossus, the 
 loneliness of a different world. Euphemias must keep 
 clean the hearth, mended the socks, bright the porringer 
 and platter, shining the window, dustless the chair and 
 table. 
 
 Tedious and tiresome duties enough, i'fegs, but duties 
 under the nose, the fingers, and the eye! These, the ties 
 of family, and the bruises that come to all in life, with 
 some small aspirations perhaps, make up the existence of 
 Euphemias. But no more than the Alexanders can they 
 comprehend the lonely outlook of the giant, standing a yard 
 above his fellow-creatures, gazing down upon them with 
 luminous eye, and conscious of a superhuman strength, 
 
120 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 to which none other can pretend. How can he not despise 
 the queer pigmies he sees bustling round him, anyone of 
 whom he could pick up and toss into a basket behind him, 
 as tall Agrippa did to the bad little boys and girls? How 
 remain benignant under such peculiar circumstances, 
 especially if he has been thro' all that our worthy red- 
 headed James went through? Why (oh! tell me why) 
 does he not rush madly through them, battering their 
 heads together, spilling them sideways, trampling on them, 
 disabusing them of the idea of their importance, revenging 
 himself for all the insults received at their hands, before 
 he came to a giant's strength ? 
 
 'Tis wonderful to have a giant's strength. 
 
 'Tis horrible to use it as a giant. 
 
 In the great tender, pulsing heart of the giant is a mar- 
 vellous pity. He does not spare himself but only others. 
 
 And yet, you may say, Jim felt no pity for Euphemia, 
 if he did not try to cross the chasm which lay between 
 them. Oh! he did! Often he became sorrowful, as he 
 looked back across it, and thought of the might-have-been, 
 thought how they could have been mother and son, if 
 he had only been an ordinary boy, for on occasions like 
 these, in these deep-hearted searchings, his agreeable fic- 
 tion would not serve. 
 
 Alas! not even a Giant can contend with the Mighty 
 Must (as Sir W. S. Gilbert calls it). 
 
 The subter-conscious Jim was already aware that no 
 ordinary doom awaited him. 
 
 Sometimes in dreams and even in his waking dreams 
 he recalled the Homeric battle between Euphemia and Mrs. 
 Findlater. 
 
 Was he grateful to Euphemia for rescuing him from shrill 
 fury and a toasting-fork ? 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 121 
 
 It seemed to him that Euphemia's conduct had been 
 wrong. Undoubtedly she meant well, if such a term could 
 be applied to an action of impulse, but where he himself 
 had submitted with resignation, it was no part of anyone, 
 not even his mother, to interfere. 
 
 From the hills Jim had seen how petty and ignoble all 
 his sufferings seemed; he had known the lonely majesty 
 of winds, hills, and skies, and recanted. 
 
 Then did Euphemia, roused by passion, rush like a fury 
 into the fray. 
 
 The lonely heart of the Giganticulus knew she was 
 wrong and pitied her, loved her for it, yes, but could say 
 not one word with reference to that evening. He remained 
 as aloof as before, and so no wonder poor Euphemia felt 
 wounded. 
 
 In spite of the hysteria of joy with which she had wel- 
 comed Jim home that night, when she thought him lost 
 and knew he was found, in spite of her determination that 
 henceforward, after any punishment he might have to 
 undergo, Jim should be her "dearest big bairn," in spite 
 of the fact that for a time she believed him to have been 
 unjustly treated, a doubt began once more to creep into 
 Euphemia's mind, a doubt engendered by slighted affec- 
 tion based on no overt act. 
 
 "Was Jim really a guid son to her?" 
 
 War had been declared between them, but a truce lately 
 patched, and more than once she dwelt upon the opinion 
 held of him by 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Reverend Simon McManus. 
 
 JL As we know, this gentleman had never forgiven 
 Jim. We had our word about the Euphemias and Alex- 
 anders, now comprehend the trouble that comes on such 
 worthy, look-under-the-nose folk when a rare creature 
 such as a giant happens to be born unto them. If they 
 do not dislike him, they are irritated by him; if they 
 cannot cramp his big frame in the half-worn-out, third- 
 hand fragments of clothing bequeathed by family custom, 
 they fret, weep, growl, and rage as elbows and knees burst 
 unconfined through threadbare body-coverings, which they 
 thrust upon him. He is all wanton, uncontrollable, boister- 
 ous energy and misdirection. They put him half-naked, 
 but as yet unashamed, in a ridiculous sack petticoat. The 
 worthy creatures can do no more. All proper clothing he 
 has long ago scraped, torn, excoriated into bits. No help 
 for it then! 
 
 Let him run, roll, wallow in the sack-petticoat. They 
 have done all that he can demand by family right. 
 
 Then, in guise of the Reverend Simon McManus, see 
 the upright, unbending form of Public Convention approach 
 with out-shot lower lip and white forehead, furrowed in 
 dark wrinkles of annoyance. 
 
 " You must conform ! " says he. "We cannot have under 
 our noses an object such as you, imperfectly clothed, a 
 menace to propriety already, dirty, semi-naked, and red- 
 haired. This village is my province. Behold in me, in my 
 square upraised hand, in my out-shot lip which poises ere 
 
 122 
 
123 
 
 delivering its well-pondered definite judgments, in my 
 correct costume, the highly respectable and unexception- 
 able insignia of my office, a custodian, approbated and 
 admired, of the public and health, happiness, morals. 
 
 " You must conform, my young friend ! In the first place 
 it is only I and not you yourself, who know what is good 
 for you. In the second, if you do not dress and behave 
 like other good little girls and boys, you will undoubtedly 
 be thrashed, because you interfere with the generous and 
 high-minded scheme which I represent, and which has, 
 after long consideration and trial, been found to be wholly 
 and exclusively the best. Other people find it satisfac- 
 tory and so you must. 
 
 " We cannot allow one urchin to interfere either with our 
 scheme or our peace of mind. 
 
 "If you have an exceptionally loud voice, modulate it! 
 Our scheme does not tolerate bawling in the public street. 
 
 " If you cannot help tearing your clothes and impoverish- 
 ing your family (a private matter) when you play, you 
 must not play, because the decency of your attire is 
 thereby endangered (a public matter). Our scheme does 
 not tolerate impropriety of any kind. 
 
 " If you are, in short, exceptional in any way, you must 
 learn to reach our great ideal, uniformity. 
 
 "If you cannot learn it by yourself, your parents, by 
 stripe and precept, must teach you. If they cannot teach 
 you, 7 must teach you. 
 
 "You must go to school. 
 
 "Be surrounded there by a crowd of our good little 
 boys and girls, whose minds of blameless regularity need 
 no such correction as yours does. 
 
 "Be presided over by my admired colleague, Mr. Mait- 
 land, whose experience and judgment are unrivalled. 
 
 "He will knock a deal of this nonsense out of you. The 
 boys and girls will knock more. 
 
124 
 
 
 
 "At last, after a period of tribulation, you will be 
 planed, clipped, sawed, hacked, and finally dovetailed into 
 our scheme. 
 
 "Our workshop is the best, our mechanics are the most 
 skilful. 
 
 " Come here, my young friend, and let me measure the 
 girth of your trunk! Heavens, what untidy, ragged little 
 branches! We must lop those off. 
 
 "Then, when we turn you out nicely polished with a 
 lovely row of shiny brass handles, and a tier of spick-and- 
 span, dustless, empty drawers, when, in short, you are a 
 cabinet, like a thousand other cabinets, turned out from 
 our workshop, of perfect shape, execution, and finish, you 
 will be unutterably grateful 
 
 ''Inexpressibly thankful, when you remember that, in- 
 stead of a beautiful, shapely cabinet, you might have been 
 a rough, horrid, uncouth tree, all twisted by the winds of 
 heaven, covered with moss, lichen, and bark, and fit only 
 for the untidy habitations of the fowls of the air." 
 
 We see, from this half-comic dithyramb, that the Rev- 
 erend Simon had discerned from earliest times a rebel 
 in Jim Macdonald. 
 
 This hostility was partly a matter of prejudice, partly 
 a matter of temperament, partly a matter of social con- 
 victions. 
 
 He had never liked Alexander and he never liked Jim. 
 
 There was nothing in that big fellow's life-development 
 to make him change his opinion. 
 
 Since the fateful day of the boy's revenge on all his 
 oppressors, the Minister was his avowed, sworn, and uncon- 
 cealed enemy. We have seen how he burrowed under 
 Jim's reputation, when he had to deal with women and 
 children. Insidious tactics suited him best in those quar- 
 ters.9 With the quarrymen, fishermen, and other males of 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 125 
 
 Tuchan he was more open, if he could gain an ear. In fact 
 the Giganticulus, since he escaped from punishment that 
 fateful day, became a perfect obsession with him, and the 
 remarkable thing is that the Reverend Simon, a narrow- 
 minded and obstinate character, believed himself to be, 
 without question, absolutely in the right. 
 
 Jim's behaviour was, however, so unexceptionable from 
 the day he went to the Quarries, that it was impossible 
 for the Reverend Simon to find any stick to beat him with. 
 So, as is often the way in such cases, he began to look for 
 a cause of offence, and to prepare himself for the belief 
 that the cause, when found, was none of his own seeking. 
 
 Now, although the Macdonald family and the Reverend 
 Simon had quarrelled on the occasion of Alexander's 
 refusal to send Jim back to the school, the Macdonalds, 
 of course, still continued to attend the kirk. In the first 
 place there was no other kirk to which they could go, and 
 in the second their private relations could not be allowed 
 to interfere with their attitude towards religious worship. 
 
 The Reverend Simon might at first frown, when he 
 saw the little group of defiants filing into their seat, but, 
 although he might wish them away, feel them a hidden 
 core of antagonism, he was obliged to view the matter in 
 the same light as they did. 
 
 So for two or three years the Macdonalds and the Min- 
 ister continued in a state of ill-disguised hostility, in which, 
 however, neither side made a definite move. The Rev- 
 erend Simon knew that it would impair his own authority, 
 if it were guessed that any of his parishioners had defied 
 him, while Alexander, as long as the Minister did not 
 "patronise" him, felt his independence sufficiently justi- 
 fied, and was content to accept him as his advisor in spirit- 
 ual matters, a curious attitude of mind but one much 
 humoured by the Alexanders. As for Euphemia, at heart 
 she retained her ancient respect for the Reverend Simon, 
 
126 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 which jealousy of Mrs. Findlater had only temporarily 
 rufllcd. 
 
 All these three years the Reverend Simon never lost his 
 desire to, in a vulgar phrase, "get back" on Jim, whom 
 he sincerely believed to be a wolf in the sheepfold, a 
 blackguard lying low, a rebel who wore the King's Coat 
 for his own base and private ends. 
 
 All these three years he watched, Sabbath after Sabbath, 
 Jim shamble in with the rest of his family; Jim grown 
 bigger and bigger every week-end it seemed; and yet still 
 guiltless of any cause of offence. Then suddenly, myste- 
 riously, a little shoot of an idea began to spring in the 
 sterile thin soil of his mind, and he knew, at once, what 
 to do. 
 
FIRST of all, by an ingenious self-deception, he dis- 
 covered that it was right for him to make friends 
 with the Macdonalds. Such a long-standing feud did not 
 befit either his dignity or his pastoral position, thought 
 the Reverend Simon. Euphemia was the first approached. 
 Long time had that worthy woman begun to pine for solemn 
 influence and direction, delivered with shooting lip and 
 square up-raised hand. Timorous though of having too 
 much offended, she did not dare to make the first ap- 
 proaches. So when the Minister, after three years of 
 distant salutation, raised his hat with courtly clerical 
 grace and made friendly inquiries, that worthy little 
 woman's heart beat fast and she flung herself, a penitent 
 undisguised, back to his jurisdiction. 
 
 Easy was the conquest of Euphemia, who had been 
 cast off, rather than a rebel. The conquest of Alexander 
 the Reverend Simon knew to be a matter of delicate nego- 
 tiation. Self -deceived as to his aim, he flattered, mis- 
 tered, administered the puff insidious, humbling himself 
 till the quarryman's vanity preened itself unconcealed. 
 
 "I'm thinkin' the Meenister has guessed I'm no a mon 
 to be patronised," he said to Euphemia. "He can be 
 agreeable company when he wushes." 
 
 "Alexander, did I no always tell ye that ye misjudged 
 our guid Meenister," replied Euphemia. "To think after 
 our rudeness to him that he is willin' to be sae polite. 
 He is indeed a guid mon." 
 
 "I've kenned waur," replied Alexander, smiling with 
 the vanity of one who has conquered in a long and arduous 
 
 127 
 
128 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 struggle. "If he had realised suner that I wudna be 
 patronised, we micht ha' been friends lang syne." 
 
 Euphemia's mild and feeble existence was irradiated 
 by this compromise between her husband's independence 
 and the Minister's swamping benevolence. She would 
 have included Jim in the general amnesty, brought him 
 to benevolence with a halter round his neck. 
 
 "The guid mon's ower anxious to hae ye apologise, 
 Jim, an' he wull be forgivin' ye." 
 
 That insinuation had been subtly distilled into her 
 mind with upraised hand and eye. All blame for the 
 quarrel had been deftly cast on the Macdonald boy and 
 himself represented as all too eager to condone if Jim 
 would put on the halter and kneel with bare knees. 
 
 Our Giganticulus was not naturally a good hand at for- 
 giving and the Reverend Simon, who, self-deceived, never 
 wished for the apology in reality, managed in various 
 dexterous little ways such as stopping to examine the 
 "Jims" still lingering on the white-washed walls of Tuchan, 
 when the sensitive red-haired hobbledehoy went by, to 
 inflame the resentment buried in that over-proud heart. 
 
 Euphemia might hint and even implore. Alexander 
 might issue something in the nature of a paternal edict. 
 Jim refused with inexplicable obstinacy. Inexplicable, 
 because the Reverend Simon had played his cards too 
 well, cheated with such subtlety that he did not know 
 himself to have cheated. 
 
 History is full of such unconscious humbugs and much 
 woe do they work before they go to their place. 
 
 The way of the Reverend Simon was now clear: the 
 situation of our Giganticulus once more highly perilous, 
 accused of unfilial chilliness and unchristian malignity at 
 home, and veritably regarded by the Minister as menacing 
 law and order, an anarchist upon whom to trample, 
 while there was yet time. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 129 
 
 And now the moment had arrived with Jim's last defence, 
 his parent's goodwill, breached. With them once more on his 
 side, the Reverend Simon could move and he moved swiftly, 
 inflamed by a wrath which had smouldered for years, by 
 an absolute conviction of his narrow sterile mind that 
 he was acting justly, and a knowledge that everyone was 
 on his side. Even Dr. Spens, almost won back by our 
 big fellow's peaceable behaviour, seemed to join the 
 enemies, when he heard of contumacy towards the Min- 
 ister and Euphemia's complaints. 
 
 Once more the Reverend Simon was master of Tuchan. 
 Only he, perhaps, knew how nearly his supremacy had been 
 endangered by one long, lank hobbledehoy, shooting fast. 
 
 For Jim still shot up, up, and up, and, as ever, it was this 
 strange elongation of body that brought him trouble, giv- 
 ing the Reverend Simon a vantage point from which he 
 could attack. Now we all know that a church, by some 
 curious paradox, is a place in which laughter explodes 
 and runs Kentish-fire on a very slight provocation. Any 
 trifle will serve, and then how this uncontrollable fourire 
 shakes, throttles, and turns to gasping and spluttering all 
 the easily-unbalanced! 
 
 The Jim, about whom atrocious fable ran riot from 
 earliest to school times, might frighten bairns, as he lum- 
 bered home from the Quarries through terror-haunted 
 dusk, when eerie and unchancy things begin to walk abroad, 
 but Jim, shambling into kirk with his family in the broad 
 light of day, was indeed nothing but a figure of fun. No 
 one could deny that the entry of the Macdonald family 
 had something essentially comic about it. First came 
 Euphemia, working-duds forgotten and dressed, parroquet- 
 wise, in the finery 'of ^Glasgow, year before last, in hat 
 all ribands and feathers dyed with vicious crudity, gown 
 cut awry of monstrous purple hue, and boots propped 
 on inch-high heels. With pinched lip and eye serenely 
 
130 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 vacant, yet really circumspect, entered Euphemia. Not 
 more ridiculous than the other women present, she passed 
 to the accompaniment of tail-eyed glances, sniffs, and 
 lifted chins. Effie, Jim's little sister, followed, a pert 
 enough minx with a short tartan skirt, long stockings, pig- 
 tail, and air of indescribable sanctity, marred every other 
 second by an equally indescribable air of precocious inge- 
 nuity, as her eyes met those of small friends. 
 
 Came next Alexander. Stiff, square, prim, eyes front 
 marched he, with right-angled feet, and long upper lip. 
 He had much dignity to support and was dressed entirely 
 in black. 
 
 Then, for the rest of the family were out in the world, 
 a yard or two behind and showing a hang-dog countenance, 
 all self-conscious misery, shambled in our unfortunate 
 Giganticulus. His huge shoulders were bowed, his red 
 head sunk, his knees crooked. His feet dragged and 
 shuffled as he slunk after his family up the aisle. 
 
 Gone the agony wrought by the Jim-drawings! Gone 
 the woe brought by derisive cries! But hateful and ever 
 more hateful each successive Sabbath was this entry into 
 the kirk before the staring mocking eyes of all Tuchan. 
 
 Jim was a godsend to the House of God. 
 
 All the children looked to him as their refuge from 
 monotony. Let the service drone wearily to its close, the 
 Reverend Simon unloose all the windbags of platitude and 
 disgorge all the froth of superficial precept, never stirring 
 the gloomy depths or touching the azure, those feet- 
 rapping, finger-chewing, nudging, saucer-eyed or pig-eyed 
 youngsters have something as good as a play Jim. 
 Nor are their elders a whit less inattentive to our amiable 
 monster from the time he enters the kirk, shuffling and 
 shambling, till the time the Reverend McManus has 
 droned his last. 
 
 Sabbath after Sabbath, he felt a hundred eyes, gimlet- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 131 
 
 like, behind him, knew fifty mouths agape in grins, heard 
 whispers, titters, sniggles, and spluttered half-suppressed 
 laughter. The "behmd-him" was full of mocking noises, 
 and perhaps he fancied even more than there were. 
 From time to time one of the younger members of the 
 community would turn round, stare undisguisedly, ravished 
 at the spectacle of Jim standing tall as a lighthouse 
 beside his mother, wink at Effie, and cram handkerchief 
 into mouth, gasping his mirth, till plucked back by angered 
 relatives, who yet did not forego a glance of extreme amuse- 
 ment at our Redhead. 
 
 He, if you remember, had a delight, in his younger 
 days, in shouting and bawling, not a rare thing among 
 youngsters. Nor is it a rare thing to find them liking a 
 song or hymn, joining in with shrill, perhaps unmelodious 
 voices, but very much enjoying this opening of their throats 
 to measured time and all the pleasures of noise, let us 
 not say "harmony." At any rate our Giganticulus was 
 not singular in this respect. He had scarcely an ear in 
 the musical sense, but mightily enjoyed letting go his 
 great bawling voice on a hilltop, finding a certain solace 
 for his ills in that huge sound. As yet he had never, 
 through shyness, tried singing in the kirk, but this Sun- 
 day thought he would begin. So, when the psalms began 
 to be chanted out by Euphemia, Alexander, Effie, and the 
 whole congregation, and the clerk beat time and the Rev- 
 erend Simon boomed a lead in his frog-in-the-throat voice, 
 with the sound of a bull's bellow, out-bellowing all, sud- 
 denly he let forth. 
 
 "The moon by night thee shall not smite 
 Nor yet the sun by day." 
 
 It was a mistake. Jim had not meant to sing (?) so 
 loud, not knowing the pitch of his own voice indoors or 
 in the echoing space of a kirk. 
 
132 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Blushed our Giganticulus, grew red as beetroot, hot all 
 over, weak in the knees and almost collapsed, when he 
 heard himself make that overpowering bellow. Surprised 
 he may have been himself, but "astounded," only faintly 
 reflects the feelings of every other. 
 
 For a bar and a half's rest the music and the singing 
 stopped completely. For the space of three minutes the 
 Reverend Simon looked Erebus. For the space of fifty 
 seconds every one in front of Jim turned round and stared. 
 For five minutes Alexander glowered at him, as if he was 
 demented, and for ten Effie was in uncontrollable giggles, 
 which Euphemia, after dropping her book and shrieking 
 faintly at Jim's impossible blunder, endeavoured to sup- 
 press by shaking and cuffing. All chance of singing the 
 psalms in a decent, sober, pious and orderly spirit had 
 vanished. 
 
 The kirk was filled with tittering, whispering, giggling, 
 and hushing. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 AT first the Reverend Simon, as we have said, looked 
 Erebus, and his looks only faintly reflected his feel- 
 ings. Then, in spite of his wish to deceive himself, he 
 realised that Jim's absurd blunder was the very thing 
 needed for the success of his plan. 
 
 But to explain this, we must go back a little and examine 
 the Reverend Simon's mind, not as he imagined it to be, 
 but as it actually was. 
 
 It may well be imagined that the Minister had not 
 failed to notice the commotion caused by Jim's entry into 
 the kirk and the outbursts of merriment to which his 
 presence gave rise. These disturbances had continued for 
 two or three years in a more or less marked manner and 
 grew worse in proportion to the unchecked shooting-up 
 of the Giganticulus. Now this was an additional cause of 
 offence to the Reverend Simon. Not only was his service 
 interrupted, but his own authority was considerably les- 
 sened by the inattention of the congregation. It seemed 
 that only a little more relaxation, from whatever cause, 
 was necessary wholly to subvert his supremacy. The 
 train was laid. A chance spark might ignite it and blow 
 his headship sky-high, even as the Dominie, in days gone 
 by, had been levelled, all unexpectedly, to the ground. 
 
 Jim had expelled the Dominie and, though through no 
 effort of his own, he might expel the Minister. The Rev- 
 erend Simon both feared and hated him, him the wolf, 
 the rebel, the anarchist. ' 
 
 Every year, every Sabbath, every day, his resolve to ban- 
 ish Jim from Tuchan, by hook or by crook, grew stronger. 
 
 133 
 
134 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 We remember how he poisoned all feminine ears against 
 Jim. He could work by insinuation there, but masculine 
 ears, as of easy-going quarrymen, hearty fishermen, would 
 need some overt display of insolence and wickedness, with 
 which to prove the necessity for a bold attack. 
 
 Long time he wondered whence he could strike the 
 blow. 
 
 Then the idea flashed upon him. 
 
 With his parents alienated, the wretch was at his mercy, 
 and could be effectively accused of wanton buffoonery in 
 the sacred building, of deliberately exposing his uncouth 
 and ridiculous person to the merriment of children, of 
 thereby creating unparalleled disorder, whisperings, titter- 
 ings, and distraction throughout, of behaving in such a 
 way out of sheer malignity in order to cause the greatest 
 amount of annoyance and inconvenience to the Minister, 
 whose offers of friendship, it was well known, had been 
 most rudely repulsed. Would not then everyone be on 
 his side and no one on Jim's, whose appearance, it could 
 not be denied, was the sign for continuous and most un- 
 seemly disturbances. What was, therefore, the penalty 
 which the Rev. Simon's brain devised ? None other than 
 to cast out the wicked and insolent young rascal from his 
 kirk. Oh! most dreadful penalty. Jim might go where he 
 pleased, do what he pleased, but he would be an outcast, 
 and no one could have a good word to say for him, wolf, 
 rebel, and anarchist, who had flattened the Dominie, 
 terrified and threatened small bairns for years, hypocriti- 
 cally conciliated the quarrymen, repaid Euphemia's affec- 
 tion with chill ingratitude, and wound up by wantonly 
 disturbing the sacred hours of prayer. 
 
 An outcast would he be indeed, and outcasts have a 
 way of falling into despair. Surely Jim Macdonald would 
 be driven from their borders and might go when and 
 where he pleased. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 135 
 
 Such was the idea which grew in the thin, sterile soil of 
 the Minister's mind and, hardly suffering Jim any longer, 
 he determined to carry it out as soon as possible. That 
 Sunday was the one chosen, for he had been bound to let 
 some time elapse between his reconciliation with the Mac- 
 donalds and the final attack on Jim. The determination 
 did not weigh heavily on his conscience; for his narrow 
 sterile mind was convinced that it was doing the right 
 thing, that Jim must be driven away, or he, the all-impor- 
 tant to Tuchan, fall even as his friend the Dominie. 
 
 The disturbance caused by the entry of the Giganticulus 
 had that morning been even greater than usual, the titter- 
 ings, hushings, and starings continuous. The Reverend 
 Simon felt wound up to say anything. Then, quite without 
 warning, came that cataclysmal bellow in Jim's bull-voice, 
 overpowering every other voice in the church, making every 
 movable thing quiver, rattling every window, and, for 
 a minute or two, stopping the service. 
 
 Astounded, furious, and incapable of thought, the Rev- 
 erend Simon gazed at the pernicious one, who blushed 
 all over, hung his head, bowed his shoulders. "Another 
 instance of vile hypocrisy (thought the Minister), another 
 outrage on the part of that Macdonald lump!" Then it 
 came to him that this last part was even what he might 
 have desired, have asked for. That ludicrous, untuneful 
 bellow had put his enemy utterly in his power. 
 
 Still, fury turned his face whiter than ordinary: the black 
 furrows gathered on his square white forehead: the square 
 white hand trembled. The titterers, gigglers, and hushers 
 grew silent as they watched these manifestations of wrath 
 gathering on the Reverend Simon's countenance. They 
 felt that something strange was in the air. All were 
 a-quiver with expectation. 
 
 The Reverend Simon arose to preach his sermon. 
 
 It was terrific. The Minister himself had no mean lung 
 
136 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 power and his voice was of the frog-in-thc-throat order. 
 When once he warmed to his work, it boomed fff. The 
 adagio, however, was husky in tone and charged with 
 pathos. For twenty-one years he had been in the parish 
 of Tuchan; had come there as a young man, aglow with 
 the sacredness of his cause and filled with, he hoped, the 
 not unpardonable ambition of wishing to accomplish a 
 great work, a noble work. Duty, however, he had always 
 put before him as his most sacred ideal; the duty towards 
 himself and the duty towards his neighbours, might he say, 
 flock? Everyone of this flock, every man, woman, and 
 child in Tuchan, was as one of his own family. He sym- 
 pathised with their sorrows, rejoiced in their joys. Under 
 his eyes had many of them grown from childhood to 
 maturity, but they were still to him as his children, his 
 children to whom he hoped, unworthy though he might be, 
 to point the way. Yes, under his eyes and under his 
 direction had the village grown up, and he could say, on 
 looking back, that his children had been good children, 
 children whom he trusted and (a break in his voice) loved 
 (crescendo). Twenty-one years had passed since he first 
 came to Tuchan, and he could truthfully say, on looking 
 back, that there had been no serious dispute between him 
 and his parishioners, his dearly loved children in Tuchan. 
 Twenty-one years had passed, and he had grown from a 
 young to a middle-aged man, but his feelings had never 
 altered. Tuchan was to him a sacred spot (and so-on and 
 so-on). It was a gratifying thing to him that he was 
 tortured by no doubts. The high ideal, set before him in 
 his youth, had been always in front of him to lead him (etc., 
 etc.) . He was convinced that he had always been animated 
 by the best motives (and so forth). He believed that the 
 majority of his children thought so too. It was a great 
 comfort to him, this lasting, steadfast conviction. If he 
 had ever felt any doubts that his judgment might be at 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 137 
 
 fault, he might have hesitated before taking the step which 
 he was going to take now. If he had ever suspected any 
 distrust on the part of his parishioners, he might have been 
 in a difficulty in asking them to support him in a course of 
 action seemingly incompatible with the doctrines of mercy 
 and forgiveness inculcated by the blessed gospels. But he 
 hoped he knew his duty, when it was set before him, how- 
 ever unpleasant it might be. There were cases in which it 
 was simple weakness to forgive. Perhaps in a little village, 
 so remote from the world as Tuchan, such cases might not 
 have come under the notice of his flock. He was pleased 
 himself, that so few travelled abroad and that his children 
 were saved from the corrupting influences of the wicked 
 thoughts and wicked deeds of great cities. Children were 
 better at home (etc., etc.). He, their Minister, came to 
 them from a great city and knew where evil stalked abroad, 
 roaring for its prey. He knew the signs of evil and none 
 hated it more than he ... (jf). Did they wish to forgive 
 evil, forgive murderers, thieves, liars, and adulterers? The 
 Law punished them and sent them to their own place. 
 Could they set themselves above the law? Wicked influ- 
 ences were abroad in great cities. It was neither his place 
 nor his duty to analyse such subtle poisons, a drop of 
 which might creep through the ear and infect the whole 
 brain. It was not his province to examine the responsi- 
 bility of such wretched creatures. His mind revolted 
 from the thought. Each of his children had in it their 
 power to choose between good and evil (etc., etc.). Let 
 the Law take its course and the unhappy wretches who 
 broke, it be judged once and for all by a Higher Power 
 (etc., etc.). It was his duty, the duty of all of them, what- 
 ever the tie, whatever the kinship, to stamp evil under their 
 heel (fff) when they saw it in their midst. Twenty-one years 
 had passed since he first came to Tuchan and he, their 
 Minister, had never had to speak, either from the pulpit 
 
138 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 or in private, as he had had to to-day. It would be a sad 
 day in his memory (and so forth), many a sleepless night 
 did he have in arriving at his duty (enlarge), but he deter- 
 mined at last to speak out. He had discovered signs of 
 evil in their midst. Yes, he their Minister, with a larger 
 experience than that of his little flock, had detected signs 
 of evil, unmistakable signs, signs of depravity and rebel- 
 lion, signs of hypocrisy and ill-concealed ferocity, signs of 
 callous wickedness, and insolence to the most sacred things. 
 There was amongst them one whose progress he had 
 watched from a child, a faithless and perverse member of 
 their generation (/// and black furrows on the forehead!). 
 He did not wish to name any names in the sacred edifice, 
 he respected the parents of the miserable and misguided 
 boy, felt the utmost sympathy for them in their calamity 
 in having such a son, but he felt it his duty to expel from 
 the doors of the House of God one who, by his absurd 
 buffoonery, wanton disregard of decency, monstrous impro- 
 priety, imperilled the very sanctity of the service which 
 they had just been holding. This callous and irreverent 
 behaviour was not a mere temporary lapse. It had 
 extended over a long space of time, two or three years 
 at least, and he could suffer it no more. Any further 
 clemency would degenerate into weakness. Besides the 
 worst reports were current in the village about this boy's 
 conduct, reports which he was sure everyone had heard. 
 From a small boy his reputation had been of the worst. 
 He had always been on the side of disorder and rebellion, 
 had more than once defied and insulted even their Minister, 
 instead of submitting to just punishment for absolutely 
 unheard of misdemeanours. Once again let him assure 
 them further clemency would be weakness." 
 
 The Reverend Simon finished his sermon and left the 
 pulpit. 
 
 The little congregation filed out of the kirk with grave 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 139 
 
 faces. The solemn boom of the Reverend Simon had 
 started a new train of thought in their minds. After all, 
 thought quarrymen and fishermen, Divine Service is a 
 serious thing. Children must be brought up in the way 
 they should go; they must take serious things seriously, 
 not titter, whisper, and giggle. After all, thought the 
 women, Jim Macdonald is a "bad ane." He has never 
 been anything else. That bellow of his was an unpardon- 
 able thing, turned all the sacred ceremony into ridicule. 
 "That guid mon the Meenister has been unco' forbearin'! 
 Did ye no hear that he was offerin' to forgive Jim Mac- 
 donald and the lad wad hae naethin' to say to him?" 
 Wives influence husbands in these matters and during the 
 last month the opinion of the quarrymen had veered round 
 against Jim. 
 
 The little congregation waited in a circle round the 
 kirk door, waiting for the Macdonald family, expecting 
 they knew not what. 
 
 First came Euphemia, pale and weeping copiously, 
 face pitiable under the crude finery of the hat. Next 
 Alexander, upper lip longer than ever and whiskers brist- 
 ling. Then Effie, her pert peaky face looking rather fright- 
 ened, and last of all, a good ten paces behind, the 
 luckless Jim, Tuchan's scape-goat. 
 
 The congregation had behaved abominably and insti- 
 tutions been imperilled. Jim must be offered up. 
 
 A miserable spectacle did the wretch look, bewildered, 
 angry, frightened, lonely, dishevelled, just, indeed, what 
 a scape-goat ought to look. Had he seemed even a 
 wee bit stronger or more independent, public opinion 
 might have protected him; his family not have cast him 
 off. But, there is no one to help those who do not help 
 themselves. Self-assertion, my dear Jim, is a great asset 
 in this pushing, vulgar world. Now indeed he was in one 
 of his worst moments, helpless and hopeless. Everything 
 
140 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 had come upon him suddenly. Alexander glowered in 
 speechless indignation, when he tried to explain. Feeble, 
 querulous Euphemia did nothing but weep. All round him, 
 he saw the stern hostile faces of Tuchan. There was no 
 sympathy for him in any of them. His huge size did but 
 increase his appearance of imbecile ineffectuality. Great 
 hands dangled down with limp fingers. Jaw slacked. 
 Eyes were vacant and lustreless. 
 
 Furious, Alexander led the way home. Once more 
 he had been deceived. Weeping followed Euphemia. 
 Frightened went Effie, trotting at her mother's side. The 
 Macdonald family were in disgrace and all through that 
 miserable boy. Jim was left alone. 
 
 On him comes the Reverend Simon and finds him help- 
 less in the circle of hard, condemning countenances. 
 
 "Away with you," he cries. "Never come inside the 
 kirk door till you have learnt to behave with decency and 
 respect. Away with you! Kirk is no place for a black- 
 guard lad like you. All your misdeeds have found you 
 out at last, Jim Macdonald. Look round here! Is there 
 a single face which shows a thought that you have been 
 unjustly treated? Away with you!" 
 
 With a sob, our Giganticulus turned on his heel and 
 went shambling off. 
 
 "And now," boomed the Reverend Simon, "let this be a 
 lesson to you boys. The way of the good man is hard, but 
 not so hard as the way of the transgressor." 
 
 The Reverend Simon had judged his opportunity aright, 
 and that discourse from the pulpit had made precisely evi- 
 dent what had been before but a dim adumbration of an 
 idea hovering in the minds of the male population of 
 Tuchan. In the kirk, in that solemn assemblage every 
 Sabbath, in the black garments of ceremony worn, every 
 one of them beheld the sum of Scotch respectability. 
 They paid honour to the Reverend Simon, observed his 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 141 
 
 judgments, because he was the pinnacle to which all 
 this edifice of respectability converged. Respectability 
 was the little deity to whom they all bowed in its 
 secret shrine, to whom they penetrated reverently. Mr. 
 McManus insulted when (and Jim had been but a bairn 
 then) usurping the authority of the Dominie was one 
 thing, but Mr. McManus insulted in his own kirk, in 
 his capacity of Minister, another and very different 
 thing. All this respectability, which they worshipped, 
 had, as its symbol, the Reverend Simon. Each quarry- 
 man felt the insult as if it had been offered to himself, 
 as if his own little secret deity had been wantonly over- 
 thrown and triumphantly bellowed over. This is the 
 kind of injury that a nation, which loves respectability 
 above all other things, never forgives. Jim Macdonald 
 had gone too far. 
 
 Tuchan cast him out. 
 
 In the last four or five months Jim had become such a 
 size that the very sight of him, apart from the catalogue 
 of misdemeanours to his name, began to raise suspicion. 
 His secret troubles made him mournful. Hence accusa- 
 tions of a sullen, oblique, fierce nature. His huge hands 
 and unnatural strength woke wonder everywhere, as to 
 what might happen if he really turned rogue. It was like 
 having an elephant about the place, on whose moral char- 
 acter the most grievous aspersions had been cast. 
 
PART III 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 HT^HIS casting out of Jim Macdonald from the kirk 
 
 A happened a month before the New Year, his seven- 
 teenth birthday. 
 
 Open war was now declared between him and the village. 
 
 The Reverend Simon had won the day and Jim was 
 declared outlaw. 
 
 Outlaw! What a terrible sound that word has! terrible 
 even to a lonely and ferocious creature, who has cut him- 
 self off from mankind by some hideous or barbarous act. 
 How much more terrible to a shrinking hobbledehoy long- 
 ing for human pity and sympathy: wanting something that 
 he cannot find: not realising, in spite of the Reverend 
 Simon's assertion, that every misfortune that had hap- 
 pened to him was his own fault! 
 
 Outlaw! ! With not a friendly champion in the village: 
 not an eye to light kindly on him : not a hand to rest amiably 
 on his shoulder if it could be reached at all by any ordinary 
 hand. Outlaw! ! ! With Alexander treating him with 
 bare tolerance as having brought the Macdonald name 
 into disgrace, and Euphemia, that little look-under-the-nose 
 body, incapable of entering into any of his sensations, and 
 therefore accusing him of utterly unfilial callosity and 
 frigidity. Outlaw! ! ! It may have penetrated the minds 
 of my readers that Jim Macdonald had so far done hardly 
 anything that was, in the highest degree, blameworthy. 
 There is no adage so true as the old one that says that 
 one man may steal a horse, while another may not even 
 look over a hedge. Jim's size in that little community of 
 ordinary, decent, sober, averagely developed persons had 
 been his handicap all along. 
 
146 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Beneath that broad chest indeed beat a heart of ridicu- 
 lous tenderness, so soft that it made him the butt of 
 jeering school-fellows, a prey to wandering dreams, which 
 the ordinary boy did not share, a horror and a laughing- 
 stock even to himself. 
 
 But no one had, as yet, guessed this much and so, 
 though he had done nothing really wicked, our big friend 
 stood accused of sullen temper, malignity, hypocrisy, and 
 brooding vice. A Jim-myth had grown up, in which he 
 always figured as a "bad ane." Without any other cause 
 than a kind of uneasiness produced by the sight of the 
 tattered, hulking, red-haired Giganticulus with the gloomy 
 freckled face and the huge powerful hands, all prophesied 
 that he would "live to be hangit." The little children 
 fled shrieking at his approach: the women wondered why 
 he had not done something wicked lately: the men, 
 turned at last by their wives and the efforts of the 
 Reverend Simon, left him severely alone. 
 
 Tuchan, like most other places, was terrified by the 
 Unusual. 
 
 Jim still remained in the Quarries. Fortunately for 
 him he was too good a workman, with his mighty strength, 
 to be dismissed, and, as a means of distraction from his 
 troubles, he toiled harder than ever. In loneliness though. 
 Even the foreman, who had been his friend, now confined 
 himself to curt orders and was quite unceremonious when 
 Jim fell, which he did more frequently now, to gazing out 
 over the Calder Valley towards the Ballandarroch Pass. 
 
 "Macdonald," he would cry, "dinna stan' aboot like a 
 gawkie. Ye're paid to work, no to dream." Then Jim 
 would clutch his pick-axe and fall to like a demon. 
 
 Our James cared for nothing but a quiet life. Notoriety 
 or singularity of any description he loathed from the bottom 
 of his heart. Soft and affectionate by nature he would 
 have liked to be on good terms with everyone, and lo! by 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 147 
 
 the ingenious malice of destiny, behold him set apart in a 
 manner as marked as it was absolute! The one craving 
 which still possessed him was to be like other people, and 
 again behold him as unlike everyone else as is possible to 
 imagine! He could never be happy while filled with dis- 
 gust at his huge size. Everything connected with it had 
 always brought him either shame or trouble, and now fresh 
 trouble, greater than any he had ever experienced, was 
 waiting for him in the spring. 
 
 The short, dark, bitter days of the Scotch winter went 
 slowly by for our red-headed outlaw, drawing out almost 
 imperceptibly a little longer till the snows melted and came 
 leaping down the old scarred sides of the mountains into 
 the Calder Valley. Amidst all this shouting of cataracts 
 and running of rills and calling of birds and blossoming 
 of hedge-rows and greening of woods James remained a 
 prisoner in the black dungeon of melancholy and Jessie 
 McLure came back to Tuchan. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE Reverend Simon invited Jessie and Mrs. McLure 
 to spend a fortnight in Tuchan. Miss McManus, the 
 Dominie's sister, and, that all things might be fulfilled, 
 Johnny Findlater were to be also of the party. 
 
 The train that bore Jessie to Duke's Ferry puffed along 
 to an idly sentimental tune, a tune which some theatrical 
 company, travelling to the county town near which they 
 now lived, had made popular. "Ti-tum ti-tum ti- 
 tum ti-tum," throbbed the engine "Ti-tum ti-tum," 
 and then broke into words: 
 
 " Of all the tales I ever heard 
 
 The one I liked the best 
 Was of a land quite too absurd 
 
 Yet nicer than the rest ; 
 Where skewered game flew down the breeze, 
 
 And pigs ran ready roasted, 
 And chocolates grew on the trees, 
 
 And all the bread was toasted." 
 
 Idle words i' faith, but with some memories of not very 
 remote childhood in them. Jessie was growing into a 
 woman now, past eighteen and a dark, stormy slip, whose 
 eyes and face were always aglow. Time and time again the 
 chorus repeated itself to the beat of the throbbing engine: 
 
 " In Wonderland, my Wonderland, 
 (Oh! many's the voyage there I planned) 
 The children play without a nurse 
 And money jingles in one's purse. 
 Oh! Wonderland, dear Wonderland, 
 I always seemed to understand 
 A holiday far, far away 
 In Wonderland." 
 148 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 149 
 
 Through lofty braes on which the gorse blossomed with 
 golden blaze, by vast, deep silent valleys, huge barren 
 mountains, and big blue lakes, passed the train; by stations 
 with queer unpronounceable names; by forests in which the 
 red deer ran; and moors, over which the young grouse was 
 beginning to try ambitious flights; by naked spaces in 
 which tiny cattle grazed; by purple solitudes where the 
 grey boulders lay, like sheep. Up and down went the 
 train, leaving the old high-road sometimes far below them, 
 running sometimes level with it, the high-road down 
 which the soldiers of the first and second Georges had 
 marched, when they made such a poor show against the 
 naked claymores of fierce Highland men. Everything 
 was lonely and peaceful here now. Occasionally, as the 
 train stopped in a station, it was overshadowed by some 
 huge rock to which clung a summer boarding house. All 
 this was the land of civilisation, whither came Glasgow 
 folks for their holidays. But Jessie was not going to stop 
 here, where romance once lived and was still hallowed. 
 She was going back to Wonderland. "Ti-tum ti- turn 
 ti-tum ti-tum" throbbed the engine as it bore her swiftly 
 along, and then sang: 
 
 " To Wonderland, my Wonderland, 
 With all its shores of golden sand, 
 Where children lived 'neath skies of blue 
 And laughed and played the whole day through. 
 Oh! Wonderland, my Wonderland, 
 By Heaven's unchanging azure spanned, 
 Or stars at eve Dear Make-believe, 
 Dear Wonderland 1 " 
 
 Not such a Wonderland was Tuchan indeed, but the days 
 of her childhood seemed to Jessie at the same time very 
 near and very far-off. She wondered if everything would 
 look the same, the little village, the Manse, the school- 
 house, Calder's Farm, she must \valk over there one after- 
 
150 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 noon and the huge valley and the old mountains with 
 their scarred sides, on whose tops the wind moaned per- 
 petually, and the gigantic twins, More and Moich. 
 
 The scenery became wilder and lonelier. Once through 
 a rift in the hills she caught a distant glimpse of sea spark- 
 ling in the midday sun. Mrs. McLure fanned herself with 
 her pocket handkerchief. 
 
 "It's very hot," she said, "but luckily we've only three 
 hours mair." 
 
 "Only three hours! Only three hours to the borders 
 of Wonderland." Jessie shivered all over and stared with 
 compressed lips and flashing eyes out of the window. 
 
 A thought! The train took it up, shaped it into words, 
 and thumped it out with maddening monotony. 
 
 "Would Johnny Findlater still be the same? Would 
 Johnny Findlater still be the same? Would Johnny Find- 
 later still be the same?" 
 
 She stared out of the carriage- window at the inhospitable 
 deserts of the moors and the towering company of the 
 mountains. 
 
 "Would Johnny Findlater still be the same?" Jessie 
 belonged to that class of persons who centre all the tem- 
 pestuous violence of their affections on one, unique, soli- 
 tary, exclusive unit of the human race. Though she had 
 not seen him since the days of Tuchan, when they both 
 stood upon the threshold of adolescence, the blue-eyed, 
 fair-haired Johnny had been ever and still was the goal to 
 which all her existence tended. 
 
 "Would he still be the same?" 
 
 "Have a sandwich, Jessie?" asked Mrs. McLure, opening 
 her reticule. 
 
 Jessie munched one with difficulty. 
 
 "I'm no hungry, " she said. 
 
 "It is very hot in here," replied the farmer's wife. 
 
 "Very," replied Jessie absently. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 151 
 
 But it was the thought which made her wonder whether 
 Johnny Findlater would still be the same, that spoiled her 
 lunch. "Ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum, " always to 
 the same thought puffed the train, and it was nearly even- 
 ing before they reached the flourishing little port on the 
 shores of the big sea-loch, the port of Duke's Ferry. The 
 coach drove them to Tuchan on the following day, over 
 the Ballandarroch Pass and through the Valley of Calder, 
 and as it deposited them (its only passengers) and their 
 luggage in front of the Inn about five o'clock in the 
 afternoon, our Reverend Simon was there to receive 
 them. A smile creased his broad, white face; his square, 
 white hand was outstretched in welcome. He boomed 
 a hearty greeting in his fog-in-the-throat voice. 
 
 "Johnny cannot get away till the day after to-morrow," 
 he said after the first salutations were over. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HOW everything had flashed back into Jessie's 
 memory during that journey on the coach, yet, 
 in fact, was everything just the same the valley and the 
 mountains and Calder's Farm, with its low barns and 
 long, low front as she saw it from the top of the coach 
 in the little wood of trees that surrounded it? Was the 
 village just as she imagined it would be, with its white- 
 walled cottages, and long, thin, winding street? Were the 
 loch and the rough, rolling hills behind it the loch and the 
 hills of the days gone by? Every stone in the place, every 
 cloud in the sky, seemed familiar to her, but were they all 
 exactly the same? It seemed, when once the first impres- 
 sion had passed away, that the Reverend Simon and they 
 had only been parted for a week. How familiar his face 
 and his voice were ! Time had made little impression upon 
 him apparently, but somehow Tuchan was not just as she 
 had expected it. There was a change for which she was 
 not prepared, and the thought once more obsessed her. 
 
 "Would Johnny be exactly the same?" 
 
 How she wanted everything to be the same, and how, 
 oh! how she wanted Johnny to be the same! 
 
 To-morrow was the Sabbath. She would walk over to 
 Calder's Farm in the afternoon and, at any rate, that 
 should be the same, unless Farmer Thomson had made 
 great alterations. 
 
 Before retiring to put the finishing touches to his sermon, 
 the Reverend Simon gave them the history of Tuchan 
 since they left all the births, marriages, and deaths; 
 how little Angus had become a stalwart fisherboy, almost 
 
 153 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 153 
 
 old enough to boast a boat of his own; how a new Domi- 
 nie had come to the school instead of their old friend, Mr. 
 Maitland; how Fanner Thomson's boy was the clever 
 boy now, though not half so clever as Johnny Findlater 
 used to be; and then (oh! delight to Jessie's ears) how 
 Johnny had surpassed all expectations; was newly the 
 winner of a great prize at one of the big Scotch Universi- 
 ties; would, even as all prophesied, shed great light, in days 
 to come, on Tuchan. 
 
 "Do you remember Jim Macdonald?" asked the Minister. 
 
 "That wild unchancy lad," replied Mrs. McLure. Jessie 
 nodded. 
 
 She had often thought of the big red-headed scoundrel 
 who nearly killed her Johnny, hoping he was gone from 
 Tuchan or that, at any rate, if he remained, he might 
 still be the same for her still to hate him. How she had 
 shuddered at that big, lumbering figure; those fat, freckled 
 cheeks; those huge, red hands! Jim Macdonald used to be 
 a perfect horror. Was he still the same? 
 
 "I regret to say," continued the Reverend Simon, "Mac- 
 donald has turned out worse than ever I thought he would. 
 I'm sure I don't know what will become of him. For years 
 past he has been cruel enough to delight in frightening the 
 tiny children. Can you imagine such a thing? There's 
 not a woman in the place who has a good word to say for 
 him, and that is a very bad sign, is it not, Mrs. McLure? 
 Quite lately I had to forbid him to come to the kirk any 
 more, a dreadful thing to have to do, but the lad behaved 
 quite disgracefully, trying to make the younger children 
 laugh, and bellowing out of tune in the psalms for the 
 express purpose of disconcerting ^ne. I greatly fear he has 
 turned out low, sullen, ignorant, and revengeful. He is 
 still working in the Quarries. Of course I should be the 
 last to interfere with him, if he has a decent and sober 
 occupation, but I don't suppose it will last long, and I 
 
154 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 can't help thinking it would be the best thing if he left 
 the village." No the Reverend Simon was not yet 
 satisfied. 
 
 "What a pity!" said Mrs. McLure placidly. 
 
 Jessie, however, that young lady of violent tendencies, 
 could not help another throb of delight almost equal to 
 the one she felt on hearing of Johnny's success. Jim was 
 still the same, or worse. She had always thought him a 
 "bad ane." How true had these forebodings been! And 
 now the more uncertainty of Johnny's fidelity to old loves 
 haunted her, the more repulsion grew at the memory of 
 Jim. She fed one emotion by another, as ever, sacrificed 
 Jim to Johnny. This girl's hatreds were indeed vindic- 
 tive, her passions unswerving. Was she not one of those 
 who only see in black and white, reject or accept, move 
 in light or dusk, are incapable of subtle shades or fine 
 distinctions. Could she ever give the benefit of the 
 doubt? Were not people to her either lions or jackals; 
 eagles or carrion- tasting vultures? Was not everything 
 either fair or foul? There was an intense egotism behind 
 this violence of contrast and an intense conviction. 
 Jessie was a dangerous slip of a girl. "Which are the 
 more dangerous, women with great convictions or women 
 without any?" moodily mutters the philosopher, who has 
 not interrupted the course of the narrative for some time. 
 
 The next day, of course, she went to kirk. The Mac- 
 donald family, excepting Jim, were in their seats. An 
 especial air of dignity sat upon them all, as if they were 
 trying to obliterate the disgrace brought on them by the 
 blackguard of the village. Alexander's lip was longer 
 than ever, and Euphemia's costume, especially the hat, 
 in more retired taste. 
 
 Jessie noted with secret delight the obvious uneasiness 
 of her bugbear's relations. Many were the greetings she 
 received. Old faces looked on her from every side. Old 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 155 
 
 faces altered just a little. A few she missed. No, Tuchan 
 was not exactly the same. Time had done something to 
 change it. 
 
 Would it have changed Johnny Findlater? Dr. Spens 
 was there and bade her how-d'you do. He was more 
 placid than ever and growing rather grey. 
 
 "I hear we are to have Johnny back," said he. "Back 
 for a few days. I hope he won't look down on us, now 
 that he is such a brilliant young man." 
 
 Jessie flushed. It was just what she had been fearing. 
 
 The Doctor looked at the dark glowing face. 
 
 "You've come to break the hearts of our youthful 
 swains," he said, smiling. "If Johnny is too conceited, 
 you must take him down a peg." 
 
 She flushed again. It was just what she had been won- 
 dering if she could do, in the case of his having forgotten. 
 
 Yet, thought she, his memory would not be short. 
 
 "Ah! Miss Jessie," continued the Doctor after a pause, 
 "we grow up to men and women. We are boys and girls 
 no longer and the world becomes a different place for us. 
 Perhaps you haven't realised it yet. You've grown up 
 bonny and, I'm sure, good-hearted. May you be spared 
 much pain. I'm longing to have our Johnny back. I'm 
 told he will be a famous man some day. Nearly all your 
 old school-fellows were nice, decent lads and lasses, nearly 
 all. But you and Johnny were the pick of them, though 
 I mustn't flatter you, Miss Jessie. I expect you have 
 enough flattery already. Who shall despise Tuchan now 
 it has produced a beauty and a famous man, or rather a 
 young man who is going to be famous? We are most of 
 us worthy, fairly contented people here, Miss Jessie, though 
 we may not be celebrated. I believe there is only one 
 really bad character in the village. Think of that, Miss 
 Jessie, and don't come back to laugh at Tuchan, which 
 contains so much goodness." 
 
156 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Of course I don't laugh at Tuchan," replied Jessie. 
 "How can you think so? But who is your bad character, 
 Dr. Spens?" she added, lowering her eyes and digging up 
 the ground with the point of her shoe. A disingenuous 
 manoeuvre, for she guessed, was certain in her own mind, 
 that the doctor could mean no one else except Jim Mac- 
 donald. 
 
 "Oh!" answered the Doctor with a shade of confusion 
 in his gentle, melancholy, honest face. "I'm not certain 
 I ought to have spoken about him. It's not fair to tell 
 tales out of school and I don't know that there is any 
 definite or really serious charge against the lad. I, at 
 any rate, have never had any grave fault to find with 
 him." 
 
 "Never?" inquired Jessie. 
 
 "You know then?" said the Doctor, catching meaning 
 in her voice. 
 
 "The Minister told me last night. You talk of Jim 
 Macdonald." 
 
 "Yes, yes," replied Dr. Spens hurriedly. "I did refer to 
 Jim Macdonald. I have no personal accusation against 
 him, none at all, but it is a general impression that he is 
 thoroughly wild and unsatisfactory. There are a great 
 many complaints and a great many unpleasant stories 
 about him in the village. You may have heard some." 
 
 "A few," answered Jessie. 
 
 "And so," continued the Doctor, "as there is never 
 smoke without fire, one can't help believing there is some- 
 thing in these complaints and stories. I've always tried 
 to make out a good case for Jim Macdonald, both to my- 
 self and other people, but I've had to admit at last that the 
 evidence is all against him." 
 
 "All against him," echoed Jessie, scratching the ground 
 with her parasol. 
 
 "Yes," replied Dr. Spens sadly, "and I'm downright 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 157 
 
 sorry for it. He certainly behaved abominably to the 
 Minister, and, though I suspect a certain amount of 
 exaggeration, he seems to have behaved very badly and 
 wickedly in the village. I tried once or twice to talk to 
 him seriously (I pulled him half out of the grave as a 
 small boy; and that seems to knit some kind of bond 
 between us), but the lad was regularly sullen and obsti- 
 nate and only said "ou aye" or "naw" or remained silent, 
 when I put any question to him, and so, what can I do? 
 The only thing which puzzles me, though, is that he works 
 steadily." 
 
 "In the Quarries?" observed Jessie. 
 
 "In the Quarries," answered the Doctor. "He works 
 very hard for his age. Well, we've all got our good and. 
 our bad points, and the best we can do is to be charitable. 
 I only wish I could say more for Jim Macdonald. Now, 
 good-bye, Miss Jessie, I am keeping you from your dinner 
 and must get back to mine. You will all come up and have 
 supper with me one night, when Johnny arrives, I hope." 
 
 Jessie remained rather silent and absent-minded through 
 dinner time. 
 
 "Where are you off to, dear?" asked Mrs. McLure, 
 when she came down afterwards in a light summer walking 
 skirt. 
 
 "I'm gaein' for a daunder to the Farm and back again 
 ower the hills," answered her daughter. "It's such a 
 fine afternoon." 
 
 "Very weel, dear," answered the mother and closed her 
 eyes as she murmured, "Dinna be too late." 
 
 Jessie walked briskly down the path into the main- 
 road. Dr. Spens' words kept on running in her head. 
 "The evidence is all against him him him. If the 
 Doctor says so, he must be bad." 
 
 The more she fed on her ancient repulsion to Jim, the 
 more splendid and beautiful appeared Johnny Findlater 
 
158 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 to her memory blue-eyed, angel-faced Virtue compared 
 with ugly, freckled, red-haired Uncouthness and Wicked- 
 ness. 
 
 Perhaps there was some excuse for her. As she walked 
 briskly up the high-road of Tuchan, her feet once more 
 beat time to Princess Honey-Sweet's song in the last 
 pantomime. 
 
 "Oh! how I loved that strange countrie 
 
 And wondered if I 'd go, 
 When I was quite grown-up and free, 
 
 Where life was ordered so. 
 I hoped to find a fairy ring 
 
 And fly there with a wish, 
 Or magic carpet on the wing, 
 
 Or sail there in a dish." 
 
 She was only a day off Wonderland. Oh! that the day 
 would pass. 
 
 Thus thought this half-child, half-woman, and forgot 
 the good Doctor's other words. 
 
 "We grow up and become men and women. We are 
 children no longer and the world is a different place for 
 us. May you not suffer too much pain !" 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 JIM lay at full length in his eyrie amid the hills behind 
 Tuchan. 
 
 Far, far below him to the west lay the little village, and, 
 by a half-turn on to his elbow, he could see across the 
 lovely Valley of Calder, where was no habitation except 
 the Farm with its long low buildings in a clump of trees, 
 and no sign of life except a few cattle pigmy beasts from 
 that great height. 
 
 By the bases of the mountains ran the road, winnowing 
 down to a thread, and climbing at last in tiny spirals up 
 the Ballandarroch Pass. He did not know that down this 
 road the coach had yesterday brought Jessie McLure and 
 her mother back to Tuchan. 
 
 No ignorant of this news lay our James in his eyrie 
 and buried deep in the black dungeon of his melancholy. 
 
 The spring, now on the threshold of the hottest summer 
 known for years, had been different from any other spring 
 in Jim's memory. The shouting of cataracts and running 
 of rills and calling of birds and blossoming of hedgerows 
 and greening of woods, though the same phenomena un- 
 doubtedly took place every year, seemed to have an inner 
 meaning. There was at first a wonderful joy in all this 
 budding and waking and outbursting and putting forth 
 ungrudgingly of life and leaf and blossom, a lighting up of 
 the heart, new to our James, as he watched the face of 
 Nature change and tender greens cover the unsightly 
 browns of bush, bramble, and bank. "It is the birth 
 of spring; now grasses return to the fields and rivers 
 overflow their banks." How simple are the words of the 
 half -jovial half-resigned Roman poet and how familiar! 
 
 159 
 
1GO A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 (Though our James had naturally never heard them.) 
 How simple are they and yet they give the same 
 catch of the heart that spring gives! All the great 
 stories of the world are old and all of them are con- 
 temporaries. It is only the frivolous and shallow, the 
 unfeeling and foolish, who laugh at the old, old stories. 
 The humble and wise remember them secretly in their 
 heart, and ponder over them sorrowfully. Spring comes 
 and goes and youth only goes youth, whether gay or 
 sad, lonely or thronged with friends. They are alike in 
 the exuberance of their griefs and passions. About them 
 there is no restraint, only the ache of desire and the longing 
 to appease the unsatisfied. Millions and millions of buds, 
 thousands of fluttering, cheeping, fluffy things, of creeping 
 humble lives, of mad, riotous scatterings and tumblings 
 in the woods, of mouths and beaks always agape! Put 
 forth, O prodigal Spring, put forth! Put forth with one 
 hand, beautifully and opulently, and take with the other, 
 secret, cruel, mysterious Spring! "The leaves return to 
 the trees and the Graces dance hand in hand." You are 
 lovely and gracious as youth, but merciless as youth is too. 
 When you are called Autumn, you shall weep and wail for 
 the beauties and cruelties of your youth. 
 
 Old, old is this story and the poets have sung it from 
 time immemorial. There is nothing half so sad as a lovely 
 spring day. "What we love, we must lose," whispers the 
 Spring, as she looks upon us with smiling, immortal face. 
 "Ask not the reason! You may call me cruel, but I am 
 unhappy too, sorrowful with the ineffable sorrow of the 
 artist, who makes what he knows must perish, who kills 
 what he loves best of all, who knows that all real beauty 
 is born of the depths of sadness." 
 
 Put forth! O beautiful, prodigal Spring, put forth with 
 the joy of the wanton and the pang of the mother and the 
 sacred sadness of the artist. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 161 
 
 Old, old is the story and there are some who laugh at 
 it. Old, old are the sorrows of the poets and many have 
 laughed at them. Perhaps, even, they have laughed at 
 themselves. Their hearts have been full of a sad, delicate 
 irony, while their eyes brimmed with tears. 
 
 For such is the laughter of the poets. 
 
 Our Jim, then, for the first time became conscious that in 
 this decking of old earth with green twines, sparkling in dia- 
 monds, and white blossoms and golden ornament, in those 
 scents of freshly turned earth and fragrant rains, in these 
 new songs and earliest butterflies and humblest lately opened 
 flowers, was something he had never before experienced. 
 
 I am not trying to make out that his sensations were in 
 the slightest degree unusual, though, in consequence of his 
 peculiar circumstances and peculiar constitution, they may 
 have been exceptionally violent. Indeed this peculiar sea- 
 son of youth, while it furnishes some of the most deathless 
 verse in the annals of English literature and some of the 
 most pregnant and heart-felt philosophy, at the same time 
 yields a plentiful harvest of jokes in the comic papers. Old, 
 old, old is the story of spring. Old is all poetry, old is all phi- 
 losophy, old are all jokes. Yet the human mind still has the 
 same experiences and must find comfort elsewhere. The 
 story of spring is the one of nearest import in the whole 
 world, the "touch of nature that makes it kin." Oh! 
 many are its outward manifestations and perhaps all serve a 
 purpose, even those "jokes" in the "comic" papers. The 
 vulgar and material seek consolation in the vulgar and mate- 
 rial, the secret and beautiful in the secret and beautiful. 
 
 The story of James in Part III is the old, old story of 
 the spring. 
 
 Was he not, to begin with, an outlaw, an Ishmaelite 
 with every man's hand against him; with no tongue to 
 tell his praise; a figure of fun, whose uncouth lineaments 
 were scratched on every white-washed wall in Tuchan? 
 
102 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Was he not utterly alone? 
 
 It is impossible indeed (in the biographer's opinion) to 
 drive deeply enough into first principles and say definitely 
 whether he was like this because of what he was or 
 whether he was what he was because he was like this. 
 For altho' the study of the Scotch Giant's life has inclined 
 him to a kind of fatalism, he resents the uttermost forms 
 of dogma owing to a fantastic desire to have all the pos- 
 sible premises before finally committing himself. At any 
 rate whatever the reason of it our Giganticulus could 
 not help (to some extent) realising his isolation, and 
 there were times during the last three or four years 
 when, resting on his pick, he felt a strange kinship with 
 the "mountains lonely as himself. Such melancholic brood- 
 ings, however, passed quickly enough in the fresh air of 
 the hills and in the healthy sweat of manual labour. 
 
 Then he had not been a declared outlaw. 
 
 But now, after the decree of banishment from among 
 the congregation of men, the birth of Spring seemed 
 to make him, huge and uncouth as he was, all emotion- 
 ally tremulous and quiveringly sensitive to these new 
 influences, and, all at once, the peculiar sense of the 
 impermanence of everything, equalling almost a feeling of 
 personal loss, the sense of the new springing up from the 
 old, of the new to become old itself in time, of the eternal 
 sorrowful secret behind the fair new mask of changing 
 Nature which made her face, if one could really see it, 
 sad with [the appalling sadness of the Ages, was engen- 
 dered in his mind, as it is in the minds of all sensitive 
 human beings. Then came the full realisation of his 
 loneliness, sweeping over him and overwhelming him. 
 
 Our Giganticulus was like a man fallen overboard into 
 a grey sea. He might cry aloud, but was there any one 
 to help him? 
 
 Or, rather, he was like a man in a dream who knows 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 163 
 
 that some great destiny hangs on a few words to be 
 spoken, and yet cannot make an articulate sound. 
 
 Yes yes, there was some indefinable thing beyond him 
 that he must try to seize but which yet persistently 
 defied capture. Didn't all lu's huge body ache for it? 
 
 He could not rid himself of this haunting, sorrowful 
 thing day or night. The dreams of his childhood came 
 oftener and more clearly than ever. Jessie McLure, 
 Johnny Findlater, the Dominie, appeared to him and 
 spoke to him, visible and tangible as flesh and blood, 
 not waning and shadowy as phantoms. He heard their 
 voices sometimes even in the daytime and stopped to 
 listen. Then the foreman would cry: "Wauk up, Mac- 
 donald. Ye're no paid to dream ava'." More than 
 ever he wished now that he was like other boys of decent, 
 average, unremarkable size. Then none of his misfor- 
 tunes would have happened. Then he might perhaps 
 
 That spring the girls of Tuchan, as they made faces at 
 him and laughed, seemed to have something quite new 
 and wonderful about them. 
 
 They and the boys of his own age had discovered a new 
 way of talking to each other in couples. 
 
 Our Giganticulus had no girl to talk to. He would 
 have been too shy if he had. All the same he found a 
 secret pain and a secret pleasure in thinking about them. 
 
 He lay in his eyrie that afternoon, full of secret, glorious 
 sentiment. 
 
 But let us not desecrate the shy recesses of his mind any 
 further. It is enough to indicate our Jim's feelings at this 
 precise point of his history, and to show how in his lone- 
 liness he adumbrated an intangible, remote, responsive 
 something to which he might call in time of need. "What 
 a ridiculous Coxcomb!" sighs the philosopher. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 ' I ^HERE was no sound in the heated, hushed air but 
 J. the coo of wood-pigeons from a neighbouring birch- 
 wood and from far below by Calder's Farm the occasional 
 lowing of a few pigmy cows which moved about in one 
 of those small fields into which the great slopes of the 
 valley were parcelled. They climbed up these fields 
 divided by low, half-tumbled down, and uneven stone- 
 walls, to within two hundred yards of where our Gigan- 
 ticulus lay. For the most part they were empty, but 
 in the last of them all was a young bull which began 
 bellowing sullenly, bellowing unintermittenly thro' the 
 drowsy afternoon. Now it is useless to deny that human 
 beings are only a higher form of animal and that the 
 latter have many feelings in common with the former. 
 Jessie McLure was daundering with thoughts of Johnny 
 in her head; Jim was lying in his eyrie full of desire 
 for that something lacking in his life, while the young 
 bull but let us explain that by the edict of Farmer 
 Thomson's cowman this young bull, tho' youthful and 
 very much inclined for female society, had been separated 
 from those same cows which Jim heard lowing by Calder's 
 Farm. Hence, hearing them low as well, he bellowed in 
 answer, making, perhaps, in his own language, mighty 
 resentful remarks about his acquaintance, the cowman, 
 or else, in occasionally gentler tones, pretty speeches 
 to his lady friends. Conversation, however, carried on 
 under such difficulties, did not afford much solace, and, 
 in consequence, he was feeling very fretful, peevish, and 
 tempestuous, if not fierce. In this state of mind the 
 
 164 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 165 
 
 animal lounged about the pasture, swished his tufted tail 
 against his flanks, and from time to time pawed the 
 ground. 
 
 Jim watched him with vague interest and head full of 
 all those other strange secret things. 
 
 His eye roamed from the fretful young bull to the pigmy 
 cows and Calder's Farm; then over the valley, where the 
 grey stones lay, looking like sheep, and towards the 
 mountains with deep ravines in their ancient sides (mere 
 cracks at that distance), and the scattered firs clinging 
 to their rugged nakedness, and the burn, which the melt- 
 ing snows fed, hurrying along their bases, and along the 
 road, winding between low untidy stone-walls and through 
 broken-down gates, winding and climbing and descending 
 at no height or depth, till it plunged down into the great 
 basin, scooped at the pedestals of More and Moich, and, 
 after zigzagging through black walls of fir, finally came 
 out on the plateau between the two great peaks, always 
 capped in snow, and commanded a panoramic view of the 
 country beyond, which Jim had never seen. 
 
 There are some natures that leap from one extreme to 
 another. A minute before, our Giganticulus had been 
 happy in solacing himself with a dream, a daydream, 
 a wakingdream, a dream so vivid that it brought him 
 almost as much pleasure as if it had been real. Let us 
 not plunge too far into the shy recesses of his mind and 
 discover what that dream was. Now, in a flash, the 
 melancholy of a hot spring or rather early summer after- 
 noon surged over him, and he felt utterly alone, utterly 
 wretched, utterly useless. 
 
 The old, feeble, querulous, and cowardly wail rose up 
 within him once more. 
 
 "If only I hadna been sae big I sud ha' been happy I" 
 
 Then an intense longing to climb the Pass and see the 
 great country beyond, which he had never yet seen, came 
 
1G6 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 over him. Anything was better than to be the despised 
 and rejected of all in Tuchan. The black dungeon of his 
 melancholy compassed him round about, but was there no 
 escape from that haggard, shrinking, ghost-pale warder, Fear? 
 
 Supposing he got up from his eyrie now and walked down 
 the hillside, a not stupendously difficult task, he could 
 reach the plateau in six or seven hours. Another day 
 would take him to Duke's Ferry, so he believed. Then 
 he could see whether it was not possible to shake off the 
 fate that had always hitherto clung round him. 
 
 Surely it was possible to escape from the dungeon! A 
 few steps and he could be free. Listen! There are 
 stealthy creeping feet along the corridor and someone 
 brushes the walls, someone who is always waiting and 
 watching. It is the haggard, ghost-pale warder. The 
 prison door is locked and there is no escape. He could 
 never bear the mocking eyes of strangers; their mocking 
 tongues. It was useless to try and deceive himself any 
 longer. He would never be the same size as ordinary people. 
 He was a foot taller than anyone else in the village and 
 growing still. Better,; however, those he knew than those 
 he did not know! He must live, die and be buried in 
 Tuchan. That was his fate. He must endure it. 
 
 During these meditations, Jim had become entirely 
 oblivious to his surroundings, a trick of his we have 
 seen. Arrived, however, at the above conclusion, he 
 once more returned to the outer world and, as he had been 
 staring with eyes that perceived nothing over the valley, 
 to his surprise discovered that a human figure was climb- 
 ing up the hillside towards him. 
 
 He saw that it was a woman or rather a girl, for she 
 seemed to climb without fatigue. Who was she? 
 
 Nearer and nearer she came, carrying a red parasol and 
 wearing a white muslin dress, girt with a red sash at the 
 waist. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 167 
 
 None of the village girls would carry a red parasol, 
 thought Jim. This must be a stranger. His melan- 
 choly vanished as suddenly as it had come. 
 
 And, as is the way with excitable natures, his heart 
 began to thump on the grass beneath him. 
 
 Who could it be? 
 
 O! youth is the season of dreams and day-dreams. 
 An accomplished dreamer can imagine anything. 
 
 The girl opened a rickety wooden gate and entered 
 the field beneath him. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 AT that moment another actor in the scene noticed 
 her as he lounged about discontentedly at the farther 
 end of the field. 
 
 "What the devil is that?" said the young bull to him- 
 self, feeling exactly like an irritable landed proprietor 
 who sees a trespasser unwarrantably walking in his private 
 grounds, and rolling an ominous eye as he caught sight 
 of an intruder and one, moreover, carrying a colour 
 particularly offensive to him and his race. With steaming 
 nose lifted and tail a-swish he stared at Jessie; then, with 
 slow steps and fore-foot occasionally pawing the ground, 
 moved towards the unconscious girl, adding to himself, 
 "These vexatious strangers, who dress in such exasperating 
 fashion, cannot be allowed." Jessie McLure never noticed 
 the outraged animal. With mind full of Johnny Find- 
 later and parasol lowered on Master Bull's side to keep 
 off the afternoon sun, she slowly climbed her way up the 
 steep grassy field. 
 
 Princess Honey-Sweet's song kept on running in her head 
 that afternoon. 0! youth in the season of songs and 
 visions, when the songs still ring true, and the visions 
 whisper, "We are from the gate of Horn." 
 
 Her heart kept time to tune and words: 
 
 "But now my dreams have all come true 
 
 A simpler way than this, 
 I've learnt you go there two by two 
 
 And find it with a kiss, 
 That happy land beyond the hills, 
 Beyond the purpling gloaming, 
 With mellow days and murmuring rills 
 And faithful couples roaming. 
 j68 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 169 
 
 " In Wonderland, my Wonderland, 
 We'll walk together, hand in hand; 
 We'll keep our tryst, we'll keep our troth, 
 And love, dear love, shall keep us both, 
 In Wonderland, our Wonderland 
 For we have joined the happy band, 
 Who walked of old thro' gleam and gold 
 In Wonderland." 
 
 Foolish and sentimental were the words of the song, 
 no doubt, and foolish and sentimental was the tune, but 
 such are the things that the heart of youth loveth, never 
 doubting that they are true, never doubting that the 
 dreams come from the gate of Horn, never suspecting 
 that songs of happiness and love well from hearts full of 
 sorrow. However, let us return to our muttons, or 
 rather to our bull. 
 
 The animal's steps became quicker and quicker; occa- 
 sionally he lowered head and snorted heavily through 
 nostrils. As yet he was some way from Jessie McLure. 
 
 It was now that James Macdonald, who had never taken 
 his eyes off the approaching Jessie, noticed the bull fol- 
 lowing her. He realised at once that the girl, whoever 
 she might be, was in danger, rose from his hiding-place 
 in the wood and shouted. Hardly had he done so, when 
 the bull decided he must charge, if life was to be worth 
 living. With head lowered and hooves drumming in the 
 gallop, he bore down upon the object of his wrath. 
 
 Almost at one and the same moment Jessie heard the 
 bull's bellow and the shout of James Macdonald, that 
 cataclysmal shout, which no lungs but his could make. 
 It merged with the bull's bellow, grew louder than it, 
 swelled in an enormous volume of noise, and then suddenly 
 ceased. All the hollow amphitheatre of the Calder Valley 
 seemed to be reverberating to the rival voices of man and 
 animal man and bull bellowing together. She stopped; 
 put hand to heart; looked this way and that, Her be- 
 
170 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 wilderment and affright can be more easily imagined than 
 described. 
 
 Is it not always irksome to have to grope after in a 
 dozen or more sentences what must pass through the mind 
 in a flash? No amount of hyphens or exclamation marks 
 can give the breathless emotions of surprise and terror; 
 the lightning effect of decisions made in a moment. All 
 language halts. Yet, in spite of the inadequacy of words 
 to reflect sensations of so rapid a nature, in this medium 
 must some hint of the terrified girl's feelings be given, and 
 the imagination of the reader do its best. What a rude 
 awakening to her day dream had Jessie! 
 
 In front of her she beheld a huge and enormous figure, 
 apparently that of a man, but by far the biggest man she 
 had ever seen (it must be remembered that James was 
 now nearly seven feet high), which cleared the low stone 
 boundary wall of the field at a single leap and rushed 
 towards her shouting, brandishing its arms, and moving with 
 gigantic strides. To a young girl thinking, in a kind of 
 ecstacy, of a boy-lover with blue eyes and golden hair, the 
 sudden appearance of any man in a solitary place would 
 have been somewhat terrifying. Judge then how appalling 
 must have been the spectacle of this gigantic and extraordi- 
 nary figure bounding towards her! 
 
 He shouted incoherently as he bounded. She made as 
 if to flee from him. 
 
 Then remembered she the bull, momentarily forgotten 
 in her terror of the monstrous man. Swiftly as that 
 Hugeness approached her, the animal seemed to come 
 more swiftly still. Its head was lowered, its hooves 
 drummed the earth, its tail swished against its flanks. 
 
 She was, as it were, the apex of an equilateral, and the 
 two terrors galloped towards her at right angles to each 
 other. 
 
 Wonderland was in an instant forgotten. She began 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 171 
 
 to think only of self-preservation. How could she escape 
 these perils which at the first lightning estimate seemed 
 indeed equally dreadful? Her mind went dizzy for a 
 moment. Then the power of calculation came back. 
 She reckoned her chances. 
 
 Immediately they thus unfolded themselves. 
 
 The bull was obviously and indubitably resolved on 
 attack, the man, strange and unprecedentedly enormous 
 though he might be, probably animated by the intention 
 of rescuing her. It was in his direction therefore that 
 she must flee, if she wished to save her life. The huge 
 figure's cries began to reach her in coherent expressions. 
 
 "Rin towards me, lassie! Rin for your life!" 
 
 Realising that the red parasol was a danger, Jessie 
 flung it away and acted upon the hint of her would-be 
 deliverer. Picking up muslin skirt high (this was no time 
 for prudery) she ran towards James as fast as strong 
 young legs would carry her. 
 
 Let us not "tire" either ourselves or our readers with 
 "base comparisons," but how equivocal are all our standard 
 values! Had Jim burst out upon Jessie alone, in a field 
 bull-less, how quickly she would have run from him! But 
 now a greater danger threatens and she flees to him as if 
 to a saviour, fears of him practically non-existent. So do 
 all our landmarks vanish in the shifting sands of life. 
 
 The next few moments seemed the flash of a dream. 
 Was it really herself, who ran up the grassy hill with 
 heart pounding side, the drum of the young bull's hooves 
 sounding ever nearer behind her, and the strange creature's 
 cries ringing dizzily above everything. 
 
 "Quicker! Quicker! Dinna fa' for the love of Heaven." 
 
 The distance between them seemed to be diminishing 
 all the time not by yards but by incredible, immeasurable 
 spaces. In her ears the thunder of hooves grew as loud 
 as the sea, or the roar of street traffic. A hot scented 
 
172 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 breath seemed to be blowing actually upon her neck. 
 Suddenly she felt herself seized by an arm of gigantic 
 strength and flung forward on her course with a violence 
 that hurled her haphazard, headlong, anyhow into a tus- 
 sock of grass. A great shout and a huge bellow answered 
 each other. . . . Then the eerie dream flashed away. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 SHE recovered consciousness again to find water trick- 
 ling down her face, and somebody, in a man's voice, 
 calling her name. 
 
 "Jessie! Jessie! Dinna say I've hurt ye, my lass!" 
 
 Still feeling dizzy (she had been lying on a grassy bank 
 dimly aware for a little time of a monstrous figure bend- 
 ing over her). The black-eyed daughter of the McLures 
 sat up and looked at the owner of the voice, concealing 
 the while as best she could a certain amount of trepida- 
 tion. At once all the recent peril flashed back. She 
 remembered the monstrous man. This must be he. It 
 was indeed. He knelt by her side with a dripping bonnet 
 in his hands, and spoke again, shyly this time and with 
 hesitation, now he saw she was conscious. 
 
 "Jessie? MissMcLure? D'ye no recognise me?" Some- 
 where or other, in past times, she remembered having seen 
 the face before. Still stunned and dizzy and incapable 
 of distinct sight. She thought wondered searched 
 the past. Who on earth was the monstrous man? He 
 seemed indeed amiable and pacific. 
 
 Stared at her moreover with a shy, eager, devouring look. 
 
 Sight became clearer. That freckled face! Those huge 
 masses of twisted, tangled red hair! It could only be 
 be 
 
 " Ye'll no recognise me mebbe, Miss McLure," continued 
 her rescuer. "I was at school wi' ye five years syne. Ma 
 name's " 
 
 "Jim Macdonald?" said Jessie in a low voice, before he 
 could finish the sentence. 
 
 173 
 
174 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Jim Macdonald, " answered the monstrous man. 
 
 There was a long silence. At first Jessie could not in 
 the least realise what had occurred. Yet it was true. Her 
 life had been saved by Jim, Jim, whom she had always 
 hated, hated still, about whom no one had a good word to 
 say Jim, worst character in the village. 
 
 What could she ever owe liim more than that life of hers? 
 O! deep in debt to him was she now. Why hadn't it been 
 Johnny who saved her life? How beautiful that would 
 have been! Why not any other person in Tuchan? A 
 stranger even? Anyone would have been better than Jim 
 Macdonald. She loathed him and felt she ought to be 
 passionately grateful to him. She couldn't be. She must 
 be. How hideous he was. Worse than ever. And every- 
 one said he was wicked. He had always tried to toady her. 
 This saving of her life seemed only a supreme instance of 
 toadyism. Ugh! She shuddered slightly. Then a feeling 
 of terror came over her now that she was saved from the 
 bull. He must be really wicked. She still stared at the 
 huge countenance of her preserver in silence and, as she 
 did so, the look of shy eagerness changed to one of com- 
 plete, utter dejection. Was not the ugly, freckled face 
 only that of a boy? Fear and hatred became a little 
 smaller. "He's only a boy," she thought to encourage her- 
 self. "I needna be frichtened o' him. Of course he's only 
 a boy." Then aloud, "How d'you do, Mr. Macdonald? 
 I'm verra pleased to meet you again." It was the utmost 
 she could do in the state of her mind the utmost. Only 
 a little more and she must have burst into tears between 
 the irony of the fate that had overtaken her, her fear of 
 Jim and the terror of her recollections. No tears tho' in 
 front of Jim Macdonald. Anything was better than that. 
 "You've grown sae big," she added. "I didna recognise 
 you at first." A thrill of agony went through the body 
 of our Giganticulus. He had again forgotten for a moment 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 175 
 
 that he was not the same size as other people. Miser- 
 ably he now saw Jessie's eyes wander over him from head 
 to foot and both eyes and mouth open as she took in 
 his proportions. 
 
 "They never told me you'd grown sae big," she con- 
 tinued. "I think you're the biggest man I've ever seen." 
 Every word pierced like a sharp little blade. He had just 
 enough strength to answer, "Yes, I'm unco big, Jessie." 
 
 She fell into silence once more. 
 
 Yes, Jim had saved her life undoubtedly. There was 
 an attitude of meanness in her feeling towards him, which 
 was trying to find a point d'appui. She ought to have 
 been all generous impulse towards her saviour, but ugh! 
 that freckled face, that huge body, and huge tangled hair 
 made such a thing impossible. Had gratitude overcome 
 all her other impulses, she might have rehabilitated her 
 old enemy's name in the village, but then who wanted to 
 be grateful ? Any little thing would serve to turn the 
 scale against him, any stick would do to beat him with. 
 Jim could not really be a hero. It was impossible. She 
 lived in the light and the dusk, drew only in black and white 
 without fine shades. Yes, Jim was hideous and a villain and 
 could be nothing else. But, to be sure, she must get the 
 story out of this gigantic, uncouth, mouthing creature 
 before she went back home. 
 
 "How you frichtened me at first," said she as amiably 
 as she could. "You shouted sae loud and ran sae fast and 
 looked sae big, that I should certainly hae rin awa' or 
 fainted if the bull hadna been after me. But how did you 
 manage to save me? How Jim?" she said, laying her 
 hand on his knee for a brief delicious second. At her 
 touch and words a thrill of more than mortal bliss shot 
 through James Macdonald's huge and sensitive body. 
 On a sudden he realised how, for the first time, that 
 enormous size and strength had been of some use. His 
 
176 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 great freckled face beamed with pride. Alas, alas! a 
 fall will come after. What gave him the feeling of 
 pride will enable Jessie to minimise the whole adventure 
 from his point of view, on the side of the heroic; make 
 it possible for her to attribute to him no exceptional 
 bravery; strengthen ten times over her repulsion. 
 
 Answered Jim to the question : 
 
 "I picked ye up and threw ye ahint me. Then I waited 
 for the bull : he wasna sae very far away, ye ken. I juist 
 waited sideways on and threw him ower an' an' I think 
 I broke his neck." 
 
 Jessie McLure looked at him in a sort of stupefied 
 astonishment. James' story seemed hardly credible. 
 
 "You threw the bull ower and broke his neck?" she 
 gasped. 
 
 "I'm thinkin' sae," replied James Macdonald with 
 almost demure self-satisfaction. Jessie looked at him 
 again. He had saved her life, but what sort of creature 
 was this who could wrestle with ferocious beasts and break 
 their necks? He must be something really inhuman, re- 
 pulsive. Instinctively she drew her skirts and herself a 
 little bit away from him. Jim was too happy to notice 
 the movement or ascribe it to the usual cause that re- 
 moved everybody from him. He felt so happy that his 
 shyness momentarily disappeared. He had something he 
 wished to explain. 
 
 "I'm speirin' that I didna hurt ye, Jessie, when I 
 threw ye on the grass. The bull was sae close that I 
 had to staund between him and you." 
 
 "Not at all," murmured Jessie faintly. Continued Jim, 
 as the impulse to confide grew stronger: "Ye asked how 
 I managed to save ye. Weel, it was this way. When I 
 stood waitin' for the bull, suddenly I felt stronger, ten 
 times stronger than I ever felt afore. Ye canna guess how 
 strong I felt then, Jessie. It was naethin' ava to owerthrow 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 177 
 
 the bull. I could hae rolled six ower and I saw e very- 
 thin' as thro' a Red Mist. I've only been sae ance afore 
 in ma life. Ance afore I hae felt that feelin' o' strength 
 extraordinair', when I " 
 
 The next second Jim was scarlet from his red hair to 
 the rim of his jersey. In that second the past came back 
 and he remembered that this last time was when he broke 
 Johnny Findlater's head, floored the Dominie, and pushed 
 Jessie down. Yes back came the past, bringing with 
 it all he had suffered at school from Johnny and the girl, 
 bringing with it all his old adoration for Jessie, multiplied 
 ten times, a hundredfold, a thousandfold, immeasurably. 
 In that second she became what he had waited for the 
 whole spring through all that time of shouting of cataracts 
 and running of rills and calling of birds and blossoming 
 of hedgerows and greening of woods: became the joy 
 hidden in that season of budding and waking and bursting, 
 and putting forth of leaf and life and blossom: became its 
 sorrow too. His blood buzzed in his temples as he looked 
 at her dark glowing face and dark flashing eyes, and his 
 huge body quivered all over. Something seemed to be 
 carrying him along with irresistible force and pace towards 
 an unknown goal. He knew now for what he had been 
 longing. Here it was at his side and yet, somehow, farther 
 off than ever. . . . How he hoped that his unlucky words 
 had not recalled the bad old times to Jessie! He wanted 
 to be friends with her more than he had ever wanted to 
 be friends with anyone. The bad old times must pass 
 from all their memories. There was no Johnny Findlater 
 now to stand between them. It was he, who had always 
 turned Jessie against Jim. The village might speak ill 
 of him, but he had saved Jessie's life; his size had done 
 it, and she would know. Yet all the time, under the riot 
 of new forces and new wishes and new hopes, was the 
 greatest feeling of sadness that James Macdonald had ever 
 
178 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 known, in spite of the fact that his short life had been far 
 from a happy one. 
 
 He looked at her with shy, eager, devouring look, half 
 hoping that she would guess and half fearing. 
 
 James Macdonald had fallen in love. As for Jessie, 
 she guessed from the rush of blood into Jim's face and his 
 sudden silence the occasion on which he last had that 
 feeling of superhuman strength. The day came back to 
 her almost as clearly as it had come back to him. All her 
 old hale of Jim came back, multiplied ten times, a hundred 
 times, a thousandfold, immeasurably, in spite of the fact 
 that Jim had saved her life. This great obligation only 
 made her hate him more. He was now something abnor- 
 mal and inhuman, something like the beast which he had 
 vanquished on her behalf, something for which she need feel 
 no emotion of pity or affection, only of hatred. What 
 credit was it for a beast to vanquish a beast? There was 
 nothing heroic in a great animal of Jim's size and strength 
 vanquishing another animal. Might there have been 
 some base, low motive behind his action ? Now, if Johnny 
 Findlater had overthrown the bull, Johnny, whose strength 
 of body had never been great, it would have been grand, 
 glorious, sublime. Like Jim she wished for the impossible. 
 There were two poles to her world the love of Johnny 
 and the hatred of Jim. To our Giganticulus she grudged 
 every noble and brave thing done because it had not been 
 the other's deed. She wished for her friend to be all white, 
 her enemy to be all black. A strange form of idealism and 
 yet one indubitably and in very truth the first bitter- 
 sweet fruit of her passionate egotism, which never thought 
 of Jim, but only of what was wanted for the gratification 
 of this Johnny-idealization; this making- true of the im- 
 possible. 
 
 And so it came about that Jim's story made him more re- 
 pulsive than ever to Jessie and that she gave him no credit 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 179 
 
 for courage and skill in this saving of her life. Yet unable 
 or unwilling to tell him the truth, and indeed there seemed 
 no necessity for it, she stammered a few words of thanks. 
 "You've you've saved my life," and then added, "but 
 now I must be gaein hame. Mither will be gettin' anxious. 
 It's ower late." Then rose she from the little grass bank 
 on which James had placed her (Faugh! to think that she 
 had been carried in his arms), could not, however, repress a 
 slight cry at the pain of a bruised shoulder. " Can ye reach 
 hame alane, Jessie?" asked Jim, rising too and towering 
 above her till she felt like a little child. "I'm dootin' 
 I hurt ye after a'." 
 
 "Oh! I can easily walk. It's only my shoulder hurts 
 a little and now the giddiness has passed awa' entirely." 
 
 "Can I no help ye, Jessie, by walkin' in wi' ye a pairt 
 o' the way? The Meenister and me is no guid friends, 
 but I could tak' ye to the road." 
 
 "No thank you, Jim." She hunted for an excuse. "It 
 wouldna be richt for us to walk together." 
 
 "Noricht?" 
 
 "No. You're Mr. Macdonald now, you see, an' an' 
 I'm Miss McLure. We hardly know each other, do we?" 
 She held out her hand with a forced smile. 
 
 "Good-bye," she said. 
 
 "Good-bye," answered Jim, his freckled face fallen in 
 bewildered dejection, and then, while shyness clutched the 
 words in his throat: 
 
 "But I sail see ye again?" 
 
 "Of course," replied Jessie, "but I shall be very busy 
 the next few days." (She did not say that Johnny Findlater 
 was coming to stop with the Reverend Simon.) "After 
 that, ony time, Jim, ony time. Good-bye!" She looked 
 round. 
 
 "Where's my parasol?" Again Jim's face lighted up 
 at the thought of doing something for her. 
 
180 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Ye threw it awa' when the bull came after ye." 
 
 "Yes, I remember." 
 
 "I'll rin and get it for ye. I ken where it lies. Bide 
 here a minute. I'll no be lang." At that moment both 
 heard a sullen but modified bellow and looked over the 
 low stone-wall into the field. 
 
 "What's that?" cried Jessie. "Why, the bull isna killed. 
 He's walkin' about." 
 
 "That's sae," replied Jim, towering at her side. 
 
 " Aweel, I'm glad the puir beastie's nae deid. His neck's 
 unco stiff though, I'm thinkin'." 
 
 Indeed the young bull was walking back stiffly and 
 slowly towards the further end of the pasture, shaking his 
 head unhappily from time to time, and, every now and 
 then, disconsolately bellowing. 
 
 "I tocht him a lesson," continued our Giganticulus with 
 a look of pride once more conquering the old humility. 
 
 "I tocht him a lesson sure. Noo, I'll rin and get your 
 parasol." 
 
 But every word of Jim's that recalled the battle fanned 
 the flame of hate in Jessie's mind. How she loathed the 
 huge, hideous, uncouth, red-haired lout! Not for worlds 
 would she have had him fetch that summer bauble; been 
 under any further obligation to him (even were it such a 
 light one as this). 
 
 "Jim," said she, "I canna let ye risk your life again. My 
 parasol can lie there. I dinna want it." 
 
 "Let me?" said Jim. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I maun get it." 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 "Quite sure, Jim." 
 
 "Verra weel, Jessie," said Jim in a disappointed voice, 
 and like a slave the monstrous man yielded, though to do 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 181 
 
 some little service for her was all that he craved; like a 
 slave heard her last words. 
 
 "I'd never take it. Risk your life, Jim, for a parasol. 
 Absurd! And now once again, good-bye. An' an', Jim, 
 dinna speak o' this yet awhile. If if my mither heard 
 
 of it she'd be unco frichtened an' she's no weel the noo." 
 
 * 
 
 For near half an hour Jim remained on the spot hal- 
 lowed by Jessie's speech and presence, falling from the 
 heights of bliss to the depths of despair as his mood shifted. 
 In her was the ideal outside himself that counteracted 
 everything unhappy, unkind, and ignoble in his own exist- 
 ence; in her was the saving clause. That much being 
 sure, everything she did and said reflected on himself, as 
 it bore relation to his wishes. 
 
 A. She had been wondrously thoughtful in not wish- 
 ing him to fetch the parasol and risk his safety once more. 
 (And this, without any comprehension of her motives, James 
 magnified into a beautiful act of self-denial, for such is 
 the way of lovers.) 
 
 B. She had been wondrously chilly in not allowing 
 him to walk home with her and not settling another 
 meeting. 
 
 Between these two ideas our James hovered, sometimes 
 rising to the heights of beatitude with A, sometimes tum- 
 bling into the blackness of all nullity with B. 
 
 Then, as his desire was that facts should be kind to him 
 and not unkind, his aching self fastened on A as the true 
 thing, clung to it desperately and blindly, as a man clings 
 to a tree above a precipice. Till the tree cracks and rends 
 for the last time, he will continue to believe it sound. The 
 gulf cannot be waiting for him of all people. So strong is 
 his instinct of life. 
 
 A new force was hurrying our Giganticulus breathlessly 
 to an unknown goal. The goal that waited for him he 
 
182 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 wholly misconceived. What he thought he saw, wished 
 to be, for sheer inability to imagine otherwise, was a 
 dazzling end to all his unhappiness. 
 
 A little voice may have cried " Beware," but James 
 heard it not or, if he heard it, turned a deaf ear. 
 
 He said to himself, over and over again, in a kind of 
 ecstacy: 
 
 "I've saved Jessie's life." 
 
 For the first time saw good in that vast overpower- 
 ing body of his, those knotted red hands, almost as big 
 as shoulders-of-mutton, those mighty thighs and mighty 
 loins, not yet grown to their full strength. 
 
 They had saved Jessie. 
 
 That they had also made her hate him, loathe him 
 more than ever, behold our Giganticulus wholly ignorant! 
 
 Such was the irony of his position; such the Will of the 
 Unresting, Unflinching Law, which makes, unmakes, and 
 moves forward, weighing all things in the balance; re- 
 warding and punishing in hidden ways, which are known 
 to men perhaps later and perhaps never. For every- 
 thing It gives, It takes away, and for everything It takes 
 away, It gives, and no man is master Thereof, but It is 
 master of him. Dimly only can he descry Its workings, 
 catch at faint showings, and feel sometimes the power of 
 Mighty Hands, mightier even than the red, shoulder-of- 
 mutton hands of James Macdonald. 
 
 At that moment our Giganticulus descried it not, but, 
 clutching at proposition A, leapt once more over the low 
 stone-wall, in which the bull was pastured, and found 
 the red parasol lying uninjured in the grass. There was 
 no molestation from the bull, not even a sullen bellow. 
 He had had enough for the afternoon. 
 
 Dandling the red parasol in his arms that remembrance 
 of the black-eyed daughter of the McLures and all she 
 meant to him he took the downward path towards the 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 183 
 
 sinking sun. As well as Jessie, Jim had a tune and burden 
 of his own, to which his feet kept time. 
 
 "Clump clump clump clump! Man Jim, ye've 
 saved her life." 
 
 Anon, too, his lips began to move in the fashioning of 
 other words, and the travesty of an ancient song passed 
 through them in a raucous hum. 
 
 "O that love and that love! 
 
 For she is rna darlin'. 
 Nae lass is in the world sae fair 
 As the lovely Jess Macfarlane." 
 
 Gone was the time when he might have joyously let 
 loose on the mountain-tops his great bellowing voice. 
 Gone was the season of aimless, cataclysmal bellowing. 
 Tiiis hour was sacred, the hour of dreary silence, and 
 fading sunset tints, and mysterious twilight making tender 
 all the hot magic of that afternoon. 
 
 It was the hour of low melodies serene, deeper-toned 
 beauty, and the Evening Star, and Jim's idea of melody 
 was that raucous hum, in which he tried to express a gentle 
 glamour born of the swiftly shifting tortures of his after- 
 noon. For all moods are Love's. And so raucously hum- 
 ming "0 that love and O that love "he went down the 
 hills, outlaw returning. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 HE pushed open the back door and crept silently into 
 the scullery, wanting to be alone in his own room. 
 Could he possibly get up the stair unobserved? It was a 
 fact that now the rift between himself and his parents had 
 so broadened that Jim came and went with hardly a word 
 interchanged for days. Often, too, in remembrance of the 
 old vow, and in order that Alexander might have nothing 
 to say against him on the score of exaggerated gastronom- 
 ical feats, he went without supper. 
 
 The door into the kitchen, where sat his father and 
 mother, was ajar. Euphemia had evidently finished wash- 
 ing up the knives and plates. 
 
 "Where's Jim, I wonder," came his mother's querulous 
 voice. Our Giganticulus was on the point of replying in 
 case Euphemia might be anxious, when Alexander made 
 grumbling answer. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake dinna fash ony mair aboot Jim. 
 That's the twentieth time since supper ye've asked the 
 same question. I misdoot the lad's been on some pliskies 
 o' his ane. We havena had ony trouble wi' him lately 
 but, forbye he's unco altered, we'll sune hae some mair. 
 Aweel, I'm fatalistic aboot him the noo. There's nae 
 smoke wi' oot a flame, ye ken. Why sud everyone speak 
 ill o' him, forbye he's an ill lad? He hasna a frien' in 
 the place and I'm thinkin' he desairves naethin' better. 
 Mony years ago I feared it and noo I'm at the conclusion 
 that Jim's nae guid ava'. If he does naethin' oot o' the 
 ordinair fulish and wicked, I'm juist thankfu'. That's a'." 
 
 Euphemia whimpered a little in answer. In her own 
 
 184 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 185 
 
 heart she accused Jim, but can anything ever make a 
 mother forget that her son may not have enough to eat ? 
 
 " The second evening ruining, Jim's had nae supper ava', " 
 she cried. 
 
 "Huh!" snorted the quarryman and sucked loudly 
 thrice at his pipe. 
 
 As for Jim, he reeled in the midst of his new-found happi- 
 ness. For the moment, in the recollection of Jessie's glowing 
 face and dark flashing eyes, he had forgotten all the dismal, 
 lonely past the sentence of outlawry. The future was to 
 be all golden. The sun had shone in on the black dungeon 
 of his melancholy and he had seen the window-bars were 
 loosened. Alexander's words pierced him as with a knife. 
 
 "He hasna a friend in the place and I'm thinkin' he 
 desairves naethin' better. If he does naethin' oot o' the 
 ordinair fulish and wicked, I'm juist thankfu'." 
 
 Ah! he would have one friend who would make up the 
 loss, ten times, a hundred-fold, a thousand times. Never- 
 more would he do anything foolish and wicked. 
 
 The time for "pliskies" was past. No one knew that 
 except Jim. It was his secret. He had saved her life. 
 There was no Johnny Findlater to come between them 
 now. The bad old times were gone. 
 
 At this thought, his new-found happiness whirled him 
 up and along like an irresistible flood. His freckled face 
 shone with a strange light; his huge red shoulder-of- 
 mutton hands trembled; his great hobbledehoy body 
 quivered from the tangled red hair to the enormous feet, 
 quivered and became almost powerless. He leant against 
 the scullery-wall for support. It groaned and shuddered 
 under his weight. 
 
 "Wha's that?" cried Euphemia. 
 
 "It's me, mither. I was oot on the hills and didna ken 
 the 'oor," he said, gathering himself together and pushing 
 open the kitchen door. 
 
186 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Huh!" snorted Alexander, looking at his son as if he 
 would have liked to scold him. But Jim looked so gay 
 and flushed that instead his father stared in surprise. 
 
 "An' what's the noo plisky?" he asked himself. This 
 was not the glum Jim of every day. 
 
 "Ye maun hae some supper, Jim," said his mother. 
 "Ye've no ta'en meat the last fower days. I'll mak' it 
 ready." 
 
 It was true that he had not taken meat for four days, 
 but, in spite of that, the Red Mist had come into his eyes 
 and the feeling of superhuman strength into his body. If 
 he took meat every day, what would be the result? Losh, 
 to think of it. ... 
 
 Jim went upstairs after a pretence of eating, not to sleep 
 indeed, but to hug all night in his deepest self a rich secret. 
 How many times, I wonder, did he say to this self, before 
 dawn : 
 
 "I've saved Jessie's life." 
 
 The tumultuous passion which had shaken him on the 
 hillside bore him along as a rushing river carries a log. 
 Sometimes a sea is calm to all outward appearance. There 
 are only tiny ripples on the shore, but in the air is audible 
 a dull, as if far off, moaning. It comes from the depths 
 of the sea, from the secret, mysterious, unknowable ocean. 
 There is a change portending. Then the surface is altered 
 and clouds cover the face of heaven. The blue of the sea 
 turns to grey and the crests of the rising waves break in 
 white. The dull booming grows nearer and louder. In 
 the distance the dull grey has already changed to a black 
 or a black-green and there the squall turns the horizon to 
 an inky black. The wind moans eerily and has three or 
 four times shouted with gusty passion. Still far off one 
 sees the black squall approaching and the waters leaping 
 and hissing in black-green foaming furrows beneath it. 
 Then, almost before one realises, the near face of Nature 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 187 
 
 is changed. The sea leaps up to meet the heavens and 
 the heavens descend to meet the sea. There is nothing 
 but seething convulsion and confusion and a roaring that 
 stuns and deafens. 
 
 So swiftly comes a storm. Or else and old metaphors 
 are cheap loosen a boulder at the top of a precipice. It 
 has lain there on the edge for many years, rooted and 
 peaceful. Far below dives the gorge. The headlong sides 
 of it are hung with twisted, clinging trees, fir, birch, and 
 ash finding a precarious foothold, and at the bottom amidst 
 thick wood a stream hurries and clamours. Loosen the 
 stone! Before it gathers impetus, the strength of a child 
 could stop it a few yards from the dizzy edge. But let it 
 travel a little further, gathering force the whole tune, and 
 then not even the strength of the strongest man could 
 avail to stay it. It leaps in the air like a thing of life, 
 tears its way through the lesser shrubs that clothe the steep 
 of the precipice, meets with a crack and crash the larger 
 trees, and goes furiously on its way, leaving them bruised 
 or broken behind it. So bounding and tearing and irresist- 
 ible it is hurled down the gorge and finally plunges with 
 a mountainous splash, a roar, and a boom far into the 
 stream below. 
 
 Such is the headlong furious force of Passion when it 
 is master. 
 
 For, when once a nature, secret and violent, like that 
 of our Giganticulus has been driven in upon itself for many 
 years, thwarted and compressed, it becomes dangerous 
 as a highly compressed explosive. None of its power has 
 been dissipated. It waits, harmless in appearance as a 
 brick for the building of a house, this one of many bricks 
 in the social edifice. But it is a brick of dynamite or some 
 other ite that has been put amongst its utilitarian 
 brethren by mistake. The first jolt, the first tap of the 
 trowel, and everything in the neighbourhood will be 
 
188 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 blown sky-high! Such a nature, because it cannot expand 
 and diffuse itself, becomes deeper and deeper as it waits 
 in solitude. The happy and content do not know passion, 
 for it is the desire for something that can never be, and 
 those who desire the impossible cannot, of course, be 
 contented. 
 
 Passion is the torch of all those who look for an ideal 
 outside themselves, whether seeking it in another person 
 or a great deed. 
 
 Passion belongs to the very few. And they stand, 
 dizzily poised between the peak and the gulf. Whether 
 they shall climb to the peak or fall into the pit, who can 
 tell? 
 
 The storm comes quickly. The log is borne rapidly in 
 the swirling, yellow water. The stone is hurled down the 
 mountain side. 
 
 But Passion is swifter than all these three things. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 NOW the young bull that Jim overthrew in the saving 
 of Jessie was a bull of unblemished pedigree and dis- 
 tinguished lineage, one of those animals that receive a great 
 deal more care than many human beings. It had been im- 
 ported, this young bull, to regenerate the stock of Farmer 
 Thomson, and raise up in the Valley of Calder a noble and 
 numerous progeny, horned, red-eyed, and small-hoofed. 
 
 Jim, it may be remembered, thought that he had broken 
 its neck, but found, to his satisfaction, that the beast was 
 able to walk, though stiffly, from the place in which it had 
 been overthrown and stunned. Not scatheless, however, 
 had the strong beast come out of that strange combat. 
 All through the night it lay sullenly bellowing, unable to 
 rise again after it had once hobbled off the field of action 
 and lain down. It bellowed more fiercely and louder 
 still the next morning, till the cowman climbed the hill- 
 side, to see what was the matter. 
 
 He brought the news, agitated and distraught, to Farmer 
 Thomson, who had been visiting, with his family, the day 
 before. 
 
 The bull's off -shoulder joint had been badly dislocated. 
 
 Mr. Farmer's rage and language were fully commen- 
 surate with the disaster. 
 
 He climbed, purple and panting, to the little stone- 
 walled pasture. 
 
 The brute lay helpless on the ground. Made a scram- 
 bling effort to rise. Rolled its fierce eye, blew through its 
 red nostrils. Bellowed! 
 
190 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Twas all in vain. The Farmer had a gun in his hand. 
 There was nothing left to do but use it. With his gun he 
 slew the young bull. He was assuredly in a furious temper 
 and a large sum out of pocket. The cowman was sacked on 
 the spot, protesting vainly that he was in no wise to blame. 
 
 So ended the last chapter in the young pedigree bull's 
 history. Like many other celebrated persons, however, it 
 left the world in a complicated position at its death. First 
 of all, as we have seen, the cowman lost his place, and sec- 
 ondly, a matter of much importance to the chief characters 
 in our story, Farmer Thomson was determined to leave no 
 stone unturned till the mystery of the accident was solved. 
 
 Young bulls do not dislocate their shoulder without a 
 very good reason. 
 
 What was the reason? 
 
 The animal must have been worried, annoyed, irritated, 
 goaded by some mischievous and evilly disposed persons 
 or person, till it became infuriated and injured itself in a 
 charge. There were marks in the grass of big feet. Rain 
 had fallen heavily in the middle of the week and the ground, 
 being soft, received a clear imprint. The Farmer examined 
 the foot-marks. At a casual inspection they seemed big 
 enough, but, when he looked close and compared them with 
 his own, for the first time he realised how enormous they 
 really were. 
 
 A distinct clue! 
 
 There could not be many in the neighbourhood with 
 feet as big as that. In fact, they must be Jim Macdon- 
 ald's prints! The mystery was solved! ! 
 
 The cowman, interrogated before he left, denied that he 
 had seen anyone the previous afternoon, but then his evi- 
 dence was not worth much for he had been asleep in the 
 barn at the particular moment when our Giganticulus and 
 the deceased animal met in the wrestle; had heard nothing 
 of the mingled shout and bellow which made all the Valley 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 191 
 
 of Calder a theatre of rumbling echoes. Decidedly Farmer 
 Thomson must find more evidence before accusing Jim, that 
 hulking ne'er-do-weel capable of any atrocity. So the 
 measurements of the footprints in the field were carefully 
 taken and preserved, and the next day he drove into 
 Tuchan to discover whether anyone had by chance noticed 
 Jim Macdonald in the neighbourhood of his pastures on 
 Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Behold evidence accumulative and convincing all 
 the evidence his heart could desire! Jim had been seen 
 coming home late on Sunday evening from that direction. 
 Was it not moreover well known that the evilly minded 
 youth was fond of lying about in the hills up there and 
 occasionally popping out and terrifying children? So much 
 so, in fact, that the young ones of the village were fright- 
 ened to go along one particular path except in bands? 
 Behold indeed evidence provocative of immediate action! 
 ' At mid-day, however, Tuchan was wont to be a town of 
 women (the Reverend Simon, the new dominie, and old 
 Haggerty, by profession stone-breaker, being the only men 
 in the place), and so such vengeance as the farmer desired 
 was perforce delayed till evening when quarryman, fisher- 
 man, and the culprit himself would return. Meanwhile 
 news that Jim Macdonald was again in trouble flew down 
 the long thin winding street till it reached the manse and 
 brought the Reverend Simon out. 
 
 "When Macdonald and his father come home from the 
 Quarries to-night," said he, "we will go there and con- 
 front him with all this evidence, all this evidence of a 
 very serious nature." 
 
 "Verra weel, Minister," replied the Farmer. 
 
 "I shall be verra glad of your assistance." 
 
 "Really this lad is going too far. I don't see how we 
 can have him about the place any longer," said the Rev- 
 erend Simon. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 JIM MACDONALD was coming home from the Quarries 
 alone as usual. 
 
 For two whole days and two whole nights he had been 
 exalted, abased, shaken, tortured, filled with new loath- 
 ing of himself, and then lifted high above the earth by the 
 Passion of Ideal Love, that passion which is swifter in 
 its coming than the log whirled in the yellow foaming 
 torrent, the stone hurled down hill or the approach of a 
 squall. 
 
 His only thought had been, when was he to see Jessie 
 again? 
 
 Having looked into her eyes he beheld a new heaven 
 and a new earth. 
 
 The touch of her hand made him quiver all over in a 
 fierce yet blissful torture. 
 
 That huge unwieldy body was only an instrument on 
 which Jessie could play the old bitter-sweet Legend of 
 Spring. 
 
 There seemed to be a new light behind everything. 
 Flowers, grass, sky, cloud, water, furrow, rain, rock, 
 heather, and loch were all filled, as it were, with this strange 
 new glow. 
 
 But how can one describe the inexpressible? The great 
 thought of the world, flowers, grass, sky, cloud, water, 
 furrow, rain, rock, heather, and loch transfused with the 
 glowing thought of a lover's brain? Nature, the whole 
 creation, the past and the future, all dwelling in one idea? 
 Everything reduced to one symbol? The world as if on 
 fire? 
 
 .- . 192 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 193 
 
 It is not possible. 
 
 Sadness and joy were so mingled that he did not know 
 whether he was sad or joyful. 
 
 All his nerves quivered to the slightest scent or sound. 
 
 The distant and melancholy lowing of a cow brought 
 tears to his eyes. 
 
 The smell of the heather made him choke down his sobs. 
 
 Was he happy, deliriously happy, or sadder than he had 
 ever been before? 
 
 Jim could not tell and he cannot tell now. Neither 
 night had he slept. 
 
 Queer pains shot through him, through all the nerves 
 of his great, feverish body. 
 
 Since he had seen her, he coughed a short, dry cough. 
 
 All that day he had had a dull headache. 
 
 It was beginning to stab him now like a knife in his 
 brain. 
 
 He flushed hot and turned icy cold without any apparent 
 reason. 
 
 Had he thought of anything else, save Jessie McLure, 
 he might have imagined that he was going to be ill. 
 
 As it was he lumbered down the road, pickaxe in hand 
 and bag over shoulder, wondering when he was to see her 
 again, see the girl who was to make up to him, ten times, 
 a hundredfold, a thousand times, all that he had suffered 
 hitherto, who was to open his dungeon with a golden key. 
 
 The sun sank. 
 
 Jim's huge figure looked vague, shadowy, and huger than 
 ever in the dim twilight. The bad old times were gone. 
 
 There was no Johnny to come between them now. 
 
 He had saved Jessie's life and she knew that there was 
 some good in him and his huge strength. 
 
 He lumbered on, dreaming in spite of the pain in his 
 head. 
 
194 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 In the opposite direction to the Giganticulus and along 
 the same road (so that they must meet presently), were 
 coming Jessie and Johnny. Dr. Spens had invited them 
 to supper. 
 
 Jim dreams of Jessie, Jessie dreams of Johnny, Johnny 
 thinks of his career. 
 
 Angel-faced blue-eyed Virtue is cold-blooded as Virtue 
 is apt to be, and pays little attention to his companion's 
 glowing face and flashing eyes. This evening the dark 
 eyes flash more than ever. 
 
 But Johnny is working out a problem (as he would a 
 problem in mathematics or geometry) to which there is no 
 very clear answer, working it out with that dear, cold, 
 not easily disturbed brain of his, with that unimpulsive, 
 calculating cleverness. Ambition is the guiding principle 
 of his life; a distinguished career undoubtedly awaits him; 
 in his inmost self he cares about no one a quarter so 
 much as Johnny Findlater. To walk the broad high-road 
 was easy for one whom the sights, scents, and sounds of 
 throbbing, palpitating Nature did not attract; to whom 
 that dream, in which tender half-thought things flutter 
 near, whispering that there is something beyond, some- 
 thing perhaps ungettable, was unknown. No Johnny 
 would never make a fool of himself for an idea. He would 
 weigh the pros and cons and do the right thing. No enthu- 
 siast he! Hence was he sure to do the right thing the 
 right thing from the point of view of his success and no 
 one could deny that it was the right thing, or that he had 
 behaved in any other way than he should. 
 
 Let us take off our caps politely to Johnny Findlater! 
 He will be a great success, and we always take off our 
 caps to success, no matter at what cost it is obtained. 
 
 Now, as always, Johnny will salute us with a bright 
 and amiable smile. Amiability and brightness are great 
 assets in the world. Lucky is the ambitious youth whose 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 195 
 
 countenance is well-favoured and whose manners are 
 thoughtful and pleasant. No matter if his heart is as 
 cold as a stone! None see our hearts except the doctors, 
 who make a post-mortem, and, as for Johnny's, it will 
 tick-tick, tick-tick, peaceably and regularly till he dies 
 peaceably and regularly in his bed of pure old age. There 
 will be no post-mortem on him. Therefore we are pre- 
 mature in dissecting him thus. 
 
 What is the problem on which this clear, cold, regular 
 brain is engaged, as it smiles brightly and amiably at 
 Jessie and listens to her with half an ear? That glowing 
 face, those dark flashing eyes have thawed a little of the 
 ice that surrounds angel-faced Virtue's heart, but the 
 admirably regulated organ continues to beat in the same 
 measured manner. 
 
 Yes, the ice did thaw a little and the blood run a 
 trifle faster down the admirably managed arteries and 
 channels of his body, but the clear, cold brain never suf- 
 fered even a temporary obfuscation at the sight of Jessie's 
 beauty. 
 
 As ever he thought methodically and carefully, and no 
 one can say that he was not perfectly right to do so, 
 altho' this problem, as perhaps you may have guessed, con- 
 sisted in whether or not he should become engaged to 
 Jessie. Was she not pretty enough for any man, passion- 
 ately fond of him, and not entirely without means? But 
 (and to Johnny it seemed a very large "but") could he 
 tie himself to a girl at this early stage in his career ? He 
 was poor, would soon have to support his mother, had all 
 his University years to go through, had not begun yet to 
 make his way in the world. ... If he had to travel far 
 he must travel alone till the rough places in the journey 
 were overpast. 
 
 Yet Jessie was tempting. As, up to this moment he 
 
196 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 had not determined on his course of action, he was just 
 bright and amiable. He did not wish to compromise him- 
 self or the girl in any way. Johnny was always perfectly 
 just. It was one of his great merits. Nothing ever 
 blinded him. 
 
 When they passed old Haggerty, the stone-breaker, 
 chipping in the dusk, Johnny was not too much occupied 
 to give him a bright and amiable smile. The old man 
 responded, took a pinch of snuff, gazed after the young 
 couple, and then laughed secretly to himself. 
 
 Old Haggerty chuckled long after they were out of sight. 
 
 The days of his youth came back and all the days of 
 struggle and poverty and sorrow in between vanished in 
 the retrospect. Old Haggerty remembered when 
 
 So it is always with the old when they see young lovers. 
 The old have come within sight of the waters of Lethe. 
 That is why they have also begun to forget. 
 
 But Jessie McLure never even noticed him. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried suddenly, catching Johnny's arm. 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "What is what?" said Johnny, putting his problem on 
 one side readily enough. 
 
 "That! Ower there! Coming towards us along the 
 road." 
 
 She spoke hysterically , frantically enough, overstrung 
 first by her late adventure and now nearly distraught by 
 the crisis of her youthful love. Indeed, Jim Macdonald, 
 looming vague and enormous round a bend in the road, 
 with pickaxe in hand and bag over shoulder, had not (for 
 an instant) been recognised. Then came the awful cer- 
 tainty. "It was he. The huge Horror. The Half- 
 Beast." She could have cut out her tongue, sunk under 
 the earth. How could the secret of her recent rescue be 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 197 
 
 kept any longer now? How with the hideous monster 
 at hand? Suddenly instinct, hatred flashed a view, a 
 counsel. Would not her surprise be wholly in favour of 
 concealment? Would not her failure to recognise him 
 be great evidence that she had not seen him up to this 
 moment? Ah ! who can say whether at that time she 
 meant to conceal altogether the fact that Jim had saved 
 her life or only to hide it for a while till Johnny had gone 
 away till, till she was more able herself to endure all that 
 such a disclosure would involve ? Who can say ? Yet, in 
 those few moments, she resolved how to act as Johnny 
 stared at the approaching monster without answering. 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know," he answered at last in a state 
 of vague astonishment. "As far as I can make it out it 
 seems to be a kind of giant." 
 
 "Oh! nonsense," she replied, playing a part easily now 
 that her cue had once been given her. "There canna be 
 giants nowadays, so dinna be ridiculous. Yet it's a verra 
 big man. It startled me at first. I couldna think what 
 it was." 
 
 "I'm not so sure," replied Johnny in his almost English 
 tones, "if it isn't a giant, it's something very like it. Why 
 the man must be nearly seven feet high." 
 
 "The effect of the dusk," replied Jessie easily, "magni- 
 fying everything or altering proportions." 
 
 Angel-faced Virtue shook his head. 
 
 "It's the biggest man I've ever seen," he replied. In 
 the meanwhile the protagonists of this story were drawing 
 closer and closer together, and Jim as he approached 
 nearer and nearer seemed to the wondering Johnny and 
 the loathing Jessie like one towering to positively incred- 
 ible heights. He came along as he thought swiftly but in 
 reality slowly. He came along humming that raucous 
 version of an antique song, which ran with broken words 
 over and over again: 
 
198 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Oh! that love and ohJ that love, 
 
 For she is my darlin', 
 Nae lass is in the world so fair 
 As the lovely Jess McFarlane." 
 
 He came along and the few stars which now peeped out 
 in the sky shot across the heavens in misty parabola as 
 they do on a long exposed negative. Rather did he seem 
 to be whirled than carried on his own huge feet, and yet 
 a kind of weight clogged him to the earth. He was 
 strangely light-headed, and gay at last, for life had turned 
 the bad corner of the road. So, with eyes unnaturally 
 bright and cheeks high flushed, he hummed, moving all 
 the while in the scenes of a day or two ago. Once more 
 Jessie showed the leg in the pretty red stocking as she 
 ran; once more he felt her warm young body in his arms, 
 as he flung her forward and waited the onset of the bull 
 (Giganticulus ferox v. Taurus inlractabilis) . Oh the 
 snort, the bellow, the hot, streaming, fragrant breath, 
 and the huge weight that would have sent an ordinary 
 man backwards to destruction but left him standing, vic- 
 tor and unshaken! Did he not hear again Jessie's voice, 
 feel again the touch of her hand upon his knee? 
 
 Has there ever lived a man who could give expression 
 to all the bliss that such memories recall? How many 
 poets, how many writers have tried, and yet all their 
 efforts are but a pale reflection of the real thing. One 
 can only give an idea, only hints, shadows, adumbrations, 
 comparisons, similes, and metaphors. Memory, even, can- 
 not wholly recall. How hard is it therefore to give utter- 
 ance to feelings which, in themselves, are "portions and 
 parcels of the dreadful past"! The reign of the senses is 
 riotous, tyrannous, and brief like all tyrannies, and, when 
 men walk abroad once more with unbowed head and 
 cheek no longer hollowed and pale, with footsteps again 
 firmly planted on the earth, as if it in some measure 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 199 
 
 belonged to them, when horrid anticipations no longer 
 crowd the opening and the closing day, when voices are 
 not hushed in the market-place, and tongues can wag 
 by the hearth, what seem the old times? Can any really 
 and truly recall their sensations, when the ruthless, cruel, 
 insatiable tyrant sat upon the throne, crowned in his 
 golden crown and robed in his royal robes? It is as if 
 they looked back from a light summer morning a morn- 
 ing when the honeysuckle pushes its delicate tinted trum- 
 pets into a night passed amidst evil dreams, into the 
 sleeper's room, rilling his nostrils with everything pure and 
 sweet, and the birds sing and the blackbirds whistle, and 
 all the fair awakening is unmarred by the sounds of men. 
 Who can say what the fierce, gloomy, black, hideous 
 phantoms of the night have been, the shades with whom 
 he has wrestled and under whose might he has fallen? 
 The sound of their whisperings and mutterings is still in 
 his ears, but what their import was he remembers not. 
 He has striven, but with what and with whom he hardly 
 remembers. They were just Phantoms of the Night. 
 
 And yet, when the tyrant was on his throne INSTANS 
 TYRANNUS life went on somehow. The oxen crowned 
 with garlands went to the sacrificial altars; the maidens 
 followed and the youths blowing on trumpets; and the 
 priests prayed to the gods. Men and women were given 
 in marriage, and children born, and the eye worshipped 
 beauty. 
 
 Yes life went on just as usual but as though overhung 
 by some fearful pall, and so, perhaps because of the con- 
 trast of uncertainty and terror, because the sorrows and 
 the griefs and the confusions were greater and keener, the 
 joys and all the sensations were greater and keener too. 
 
 But now men look back from a calmer and more settled 
 time when, as far as is possible in our strange world, one 
 day will follow another, as like as one priest's cloak is to 
 
200 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 his fellow's, and the next moment can be reckoned on, and 
 the clock's tick sounds no longer solemn and ponderous as 
 a judge's doom. Now jubilate, jubilate! 
 
 The Tyrant is deposed. No longer are the streets alive 
 with spies; no longer are the courts rotten with false testi- 
 mony. No longer do Secret Fear, Hatred, Malice, and 
 Uncharitableness sit as lords of the land's tribunals, and one 
 man can look another in the face without fear or favour. 
 So who can describe that already half-forgotten and fierce 
 medley, when suspicion grew like weeds among the tombs, 
 and hatreds hissed like snakes under the stones, and the 
 dreadful tyrant sat on his throne INSTANS TYRANNUS? 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 "T)HENOMENAL - - incredible - Polyphemus - 
 
 -L Gargantua Blunderbore Goliath!" exclaimed 
 Johnny, as memories of famous monsters of old time 
 leapt into his mind at the near sight of Jim. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Jessie. "Come on! Dinna let's stare at 
 him. I believe he's drunk. Hark! he's singing to 
 himself." 
 
 Did she or did she not believe that Jim Macdonald was 
 intoxicated? Everyone spoke ill of him. It might very 
 well be the case. Sober individuals do not sing to them- 
 selves as they walk by the wayside or at any rate in the 
 raucous hum, in which neither words or tune were dis- 
 tinguishable, affected by him. Did she or did she not 
 believe that the uncouth fellow had been grossly tip- 
 pling? One thing, at least, was certain, it was all to get 
 Johnny past without words. 
 
 "Drunk! " said Johnny, and Jim, now about twenty yards 
 off, lurched as he spoke. "Then we won't speak to him." 
 
 " Hurry past without looking, " whispered Jessie quickly. 
 
 He stared at her. He had not thought her so timid. 
 
 "It is one of the quarrymen I suppose. What a huge 
 fellow! He must, indeed, be nearly seven feet high." 
 
 "Johnny please please dinna stare at him sae," 
 whispered Jessie once more tremulously. "Whatever 
 should we do if he attacked us." 
 
 What chance was there of getting past without words ? 
 A faint one, a very faint one if Johnny never recognised 
 him. But if he did and they spoke together . . . truly she 
 might fear for the result. Had she told Jim of the Rev. 
 Simon's other visitor? It was many years since Angel- 
 
202 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 faced Virtue and Uncouth Wickedness met in the School- 
 yard. Many, many years. But was the case altered? 
 There are some things which even Time cannot obliterate, 
 and were not the probabilities that Jim Macdonald was 
 drunk, without the capacity for self-control? 
 
 "He's not a man-eating giant, I hope," said Johnny 
 with mock gravity. "Pooh! Jessie, the fellow won't hurt 
 us. What's the matter with you this evening?" 
 
 "Perhaps I am verra absurdly nairvous," she replied 
 with an attempt at a laugh, "but the weather has been sac 
 hot this week. I'm sure there's thunder in the air." 
 
 "A rain-storm would do a world of good," he said and, at 
 that moment, flung a swift upward look at the passerby. 
 One view of the red and freckled face and the red hair was 
 enough. In his surprise he cried aloud, "Jim Macdonald!" 
 
 Jessie gasped and turned white as a sheet. The meeting 
 had come then. 
 
 In a kind of agony she turned away and did not see every 
 emotion in the world pass across Jim's face. Surprise, 
 anger, fear, love, jealousy, mortal sickness, hatred, envy, 
 sorrow. Dreaming of nothing but Jessie, he had not 
 dreamt that she was so near. Dreaming of Jessie, he had 
 not dreamt of seeing Johnny too. Dreaming of devotion 
 rewarded, he awoke to find it betrayed. 
 
 So, "Johnny an' an' Jessie," he said slowly and his 
 huge bulk seemed to quiver. 
 
 Johnny, having no passions of his own, was not very 
 observant of other people's. It was dusk and he could 
 only indistinctly see the face of the colossus, who towered 
 above him. Still even he noticed the distortion of the 
 round, red face and the changes of the undecided, childish 
 features. Jim lurched again and swayed slightly to and 
 fro as he stood looking down on Johnny. He put his hand 
 to his forehead and stared confusedly from one to the 
 other. His eyes were unnaturally bright: skin damp with 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 203 
 
 sweat: face scarlet and the next instant pale. "He is 
 drunk," thought Johnny and repented bitterly of not 
 having restrained the cry that attracted Jim's attention. 
 "How are we to pass him without unpleasantness? How 
 are we to get on now?" 
 
 He decided swiftly with his clear, cold brain, which 
 always took the way from a difficulty without confusion, 
 that the ordinary and obvious civilities were the proper 
 course. Jim might not be too drunk to reply reasonably 
 and let them pass on quietly in a few moments. In the 
 old days his delight in tormenting had chiefly come from 
 a love of power, of having something at his mercy, 
 from a feeling of contempt, which utterly excluded pity 
 for everything helpless, useless, and unsuccessful. To him 
 battling with the world in his own fashion was a real 
 delight. He rejoiced in overthrowing difficulties, in out- 
 distancing his competitors, in the pure and naked glory 
 of his "I" advancing. 
 
 No riddles, no doubts, no distractions, no hesitations, 
 no self-tortures existed for him. No sentimental tuggings 
 pulled him this way and that. He was always incapable 
 of putting himself in another's place and yet, as he never 
 asked for anything but took it quietly and firmly by his 
 own exertions, no one expected him to be put for an instant 
 in their own places but simply watched his progress, 
 "marvellously admired." 
 
 With his hand now on greater powers, he had nearly 
 lost all memory of the old days when he tormented Jim 
 Macdonald, and had certainly lost all motive to torment 
 any longer one who was not, at this hour, in the slightest 
 degree, in Johnny's way. 
 
 So, "Hulloa, Jim," said Johnny with his bright and 
 amiable smile. "I never saw it was you coming down 
 the road. You've hardly altered a bit though." 
 
 Jim attempted an answer. Of what it consisted I do 
 
204 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 not know and never shall. The words stuck in his throat, 
 which in the last quarter of an hour had become horribly 
 hot and swelled. 
 
 Nothing came from his lips, dry and harsh, but a gurgle. 
 
 A hoarse, menacing gurgle that was almost a growl. 
 
 Jim could think still. Think with a precision and clear- 
 ness most unusual to him. 
 
 And one sentence went perpetually through his brain 
 as he stood there rocking and silent like some man-elephant. 
 
 "Jessie had betrayed him. She had never told him that 
 Johnny would be there." 
 
 Whose was the blame? 
 
 Jim had got it fixed into his head beneath a mass of 
 tangled red hair a head never accustomed to reason 
 like Johnny's, a head that could not contain more than 
 one idea at a time, a head swift moving but slow think- 
 ing (if one can apply such adjectives to any head), a head 
 that battered itself with magnificent folly against stone- 
 walls, a child's head, a head whose development had lagged 
 behind the development of the body that Jessie McLure 
 was come to Tuchan for the purpose of abolishing all these 
 miseries that had hitherto been netted round him. 
 
 "It is so pleasant seeing old friends again," went on 
 Johnny, smiling still. 
 
 No one would have guessed the pleasure that must un- 
 doubtedly be Jim's from looking at his sullen, flushed face. 
 
 "Last time we met," Johnny laughed outright, and the 
 sound had an amiable ring in it, "I seem to remember we 
 had a bit of a quarrel. You broke my head with a stone, 
 Jim. Have you forgotten?" 
 
 The passing years, with all their successes, had taken 
 all bitterness of recollection from the mind of angel-faced 
 Virtue. Only into sullen Wickedness' memory that last 
 of his school-days suddenly leapt back, as vivid and 
 dramatic as if Johnny were once more lying on the ground 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 205 
 
 with the Dominie bending over him. During those years 
 in which Johnny had visited other places and made other 
 friends (he who always made friends easily), Jim, as we 
 know, had never stirred from Tuchan. Every stone in 
 the village, every clump of heather by the roadside had 
 assimilated itself into him. Though his body had ex- 
 panded, his mind had not followed suit. Half-defiant 
 and half-brooding, the Giganticulus awaited, in the place 
 where he had grown, the fate that was to bring them all 
 together again. His intelligence was hardly more than 
 a dog's compared with his old enemy's practised brain. 
 Forgotten the day when Johnny's head was broken? 
 
 That would never be forgotten. 
 
 His old hatred surged irresistibly through him even as 
 his old love had done. 
 
 Such love and such hatred can only exist where the 
 mind has not dissipated itself on multifarious objects, but 
 remained aloof and alone like a monk in his naked cell. 
 
 "We never shook hands afterwards. Let's shake hands 
 now, Jim. I'm very glad to see you again." 
 
 The Giganticulus never had much capacity for action 
 and any words he might wish to say were strangled in his 
 throat. He would rather have fought twenty-five bulls 
 than shaken hands with Johnny, but almost before he 
 knew what he was doing, he took the fingers proffered in 
 his own huge palm. n 
 
 "Jim," quoth Johnny, "the old quarrel is patched up. 
 We can be friends again." 
 
 It was said with an easy, confident air and a look of 
 satisfaction on the pink and white, regular featured face, 
 which confounded the hulking slave in front of him. 
 
 How that fellow longed to raise shoulder-of-mutton fist 
 and dash it into the simpering countenance of rectitude, 
 but, with the few glimmerings of sense that were his, knew 
 that the cause would hardly gain thereby. 
 
206 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 His great hand fell limply. 
 
 Hitherto Jessie had remained silent with face somewhat 
 averted. Now she had no doubt from his lurches and 
 growls that her guess as to his condition had been correct. 
 Had not the conversation lasted long enough ? She said in 
 a low voice: 
 
 "Come awa, Johnny. We must not keep the Doctor 
 waitin'." 
 
 Drunk as he was, might not Jim blurt out at any 
 moment the story of the bull, and oh! the more she saw of 
 him, the more odious it seemed that she should owe her life 
 to this half-animal, half-witted, wholly repulsive creature, 
 lurching, growling, in an aphasia of tipsiness. 
 
 "Good-bye, Jim! We shall meet again." 
 
 " Good-bye, Jim," echoed Jessie, but the farewell stuck 
 in her throat. She could hardly speak to him. Hardly 
 knowing herself whether her words were audible she forced 
 them out; choked; swallowed; and then said in a tone 
 which was meant for Johnny's ear: 
 
 "How disgustingly drunk he is!" 
 
 As she spoke the obstruction in her throat seemed to 
 vanish, and the exclamation, forced through her larynx, 
 easily carried the ten paces to where Jim stood looking 
 after them, with shoulders bowed and hang-dog oafish 
 face. 
 
 He staggered as Jessie's words reached him, lurched, 
 and just saved himself from falling, clawing at the air 
 with his huge shoulder-of-mutton hands. A hoarse cry 
 burst from him. 
 
 "Jessie!" 
 
 The girl turned half-back, saw him staggering and sway- 
 ing, and, with a shriek, whipped round and ran up the road. 
 
 After a glance at Jim, Johnny followed her. 
 
 The Giganticulus remained alone. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 IN that brief five minutes he had been snatched from a 
 glimpse of heaven and plunged into the abyss of hell. 
 
 Whether or not the heaven and heil were of his own 
 making is a metaphysical question and one hardly germane 
 to this history. 
 
 The fact remains that, if Jim had been living in purgatory 
 up to that moment, after it he was plunged in hell, deep 
 and deep and deep. What is hell? 
 
 Since mankind invented a heaven to reward those who 
 are heavy-laden, many hells have been also invented for 
 the punishment of the wicked. First of all there was the 
 classical hell where Pluto the dark-browed, golden-front- 
 leted King reigned with his pale Queen over regions 
 of gloom; where torture-racked spirits were plunged in 
 rivers of fire and ceaselessly cursed, groaned, and shrieked; 
 where those who had offended the gods while on earth 
 must always perform impossible tasks Tantalus, Sisy- 
 phus, the daughters of Danaus. 
 
 Thus Jim, at the moment when Jessie and Johnny left 
 him standing in the road, suffered, in himself, misery out 
 of which an imaginative theologian could have constructed 
 a very passable place of torment. 
 
 It is immaterial whether such an one had a leaning 
 towards physical or spiritual rackings, the Giganticulus 
 could have given him plenty of raw material for his experi- 
 ments in either direction. 
 
 A red-hot iron stabbed him through either temple. 
 Swift and agonising pains shot through all his limbs. He 
 was so weak that he could hardly stand. A wheel turned 
 
 207 
 
208 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 ceaselessly inside his brain. His feet were made of lead, 
 his hands of lumps of ice. Occasionally it seemed as if 
 these leaden feet flowed away from him, molten, and as if 
 the ice of his hands joined the stream. He was conscious 
 of nothing but a huge, heavy head, which his neck hardly 
 supported. It was as if a cannon-ball was balanced on a 
 stalk. The cannon-ball nodded hazardously. The stalk 
 must soon snap. 
 
 He felt an overwhelming desire to lie down by the 
 roadside. His strength was utterly vanished. Nothing 
 remained but the last weakness. 
 
 So much for the physical torture. 
 
 As for that of his mind, we discriminate as a matter 
 of convenience and convention, how can one describe 
 that for which language must always be inadequate? The 
 most poignant words in our tongue are the shortest. They 
 are swiftly spoken love, hate, God, right, wrong, vice, 
 might, moan, shriek, great, small, the list might be pro- 
 longed over two or three pages, they come straight, 
 they hit in a breath. There is nothing glittering, gorgeous, 
 or solemn about the march of their syllables. They lack 
 the tramp of onomatopoeia. 
 
 Yet, though they are the shortest, they imply the most. 
 They wear no " vesture very glorious." They are stern and 
 naked symbols, truthful in their nakedness, and the naked 
 stirs the imagination as the artificial never can. 
 
 Therefore, when we write that Jim was sad, we write 
 the truth in one of these stern and naked monosyllables. 
 By "this simple sentence we stir the imagination of all who 
 have suffered and through suffering have learnt pity, the 
 purest and loveliest emotion that men can feel. 
 
 Not the delicatest artifice of word or the most per- 
 fect web of sentences could, in reality, say half of what 
 this simple monosyllable says, for, wherever a thing is 
 attempted, it must partly fail, and whatever is expressed 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 209 
 
 takes away, therefore, by the very fact of expression. 
 cruel and inexorable Law! 
 
 In all things it holds good. 
 
 For that which a man has, and having is only a form 
 of expression, becomes in a moment less beautiful. Can 
 anything be more tragic? 
 
 Jim did not know this but only felt the indirect force of 
 the Law, as he stood there with his vast figure vague in the 
 gloaming and afterwards almost merged in the dark. For 
 directly Jessie ran down the road, he knew immediately 
 that she was more desirable and more beautiful than he 
 had ever before imagined. 
 
 Her voice sang in his ears, lent a kind of ruthless 
 music even to the unjust sentence pronounced upon him. 
 
 "How disgustingly drunk he is!" 
 
 For close upon an hour (for he had left the Quarries 
 last, and no others used the road habitually save the 
 quarrymen), he stood upon that lonely way desolate, 
 undisturbed, and thinking over the unjust accusation. 
 
 The words, uttered by Jessie, were as if burnt into his brain. 
 In his folly he had imagined hearing many words from her 
 lips (did not the girls and boys of Tuchan wander that sea- 
 son in couples?) but assuredly and in very truth, never in his 
 most fathomless moods of despondency, words like these, 
 i Even then, after the agony of an hour, while the black 
 hauntings circled in his brain just as the bats round his 
 motionless-hung head, he began to make excuse for her; 
 even then, would not admit, wholly and unconditionally, 
 what, once admitted, would crush him to the ground. 
 The light had gone out of rock, hill, cloud, moor, loch, 
 furrow, water, and grass. 
 
 A light had gone out of himself. 
 
 Out of the whole world perhaps. 
 
 The very thought that such a thing could be said made 
 it darker, 
 
210 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Yet many a cruel thing is done in ignorance. Jessie 
 McLure did not know. 
 
 Even a kind of pity mingled itself in his feelings towards 
 her, pity the purest and loveliest emotion that even a 
 Giganticulus can know. 
 
 Pity, because she did not know and would have hated 
 herself if she had known, bade him forgive her. And 
 then (so mounted the scale in her favour and Jim loved 
 well because he could hate) thought he, a few moments 
 after, Jessie must have reason on her side. "There must 
 be something about me to make her think I was drunk." 
 
 At the thought the whole night swam dizzily round him 
 and the stars shot across the heaven in misty parabola 
 once more. 
 
 A glimmering of common sense came to him in his con- 
 fusion of sorrow, despised affection, and ancient hatred 
 revived. "I'm no drunken," he said to himself, "but I'm 
 sick." 
 
 Then remembered he how for a week past he had felt 
 mysterious weaknesses and achings. In the last two days 
 these had culminated. Had it not been for the idea of 
 seeing Jessie again, he must have given in before. This 
 hope, with the knowledge that his abnormal size had at last 
 helped him and that she recognised some service in it, sus- 
 tained him. Even now, perhaps, he might have held out 
 had not Jessie spoken the unjust accusation. But it had 
 been spoken and he must prove to her that it was really 
 illness that made him so weak and unsteady. Must prove 
 it to her. There was no good in fighting any longer. Home 
 then. Dr. Spens would come to see him. Good Dr. Spens, 
 who always tried to be kind, could cure him. Jessie would 
 not be unkind to him if she knew he had been ill. Really ill. 
 No. As soon as her mother was strong enough to hear of 
 the peril thro' which she had run, she would tell the story 
 and make all go fair. She had been right to feel disgusted 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 211 
 
 with him even tho' he had saved her life. He must not 
 ask too much. Great had been his fortune in being able 
 to do a great thing. Johnny was there . . . but had he 
 saved her life ? 
 
 "Och! how ma heid aches!" mumbled Jim, putting one 
 huge shoulder-of-mutton hand to his aching forehead, and, 
 as if she could hear it, "Jessie, ma heid's dreadfu' bad 
 but no wi' the drink, lass." 
 
 All these ideas went through his mind, not in any clear 
 and perspicuous train of thought; rather by a series of 
 hardly mated, blurred impressions. But now, staggering, 
 lurching, and swaying, he passes home through the dark. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 AS he neared the Macdonald cottage, he heard the 
 sound of voices and turned in, as noiselessly as he 
 could, by the back way. 
 
 His strength had just lasted long enough to take him 
 home and then, for a breathing-space, he leant up against 
 the scullery-wall, even as he did three nights ago, when a 
 fit of weakness had seized him. The door of the kitchen 
 vras closed this time but through it came a babel. To him, 
 dizzy, aching, and trembling, it seemed as if the room must 
 be full of people. 
 
 Even in his miserable condition he wondered what was 
 happening. 
 
 Above all he heard a loud and querulous wail. It was 
 the wail of Eupherria undoubtedly. Had there been some 
 disaster? Had one of his brothers or sisters died sud- 
 denly? All sorts of wild ideas waved through his brain 
 already fevered by sickness. He put one hand against the 
 wall to steady himself. For the moment his own troubles 
 were forgotten. Then he heard the voice of Alexander 
 raised in a gust of wrath. 
 
 "I kenned fine that nicht there was some noo plisky! 
 Didna I tell ye sae, Phemie?" 
 
 His mother sobbed loudly in answer. 
 
 Then a loud, rich, dominant voice, easily recognisable 
 as the Reverend Simon's, rang in Jim's ear, as if the inter- 
 vening door had been of paper, not wood. 
 
 "Mr. Thomson found his footprints all over the field, 
 at least footprints so large that they could belong to no 
 one in the village except him, and Mrs. Macintosh saw him 
 
 axa 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 213 
 
 coming from that direction the same evening. So I greatly 
 fear, Macdonald, that the accusation is well founded. I 
 wonder why he is not home yet." Jim remained with 
 mouth agape and hand spread against the wall. In his 
 surprise all his sensations of illness disappeared. It grad- 
 ually penetrated to him that none other but himself could 
 be the topic of conversation. Yet what was the precise 
 cause of the Reverend Simon's presence in the cottage he 
 could not guess. 
 
 "Mr. Macdonald," joined in another voice, which Jim 
 did not know, a voice which sounded as if its owner 
 was striving to suppress some strong emotion, "Mr. 
 Macdonald, that bull was called the ' Pride of Ayrshire ' 
 and cost me a hundred pound. I found him wi' his shoulder 
 sae badly dislocated that I was forced tae shoot him. 
 D'ye ca' it fair that a mon sad lose sic a sum o' money 
 because o' the ploys o' an idle rascal? " 
 
 "Mon alive," roared Alexander. "YeVe tauld me sae 
 a score o' times. D'ye think that I enjoy " 
 
 Before he could finish the sentence the door between the 
 scullery and the kitchen was thrown violently open and 
 the enormous figure of Jim was framed in the doorway. 
 
 "I didna mean to hurt him, " he said and swayed slightly 
 as he spoke. 
 
 The Reverend Simon, Farmer Thomson, Alexander, and 
 Euphemia jumped one and all at the suddenness of his 
 entry and then stared at him in dumb surprise. Though 
 they had been waiting the best part of an hour for him to 
 return from the Quarries, they had not expected him at 
 that exact moment. The first that recovered his presence 
 of mind was the Reverend Simon. 
 
 "Convicted out of his own mouth," he cried and there 
 was an ill-concealed ring of triumph in his tones. 
 
 "This is a serious matter, my lad, the kind of thing for 
 which men go to prison." 
 
214 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Och! Jim, Jim!" wailed Euphemia. 
 
 "Sac ye've come hame at last," muttered Alexander, 
 glowering. 
 
 And "Twas ye that did it, then. I was richt," said 
 Farmer Thomson, as, red in the face with anger, he chewed 
 his thumb, a nutty-bro.vn stump. 
 
 " Well, now that you've confessed, and a very good thing 
 for you," went on the Reverend Simon, "you had better 
 make a clean breast of the whole business. We know 
 more than you think, and so do not attempt, in any way, 
 to palliate your conduct by falsehood, conduct which I 
 may say (grandly his voice rolled out the periods) is utterly 
 despicable, treacherous, and malicious. It seems, Jim 
 Macdonald, that you are not content with terrifying and 
 bullying little children, you must torture poor dumb ani- 
 mals too. Now, out with the whole story! " 
 
 Jim vras about to tell it, when suddenly he thought, 
 "Ma pledge to Jessie!" Remember that with his sickness 
 coming fast upon him and after the hour of agony, through 
 which he had passed, his mind was not very clear and 
 moreover he had not at any time Johnny Findlater's cold, 
 alert brain to see, at once, the way out of a difficulty. His 
 promise held on the tip of his tongue any explanation. 
 
 "Out with it, I say! Out with everything," trumpeted 
 the Reverend Simon in his most dictatorial tones, seeing 
 the Giganticulus pause. "No subterfuge! no shilly-shally- 
 ing!" 
 
 Jim still stumbled in the labyrinth of his hazy ideas of 
 chivalry. He must not cause any injury to the health of 
 Jessie's mother. He must, till he could get back his word, 
 conceal a part of the story. It never occurred to him 
 that they would not believe. 
 
 " I'm verra fashed that the bull's deid, " he began slowly. 
 
 "That's easy eneuch tae say," grumbled Mr. Thomson. 
 "You won't get off your punishment in that way," pom- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 215 
 
 pously and yet grimly interjected the Reverend Simon. 
 Euphemia wailed again. 
 
 "I never meant tae hurt him." 
 
 Farmer Thomson bit his thumb more impatiently than 
 ever and shuffled his feet, while the Reverend Simon was 
 just going to open his mouth, when Jim, holding up his 
 hand with a new and strange sense of dignity, said: 
 
 "I threw him ower to save anither body." 
 
 Everyone looked at him in a blank amazement. 
 
 "Explain yourself further," said Mr. McManus. 
 
 "I threw him doon in the field because he was chasing 
 anither body," answered the Giganticulus. 
 
 Mr. Thomson gave an impatient stamp and snorted like 
 one of his own cattle. Euphemia stopped sobbing for an 
 instant and stared; while Alexander, whose temper was 
 becoming more and more testy, cried: 
 
 "For the sake o' Heaven, Jim, dinna waste the time 
 of everyone here by talking nonsense. It's bad aneuch 
 a'ready." 
 
 "What A'm tellin' ye is the truth," replied Jim, "Fairmer 
 Thamson's young bull was chasin' the pairson I ken and 
 there wasna anither way forbye rollin' him ower." 
 
 "Pooh! What a story! " said Mr. McManus disdain- 
 fully. "Who was the 'person' I should like to know, and 
 how in the world could ? " His rich, dominant voice 
 suddenly died away as he realised the marvellous nature 
 of Jim's statement. "How in the world could ?" he 
 said again and stopped, but not for long. Cried then, 
 "You lying rascal, and a rascal are you indeed if you 
 force a minister of the Gospel to say such words, how in 
 the world could you throw a bull over?" 
 
 "The story's a lee from beginning to end," said Farmer 
 Thomson. "Wull he spin sic a yairn before the magis- 
 trates I'm askin'?" 
 
 As throughout the interview Euphemia wailed. 
 
216 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "I'm sick o' the lad," cried Alexander and kicked vio- 
 lently against a chair. 
 
 "How did I throw him ower?" answered Jim. "A juist 
 slipped aside as he passed and caught hauld of him and, 
 at first, I thocht I had broken his neck." 
 
 He made as if he would illustrate his words by action 
 but, as he moved, another pain stabbed him through 
 shoulders and head and the whole room whirled round 
 him. He nearly fell. To steady himself he clutched at 
 the circumambient air with his two shoulder-of-mutton 
 hands. One of them just missed the Reverend Simon's 
 right eye. 
 
 "Good Gracious! Do be careful!" cried that worthy 
 as he dodged backwards with his head. 
 
 "Whatever's the matter wi' ye, Jim? " moaned Euphemia, 
 taking her first part in the conversation. The capacity for 
 concentrating his thoughts vanished from the Giganticulus. 
 Not only was the room whirling round him but also past, 
 present, and future. Euphemia, Alexander, the Reverend 
 Simon, Farmer Thomson circled above him like elderly and 
 ungraceful fairies. Their voices seemed to come from mid- 
 air. He stared stupidly and almost uncomprehendingly at 
 this amazing aerial quartet. 
 
 "I'm sure I dinna ken," he replied as Euphemia floated 
 wailing past the tip of his nose. "I think I'm sick." 
 
 "Och!" cried Euphemia on her return journey and 
 clutched him in her flight. One coarse-skinned, dried-up 
 hand held his. How deliciously cool it felt! Jim thought 
 to himself and then said out loud, for this if anything 
 would prove his case: 
 
 "Ye winna believe how strong I be and noo here's the 
 proof. Dinna ye see that A'm haulding up ma mither wi' 
 ane haund richt in the air an' yet ye a' think that wi' 
 twa haunds an' a' ma strength I cud'na throw ower the 
 bull. Luk ance mair. I can hauld her wi' ane ringer." 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 217 
 
 He disengaged three and a thumb from tiny Euphemia's 
 grasp, and a triumphant look overspread his face. 
 
 She wailed louder than ever. Her mother's heart was 
 rent. She was weeping for her cliild. 
 
 "O! Jim, laddie. What is it wi' ye? What is it wi' 
 ye?" 
 
 "Luk, luk, Meenister!" cried Jim with a fatuous glare 
 of triumph on his face. 
 
 "Pshaw!" (or words to that effect) cried the Reverend 
 Simon violently while black furrows knitted themselves 
 on his white forehead. "Pshaw! We cannot stay here to 
 be trifled with. Trifled with, did I say? I mean in- 
 sulted. The rascal's laughing at us. He's playing the 
 fool and the knave at the same time, Mrs. Macdonald. 
 I refuse to be put off in this way. We must have the 
 truth. He admits to having injured the bull, and neither 
 Mr. Thomson or myself can consent to go away before the 
 circumstances are clear in every particular." 
 
 Thus spoke Mr. McManus in a fury as he cimly realised 
 that once more the destiny of Jim would be torn from his 
 grasp. 
 
 "It's a cock-and-bull story," he cried, losing all self- 
 control. "He's laughing at all of us. He's no more sick 
 than I am. He shall go to gaol." Farmer Thomson sup- 
 ported the Minister with less personal bias but a consider- 
 able temper. 
 
 "The bull was ca'd the 'Pride of Ayrshire' and cost me 
 a hundred poond," he said for about the tenth time. 
 "Dinna lee ony mair but say hoo ye injured it!" 
 
 These voices still seemed to Jim the voices of an aerial 
 troupe. He giggled feebly and hit at the last speaker as 
 he swung past. 
 
 "Ye fulish auld mon," cried Jim, "if ye stop on the flur 
 I'll talk to ye but if ye gae on fleein' through the air, I'll 
 no speak ony mair. It makes ma heid ache," 
 
218 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Bend doon, Jim, bend doon!" whispered Euphemia 
 low and heedless of the two who would hurt her son, 
 "bend doon an' let your mither feel your forehcid." As 
 a tower leans ere it falls, so bent Jim in answer to his 
 mother's command. The cool rough fingers touched below 
 the forelock of his tangled red hair. 
 
 "Meenister!" cried Euphemia, suddenly defiant. "It's 
 blazin' hot." 
 
 Alexander was about to kick a chair, but his wife's eye 
 caught his and he remained motionless, attentive. 
 
 "Mrs. Macdonald," said the Reverend Simon in a last 
 attempt, with clenched hands and fury flashing from his 
 eyes, "this is not the first time that you've helped this 
 miserable boy to escape the punishment which he deserves, 
 and now, I put it plainly, you must decide once and for 
 all between him and me. I pardoned insolence in him 
 years ago, yes, and last year, and this year when it was 
 only towards my person, Heaven knows whether I was 
 right to do that, but this deliberate and wanton injury 
 done to Mr. Thomson is not within the category of things 
 my duty as a Christian allows me to pass over. The boy 
 is ill, you say. He was not ill when he hurt the bull. 
 Therefore he must be punished at the proper season. I 
 leave you now, but let me emphasise the fact once more 
 that this time you must choose between him and me." 
 
 Euphemia drew herself up to the full stature of five 
 feet two and a half inches with all the pride of maternity. 
 
 "There's time eneuch when the lad is weel again," she 
 began, when suddenly Jim's voice interrupted her. The 
 four people in the room had discontinued their dizzy 
 gyrations and now stood on the floor like himself, but in 
 the last few minutes they had grown smaller and smaller, 
 while their voices tinged faintly in his drumming ears from 
 the far, far distance. He, himself, seemed to be growing, 
 growing in all the parts of his already great body. He was 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 219 
 
 swelling so hugely that before the end came and he burst, 
 he must speak speak to the little red dot and the little 
 white dot that he knew to be, respectively, the faces of 
 Farmer Thomson and the Reverend Simon. Therefore, 
 snapping the little tinging that was in his ears and reminded 
 him somehow of his mother's voice, by his own solemn and 
 grave words, he spoke to the listening earth, to sky, cloud, 
 rock, heather, hill, furrow and loch. For now (so quickly 
 and vainly shifted the changing fancies of his delirium) by 
 the darkness that surrounded him he knew he must be on 
 some great moor. That little white dot or that little red 
 dot were the lights of lonely houses or perhaps the lights 
 of stars; the faint tinging, which the sound of his voice 
 had broken, was the wind. 
 
 The lights grew dimmer and dimmer and thus to the 
 darkness he spoke : 
 
 "I threw her ahint me. I promised no to say her name 
 an' I winna and then I waited for the bull and threw 
 him ower as he passed. I thocht I'd broken his neck. He 
 lay sae still. Then I picked her up I winna tell her 
 name and carried her to the burn by the birches and 
 sprinkled her bonny face wi' water. I hadna seen her for 
 five years but my! she was bonny. An' she lay still. I 
 thocht at first I'd broken her neck. Then she opened her 
 ee'n an' my ! she hiked bonny. I knew it was her I'd been 
 waitin' for all them five years. She wasna hurt but I 
 promised nae to tell her name in case her mither micht be 
 frichtened. If I hadna thrown down the bull, she wad hae 
 been kilt. But she wasna hurt ava'. But if her mither 
 knew, she wad be frichtened. Sae I winna tell the lassie's 
 name but my ! she luked bonny. If she was here I'll no 
 tell her real name but ca' her Jess McFarlane (winking 
 cunningly), 
 
220 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Oh! that love and oh! that love 
 
 For she is ma' darlin'. 
 There isna lass i' the world sae fair 
 As the lovely Jess McFarlane." 
 
 (Humming his old discordant travesty of an air.) " Yes 
 if Jess McFarlane was here," he continued, "she'd tell 
 ye the varra same thing as me. But she canna speak o't 
 because it wad frichten her mither. Canna speak o't. No. 
 First I thocht her neck was broken. She lay sae still." 
 
 Having thus spoken to the surrounding darkness, which 
 interrupted him not, even as a tree falls, fell James Mac- 
 donald on the kitchen floor. 
 
PART IV 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
 HE recovered consciousness a week later to find the 
 kindly face of Dr. Spens looking into his own. 
 
 Euphemia was also in the room. She seemed inexpres- 
 sibly delighted. 
 
 "Ah ha!" said the Doctor in a pleasant cheery voice. 
 "Now we shall do well, if we take care. Now we shall do 
 quite well." 
 
 "O! thanks be to the Lord," cried Euphemia. 
 
 "Whateffer is the matter? Why am I in bed?" asked 
 James Macdonald in a voice so weak that it surprised 
 him. 
 
 "Laddie, ye've been sair sick indeet," replied his 
 mother, "but the guid Doctor says ye'll sune be well 
 noo." 
 
 "Sick?" asked the Giganticulus. 
 
 "A touch of pneumonia, Jim," replied Dr. Spens. 
 "Neither a slight attack nor a very bad attack, but yet 
 one to make your mother very anxious." 
 
 " 1 remember naethin' aboot it." 
 
 "Because, my dear Jim, you've been unconscious for a 
 week." 
 
 "A hale week ye've lain there tossin' frae side tae side o' 
 yer bed, moanin' and cryin' and shoutin'," cried Euphemia 
 excitedly, "an', O ma mannie, A thocht ye wad never be 
 well, and a' the time ye were 
 
 "Hush! Hush! Mrs. Macdonald, you must not excite 
 the patient," said the Doctor in a voice that was a mixture 
 of gentleness and asperity. He bent over Jim and gave 
 him something in a glass. The Giganticulus, as heroes 
 
 223 
 
224 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 always do in novels when they recover from a serious ill- 
 ness, sank into a sound and natural sleep. 
 
 The next time he looked upon the day with the full 
 light of consciousness, he discovered that the orbits of peo- 
 ple in general were no longer disturbed by him. Every- 
 thing was going on just as usual. Only he was confined 
 to his bed and must stay there for a week or ten days 
 longer at the least. Alexander went down to the Quarries 
 every day while Euphemia bustled about the house. Jim 
 could hear her bustling from his bedroom. Most people 
 know the dreary loneliness of convalescence. The Doc- 
 tor's visits are welcomed as a break in the monotony of the 
 day, and so Jim eagerly anticipated those of Dr. Spens. 
 For the first three or four days he felt pretty weak and 
 heard the village news with only a languid interest. There 
 were things, however, that remained in his mind in spite 
 of weakness and pneumonia, overpast, about which he 
 would have liked to speak. Only he felt too shy. Had 
 Jessie been to the cottage since the beginning of his ill- 
 ness? Had she left him any message? Would she come 
 again soon? No one had said anything to him about the 
 bull. Jessie must have explained the whole story. How 
 he longed to meet her in order that he might offer his thanks. 
 As we have mentioned above, three or four days went by 
 and nothing was heard of or from Jessie McLure. A 
 haunting fear grew up in his mind that she might have 
 left Tuchan. He remembered that her stay was not to be 
 for long. As his strength returned, so returned by degrees 
 the violence of his old desire, and hour after hour he lay 
 upon his back thinking, till his contending passions began 
 to rack him with nearly unabated force. He did not know 
 that, although consciousness had been lost, his tongue 
 had not been tied. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 225 
 
 So, had not the Doctor spoken to him first, he would, 
 sooner or later, infallibly have spoken himself. When the 
 Doctor did speak Jim heard him in a stupor of amazement. 
 
 "My dear Jim," he said, sitting one morning on the 
 edge of the bed, the fifth after Jim's recovery, "you don't 
 recollect the occasion, naturally, but some seventeen years 
 ago I brought you into the world and a very ticklish busi- 
 ness it was. Perhaps this struggle I had to keep you alive 
 has affected our relations. I do not know. Anyhow I've 
 always taken an interest in you, an exceptionally keen 
 interest." 
 
 Jim, with his red head propped up on the pillow and his 
 great length uncomfortably stowed in the small bed, was 
 rather abashed. 
 
 "The thing is," continued Dr. Spens, "and I don't feel 
 that by this information I am divulging anything of con- 
 fidence, that the Minister is determined not to let this 
 affair of the bull rest. Your illness has made no difference 
 at all to his state of mind. He is absolutely convinced 
 that you should be punished." James Macdonald wished 
 to ask a question but the words stuck in his throat and he 
 waited. 
 
 "Yes," said the Doctor, "and I suppose, strictly speak- 
 ing, I ought to share his opinion, but, somehow, James, I 
 don't know why, I want you to get off this time. I feel 
 I can make some excuse for you. You were on the very 
 threshold of fever and I think we can hold that you were 
 not really responsible for your actions." 
 
 A sentence burst weakly from Jim's throat. 
 
 "Doctor, I juist remember tellin' the story to the Meen- 
 ister before I became unconscious. It's naethin' but the 
 truth." 
 
 "I heard you told a story to the Minister." 
 
 "It was the truth, Sir," cried the Giganticulus eagerly. 
 
 Dr. Spens frowned and bit his lip. 
 
226 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "I did not hear the exact rights of it," said he. 
 
 "I couldna tell the hale thing exac'ly seein' that I prom- 
 ised nae to say the lassie's name." 
 
 The Doctor frowned again. 
 
 "The lassie's name was guessed," said he. 
 
 James cried out. 
 
 "You said her name was Jess McFarlane, Jim, in your 
 delirium, and so the Minister guessed you meant Jessie 
 McLure. Did you? " 
 
 The Giganticulus shook his head. 
 
 "I mauna say," he replied. 
 
 "If it was another girl," answered the Doctor slowly, 
 "I must really advise you, Jim, to tell her name if you 
 wish your story to be believed and to gain any corrobora- 
 tion. I may as well tell you that the Minister asked Jessie 
 McLure whether you had saved her life from the bull and 
 that she wholly denied the fact." 
 
 Then it was that Jim stared in a stupor of amazement. 
 
 The Doctor continued with hardly a pause after this 
 statement, as if anxious to get an unpleasant task finished. 
 
 "Ij would take your word, for I certainly never re- 
 member your having told me an untruth, but the circum- 
 stances connected with all this are rather peculiar, are 
 they not? You were delirious all last week, I may say, 
 and you cried out a good many things that people usually 
 keep to themselves. Miss McLure, for instance. Very 
 natural you should (he coughed), but, my dear Jim, 
 I'm afraid it's my duty as an old friend, to tell you that 
 she could not possibly ever think of marrying (he 
 coughed again, such was his habitual sensitiveness in dis- 
 cussing delicate subjects), but after all, never mind that. 
 I'm sure you're a sensible young fellow at bottom, Jim, 
 and the chief thing is for you to see that your story 
 is absolutely uncorroborated and really impossible. You 
 must come to think of it as it is the creation of a fevered 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 22? 
 
 brain. How could you, a mere boy, throw down a bull? 
 Impossible. You have just dreamt the whole thing, Jim. 
 That's the only rational explanation. You had something 
 to do with the bull. What is at present wrapped in 
 mystery. Perhaps you will remember later. If so, let 
 me, your best friend here, know. If not, never mind. 
 Listen, Jim, this is what I really wish to speak about. 
 Here, in Tuchan, you're doing no good. If you like, when 
 you get quite well, I'll smuggle you out of this and set 
 you up somewhere else. Think over it. You'll be able to 
 turn over a new leaf. Let me know as soon as you've 
 made a decision. Never mind thanks. Good-bye. I'll see 
 you to-morrow afternoon." ^ 
 
 Dr. Spens, in an agony at having been so intimate, 
 picked up his hat from the bed, smiled quietly at Jim, who 
 had not spoken a word for five minutes, and left the room, 
 little knowing that his well-meant words had fallen like 
 a match into a magazine of powder. 
 
 Jim still stared before him in a stupor of amazement. 
 
 Jessie McLure denied that he had saved her life. It was 
 incredible. 
 
 That the Doctor believed In his story no more than 
 the others, was in comparison a matter of infinitely little 
 moment, and that he made an offer that exemplified the 
 shy generosity of his nature, made equally little im- 
 pression on the mind of the Giganticulus. 
 
 It was entirely occupied by the Doctor's disclosure. 
 Jim had pardoned her for telling Johnny Findlater that 
 he was drunk, and possibly he had been right to pardon 
 her. At the moment the fever was shaking him from head 
 to foot, flushing his cheeks, tying his utterance. With 
 his general reputation, and she indubitably knew some- 
 thing of it, such an inference was not wholly unnatural, 
 and also! Jim could have pardoned her almost anything. 
 But this this this he could not understand. She 
 
228 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 had denied the great feat for which, eye to eye and hand in 
 hand, she had praised him: forborne testimony to the one 
 thing of his life that showed his abnormal size and strength 
 to be a gift of price, not a hideous and merciless handicap : 
 forsworn the secret tie that bound them together, a 
 secret beautiful and almost holy in its hiding-place of their 
 two hearts and yet more beautiful and holier directly it 
 should become a secret no longer. Till that moment he 
 had felt that this secret did indeed bind them together, 
 whatever the rest of Tuchan might think, momentarily and 
 ignorantly, whether they believed in the story or not. 
 
 And now he had been denied denied where with all 
 the burning fire of impulse he had placed his faith. My 
 Masters, do you call this rise and this fall of Jim irrational 
 and illogical? What is faith, then, unless it is, in its very 
 essence, illogical and irrational? If logic and reason are 
 the greatest things in the world, then is faith nothing. 
 
 For two hours he lay restlessly turning in his bed. De- 
 spair, as the old romaunts say, was no word to image the 
 appalling chaos reigning in his mind. And what, after all 
 this, was the result of our foolish coxcomb's huge and ter- 
 rible agony? 
 
 There had been the episode of the road when Jessie told 
 Johnny Findlater that he was drunk. 
 
 Now there was this Doctor's story. 
 
 Surely such things were enough. Doubtless he came to 
 the conclusion that Jessie had treated him shamefully, and 
 was not worth bothering about. Oh! no, he didn't. 
 
 He just thought that there must have been some mis- 
 take. 
 
 Decided that, at the first opportunity, he must see Jessie 
 and tell her what the Doctor said. Her fair fame must 
 not be so besmirched. 
 
 With his eyes turned to the ceiling, he lay in bed follow- 
 ing up a new train of thought. 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 IT was 10.15 A.M. when Dr. Spens left the Macdonald 
 cottage and in the top bedroom a wonderfully dis- 
 traught Jim. 
 
 11.5 when he called to Donald his taciturn groom- 
 gardener to put his mare in the gig. 
 
 11.20 when Johnny, Jessie, and Mrs. McLure arrived 
 at the House on the Road to the Quarries. 
 
 11.35 when young Findlater gave two bright and amiable 
 smiles and waved from the receding gig. One smile was 
 for Mrs. McLure, the other for Jessie. 
 
 11.37 when that distinguished visitor finally disappeared 
 from Tuchan after a stay of little over a fortnight. It 
 only took a couple of minutes for the Doctor's brisk- 
 trotting little mare to whisk them out of sight round the 
 corner. 
 
 11.42 when Mrs McLure said, "How wearisome to think 
 that we've got to move the day after to-morrow, ma dear." 
 
 11.42.1" when Jessie replied fiercely, "I wush we were 
 leavin' the verra minute and nae waitin' anither twa days." 
 
 1 2. 20 when mother and daughter got back to the Manse 
 (Mrs. McLure was not a fast walker), and the Reverend 
 Simon asked, "So, and did you see the last of Johnny?" 
 and Mrs. McLure replied in the affirmative. 
 
 She was perfectly right. They had. 
 
 229 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 WE have mentioned somewhere that this spring 
 became the hottest summer known for years, and 
 now for three weeks the sun had blazed down with unre- 
 mitting fury. Not the least little drop of rain had fallen. 
 In spite of the youth of the year, the grass and the woods 
 were parched and faint with thirst. 
 
 All the air was charged with electricity. The quarry- 
 men, in nothing but shirts, open at the neck, and corduroy 
 trousers, were near stifling at their work, and the women, 
 left at home, toiled up the steep street of Tuchan mopping 
 their foreheads. What then must it have been like at 
 wash-tub and oven? The nights were more oppressive 
 than the days. There is always something vigorous in 
 the heat of the sun, however fierce it may be. When, how- 
 ever, that relentless luminary had sunk to his rest behind 
 the island of Ruish, it seemed as if all the air, as well as 
 all light, had deserted the little strip between the loch and 
 the mountains. By some freak of nature, it had generally 
 clouded over during those three weeks, and stars, such as 
 had shone the evening of the meeting between Jessie and 
 Johnny and James Macdonald, had been a rarity. With 
 the dark there brooded over Tuchan a restless foreboding 
 of change. Everybody's nerves were on edge. It was in 
 vain for the tired quarryman to try to smoke his pipe 
 peacefully, as he was wont, in the lighted quadrilateral of 
 his doorway. The pipe would not draw properly. He 
 itched all over. He could not keep still in one place. 
 The wife was out of temper. Angry voices and impatient 
 exclamations echoed down the main street. The children 
 
 230 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 231 
 
 could not sleep properly, fretfully cried all night long. 
 Yet there was nothing the matter with anybody. It was 
 just the weather. Here the philosopher cannot help 
 observing for how much the weather is responsible. If 
 there was such a thing as an ideal climate, there would 
 certainly be ideal human beings. 
 
 During the whole three weeks, it had never been so hot 
 as it was to-night. 
 
 "Ouf !" said the Reverend Simon as he leant back in his 
 chair and mopped his forehead (by his suggestion chairs 
 had been brought out into the Manse garden), "This heat 
 is abominable. My skin positively prickles all over." 
 
 "I wouldn't wonder if it's prickly heat," answered Mrs. 
 McLure in a voice that showed she had made the least 
 possible exertion in speaking. "Ma cousin Alexander, 
 wha's an engineer in the Green Anchor Line, says that the 
 rash comes oot all ower your body like strawberry jam and 
 gives you rest neither day nor nicht." 
 
 The Reverend Simon felt very irritable that evening. 
 The idea of his body being covered with strawberry jam 
 did not in the least consort with his dignity as a minister 
 of the kirk. 
 
 "It's not nearly hot enough for that," he replied shortly. 
 "They only have prickly heat in tropical climates." Then 
 as if he felt there was something almost blasphemous in 
 having grumbled at the weather, he said, "But, my friends, 
 this is a great opportunity for practising that inestimable 
 virtue, patience. Let us make the best of things. For 
 instance, my dear Mrs. McLure, you felt terribly oppressed 
 inside the house? " 
 
 "Indeed I did," answered that lady as she lay almost at 
 full length with her eyes shut. 
 
 "Well," replied the Minister, "compare the fresh atmos- 
 phere of my garden with that of the drawing-room, which 
 I own was somewhat stuffy." He lifted his large white 
 
232 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 face and sniffed. "I declare the night is fragrant. What 
 a delightful thing a garden is! How unfortunate are those 
 compelled to live in cities far away from flowers ! Flowers 
 are the same to me as children to the married man, my dear 
 Mrs. McLure. Often, when I am wearied, I pace round 
 my borders and spend an hour or so looking at my little 
 blossoms. Ha ha! No doubt I seem to you a senti- 
 mentalist and perhaps I am. We all have our secrets, do 
 we not? When the crocus burst forth, I feel as if some 
 angel had spread his flame-coloured wings in my garden. 
 When the primroses stream over the banks, I think that 
 a cloud of butterflies have settled in my garden and fallen 
 asleep. Ha ha! Mrs. McLure, I am not an entirely 
 heartless old bachelor." 
 
 Jessie, who was lying in the chair on the Reverend Simon's 
 other side, interrupted and there was something fierce in 
 her voice. 
 
 "I think flowers are beautiful, but not as beautiful as 
 all that." 
 
 The Minister was, by degrees, talking himself into a 
 good humour. As the rotundity of his periods increased, 
 the irritability of his skin diminished. 
 
 "Miss Jessie must not take away any of their beauty 
 from my blossoms. Too harsh a word may crush my little 
 violets altogether. I shall come in the morning and find 
 them vanished away, all because Miss Jessie has spoken 
 harshly of them." 
 
 "How could what I say hurt them?" asked she. 
 
 "Of course it couldn't really" he replied, and she could 
 just discern a quasi-paternal smile on his big white face 
 through the darkness. "It is only my fancy, only the 
 fancy of a poor old man, who loves his little blossoms." 
 
 "I declare the heat's waur than ever," groaned Mrs. 
 McLure. 
 
 "Patience, patience, dear lady!" cried the Reverend 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 233 
 
 Simon, spreading out his two white hands, which glimmered, 
 agitating themselves, in the darkness. "Oh! let us make 
 the best of things. We are not sick. We have fed well. 
 We are happy. Does it then matter if we are a little 
 hot?" 
 
 "I wush I hadna had three helps o' pastry," replied 
 Jessie's mother with another quite heart-rending groan. 
 
 Jessie turned feverishly in her chair two or three times 
 and then got up. 
 
 "Where are you going, dear child?" asked Miss Mc- 
 Manus. 
 
 "I must walk about a little," replied Jessie. "I feel sae 
 restless. I suppose it's the heat. I canna sit still any 
 longer." 
 
 "Shall I come with you?" 
 
 "Dinna bother!" replied Jessie, "sit still, Miss Mc- 
 Manus. I'll be back in a moment or twa." 
 
 The Minister's sister touched her hand as she passed. 
 
 "You are hot, dear!" she cried. 
 
 "Ou aye," replied Jessie indifferently, and her slim white 
 figure wandered off till it was lost to view in the little 
 clump of fir trees at the end of the Minister's garden. 
 
 When she supposed herself out of earshot of the little 
 group on the lawn, she restrained her tears no longer. 
 
 Was all this the weather? 
 
 The night became more and more oppressive and the 
 Reverend Simon went on talking, mopping his smooth 
 white face every now and then with his large white hand- 
 kerchief. There is nothing like preaching for opening the 
 pores of the skin. 
 
 Suddenly, in the distance, from over the islands, came a 
 low fierce growl. 
 
 "Thunder!" said the Reverend Simon with the air of 
 having made an original remark, as he interrupted his 
 own discourse. 
 
234 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Thunder!" cried timorous Miss McManus, who was 
 the exact opposite of her brother in nearly every particular, 
 but bowed down before his every word, as if before an 
 oracle. 
 
 "Thunder!" groaned Mrs. McLure, raising herself pon- 
 derously from her chair. "Then we must move again!" 
 
 "I fear so," said the Reverend Simon, looking westward, 
 and as it were into the black of a cavern's mouth. "But 
 hardly yet, Mrs. McLure. We've plenty of time." 
 
 "I'm gaein' to get under cover as quickly as possible," 
 replied Jessie's mother, bustling. "The further I am away 
 frae thunder, the better I Like it. Wull ye ca' Jessie, 
 Meenister?" 
 
 Mrs. McLure and his sister disappeared into the house, 
 as fast as their legs could carry them. 
 
 "Yes, there is going to be a storm," said the Reverend 
 Simon, as he still gazed into the black cavern's mouth. 
 "I thought we should have had to pray for rain next 
 Sabbath." 
 
 The thunder growled and muttered unceasingly and 
 flash after flash of lightning lit the black forehead of the 
 storm as it travelled towards him. 
 
 "No. We shall not have to pray for rain next Sabbath," 
 once again thought the Reverend Simon and, indeed, it 
 became more obvious every moment that any appeal for 
 divergence from the laws of nature on behali of Tuchan 
 and the surrounding country would be unnecessary. A 
 wind began to mutter in the clump of red pines. Their 
 twisted branches started to creak and to moan. "The 
 little blossoms," which he loved, waved their fragile heads 
 dismally. The wind was the fore-courier of the storm and 
 the full force of it hurried the thunder-clouds over the sea 
 with hurricane wings. It was not many minutes since he 
 had heard the first, fierce, low growl and now the lightning 
 was striking almost overhead and a few heavy gouts of 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 235 
 
 chilly rain fell on his big, white, upturned face. In a very 
 few minutes the full force of the tempest would break upon 
 the Manse garden. 
 
 "Miss Jessie Jessie Jessie," cried the Reverend 
 Simon, his voice mingling with the rising sough of the wind 
 and the rain which now hissed down in straight wicked 
 arrows on leaf and petal and shrub. "Jessie," he cried 
 from his place on the lawn, turning his square white face 
 to the little wood, in the direction of which she had dis- 
 appeared. "There's going to be a thunder-storm. Come 
 in before it begins." Suddenly a scream from the garden 
 shrilled through the wood, and at the same time along the 
 footpath, which ran parallel with the garden-wall for thirty 
 yards or so, ere it reached the gate, the Reverend Simon 
 heard high voices and feet pounding. 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 SWIFTLY, with branched lightning and hissing rain, 
 came up the storm over Ruish. 
 
 But, as swiftly, burst that of Jessie's pent-up passion! 
 As fierce was the lightning of her eyes and as endless the 
 rain of her tears. Such similes are, indeed, in the vein of 
 the old romaunts. She was only overheard to utter three 
 words as she buried her white-robed self in the wood of 
 pines which made a high black wall against the hills and 
 the evening sky. Over and over again she repeated them. 
 
 "I canna bear it. I canna bear it. I canna bear it." 
 
 She was beginning to think that nothing was so beauti- 
 ful as she once imagined. Not only the Reverend Simon's 
 "little blossoms." She had stamped on a bed of some 
 white things, in the dark she could not see what they were, 
 as she passed. They were dashed now in a thousand 
 fluttering petals. 
 
 The talk and laughter of others were intolerable. She 
 must let herself go, alone, in the little dark wood. She 
 had hardly entered twenty paces into it before a gigantic 
 figure rose from the ground and in a hoarse whisper said: 
 
 "Jessie." 
 
 Her heart stopped for two or three seconds and then 
 bounded on at a scarcely credible rate. A momentary 
 fear deprived her of the power to speak. 
 
 Then the hoarse whisper of "Jessie" came again. 
 
 With one hand on a tumultuous breast, she stammered, 
 "W wha's that?" 
 
 " Me Jim Macdonald. Jessie, thank God, ye're come, 
 lass." 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 237 
 
 3 
 
 "Jim Macdonald you what are you doing here? 
 Where have you been hiding?" And then, "Whisper, for 
 guidness sake!'' 
 
 There was a great and tangled heap of brambles that 
 stood almost on the very edge of the Reverend Simon's 
 lawn. "You shouldna be here." 
 
 "I couldna help comin'. Deed I couldna help it." 
 
 "Jim Jim you maun gae at once," replied Jessie, 
 hardly knowing what she was saying. Her mind was a 
 mixture of terror and loathing. The darkness and the 
 sultriness and the thunderous air lay upon her like a weight. 
 
 "Jessie dinna bid me gae juist yet." 
 
 "But, Jim," and something flashed back into Jessie's 
 mind, that she had forgotten owing to the shock of meeting 
 him, "you've been sick." 
 
 " Sae the Doctor tells me, Jessie." 
 
 "Pneumonia." 
 
 "Sae they ca'd it." 
 
 "Ye sud be in your bed nae here in the cauld." 
 
 "A'm hot, burnin' hot, an' weel eneuch the noo." 
 
 "Ye'll dee." 
 
 "I'm nae sic a weaklin' ava'. I heard ye greetin* the 
 noo." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "As ye came intae the wood." 
 
 "I wasna." But even as she denied the truth, once 
 more a sob shook her from head to foot. 
 
 "Jessie, what ails ye?" 
 
 "NaethinV 
 
 "For why are ye greetin' then?" 
 
 Another sob was the only answer. Every clumsy word 
 from Jim's mouth hurt her. 
 
 "Jessie, I'm wushin' to speak wi' ye." 
 
 "Jim, you had better gae hame." 
 
 "I maun speak wi' ye first. It's sairous." 
 
238 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "Och! Jim, what is it? Canna ye see I'm nae well." 
 
 "What ails ye then?" 
 
 "NaethinV 
 
 Jim was utterly perplexed by these feminine proceed- 
 ings, and, while he pondered, terror began to master Jessie's 
 surprise. What did it mean being left alone, like this, in 
 the wood with Jim? 
 
 "Ye had better gae," she said again tremulously. 
 
 "Nae before I've spoken wi' ye," replied Jim with 
 unwonted obstinacy. 
 
 Rascally, scoundrelly Jim loomed up before her, a vague 
 shadow against the inky blackness of the wood. The first, 
 distant growl of thunder passed unnoticed by them both. 
 She turned suddenly to flee with a vague terror in her heart. 
 
 Jim caught her arm. It was useless to attempt escape 
 from that shoulder-of-mutton hand. She was going to 
 scream. Then checked herself in the nick of time. That 
 abominable affair of the bull held her continually prisoner. 
 If she screamed and was rescued, she must explain her 
 connection with Jim. 
 
 The whole business would come out. 
 
 Then, and for the first time since this hateful interview 
 in the wood, a little accusing voice began to whisper to 
 her that a few days ago there had been much talk about 
 this very same bull and about this very same Jim. 
 
 Tuchan had been amused though angry. This same Jim 
 had never before been credited with such powers of inven- 
 tion. 
 
 It appeared he had not actually mentioned her name in 
 his romantic though impossible story, even while delirious, 
 but there was no doubt at all that she was designated as 
 heroine. 
 
 "Monstrous absurd impossible insolent," had 
 roared the Reverend Simon, with his square, white fore- 
 head furrowed in anger. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 239 
 
 "Impudent," had added Johnny, supplying one of the 
 few adjectives that the Minister omitted. (Oh! Johnny, 
 misery misery!) 
 
 And while Mrs. McLure murmured sleepy astonishment, 
 Jessie had said nothing. Only gathered from the Rev- 
 erend Simon that (i) it was the very crown of Jim's impu- 
 dence to be smitten ill at such a moment, if he was as 
 ill as Dr. Spens made out, for the Doctor was always in- 
 clined to favour him unduly, Heaven alone knew why, 
 and that (2) the matter should be sifted to the bottom 
 directly he recovered and he, when proved guilty as he 
 undoubtedly was, sent before the magistrates. 
 
 And Jessie said nothing. 
 
 Of course this was not exactly the same as openly saying 
 that the whole story was an invention as far as she knew. 
 In fact, so she told herself, everything should be divulged 
 as soon as Johnny left Tuchan. 
 
 But now Johnny had left (misery! misery!) and Jim was 
 here (most inconvenient and not a little terrifying): and 
 her part in the drama still a mystery. 
 f All this took but a moment or two to flash through her 
 quick brain and, when Jim spoke again, she had already 
 made a mental resolution that she must be wary. He held 
 her always in his huge hand. 
 
 "Is Johnny still here?" he said. 
 
 The recollection of that distinguished young gentle- 
 man's last bright and amiable smile recalled all her might- 
 have-been to Jessie. Jim had his revenge, unknown to 
 himself. The subtlest revenges are always those of which 
 we know nothing. If Jessie had plunged him into Hell, 
 he gave tit-for-tat. 
 
 "He went this morning," she replied, fighting hard that 
 her misery should not once more overcome her. She would 
 not show in tears before anyone, such was her pride, least 
 of all Jim. He drew a great sigh of relief (foolish fellow). 
 
240 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "I heerd talking in the garden, but I didna ken wha 
 was there." 
 
 "Say what ye hae to say quickly, Jim, and dinna let 
 anyone hear." 
 
 "First of a', Jessie," he said eagerly, "I wasna drunk 
 when ye met me on the road twa weeks syne. I was sick. 
 I couldna staund richt. Ma heid buzzed." 
 
 " I ken I ken," she cut in almost peremptorily, and then 
 added in a voice which sounded sullen and grudging, " I'm 
 sorry that I said sae, Jim." 
 
 "Ye hurt me at the time, Jessie, but I saw it was ma 
 pairt to forgive ye because ye didna ken that I was sick, 
 and when ye saw that I couldna staund and 
 
 "Is that a' ye hae to tell me? If sae, there was nae need. 
 I kenned this while ye hadna been drinkin'." 
 
 "Och," cried Jim, rapturously (such a dull-witted and 
 ecstatical coxcomb surely never was heard of), "I've been 
 wae since I saw ye last, forbye when I was sick and kenned 
 naethin', thinkin' a' the time 
 
 "Forget your thoughts and gae hame, Jim!" She 
 turned suddenly and would have flitted through the 
 bushes back to the lawn, a great thankfulness in her heart. 
 It was only this whether or not she had considered Jim 
 tipsy, and by no means the affair of the bull. She would 
 have flitted, glad at heart (says the historian), but as sud- 
 denly and as irresistibly as before the hand of the Gigan- 
 ticulus shot out and detained her by her skirt. 
 
 "Ye've lichtened ma hairt muckle, Jessie," came the 
 hoarse voice of that dimly seen mass of human flesh, bones, 
 hair, fibres, skin, ligaments, and cartilages, "but that isna 
 what made me come here." 
 
 "What then?" asked she with a deep and dark fore- 
 boding. 
 
 "The bull," he said. 
 
 And in dreadful silence, as if turned to ice, she heard. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 241 
 
 "It's deid," continued the Giganticulus. "Mebbe the 
 Meenister tauld ye?" 
 
 Jessie answered with a mumble that might have been 
 either affirmative or negative. She could but fence for 
 the moment. 
 
 "Aye," continued Jim, "his shoulder was sae badly 
 hurt that Fairmer Thamson shot him. I didna mean to 
 hurt him, ye ken." 
 
 As Jim spoke all the horror that Jessie felt at such a 
 monstrosity as Jim came back. There was everything 
 unnatural, bestial about such a creature. He was a crea- 
 ture. Little else. Half-animal. She shuddered and drew 
 away. 
 
 Jim attributed this motion to some feminine shrinking 
 at the bull's untimely fate. 
 
 "'Truth, lass, it was a peety," said he, "but it couldna 
 be helpit," and then gave a history of the Reverend Simon's 
 persecution. "I promised ye never to tell your name as 
 ye bade me an' I haena, and sae they dinna believe the 
 tale." 
 
 She muttered another indistinguishable word or two. 
 
 "Ah!" continued the Giganticulus proudly and with that 
 new sense of dignity that had come upon him since he 
 recognised some service in his mighty strength and stature 
 (neither full-grown yet, mark you), "they winna believe 
 that I hae sae muckle force as tae throw ower a young 
 bull, and they said ( Where's the lassie? There's nae lassie. 
 It's a lee. If there were a lassie, she wad come forward 
 and say it a' happened indeed.' But, ye ken, Jessie, as I'd 
 promised, I cud say naethin'. D'ye understaund? " 
 
 At any rate she had understood Jim well enough to 
 know that he would not break his promise. 
 
 But did she understand fully? 
 
 All that lay underneath such a fantastical chivalry as 
 Jim's? His illness seemed to have fallen so pat. She had 
 
242 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 hoped to have left Tuchan before she met him again. It 
 was abominable that he should climb into a private 
 garden in such a way. Her hatred of him blazed into a 
 bonfire that consumed all the minor moralities. Why was 
 she to be so tortured this evening? 
 
 Yet she must say something civil to the beast who 
 destroyed beasts. 
 
 "It was verra kind of ye to keep the promise." 
 
 "But, Jessie, can your mither bear the news the nicht 
 or the morn, if ye've quite recovered, nae forbye ye've 
 quite recovered. Ye see it's this way. The Meenister 
 
 James came to a full stop. Why did not Jessie give 
 him back his promise? He had never really believed the 
 Doctor's story. There must have been some mistake. 
 Now Jessie would give him back his promise at once. It 
 was for the tie between them, not the Reverend Simon, 
 that he cared. O, crack-brained, romantic fellow, he would 
 not believe the Doctor's story. 1 S 
 
 Jessie remained silent and motionless, her white skirt 
 still grasped in Jim's hand. The way of escape was no 
 longer open to her. She must either confess that the 
 hideous, hateful monstrosity had saved her life and pub- 
 licly blazon his benefit (what then would all think of her 
 not having spoken at once or at any rate sooner?) or deny 
 him altogether. In the first alternative admit a bond with 
 the being she loathed most on earth and another with him 
 she loved best and had lost (oh! misery, misery), in the 
 second commit an act of treachery and black ingratitude 
 of which she had never acknowledged herself capable. 
 
 Terribly and swiftly to either side was her black and 
 passionate nature torn in turn. 
 
 Nor did she utter a word as she stood rent. 
 
 And ever as before the absurd Jim would not believe 
 in the Doctor's story. 
 
 "Jessie, lass," he cried, and the mutterings of the thunder 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 243 
 
 grew louder, unheeded by them both amidst the sough of 
 the coining storm. "That day I owerthrew the bull an' 
 saved your life was the first day that I knew ony guid in 
 this huge body o' mine. A' my life till then it had been 
 shamefu' to me. I wushed a'ways to be like ither bairns 
 an' boys. Ye dinna ken, ma lass, what it is to be sae big. 
 Noo that I hae saved your life by this body o' mine, I 
 cud sing and daunce for gladness. I dinna heed the past. 
 Ye came back tae Tuchan tae mak' life happy for me."_ 
 
 The words and thoughts, choked within him for so long, 
 burst forth like a torrent. 
 
 "It isna for the Meenister I care. It's that I can think 
 noo I'm guid for somethin' that there is a secret be- 
 tween us; that only you know I'm guid for somethin'. 
 Naebody else need ken but you, Jessie." 
 
 Now surely she would give back the promise. Show 
 there had been some mistake. 
 
 He spoke the truth. He liked the secret best, only he 
 must be reassured, now, by her that she had not denied 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XLV 
 
 THE gigantic figure, which grew more and more 
 indistinct as the gloom of the little wood increased, 
 fell on its knees, caught her hands, and kissed them, and, 
 at that audacity, a futile and splendid audacity became 
 the whole living force of the Giganticulus. Jessie may 
 have expected trouble but certainly never a trouble of 
 such a kind. Her hatred and terror of Jim increased ten 
 times, a hundred-fold as his lips touched her skin. 
 
 The thought that it should have been Johnny's part and 
 not his to kneel in such an attitude fanned in her a new 
 fury at the wantonness of Fate which ordered things thus. 
 Blue-eyed, fair-haired Johnny left her with no remembrance 
 of him but a bright and amiable smile. Hideous, uncouth, 
 wicked, ridiculous Jim sprawled, sobbing, at her feet. She 
 heard his hoarse voice pouring forth cataracts of words. 
 It was as the time when winter is loosed or the snows pour 
 down from the mountains or the river bursts its dam. 
 The reserve which had always been Jim's till then, both 
 from nature and circumstance, was broken for the first 
 time. Surely such a clumsy, wild, and laughable language 
 of adoration had never before issued from human lips. 
 "Then he is not really human," she thought, and tried 
 again to dart away. 
 
 But now the shoulder-of-mutton hands held her wrists 
 faster than any gyves. 
 
 "Let me gae, you great beast!" she whispered, courage 
 coming to her with the violence of her hatred and loath- 
 ing. "What have you come here for? Anyone forbye a 
 gowk like you wad hae known that I loathe and detest 
 
 244 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY J 215 
 
 ye and hae done sae ever since we were bairns." The 
 decision over which she had so wavered was made. 
 
 Now that the words were out at last, her courage mounted 
 to undreamt of heights. She clenched the little fist of her 
 right hand and struck him again and again on the face, 
 laughing shrilly with joy the while. Truly anger, misery, 
 and hatred had made her even madder than Jim. Yes, 
 there was a strange pleasure in beating this dimly seen 
 face. With every blow she seemed to be paying off a 
 score against fate. 
 
 Up till that moment Jim had been more or less sane. 
 Whatever are the afflictions of the mind, whatever the 
 sufferings of the body, it is easy to be sane so long as faith 
 is left. But when that is lost, the faith held dearest of 
 all things, who shall remain wholly sane then ? Irration- 
 ally, absurdly, Jim had put all his eggs in one basket, 
 all his treasure in one chest, all his faith in Jessie and the 
 secret tie between them. The day the secret was known 
 would only draw them closer together. Dr. Spens could 
 have told him, any doctor could tell you, that it is 
 highly imprudent to fasten your mind on one thing to the 
 exclusion of all others. Any old market-woman would 
 supply her testimony to the danger of putting all your 
 eggs in one basket. 
 
 Yet such is the way of the poor, who have only one 
 basket. If they want eggs, they must take the risk. 
 Such is the way of the silent, humble, and shy. They 
 must also take the risk. 
 
 However childish and fantastical his behaviour, Jim 
 might, warrantably, have been called sane before. But 
 then his eggs were all sound and fresh. 
 
 That blow from Jessie broke them all. 
 
 All his beautiful eggs. 
 
 And perhaps the reader will remember the effect made 
 on Jim when Jessie struck him that noon years ago. 
 
243 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 He heard her call him "A great beast." 
 
 Felt a score of blows from her hard little fist upon his 
 upturned face. 
 
 Caught that she loathed him and had loathed him 
 always. 
 
 She had spoken or rather whispered with such clarity 
 of meaning that even to one of Jim's confused and tumbled 
 brain the words could have no other meaning. 
 
 "Yes," cried Jessie, careless now whether anyone from 
 the Manse heard her or not, "the Minister told me the 
 story. I kenned the bull was deid and that ye were sus- 
 pected of having killed it. The Meenister an' 0, he was 
 an angry man, said ye did it oot o 'malice and spite. That 
 ye were tired of frichtening wee bairns and tried for a 
 change the frichtening an' the hurting o' puir wordless 
 animals. These were the words o' the Meenister, an' ma 
 mither believed them an' Miss McManus believed them. 
 They believe them still. For why? Because I never said 
 a single little word to mak' them think anything else. 
 That day ye saved me from the bull was hatefu' to me then 
 and wull be hatefu' a' my life. That was why I bade ye 
 say naethin' to naebody and nae for my mither's sake. 
 Naethin' wad frichten her. She's as placid as a coo an' as 
 sleepy as a dormouse. 
 
 "I bade ye say naethin' because I hated the very thocht 
 o' your having saved me, ye ugly, feckless, speechless, 
 dirty, mannerless loon. I wad suner hae been saved by a 
 convict frae a gaol than you. I think I wad suner hae been 
 caught and killed. I wad hae run tae the bull not frae 
 him, had I known it was you. I'm not like the ithers, not 
 like Mr. McManus, an' I pity him in my heart if he thinks 
 y'are, in truth, wicked and cruel as he says. Nae, I ken 
 ye better. If ye were really as wicked and cruel as he 
 says, I micht like ye. As it is, I despise ye and hate ye 
 and hae done the same ever since I was a bit bairn because 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 247 
 
 y'are a lumbering, stupid, helpless, hopeless fule an' the 
 ugliest, biggest, and clumiest gawk anyone has ever seen 
 or is likely tae see. I knew, when ye were at schule, that 
 ye hated bein' sae big an' that the thocht of it made ye 
 miserable. An' every minute, every hour I was glad of it. 
 Every time that I brocht a tear intae your ee, I was glad 
 of it. Every day that I made miserable for ye, I went 
 hame happy. Noo I hae naethin' left tae love, but, thank 
 God, I hae you still tae hate. Hate is somethin' of a luxury, 
 my ugly Jim. O, I hate you, how I hate you! When ye 
 saved me frae the bull, d'ye ken what it was that made a' 
 hate of ye come back, bigger and bigger and bigger than it 
 ever was in the auld schule days. Juist this, this, ye red- 
 haired beast. Juist because I saw it made ye proud o' your 
 huge an' ridiculous body, the body that a' we bairns used 
 tae mock at, the body that made ye miserable, an' me 
 happy because ye were miserable. When I saw the licht 
 o' pride in your ee instead o' the auld sadness, I reckoned 
 a gey ill day that made sic a change in ye, and pit me under 
 sic an obligation. 
 
 "I believe ye thocht that I admired ye for your huge 
 strength. Eediot! When ye tauld me ye had owerthrown 
 the bull, ye seemed to me hairdly human. Ye seemed juist 
 a beast wha focht wi' beasts. The sicht of ye revolted, dis- 
 gusted me. I hate your ugly big haunds. I hate your red 
 hair. I hate your stupid, hideous face. I hate every pairt 
 of your monstrous body. Och! Jim, hoo I hate ye! 
 
 "An' noo, I'll tell ye straicht. I winna beat the bushes 
 langer. Wad I had said a' this at first, but I was a coward 
 an' a fule, like a' us wretched weemen. I wad'na say a 
 word tae keep ye frae the gaol doors. I wad'na lift a finger 
 to save ye frae hangin'. Sae, Jim, they can send ye tae 
 prison, and for the joy of it my heart wull sing. Wad I 
 cud gloat ower ye as ye did a felon's wark or sat in a felon's 
 cell! 
 
248 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 "It's oot at last. I'm lichter for it. My heart is 
 even singing the noo juist for the joy of tellin' ye what 
 I think of ye an' hurtin' ye ance mair as I did in the 
 auld days, hurtin' ye mair, I'm hopin'. The anely thing 
 that grieves me is that I ken I cud never hurt ye sae 
 much again. 
 
 "It's oot at last and noo ye can do what ye like wi' me. 
 Kill me if ye wull. I dinna care to live noo. I've lost 
 the same as you, my ugly hatefu' Jim. I ken hoo it feels 
 as if ye dudna wush tae live ony mair. That's why my 
 hairt is singing. I ken hoo ma words, every little word 
 o' mine, hurts ye, an' I'm glad for it. My heart is sing- 
 ing, singing, singing because I've hurt ye as much as I 
 hate ye." 
 
 Even as one torrent answers another in the silence of 
 the mountains that huddle into the sunset round the 
 gigantic twins, More and Moich, so did the passionate 
 voice of Jessie answer the passionate voice of Jim in the 
 silence of the pine- wood. The clarion of hate blew defiance 
 to the sobbing harp of love. But stay! The romantic 
 situation is carrying away the feelings of Jim's biographer, 
 himself alas! too easily a prey to all the seductions of 
 romance. Our Jim's voice never, at any time, in the 
 slightest degree resembled the melting, plucking tones of 
 vibrating harp-strings. He possessed, when in good health, 
 a most resonant, stupendous, ear-shattering, tempestuous, 
 inhumanly huge, fantastic, wonder-provoking bellow. In 
 the weakness of convalescence and in the extremities there- 
 of, it had been most lamentable, pitiful, and low, a most 
 unmelodiously hoarse croaking. 
 
 But now, and as it seemed, from another world, came 
 a cry in a well-known and rotund pulpit organ. 
 
 "Jessie, Jessie, where are you? Miss Jessie, why don't 
 you answer?" 
 
 At this voice from her former life her courage suddenly 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 249 
 
 failed and the storm, travelled over Ruish, burst gigan- 
 tically over their heads. 
 
 A blaze of lightning lit up the wood and showed every 
 tree trunk and naked red branch silhouetted, and between 
 them the loch and the hills beyond it. From just overhead, 
 it seemed, came a terrific roll of thunder. It clanged and 
 reverberated in heaven in a long-drawn shattering peal 
 and died away and left the darkness shuddering. 
 . For a couple of minutes there was a terrified silence of 
 all nature, and, during them, Jessie and Jim stood motion- 
 less. The suddenness of that roar from heaven had stricken 
 all movement out of them both. There came another sword 
 of lightning that pierced the pitch-black sky from end 
 to end and a volley of thunder even more stupendous 
 than the last. Then another terrifying silence. In those 
 two vast illuminations of the earth and the empyrean 
 she had discerned plainly the huge kneeling figure, the 
 huge face, all brown-spotted with freckles and deathly 
 white, except that a bright flush of carmine stood on each 
 cheek-bone. It needed no trained eye to see that Jim was 
 ill. Dying perhaps? She might have killed him by her 
 words. Jessie, sane once more, having seen, became as 
 the feeblest of her sex. There was another roar of thunder 
 following on the glare of a still vaster lightning, and then 
 the approaching hiss of rain merged in a swashing, drown- 
 ing deluge. The next moment she felt herself seized by 
 Jim's enormous arms in a stupor of swishing rain, rat- 
 tling thunder and terror, felt his hot, loathsome kisses 
 planted on her face, neck, hair, anywhere. She screamed 
 now, but it was in vain, and struggled. She had called 
 Jim a beast. He uttered nothing but hoarse, hideous, 
 beastlike cries. All the barriers of self-restraint had been 
 broken down. He was, in fact, nothing now but the 
 animal which Jessie had called him. 
 
 Once more the Red Mist came into his eyes and, the 
 
250 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 weakness of convalescence vanished completely, he knew 
 again the feeling of superhuman strength. The brute 
 awakened in him made him seize what he had a fortnight 
 ago considered almost too divine, too remote for contem- 
 plation. He caught up Jessie with his gigantic strength 
 and squeezed her close as he could to himself; smelt the 
 scent of her hair; felt the warmth of her body; the throb 
 of her breast. As a matter of fact, he was almost uncon- 
 scious of his own actions. The fever, which had barely 
 left him, began to return after such an exposure, and 
 chaotic, monstrous, terrible phantasms to surge through 
 his brain, things to which he could, in saner moments, 
 hardly have given a name. There was fury in him that 
 must be somehow appeased, an inextinguishable wrath 
 against God and man, a tumultuous revolt against all 
 barriers. He had fixed all desires of his huge and 
 passionate self on one thing, and it had been taken 
 away. In hardly a moment all his honour had fallen. 
 He knew that the Jessie whom he crushed in his arms 
 was not the real Jessie that he wanted. The ideal he 
 wished in her fled farther away every moment that he 
 held her, but the brute in him had a primary relief in 
 uncontrolled action. Yet the knowledge of this, which 
 acted automatically on him, not consciously, only served 
 to heighten his frenzy. She lay limp and motionless in 
 his arms after a while and her cheek was cold to his kisses, 
 yet he knew that hatred and contempt of himself were 
 mistress of that limp and motionless form: that, hence- 
 forward, she would hate and despise him more: that to 
 arouse her would only be to hear the same words again. 
 
 Whatever he did, however long he held her in his 
 arms, however he might try to appease the tempestu- 
 ous gusts of passion that swept through him, the result 
 must in the end be the same. Yet jealousy and anger 
 at the contempt in which she held him forbade him to 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 251 
 
 let her go and leave the garden. The very thought that 
 she loathed his embraces as something poisonous and 
 disgusting filled him with a huge and roaring spirit of 
 revenge. 
 
 It was in this spirit that he cried: 
 
 "I'm thinkin' your wushin' it was Johnny here and 
 not me." 
 
 This insult gave him a fierce pleasure. He hoped 
 to arouse the cold Jessie. That would evoke a kind of 
 pleasure. But Jessie gave no answer. 
 
 And down upon them, locked together, poured the 
 drowning rain: above them rattled and volleyed the 
 thunder: over their heads daggers of lightning stabbed 
 the gloomy arras of the heavens. 
 
 It was not a couple of minutes since Jessie had heard 
 the Reverend Simon's voice, but in that time Jim had 
 moved leagues in the darkness of the whirlwind. 
 
 And now one fact must be brought forward by his biog- 
 rapher, and that is the extraordinary effect the overthrow 
 of the bull had made on his character. Since the dis- 
 covery that there was some good in his enormous strength, 
 a new feeling of pride had gradually begun to grow up in 
 him, and, without a doubt, his attitude towards his vast 
 and ever-higher towering self was no longer only that of 
 shame, uneasiness, and secret misery, but sometimes of 
 surprised interest. His fibre was toughened by this. He 
 had become, though he may not have known it, in many 
 ways more hopeful. So it was anger, not abject humilia- 
 tion, which Jessie's fierce words had aroused in him, an 
 all-embracing, uncontrollable anger. He knew that she 
 owed her life to him, and when he compared the fragile 
 limbs and delicate face of the acute Johnny he, himself, 
 felt a contempt for both the boy and the girl. The con- 
 
252 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 tempt which sincerity feels for insincerity, and strength 
 feels for weakness. All these variations of mood and 
 thought swept through him as he held Jessie in his arms 
 and felt her grow colder and colder. And then Anger 
 seized hold of him again Anger that he had duped him- 
 self Anger against God and man Anger that in spite 
 of everything he still wanted to feel Jessie, warm and 
 throbbing, in his arms, not cold and motionless, and utter- 
 ing low words of love, not high, fierce words of hate. 
 
 And all the time he knew that this could never be. 
 Those ten minutes spent in the wood had been computed 
 as hours in the Measure of his Life. 
 
 And now voices filled the corners of the little wood and 
 feet sounded hurrying and trampling, even though the 
 storm never ceased its uproarious tumult. 
 
 "Jessie Jessie Jessie," cried the voices. 
 
 And now, " Jim Jim Jim ! " 
 
 The lightning flashed again and the pursuers saw the 
 figure of the Giganticulus standing or rather stooping with 
 the girl in his arms, a wild, hunted look on his face. A 
 simultaneous shout arose from the Reverend Simon, Alex- 
 ander, Mclntosh, and two other quarrymen, who accom- 
 panied them. 
 
 Jim loosed his hold of Jessie and turned. At once she 
 fell, for she had, long ago, fainted. 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 IT did not take a moment to leave the garden by the 
 way he had come. A heave of his huge arms and a 
 spring of his huge legs and he was over the Manse wall 
 and upon the pathway which led to the road, in the tenth 
 of the time it would have taken an ordinary person to 
 climb the obstruction. At once he found a relief in run- 
 ning with enormous strides through the buffeting wind and 
 spouting rain. He sprang forward, unconscious of every- 
 thing save the desire to move. Anger still ruled him 
 though the impossible was banished. "Jessie said I was 
 drunk," spoke Fierce Contumacy within him, "I winna 
 be accused for naethin'. I'll get drunk the nicht, if I 
 can." 
 
 And his brain, which, in the last week or two, had begun 
 to work for the first time, formed an idea, to be fully de- 
 veloped later. 
 
 From behind the garden wall came loud outcries. 
 
 "Jim's awa'. Stop him! He'U dee." But Jim, if he 
 heard the cries, paid no attention. With strides of his 
 great earth-measuring legs, he sped up the Tuchan road, 
 ponderous, violent, vast, irresistible. Woe to anyone who 
 tried to stop him! The Red Mist incarnadined everything 
 he saw. Superhuman strength lay in every joint, muscle^ 
 nerve, artery, limb of his gigantic body. 
 
 The scent of Jessie's hair was still in his nostrils : he felt 
 her bosom's throb against his own: her cold cheek against 
 his lips, but the more he bounded, the swifter he ran, the 
 further he would be away from her. 
 
 He would put the impossible behind him and know 
 
 253 
 
254 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 that, whatever else happened, there was one part of Jessie 
 he could never win. Did the ideal in her still exist, or did 
 it exist in Jim only? Ah! cries the philosopher, once 
 more interrupting the course of the narrative, this is, 
 indeed, a super-subtle question. Did he love Jessie for 
 something in herself, or for something in himself, or for 
 something outside self? Not all the divings, probings, 
 formulae, examinations, scientific or philosophical, par- 
 allels historic, arguments synthetic, will ever quite get to 
 the bottom of the mystery. Odi et amo. Long ago, two 
 thousand years before Jim was born, the discovery was 
 made that one could love and hate at the same time. 
 Meanwhile Alexander, hoisted up onto the garden wall 
 painfully and with groans, peered into the impenetrable 
 blanket of the dark and cried fitfully: 
 M "Jim's awa'. Stop him! Stop him!" 
 
 But there was no one on the road between them and 
 Tuchan and if there had been, nothing could have availed, 
 that night, against the angry, passion-fanned, fever- 
 ied strength of the Giganticulus. As it was, with earth- 
 measuring bounds, far out of their hearing and sight, had 
 sped the dangerous Jim. He reached the first cottage in 
 Tuchan, which belonged, as we know, to the Mclntoshes. 
 Mrs. Mclntosh was at her door alone, her man having 
 gone to aid Alexander in the search for his son, and she 
 heard Jim far down the road, listened astonished, then 
 blanched with fear as he rushed by her, swift and big as 
 some locomotive, bounding, waving his arms, shouting 
 imprecations, with red locks flying, yelling and groaning 
 alternately. 
 
 She shrieked as he passed and Jim shook his fist at her. 
 
 She had one glimpse of glittering madman's eyes, a con- 
 vulsed countenance; and that was quite enough. 
 
 This was the moment of Jim's revenge on Tuchan. 
 The sight of the familiar, winding, climbing little street, 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 255 
 
 the lighted quadrilaterals of the windows fast closed 
 against the storm, the white walls dimly looming in the 
 darkness, on which, probably, ancient, almost effaced 
 "Jims" still lingered, brought back to him as it were 
 memories of a former life, though hardly two hours had 
 gone since he escaped from the Macdonald cottage. How 
 many times had he slunk, lumbered up and down that 
 street since the days when, clothed in the ridiculous sack- 
 petticoat, he had joyously and wantonly pursued cats and 
 hens, bawling at the top of his puppy- voice! How many 
 twinges, miseries, and memories the sight of this little 
 street brought back! What a power it had over him 
 in that former life, which, dimly remembered, still hurt 
 him. But now, as he leapt and bounded up it, he seemed 
 to have power over the street that main street of Tuchan. 
 Though the recollections which the sight of it brought 
 back hurt him, they were no longer crushing hammer- 
 blows, only sharp little pin-pricks. The new trust born in 
 him by the overthrow of the bull had grown stronger and 
 stronger till it had become an almost irresistible force. 
 
 In the old days he had, while sitting in his eyrie on the 
 hills, seen how small Tuchan looked from the height, dis- 
 covered his own unimportance as he gazed over the Calder 
 Valley towards the great twin-mountains. His sorrows 
 lessened then, because they and himself became, in such 
 moments, so petty. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, they appeared petty because 
 he was so huge. In his delirium, in his anger and fever, 
 he was, for the first time, a giant stalking among pigmies. 
 Not a calm benignant giant but a furious. He magnified, 
 even, to himself the strength which was his. There was 
 no stupendous feat of which he was not capable, no 
 opposition which could stand against him, if he wished to 
 overthrow, as he had overthrown the bull. He was 
 master even of the storm. And, now, how he longed to 
 
250 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 make use of his superhuman strength! The immense pity 
 that dwells in the hearts of giants had momentarily van- 
 ished. How he longed to run amuck through Tuchan, 
 banging together heads; overturning and trampling bodies; 
 showing his Giganticulus' derision and contempt of the 
 people, who hardly reached his shoulder! Mrs. Mclntosh 
 had shrieked and fast closed her door, and the cry and 
 the bang had roused the curiosity of the next-door neigh- 
 bour. A face came to the window and peered out. Jim 
 saw it and with one bound was across the street, mopping 
 and mowing at it, dancing with uncouth gestures, and 
 shaking his fists. It was the bearded, lack-lustre, aston- 
 ished face of a fisherman. 
 
 "Come oot! Come oot!" cried the Giganticulus. "I'll 
 settle ye." 
 
 And continued his uncouth war-prance, every movement 
 of which showed an incredible strength, clumsy and unde- 
 veloped though it might be. 
 
 Swiftly and abruptly the face withdrew from the window. 
 The light went out, and Jim heard an inner door bang. 
 
 "Coward! Coward! Wad ye rin awa' then? Come 
 oot!" He put the palm of his shoulder-of-mutton hand 
 against the door and gave two enormous slaps or shoves. 
 The whole thing creaked and groaned from top to bottom. 
 The very cottage seemed to shudder. All the windows 
 rattled. 
 
 "Let me get in an' bash ye!" he said, but no answer 
 came from the terrified inhabitants. Horrible as the night 
 was, they had fled from the cottage at the still more hor- 
 rible aspect of Jim. Nor did the Giganticulus trouble to 
 break down the door or pursue his investigations further. 
 A sudden refinement suggested itself to him. 
 
 Would it not be more soul-satisfying to deliver his 
 bosom of elaborate almost courtly insult than to make use 
 of the toughened thews and steely sinews of his great body? 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 257 
 
 Would it not be even more delightful to show them what 
 cowards they were all, than to bang their heads together? 
 It would be more humiliating for them. "Aye," said the 
 Giganticulus to himself the amendment was carried 
 unanimously. ~, 
 
 So, giving one final and shattering thump on the quaking 
 door before him, he passed on to the next cottage. The 
 inhabitants of this also had been aroused by the uproar. 
 Mother and children were cowering in the bedroom. As 
 the first gigantic blow of Jim's fist fell upon the door, the 
 quivering voice of a quarryman replied from within. 
 
 " Gang awa', Jim. Gang awa'. Dinna wake the bairns." 
 
 Huge laughter exploded from the mighty cavern of 
 Jim's chest. 
 
 "Dinna wake the bairns!" he cried. "Aire they the 
 wee dears that pointed at me on the road mornin' an' 
 nicht? It wad be a shame if I waked them. I'll juist 
 sing them to sleep." 
 
 Oh! Heaven defend us from such a lullaby as Jim's. 
 Wounded tigers never howled as he did for the next ten 
 minutes. Then shouting sarcasm, derision, and defiance, 
 he passed from that cottage to the next, exulting in his 
 strength. 
 
 And thus was his long-delayed revenge upon Tuchan, the 
 birthplace which had despised and abused him, accom- 
 plished. So fearful was the sight of him, prancing his war- 
 prance and yelling his war-yell, that none came out singly 
 or by companies to tackle him. Every cottage was full of 
 cowering households, as the Giganticulus raved and bel- 
 lowed in the street, banging on doors with his shoulder-of- 
 mutton fists, yelling insults through darkened and fortified 
 windows, the undisputed and colossal master. Always 
 across the black-dark sky the lightning zigzagged and the 
 
258 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 deafening thunders rolled. And from the surrounding hills 
 torrents poured down till the village seemed one built in a 
 lake. That night was like one of those old biblical nights 
 of destruction when the vengeance of Heaven was let loose 
 as well as the vengeance of man. 
 
CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 AND now Jim, his mind filled with the surcharged 
 fancies of delirium, passed through the village and 
 ran, with undiminished speed, up the road which led to the 
 Doctor's house and the Stone-Quarries. He bounded and 
 shouted like the possessed thing he was. Through the 
 black vault of the heavens the branched veins of the 
 lightning ran in blinding streaks and the darkness was 
 continually filled with the rattle and crash of thunder. 
 The rain fell in solid walls, through which no eye could 
 pierce. Every now and then the flying feet of the Gigan- 
 ticulus passed little streams, already swollen with the deluge 
 and leaping down into the valley, which he had just left, 
 with the clamour of torrents. An insane strength bore Jim 
 along. Fever sent flame, not blood, through his veins. 
 He ran at a speed that would have rendered pursuit im- 
 possible, even had pursuers been able in the blinding rain 
 and the alternations of chaotic darkness and dazzling 
 twin-flashes to mark his track. 
 
 Sometimes he ran in silence and sometimes answered the 
 appalling voice of the thunder with his own puny shout- 
 ing. In that furious convulsion of nature even his gigan- 
 tic voice sounded like the strengthless utterance of a ghost. 
 Jim, however, was not conscious of a tiny part in such an 
 elemental uproar. The passions which shook him needed 
 some such stage on which to fling themselves loose. He 
 shouted a wild obligate to the crashing drums of heaven 
 and the stupendous orchestra of wind and rain. That 
 vast and almost primeval creature, the Giganticulus, was 
 in tune with an upheaval of nature and nothing else. 
 
 259 
 
2CO A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 The wind buffeted him, the rain stung his face with 
 whips, the thunder cracked, rolled, and stunned all other 
 sounds to silence. Heaven and earth were frenzied this 
 night, but Jim met them on equal terms. As the wind 
 made even his mighty strength sway, he struck at it with 
 his fists, buffeting back his gusty antagonist, to him per- 
 sonified. He ground his teeth with rage at the rain's 
 lashes, it seemed his enemy like everyone else, and his 
 huge laughters of derision answered the _bellowings of the 
 thunder. 
 
 Once he stood still and roared defiance. A shepherd 
 overtaken by the storm and crouching in a hollow by the 
 roadside saw the raving Giganticulus go by with tangled 
 red locks flying, and shouts of a girl's name mingled with 
 execrations of a man's. It was only in a second-brief glare 
 that he saw him and the next moment the frightful pas- 
 senger of the hills had vanished into the dark. Such a 
 face ! such a size ! such speed ! The terrified shepherd did 
 not recognise in the sudden apparition the sullen but slow 
 and lumbering Jim Macdonald. The creature that passed 
 him had the eyes of a maniac; the mouth open; a crazy 
 and inhuman fury of countenance. It stared at him 
 without comprehension. Then bounded high into the air 
 and with a cry disappeared. It left the man with no 
 impression of humanity, for superstition dies hard in a 
 highland breast and it was a night to let loose dreaded 
 Powers of the Hills. With a face still blanched and a 
 trembling hand, which attempted to cut out of the air the 
 huge form, the shepherd arrived that night in Tuchan. . . . 
 
 Dr. Spens' old housekeeper stood at the window of the 
 dining-room after making sure that it was firmly fastened 
 against the driving rain and a wind that perpetually 
 increased in violence. The night was so dark that she 
 could hardly see a couple of yards from the sill, and, dour 
 and fearless though she was, she could not help being a 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 261 
 
 little terrified at the violence of the storm. The lightning 
 swept in blinding zigzags over the tops of the huddling 
 mountains and gave her momentary views of the doctor's 
 garden stamped vividly in all its detail as the dark 
 ness lifted. The tiny lawn; the oblong beds of daffodils 
 and wall-flowers; and a little path running round a shrub- 
 bery to the front door. Down the path as the old body 
 peered through the window, she saw in one of these dazzling 
 flashes a gigantic figure come swinging. Then the night 
 fell again like a curtain. Fear, real fear came upon 
 her, though she was accustomed to remain alone in his 
 house while the Doctor went abroad. What there was of 
 her imagination began to work and she imagined the man 
 there in the darkness though she could not see him. 
 All the time her Scotch good sense was struggling for the 
 mastery. "Eh!" she said to herself, "it's anely somebody 
 wantin' shelter frae this fearfu' nicht." The roar of the 
 storm was so great that she could catch no noise of foot- 
 steps, but she blew out her candle-light, hoping it had not 
 been seen. Next moment, in the utter darkness, she heard 
 a terrific bang at the front door and a great hoarse voice 
 shouting. Fear, real fear, had paralysed her and fixed 
 her to the place at the window. So, when the lightning 
 slashed the heavens a moment after, she saw the figure 
 again clearly and as in the light of day, before the darkness 
 re-descending swallowed it up. Even she, in that moment, 
 did not recognise it. She only knew that it was hatless, 
 red-headed, clothed in dripping garments of an utterly 
 nondescript appearance and huge beyond all imagination. 
 There was time for a pair of blazing, beast's eyes to catch 
 hers, for the dripping, mud-plastered face happened to be 
 turned towards the windows of the Doctor's dining-room. 
 At the next flash she saw it standing straight in front of 
 her, the other side of the pane, and recognised that huge, 
 sullen, and malicious oaf, James Macdonald. It were 
 
262 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 difficult to say exactly whether her fears were allayed or 
 increased. It was something to have the name and cir- 
 cumstances of the invader, that no wild robber or mur- 
 derer was there ; but on the other hand the evil reputation 
 of this lad was too general for her not to know it. While 
 she was still wondering whether James Macdonald wished 
 an asylum from the night, the lightning came again. He 
 was waving his arms, and seemed to be shouting, though, 
 owing to the violence of the storm, no words reached her. 
 Then in the darkness she faintly discerned a huge form. 
 The Giganticulus had pressed his face right up against the 
 window-pane. She heard, now, what he was shouting. 
 
 "Whuskey!" 
 
 His cry rose above the howling of the wind and the lash- 
 ing of the rain. 
 
 "Whuskey!" 
 
 When she saw his face again, pressed right against the 
 window, fierce, threatening, and crazy, with open mouth 
 and wildly staring eyes, definite fear seized her. She 
 knew that he had been ill. What was he doing abroad on 
 such a night? It was not fit for a wild animal to be out 
 in, let alone a human being. Definite fear seized her, not 
 so much for herself as for him. She collected all her 
 courage and beckoned to him to come inside. Her voice 
 would never carry through the tempest. The face at the 
 window was convulsed with anger at the delay. 
 
 She cowered back into the room, but Jim's voice came 
 to her between a rattle of windows and a roar of thunder. 
 
 "I ken weel you're hidin'. Gie me the whuskey. D'ye 
 hear what I'm tellin' ye. If ye dinna, I'll bash in the 
 windies and murder ye." 
 
 Wild words to hear on a wild night, and they put new 
 fear into the housekeeper, fear for herself this time. The 
 words of the huge lout, whose face was pressed against 
 the window, were the words of a furious lunatic. To invite 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 263 
 
 him into the house would probably be tantamount to sui- 
 cide. Her mood veered round. She would do anything to 
 get him away from that window away away anywhere 
 on the hills, though the rain lashed and the thunder bel- 
 lowed and the wind howled. 
 
 "I'll gie ye a minute," shouted the Giganticulus again. 
 "If ye pit the bottle oot o' the windie, I'll nae hairm ye." 
 
 The old housekeeper trembling in every limb went to the 
 cupboard, where the particular brand of Mountain-Dew 
 that Dr. Spens affected, was kept. At that moment her 
 scruples seized her again and, with a flight of imagination 
 wholly unusual to her, she came near the truth. He was a 
 wild lad. Jessie McLure and young Findlater had said 
 something in the last two or three weeks about meeting 
 him drunk on the road. Had he taken advantage of Dr. 
 Spens' absence to get out of bed and drink? Such folly 
 and vicious hardihood were almost inconceivable, but yet 
 the case might stand thus. There were two bottles in the 
 cupboard, one full and the other three-quarters emptied. 
 She must pacify him by giving him whiskey, otherwise he 
 might do more than threaten (she disliked, emphatically, 
 the look of these shoulder-of -mutton hands), but it was 
 her duty to give him the bottle that was nearly empty. 
 She shook them alternately at her ear. A low gurgle gave 
 her the clue to following out her plan, and, with the nearly 
 empty one in her hand, she stumbled across the room to the 
 window. 
 
 Probably she would have been too weak to open it 
 without assistance from the fury of the elements, but 
 directly it gave a little, the wind blew in with incredible 
 violence and thrust it together with the old housekeeper 
 back into the room. She staggered, fell up against the 
 Doctor's Windsor chair, lost her balance and tumbled on 
 the floor. The bottle escaped from her hand and was 
 dashed into a thousand fragments. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Her intentions had been, no doubt, excellent, but it was 
 ordered that they should come to nothing. It was ordered 
 that Jim should survive that wild night, running through 
 the hills, and find on the road which climbed through the 
 Pass of More and Moich and, descending, on the other 
 side, into a country of lowish rolling heather-clad hills all 
 strewn with rocks, came at last, after ten or twelve miles 
 of winding and dipping, to Duke's Ferry a fantastic fate 
 to call him from the unhappy past. Had he only drunk 
 a quarter of a bottle of whiskey, he could never have 
 survived the ordeal of that night, but he was to get 
 drunk, gloriously drunk, for the first time in his life, 
 and save himself in that way. The philosopher shows 
 enough self-restraint to refrain here from moralising, 
 although the occasion is excellent and the inferences to 
 be drawn both profound and subtle. A whole chapter 
 might easily be devoted to vast metaphysical issues 
 raised, and the supporters of a Providence, on the one 
 side, and a Fate, on the other, foam in a wordy warfare 
 over the page or pitifully lose themselves and their five 
 senses in the most exquisite hair-splittings. But no! 
 The philosopher throws this chance away as he has 
 thrown so many others and returns with adamantine res- 
 olution to the narrative. 
 
 The thump of the housekeeper's fall would never have 
 been heard by Jim owing to the noise of the storm, but, as 
 she lay upon the floor, the lightning, which had begun to 
 be more intermittent, flared again through the heavens. 
 Every detail of the Doctor's dining-room was stamped 
 vividly upon the retina of the eye of our Giganticulus 
 the open cupboard, and a bottle of whiskey standing on 
 the edge of the table. Nor were the housekeeper lying 
 on the floor, the overturned chair, and the fragments of 
 glass overlooked. He was sane enough to draw a swift 
 conclusion from his various impressions, for his madness 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 265 
 
 was due not to want of perception, but rather loss of 
 proportions. 
 
 "Get up! Get up!" he roared. "There's anither bot- 
 tle on the table. Gie me that ane, or I'll tak' it myselV 
 He put his red head into the room, and the woman on the 
 floor could plainly detect the outlines of it. In another 
 moment he might be through and with both feet on the 
 carpet. Guid sakes! Moral scruples were forgotten. It 
 was everything, now, to get him away, if the bottle 
 of whiskey was all he wanted. After all, charity does 
 begin at home. The wind and rain were whistling 
 into the room, but more terrible than they was the 
 voice of the Giganticulus roaring command. She got 
 to her feet with astonishing agility and, in less time than 
 it takes to write, w r as mistress of the coveted bottle. 
 The shadow of a huge hand hung before her in the 
 darkness and, reckless of consequences, she joined it and 
 her burden. 
 
 The hand seized the bottle, as the trunk of an elephant 
 seizes a comestible, and withdrew, and the next instant she 
 saw the great outline of a human form vanish into the 
 darkness. 
 
 For close on ten minutes the Doctor's housekeeper 
 waited motionless in the place where she stood. The rain 
 poured in through the open window, drenching the carpet 
 to the very middle of the room and making the curtains 
 mere shapeless sops which jerked and flapped and waved 
 and danced and fell as the wind blew them about. The 
 woman became chilled' to the very bone as the wet struck 
 through her more or less flimsy blouse, but the only things 
 about her that moved were frenzied streamers of the 
 iron-grey hair. And always, always she listened. Nothing 
 reached her ears but the wind and the rain and the distant 
 
266 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 muttering of thunder, for by now the storm had moved 
 further off. 
 
 Dour, fearless, and unimaginative she was by nature, 
 but to-night her nerves had received a decided shock. 
 
 At last, when, after such a motionless ten minutes, she 
 had heard nothing except the swashing and the howling of 
 the tempest, she made a sudden move towards the win- 
 dow, closed it, and then subsiding on the floor, fainted away 
 for the first time in her life. 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 BUT James Macdonald ran on. 
 The winding hill-road curved sharply to the right 
 some hundred yards from the Doctor's. It was from the 
 sharpest point of this curve that Johnny Findlater had 
 smiled his last bright and amiable smile at Tuchan and 
 Jessie. 
 
 Here, too, Jim stopped and said "Good-bye" to Tuchan. 
 Down, far down in the little hollow beneath him lay the 
 small village where hitherto he had lived and suffered. The 
 thunder reverberated over it and the rain roared down 
 upon it, and to Jim's crazy imagination it seemed as if the 
 fury of the elements would blot it out. 
 
 Before the final catastrophe he was glad, himself, to have 
 thumped their doors and shouted a loud defiance. 
 
 For the moment his revenge had satisfied him and the 
 sense of his wrongs, still fresh, been appeased. And then, 
 by one of those queer revulsions of feeling, sadness over- 
 came him at the thought of never seeing again the little 
 village, where he had been born and grown inch by inch, 
 even as ordinary mortals grow, to his immense stature. 
 Hate the inhabitants of Tuchan as he would, the place itself 
 was not odious to him. It was there that he hoped to be 
 buried one day, after, if it might be, a peaceful life, with 
 a rough headstone to commemorate his simple virtues and 
 make no mention of his simple defects. Every bit of it 
 was, as it were, a part of himself. Now, on leaving, he felt 
 as if he were plucking a part of himself out, that part which 
 we still continue to call the heart, and casting it from 
 him. Yes, that night, he had torn up the memories of 
 
 267 
 
208 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 Jessie and Tuchan by the roots, and, at that parting of 
 the ways, the rent pained him. With that he turned and 
 ran on again. 
 
 He climbed with gigantic, tireless strides, the whiskey- 
 bottle in his pocket still untasted. On the left the huge 
 mountain bases began to rear themselves. That narrow 
 path which he passed, running faster, led to the Stone- 
 Quarries. Jim shook his fist at it in memory of the past. 
 Even that comparatively calm place had been poisoned to 
 him. 
 
 The lightning, now rarer, flamed vivid and in the brief 
 clarity he saw the whole Calder Valley before him, a 
 vast amphitheatre surrounded by hills. All round him 
 they lay like vast recumbent giants themselves, heedless of 
 the uproar, heedless of the tumult in Jim's soul. Ahead 
 were More and Moich with, between them, the strait and 
 narrow gate through which he must pass. The whole 
 valley had been as clear as daylight, the precipitous sides 
 of mountains seamed by watercourses; the road running 
 between tumbled stone- walls; the barns and roofs of Cal- 
 der's Farm. Thus it flashed into his eye and out again. 
 
 Then he plunged forward once more into the darkness, 
 tripping over stones, splashing through pools of water. 
 The road began now to dive do\vn into the valley and Jim 
 had to run by instinct. His nature, only stirred in moments 
 of unusual emotion or excitement, was in ordinary so unam- 
 bitious or slothful that he had never come as far as this. 
 At the bottom of the hill he kept straight on when he should 
 have turned, and hit a tree with stunning force. A thick 
 branch struck him half on the forehead and half on the 
 temple. This branch was about seven feet from the ground. 
 The tree shook to its very roots and James Macdonald 
 almost fell. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 269 
 
 For a moment or two he moved round and round in 
 circles, holding his hands to his head. The blow, when its 
 immediate effect vanished, brought him back to a kind of 
 half-consciousness. He also remembered the whiskey in 
 his pocket. 
 
 "The Meenister says I'm a drunkard," he mumbled. 
 " 'Ive been accused o' daein' things wrangly a' my life. If 
 I'm to be thocht wicked onyway, I may as well dae them 
 as not. They say that if ye're drunk ye forget a'. Ony 
 way I'll try." 
 
 Then the usual pitiful irresolution, doubly pitiful because 
 of his huge size, at the thought of any new action over- 
 came him. 
 
 "I canna even get drunk like a mon," he muttered in 
 self-disgust, and a feeling, almost of fear, was his master 
 for a moment. Then a spirit half of bravado, half of self- 
 pity possessed him. 
 
 "I'll get drunk richt here an' noo," he shouted. The 
 storm had now moved further off and muttered in the dis- 
 tance as it circled round the vast tract of hills. Every 
 now and then there were faint glimmers of lightning. 
 Rain was not falling with the same torrential violence, but 
 it came down steadily, pitilessly, and an ever-rising wind 
 drove it into his face with the sting of whiplashes. Jim 
 shivered till his teeth chattered in his head and each shiver 
 was succeeded by a sudden flush of burning heat. 
 
 "They a' say I'm a drunkard an' sae I'll get drunk 
 richt here an noo," he cried again with a mingled roar of 
 self-pity and anger. He stood, with the bottle extracted 
 from the inside pocket of his coat, in his hand, as if listen- 
 ing in the darkness for a voice to answer this terrible 
 threat. ~ 
 
 Why was he always alone? 
 
 Was there no one to tell him whether he should or should 
 not get drunk? 
 
270 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 The lightning glimmered distantly and once more showed 
 him the still, recumbent forms of the old Scotch hills. 
 Immutable, ageless they seemed and silent too, as if they 
 brooded over some eternal problem of their own. 
 
 They gave no answer to the Giganticulus. 
 
 The bruise on his temple began to throb. Some rather 
 maudlin tears poured down his freckled cheeks and he felt 
 indescribably weak, lonely, and miserable. All vigour and 
 force seemed to have left him. "Losh!" he muttered to 
 himself, "I'll never get to Duke's Ferry by the morn." 
 
 The bottle in his hand felt warm and comforting to his 
 cold grasp. 
 
 His irresolution vanished and he' put it to his lips. How 
 it caught him by the throat, the neat spirit, made him gasp 
 and choke for an instant, and then seemed to overwhelm 
 and annihilate all feeling except that of its hot, rushing 
 self! The criss-cross, interacting forces of his emotions 
 were whirled together and hurried away to somewhere 
 quite remote, as two or three gills of the Doctor's Glenlivet 
 bubbled and gurgled down his capacious gullet. His great 
 mouth remained open until he could no longer hold his 
 breath. The sudden and automatic closing of it bedewed 
 his chin and lips, and Jim licked them eagerly with his 
 tongue as soon as he had taken breath. The centres of 
 his brain were momentarily paralysed and the nerve- 
 messages tapped there in vain. Alcohol had produced a 
 grand insensibility and the idea of his pitif ul and neglected 
 condition vanished for a time. With a renewed strength 
 he set forward on his road through the Calder Valley. 
 
 It was almost with elation that he ran. 
 ' There were three miles and a half from the tumble-down 
 gate, through which he burst with such terrific force that 
 he never noticed any obstruction to the mouth of the 
 forests that clothed all the lower slopes of Moerand Moich, 
 three miles and a half of level road. Nobody is ever likely 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 271 
 
 to cover them at greater speed than Jim did on that his- 
 toric night. His footsteps, deep in the mud, were meas- 
 ured next day, and the length of his stride, for the first 
 two miles certainly, was prodigious. It is a pity that the 
 depth of the impressions and their distance from each other 
 were not carefully recorded. Then some skilful mathe- 
 matician could have calculated his speed, the very time in 
 which the valley was traversed, and Jim, in addition to 
 his other distinctions, might have been the holder of the 
 two-mile cross-country record. As it is, there is only a 
 rough oral tradition in Tuchan which the Athletic Asso- 
 ciation would of course be unable to accept and I therefore 
 pass it by. 
 
 Certainly, he must have bounded along with altogether 
 phenomenal and unprecedented bounds, while the first 
 gulps of spirit did no more than invigorate him. The 
 immediate effect began to wear off, it appears, after the 
 second mile had been covered. One could see that he 
 stood still just by the old thorn-tree which marks the end 
 of the upland pasture. Here presumably he drank as much 
 more as he could, for after this and all through the wild 
 part of the valley where the vast amphitheatre of hills 
 moves out in a half-circle of some fifteen miles, and the 
 long slopes are bare save for the grey herds of enormous 
 boulders, lying there, probably, since the sea filled that 
 basin, his course became considerably more devious, not 
 to say erratic. On three or four occasions he fell down. 
 The marks there on the road and his clothes, next day, bore 
 ample testimony to his tumblings. Several others ran zig- 
 zag fashion. A rag, torn from his trousers, was discovered 
 caught on a rough stone projecting from the top of the 
 wall. They found his left leg rather badly ' t cut the next 
 morning. 
 
 Now, for the rest of Jim's running, it is necessary for 
 the biographer to draw upon his own slender imagination 
 
272 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 and no longer on fact. The Scotch Giant has a few, 
 very few and vague memories of this night's occur- 
 rences, and these for obvious purposes have been some- 
 what amplified. 
 
CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 AT last he began to climb the road where it rose through 
 fir-forests to the narrow mountain-gate between 
 More and Moich. It was as dark as a tunnel and for a 
 moment he hesitated on the entrance to that otherwise 
 impenetrable wall of black. 
 
 Then he mumbled once more: 
 
 "I maun be in Duke's Ferry before the morn." 
 
 This gave him courage and with a lurch and a stumble 
 he cannoned off a tree trunk, by good hap, into the middle 
 of the road. Even he, in such a condition, noticed the 
 contrast between grey darkness, just left, and the utter 
 raven blackness of the forest. Still, it did not daunt him 
 very much. He staggered on and upwards. There was 
 still about half the original contents in the whiskey-bottle, 
 but what he had already drunk had taken away the little 
 sense which remained in Jim's brain. 
 
 He was now talking volubly and in a low tone to himself 
 as drunken folk very often do. His moods varied as the 
 alcohol surged through him. 
 
 "Jim, my man, I remember noo. You're sick. Why 
 did the Doctor come tae see ye, if ye werena sick. Doctor, 
 I'm feelin' cauld, sae cauld. Losh! it's a fearfu' nicht. 
 Mither, I'm nae a bairn ony mair. Can I hae a drappy o' 
 whuskey to keep awa the cauld?" A voice, Euphemia's 
 voice, seemed to answer him from far away. "Drink, my 
 mannie, drink!" Jim followed the advice of the voice 
 and then memories of the tiny woman flooded his eyes with 
 tears. He blamed himself for the coldness between them. 
 It was not Euphemia's fault that she had never understood. 
 His huge size should not have made such a difference to 
 
 273 
 
274 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 him. The misfortunes that happened were his own fault, 
 even as the Reverend Simon said. He, himself, was 
 nothing but a miserable, hulking coward. His enemies 
 were right. 
 
 "But," he mumbled, "it's a' ower noo. I've seen the 
 last of Tuchan, the last o' ma mither. Losh! if I staun' 
 here bletherin' I'll nae be at Duke's Ferry before the morn." 
 
 These old, evil thoughts hurt him. They must be 
 driven away, forgotten. And so, once more, he carried 
 the bottle in his hand to his lips and drank a great mouth- 
 ful. His hand trembled so that much of it was spilt and 
 trickled with the rain down his chin; a moiety of the neat 
 liquid scorched his unaccustomed throat and burned like 
 fire in his stomach. 
 
 "By Gosh!" he said, "that's graund. I'll hae some 
 mair whuskey's the stuff!" he cried and staggered from 
 one side of the road to the other. The night was moving 
 round him, swinging dizzily up and down, and the invisible 
 road ever now and then rose up and hit him. 
 
 He cursed it and struck it with his huge shoulder-of- 
 mutton fists when down. 
 
 "Coward!" he cried, "ye lay still eneuch when I hit ye. 
 Let me walk in peace." 
 
 Then he would get up again with the blood pouring from 
 his fingers and knuckles, and sometimes from his mud- 
 splashed, bruised face, and take another drink of whiskey. 
 That put a new strength, though a strength of short dura- 
 tion, into his fever-wasted, passion-wasted limbs. 
 
 A mad inclination to sing seized him, but he could remem- 
 ber no tunes. Only strange cries, divided by enormous 
 intervals and varying in length and volume, issued from, 
 his lips in a string of mindless vociferations. 
 
 And still up the steep slope of the mountain pass he 
 climbed on. Luckily for him the path was fairly broad 
 and straight, broader and straighter than it seemed, from 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 275 
 
 the other side of the valley. Otherwise he could never 
 have made it to the end. He fell down innumerable times; 
 sometimes over half-buried fir-roots just off the right track, 
 sometimes because his knees gave way beneath him. Bark, 
 moss, twigs, leaves, pine-needles, ancient slivers, and new- 
 wetted black mould hung to every roughness or crevice in 
 his rain-dressed clothes. He was daubed, mired, crusted, 
 soaked, spattered, from head to foot. In the darkness of 
 the wood he could not see a couple of yards in front. Strange 
 to say, his half-drunken brain guided him by instinct, and 
 the desire to reach Duke's Ferry before morning never left 
 him. That instinct to leave Tuchan and leave it forever 
 had been struggling for years and years with the other 
 instincts of his nature. Now, because it had been so long 
 prisoner, it was become master of everything in his nature. 
 The storm might howl, the rain beat and slash him, his 
 vast strength fail and become almost the weakness of a 
 child, yet now his one, overwhelming idea, his sole neces- 
 sity was to reach the port before morning; to be safe on 
 some ship before the old people could bring him back. 
 
 Sometimes, now that he was forced to travel slower, 
 both from loss of strength and the steepness of the road, 
 he looked back over his shoulder. Little did he know that 
 no human feet except his could have crossed the valley 
 on such a night at such a speed. There was nothing around 
 him but the intense blackness of the forest, nothing above 
 but a narrow rift of less deep black. The rain still fell upon 
 his upturned face, but he thought that its violence had 
 passed. He could no longer hear thunder. There was 
 nothing but a vast ancient silence. So he lurched up the 
 rough road, shouting and moaning, and reeling from side 
 to side in the thick darkness. 
 
 In the middle of this horrible outcry his distracted mind 
 reverted to the Reverend Simon McManus. "A graund 
 white face to bruise," he said as he left off shouting. " A'd 
 
276 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 love to bash it in. Why wad he nae let me sing i' the 
 kirk? Jim lad, ye sing fine. What was the song ye liked 
 sae much to sing ? A song aboot a lassie. Yes, that was it 
 aboot a lassie ca'd Jessie. Hoo did it gae noo?" 
 
 He made several false starts with the air, as he stood 
 alone there in the pitch black forest path; made noises 
 more like the grunts and howls of a wild beast than sounds 
 proceeding from a human throat. Then the old raucous 
 hum came from his parched lips and the travesty of an 
 ancient song. 
 
 "Oh! that love and Oh! that love, 
 
 For she is ma darlin', 
 There isna lass i' the world sae fair 
 As the lovely Jess Macfarlane." 
 
 Jim stopped, and stood swaying in the darkness, the 
 whiskey lapping against the sides of the bottle as he swung 
 to and fro like a restless pachyderm in his native forest. 
 
 " As the lovely Jess Macfarlane," 
 he continued doubtfully to himself. 
 
 "The lovely Jess Macfarlane," 
 
 he repeated slowly once more. 
 
 "Nae," he said sagely, shaking his vast head, with 
 tangled red locks dripping water into his unseeing eyes, 
 "nae the name was na Macfarlane at a' wasna 
 Macfarlane. What was it then? I ken weel a lassie 
 wi' black eyes and black hair. Jim, man, ye've kissed 
 her." 
 
 For a moment or two, in his fluctuating memories, the 
 ideal Jessie came back, she who was to put an end to 
 all his mischances, black-haired and red-stockinged, a 
 beautiful, cherished thing to be saved and, then and for- 
 ever, all in all to him. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 277 
 
 "Jessie! Jessie!" he cried to the surrounding forest, 
 "rin towards me for your life!" 
 
 But who had ever run towards Jim? He saw limned on 
 the curtain of the darkness, face after face, white, an- 
 guished and terrified. Beautiful and proud were the faces 
 till they saw him and then their expression changed. 
 Their pride became fear and then scorn. Their voices 
 rang with the scorn as they cried to him through the 
 night. 
 
 "Oh! it's a monster, nae man at a'." 
 
 Hundreds and hundreds of these phantoms passed him, 
 it seemed, each with its word of hatred, and at every one 
 Jim quivered from head to heel. He sprang forward to 
 kiss one as he had done in the Manse garden and, then, the 
 black became blank once more. Who had ever run towards 
 him? 
 
 He took another sip from the whiskey-bottle. 
 
 "Damn a' lassies!" he mumbled. "Whuskey's the stuff 
 for a man. Jim, lad, ye're a mon noo. Ye're grown sae 
 fast they had tae turn ye oot on the mountains. There 
 wasna ony hooses big eneuch for ye, Jim. Eh ! its a f earf u' 
 nicht. Sae ye had tae rin awa' oot i' the cauld an' the 
 rain." 
 
 He took another draught from the bottle which trembled 
 in his hand, and the tears once more came into his eyes. 
 
 "Oot i' the cauld an' the rain," he mumbled, staggering 
 and lurching onwards still. "Jim, lad, ye'll dee i' the 
 fearfu' cauld or be struck wi' lightning. They'll find your 
 body a' black i' the morning and naebody will care 
 whether ye're leevin' or deid." 
 
 The neat spirit surged through him and Jim was no 
 longer conscious of the reality of things. Pain, sickness, 
 ignominy were all blurred into a shadow of far-away indis- 
 tinct trouble, trouble that did not matter any longer. 
 Only a subconsciousness, deep-seated unquiet drove him 
 
278 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 along, staggering, lurching, and mumbling. Sensations 
 seized him and left him with equal suddenness. Some- 
 times he wept, sometimes he shouted. There was no 
 coherence, no sequence in his thought. The recollections 
 were all random. 
 
 Confused like his steps. 
 
 Alternately he caught Jessie in his arms and kissed her 
 and heard once more her words of scorn and loathing. 
 
 Misery and joy were companions in his rumbling mind. 
 
 That first touch on his knee thrilled him over and over 
 again. 
 
 Sometimes he was a child once more, playing with her 
 and Johnny Findlater in the streets, and trying to win 
 the affection of the black-eyed, black-haired Jessie in his 
 puppyish way. Once again he fought with Johnny, saw 
 him triumphantly waving his ha'penny and the white 
 face of the Reverend Simon looking down into his. 
 
 Then the miserable school-days brought tears of recol- 
 lection into his eyes and even now a mad desire to bash 
 somebody. And now it was a sneering face with a fleshy 
 nose looked at him through the dark and rain while a thin 
 biting voice said: 
 
 "Weel done, Brobdignag. Weel done, Hippopotamus!" 
 
 In his crazy delusions he struck out, and half felt that 
 he had dispelled some reality by his blow, half felt surprise 
 that he had encountered nothing solid. 
 
 The memory of his blow on the Dominie's nose, that 
 long, fleshy nose, and the fat soft sensation it gave him, 
 came back and he laughed aloud. It was all long, long 
 ago but the Dominie's nose had never grown straight again. 
 
 They would laugh at him now the little boys just 
 as they had laughed at Jim. 
 
 This must have been his last definite thought. He 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 279 
 
 remembers nothing more save emerging at last on to the 
 barren height of the pass, for he had climbed, that night, 
 beyond the fir-forest and almost, it seemed, up to the stars. 
 In the vast vault above him, whither in astonishment he 
 turned his freckled face, they winked and twinkled pure 
 and innumerable in new- washed spaces. The storm had 
 rumbled and circled itself far away by that time, the 
 velvet of the heavens was glittering with triangles, belts, 
 and rivers of diamonds. That solitude of the sky was so 
 infinitely greater than any solitude, through which he had 
 galloped in his mad flight, that, for a while, it struck him 
 motionless. 
 
 Then he remembered. 
 
 "I maun be in Duke's Ferry before the morn." 
 He lifted the bottle to his ear. There was a faint tinkle. 
 So, putting it to his lips, he drank it to the last drop and 
 flung it away as far as he could. With tottering knees and 
 stumbling feet Jim began the descent. 
 
PART V 
 
CHAPTER L 
 
 " r I A HE 'Great Tickler' was last seen moving in a 
 J. north-westerly direction." 
 
 It is one of the disadvantages of eminence that the 
 movements of a great man are always watched, chronicled, 
 and commented upon. The prime-minister, the empire- 
 maker, the financier can hardly travel a step without the 
 accompaniment of a paragraph in the press. 
 
 How subtle must be the joys, for such an one, of travel- 
 ling incognito. 
 
 Wrapped in a huge and luxurious astrakhan coat, like 
 Sir W. S. Gilbert's "boat-cloak" an effective disguise 
 Ambrose Mandeville, the "Great Tickler," eluded all 
 observation. 
 
 It was a part of his whimsical nature to vanish suddenly 
 and leave the vast organisation, of which he was the 
 presiding genius, to the care of subordinates. Without 
 more than a few hours' preparation, without the least 
 hint to anybody, he would disappear to the ends of the 
 earth and reappear with a treasure. 
 
 It was part of his whimsical nature to despatch some 
 queer message en route, 
 
 On this occasion he sent the telegram that forms the 
 opening lines of this chapter, handsomely tipping the 
 porter who bore it to the office. 
 
 Then, luxuriously sinking back into the corner of his 
 first-class carriage, he became once more the unknown 
 adventurer with his way, as it were, still to make in the 
 world, and opened "Beyond Good and Evil." 
 
 These wild journeys without premeditation, as much 
 
 283 
 
284 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 flights of fancy as anything else, were the only illusions 
 that he permitted himself. 
 
 As he sped at between forty and fifty miles an hour in 
 a north-westerly direction, he closed up the business- 
 department of his Napoleonic brain and turned on all 
 hands in the thinking-department. 
 
 There was no one else in the carriage. 
 
 The train, in its north-westerly career, roared and 
 rattled, and motionless sat the "Great Tickler," save 
 when with the fingers of his right hand he turned the 
 leaves of his book. A great fleshy beak jutted between 
 the wings of his collar. His big square head was sunk 
 between the square shoulders. There was no light in his 
 brilliant black eyes as he followed Nietsche step by step. 
 
 The power of concentration, which the "Great Tickler" 
 possessed, was preternatural. 
 
 He sat with dull, opaque, downward glance, as still as 
 any statue. 
 
 Who was it said, "The world is made for Caesar"? 
 
 Surely such a man as the "Great Tickler" came forth 
 to rule continents. 
 
 To sway thousands. 
 
 To be Cassar. 
 
 Yes, and truly, though he fled in a north-westerly direc- 
 tion wrapped in the disguise of his sumptuous astrakhan, 
 half on business and half on holiday, Caesar he was. 
 
 His word pulsated across continents. Thousands of 
 men, in either hemisphere, moved at his nod, and tens of 
 thousands, men, women, and children, passed in at the 
 gates of the wonderful white city, which he threw open. 
 Whatever was curious, rare, or beautiful he sought and 
 found. Men hunted for him in the Altai Mountains. 
 In the darkest recesses of Mid-African forests, where 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 285 
 
 dwarfs run, beast-like, on all fours in the gloomy jungles 
 and build like apes in the tangled lionas, the name of the 
 "Tickler" was known. His fame was wafted along the hot 
 winds that blow over the Amazon and up the Paraguay 
 River, haunt of man-eating fish. His word went forth 
 through Brazilian forests, where the giant Anacondas lie 
 basking, and searched the old polysyllabic treasure-towns 
 of Mexico. The seal-hunters of Kerguelen knew him and 
 those who fish the icy coasts of Labrador. He moved in 
 spirit among the buried cities of Ceylon and the immeasu- 
 rable distances of the Himalayas. 
 
CHAPTER LI 
 
 /^<OMEup, lass!" 
 
 V^4 Dr. Spens touched the brisk little mare with his 
 whip and she started forward with a swing of her quarters. 
 A rest of five or six hours in Duke's Ferry had well restored 
 her. On the back-seat the silent groom-gardener, Donald, 
 preserved his balance, capitally for a gardener, and clumsily 
 for a groom. It was now a grey, drizzling morning and the 
 east had just begun to lighten with the coming day. As 
 the little mare rattled along the road, which here ran level 
 through the heather, the Doctor could see the backs of 
 the hills stretching sombre and desolate on every hand. 
 Their way ran through a ravine not very deep. For a 
 hundred yards on either side the ground rose almost im- 
 perceptibly towards lowish hills, part rock and part short 
 heather mingled with scanty, poor grass. 
 
 On their right hand and a little hi front of them was a 
 largish loch to which the boulder-strewn hills sloped almost 
 gradually down. A quarter-of-an-hour's driving brought 
 them to it. It was desolate utterly and still, save for 
 the cries of sand-pipers hopping from stone to stone and 
 the lap of water amongst the reeds. They were at the 
 head of the loch and soon they saw it, at its full extent, 
 as it lay among the hills at right angles to their road, sombre 
 and grey at first, and glooming darker and darker till in 
 the distance it seemed to become a black and narrow 
 creek amidst cold and naked mountains half-veiled in the 
 morning mists. There was not a habitation of any sort 
 in view. 
 
 "A bit lonely here, Ambrose," said the Doctor, turning 
 
 286 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 287 
 
 to a figure, which sat at his side muffled in a large astrakhan 
 collar. 
 
 "Lonely! I should just about think it was," returned 
 a voice uncommon brisk and a trifle nasal. "I can't 
 think how you manage to go on year after year. But 
 then you always were a solitary bird. I should let the 
 metaphysical department utterly get the better of me if I 
 lived here for six months." 
 
 There was a very slight, hardly noticeable, peculiarity 
 about his pronunciation. His "t's" all seemed to become 
 "d's." 
 
 "I am a solitary bird, as you say," replied the Doctor. 
 "Besides a poor man's got to take what he can get." 
 
 "I started poor enough, Jehosaphat!" answered his 
 companion. 
 
 "Ah! then you had energy enough for twenty. Were 
 quick, determined, tough. How well I remember you 
 in the old days! I've a mental portrait of you plain. So! 
 Face square on the whole; square forehead and square 
 chin; more breadth in front of the ears than behind; a 
 big, jutting, fleshy beak; eyes very bright and black; 
 head rather sunk in the shoulders, they were square 
 too and very broad for your height; chest capacious 
 with plenty of room for heart and lung action; legs short 
 and thick; tendency in later years to corpulence. You 
 haven't altered much, Ambrose. I should have recognised 
 you anywhere." 
 
 "Jehosaphat! old boy. As you know, old fellow, I've 
 never been able to afford any illusions about myself or 
 anything else, but your portrait isn't out-and-out flattering 
 from a beauty-man's point of view." 
 
 "No, Ambrose," laughed the Doctor, "you never were 
 a beauty-man. Clothes don't sit well on a figure like 
 yours, on the man-of-action's short, thick body. But, 
 then, we doctors, perhaps, Ambrose, you are still doctor 
 
288 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 enough to remember, don't look at the outside of the body, 
 except for signs and tokens, so much as the inside. What 
 is a grace to the layman is often a horrible symptom to us. 
 A pink and white complexion may mean tuberculosis; a 
 light eye tendency to hysteria or insanity; a slender grace- 
 ful body is sometimes a warning to us that the vital func- 
 tions have not free enough play." 
 
 "Oh! oh!" cried the figure in the coat with its slightly 
 nasal voice, "what a point of view!" 
 
 "Yes," went on Dr. Spens firmly, "we doctors have a 
 different valuation to the unlearned. But we have com- 
 pensation for what we lose, as always happens in this life. 
 We learn to think beautiful what the layman thinks ugly. 
 In some ways," he added, with the touch of gentle humour 
 which was one of his charms, "you were the handsomest 
 man I ever knew." 
 
 "Oh! oh! oh!" cried his companion again. 
 
 "How I envied you," continued the Doctor in a state 
 of mild ecstacy, "those magnificent lungs which can have 
 had no trouble in well oxygenising your blood; that heart, 
 which pumped it to every part of your body, tumultuously, 
 regularly, with the force of a great engine. I sometimes, 
 in my medical student days, thought I would like to make 
 a post-mortem on you just for the pleasure of seeing how 
 you were fixed in that chest-cavity. Ah! I was a real 
 enthusiast in those days. Such splendid arrangements 
 are never seen except in a short, thick body, like yours, 
 which the world calls ugly. The world likes those 
 huge, fair men with slow pulses and sleepy movements. 
 They're no good, Ambrose. Their hearts can't keep it 
 up after forty, anyway. The blood all goes to feeding 
 the remote extremities of the body. It hardly reaches their 
 brains. Give me the swift, mad tumult of the short man's 
 circulation and the big stomach, set well in between the 
 thighs, which shows a good digestion and a capacity for 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 289 
 
 always attaining nourishment. That keeps the nerves 
 sound and the brain clear, gives the Napoleonic brain-in- 
 compartments organisation. Give me, Ambrose, the short- 
 legged, short-necked, short-tempered man. He gets on." 
 
 "Short-legged! short-necked! ! short-tempered! !" ex- 
 claimed the man whom the Doctor called Ambrose. 
 "That's me to a tick. I knew it. But it does sound 
 rather brutal. You put things uncompromisingly, Spens. 
 Living in the wilds, I suppose. In spite of my magnificent 
 lungs, my superb heart, and my brain-in-compartments, 
 I feel a strange, wild longing to be one of the beautiful, 
 blond men, to have a fascinating exterior. Confound 
 my short, thick neck, my bull-neck! What business 
 has my vertebral column to be fixed like that? I've cut 
 the medical profession. I resent being admired exclusively 
 by experts. Your ideas of beauty, Ambrose, are fantastic 
 and unnatural. I yearn once more after the schoolroom 
 hero type, the beloved of pretty little girls. The longings 
 of my early days surge back upon me." 
 
 "The best is never appreciated except by the few, and, 
 Ambrose, you know that as well as I do," said Dr. Spens 
 philosophically. 
 
 "Perhaps," replied the other, "but then you forget my 
 profession in your valuations. What would become of 
 me, if all the world were built of a pattern? Jehosaphat! 
 I should look a goat now, I don't think." 
 
 "Oh!" replied the Doctor with something of a shudder. 
 ' ' Freaks ! What a trade ! Bugh ! " 
 
 "There aint much in that. Freaks aint worse than 
 tumours an' midwifery. It's a jolly fine trade. You bet 
 your life. 
 
 The Doctor looked with an air of half-amusement, 
 half-admiration at his friend. 
 
 "How did you think of such a thing?" he cried. 
 
 "Think of it! It's a fine trade, a first-class trade, 
 
290 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 a noble trade. I have a jolly good time. My freaks 
 have a jolly good time. Somebody's got to look after the 
 freaks in this world. They've got a right to live like any- 
 one else, I take it. Then there's all the excitement. 
 Travelling capitals of Europe nobs of all kinds 
 crowned heads sometimes! A king gave me this." 
 
 A face that tallied somewhat with the Doctor's descrip- 
 tion came out of the astrakhan collar, that sumptuous 
 ruff of curling black wool which encircled the bull neck, 
 a face with piercing black eyes and a jutting, fleshy nose. 
 No wonder the owner snuffled. The face was Jewish to 
 the last hair in the eyebrows. 
 
 "Not a bad diamond, eh?" 
 
 He pulled the collar open in front. 
 
 In his expansive tie sparkled a brilliant of the first 
 lustre. 
 
 "No, old boy! There aint any flies on my job. Except 
 in moments of irritation I don't regret my short neck and 
 my short temper and my short legs if, as you say, they 
 have helped me on. Unlike most of my people I'm a bit 
 of a metaphysician and transcendentalist. Long ago I saw 
 like you the folly of the world, eh? But after all it's the 
 only one we've got and we may as well make the most of 
 it think, if we can, that good food, good clothes, good 
 wine etc., are realities. I've got a metaphysical depart- 
 ment in my brain but I resolutely shut it off. No, my job's 
 all right. I'm worth a bit now. 'Course, I'm disappointed 
 sometimes." 
 
 "The seal, eh?" 
 
 "Confound that seal! All the way to a damned little 
 stink-port like Duke's Ferry to look at a dead seal. Would 
 ha' been a bit of a draw, tho' two heads! eight flippers! ! 
 Mandeville's Circus wants something new. Novelty's 
 what brings 'em in thousands. Novelty and ads. Don't 
 let the public go to sleep. That's my motto. Good old 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 291 
 
 B. P., tickle 'em up! Good old sausage eaters, tickle 'em 
 up! Good old froggies, tickle 'em up. See?" 
 
 Dr. Spens, in spite of his natural sobriety, could not 
 help laughing. There was something so kindly and jo- 
 vial about Ambrose Mandeville's vulgarity. His scientific 
 snuffles seemed to give a certain distinction to his remarks 
 and he conveyed the impression of extracting all the joy 
 possible out of life by his immense energy and love of 
 being. His tie was so many-coloured, his astrakhan collar 
 so immense, his tie-pin so dazzling, his voice so rich and 
 resonant, his vitality so immeasurable that he inspired the 
 Doctor with the glory of his existence, even though Mande- 
 ville's trade might not, in cold speculation, seem to have 
 anything very glorious about it. It was one thing, how- 
 ever, to talk about it yourself, another to hear him talk 
 about it. What Dr. Spens said was true beyond doubt. 
 His was a perfect organisation. Not an ounce of blood, 
 not a nerve, not a cell was wasted. 
 
 That brain had been so wonderfully organised that he 
 could turn it onto or shut it off from any subject just as 
 he wished. He wrestled with all forms of thought but no 
 thinking interfered with his capacity for enormous, endless, 
 creative, practical work. 
 
 Imagination of many kinds he had, but not that which 
 makes the man a slave even though it produces things of 
 beauty or intense concentrated thought. 
 
 Mandeville deliberately used all his power for practical 
 work. 
 
 And it was the life and colour which he put into his work 
 that made it seem so fine. 
 
 "I should never have made a good 'Tickler,'" said Dr. 
 Spens, half regretfully. "I had my battle with the world 
 and lost it lost it badly. How long ago it seems now! 
 When I first came here I had the haunting feeling, occa- 
 sionally, that I ought to be doing something in the world, 
 
292 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 making a name for myself in fact instead of doing homely, 
 unobtrusive work in Tuchan. But it passed away after 
 two or three years. And now, thank Heaven, I'm all right 
 where I am. Even though I get depressed sometimes, I 
 comfort myself with the thought that we can all find our 
 little jobs in the world. I'm out of touch with the latest 
 discoveries, of course. If there's anything crucial I send 
 the patient at my own expense to Glasgow." 
 
 "Funny how we used to be such pals, wasn't it?" said 
 Mandeville, once more sinking into his astrakhan collar. 
 He seemed to revel in its warmth and comfort like a school- 
 boy. He had the faculty of finding an elemental joy in 
 luxury. Dr. Spens made little figures with his whip, 
 thoughtfully, and looked between the mare's ears. 
 
 The rich and resonant voice of Ambrose Mandeville 
 recalled old friendships and merry laughter, which his 
 gentle and sensitive nature had loved, recalled the old 
 days and the old world of ambition and energy to which 
 he had said such a distant good-bye. 
 
 "People come in and out of one's life," continued Mande- 
 ville, "and it doesn't seem very long since we were at the 
 hospital together, but Jehosaphat I'm glad to see you again, 
 old boy. I don't care a damn about my two-headed seal. 
 I'd lose fifty of 'em for the pleasure of having seen you." 
 
 Mandeville meant what he said and, considering his 
 profession, his words showed him to have a handsome and 
 generous mind. The Doctor left off making little circles 
 with his whip and touched the mare with the lash. She 
 sprang forward willingly and the sudden movement saved 
 him the necessity of saying anything. As we already know, 
 he was a particularly shy, reserved, and delicately strung 
 person. 
 
 No, he could never have been a "Tickler" like Mande- 
 ville. The latter, however, knew quite well that the 
 Doctor was glad to see him again. The dim grey of the 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 293 
 
 morning grew lighter and lighter every moment It was 
 cold. 
 
 Mandeville shivered and grumbled, "You're a tough 
 old nut, anyway. I suppose you're used to getting up in 
 the early morning. As for me, it's one of the few things 
 I really abominate. I can just do it, that's all. Lucky 
 I never became a doctor, isn't it? " 
 
 "You'd have got used to it," replied Spens. 
 
 "Never," replied Mandeville, sinking into his astrakhan 
 with a luxurious moan. "How ever many more miles is 
 it to your house, old cock? " 
 
 The mare had been trotting briskly during their con- 
 versation, and now the road began to climb distinctly up- 
 hill. They were almost at the end of the loch along which 
 they had been driving, and beyond it they could see thick 
 woods of firs climbing up into the mists. 
 
 "Some miles yet, I fear," replied the Doctor. "We 
 are now almost at the foot of the Ballandarroch Pass. In 
 a mile or two more we shall really have to begin to climb. 
 There seems to have been a lot of rain here last night. 
 The roads are getting perfectly abominable. Didn't you 
 hear thunder? I did. Just after I went to bed. I sup- 
 pose the storm circled off here." 
 
 "We shall have a job through the Pass, then, but 
 you will be well rewarded when we arrive." 
 
 The morning mist blew aside for a moment and the 
 "Tickler" saw the mountain road winding high above 
 through the forests that clothed the great bases of More and 
 Moich. It was a long, long drive, even though his old friend 
 the Doctor had promised him a spectacle out of the ordinary 
 at the end of it. And he did hate getting up early in the 
 morning. Wherever he happened to be and whatever he 
 happened to be doing he made it a rule never to get up 
 before the sun rose. This morning he had been up three 
 hours before it. 
 
294 
 
 "We'll buck along," said Mandeville. "I want a snooze 
 before I see this surprise packet of yours. I believe it's 
 all a gag." 
 
 "You're an unbelieving " 
 
 "Jew. Don't rub it in, old cock! I can't help it." 
 
 Spens laughed. 
 
 "By the way," he said, "you never told me why you 
 chucked doctoring. You were so keen on it when I left 
 the hospital." 
 
 "Yes, I was keen enough on it when I didn't know any- 
 thing about the game," replied Mandeville. "I kept my 
 eyes open though, and very soon saw that I should never 
 do any good." 
 
 "Why? You'd brains." 
 
 "Brains!" cried Mandeville in a voice of scorn. "My 
 brain-in-compartments wasn't any good to me in the 
 profession nor my magnificent heart or my superb lungs 
 either. Brains indeed! Brains aren't what the ladies 
 want. What they want is a doc with nice grey English 
 eyes and curly fair hair. Makes 'em feel comfortable. 
 They've no use for a fat Jew who snuffles through his nose 
 when he's gammoning 'em, even if he has a magnificent 
 heart and superb lungs and a brain-in-compartments. 
 No, Spens, decidedly it isn't brains that the ladies want. 
 For a fashionable doc grey eyes and gammon is the only 
 ticket. Nature or Fate, which made me a Jew and gave 
 me these short legs and this bull-neck and this short square 
 body, didn't intend me to make my fortune that way, and, 
 as I wanted to make a fortune, I chucked it. There are 
 two things a good Jew never uses on himself gammon and 
 bacon. Moses forbade us to eat bacon and, as for gammon, 
 we gammon other people but we don't gammon ourselves. 
 We've had too much black hole and toothdrawing for that. 
 We just look at ourselves in the worst possible light and 
 then start on to make the best of ourselves. See?" 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 295 
 
 "I do and not a bad plan either. But why did you 
 take up your ahem Tickling business?" 
 
 The magnetism of Mandeville was upon him. 
 
 "Oh! they brought the bearded woman from Barnet 
 and Bagguley's World's Fair to have an operation at the 
 hospital one day," replied Mandeville, "and when I saw 
 her on the operating table with her great beard down to 
 her knees, I don't know why, the inspiration came to me 
 in a moment, like all true inspirations." 
 
 "So you chucked the hospital?" 
 
 "Chucked the hospital and " 
 
CHAPTER LII 
 
 AT that moment the little mare reared up between the 
 shafts till she stood almost on her hind legs, and 
 then started off at a headlong gallop down the road, deposit- 
 ing Donald, the groom-gardener, behind her. True to his 
 taciturnity, he alighted without a word. The Doctor had 
 all his work to keep the animal straight. The road here, 
 cut out of a steep slope declining towards the loch, was 
 exceptionally narrow, and a swerve to right or left would 
 have landed the dogcart either in the water or up against 
 a six-foot bank. In either case a severe spill would have 
 been inevitable and for a moment or two Spens was uncer- 
 tain whether he could avoid an accident. Before getting 
 hold of the mare's head, however, he had seen a gigantic, 
 tattered figure rise from a strip of grass between the loch 
 and the road, utter a weird cry, half-moan and half-growl, 
 and grab with an enormous hand at the mare's head. For 
 several hundred yards they pelted down the road, swaying, 
 jerking, bumping, and clattering in the slushy surface of 
 mud and stones. 
 
 The Doctor was too much occupied in trying to stop the 
 runaway to pay much attention to anything else. When, 
 at last, he succeeded in bringing her to a standstill, he 
 turned round to Mandeville and found him, as it were, a 
 totally different being. He had emerged from his somno- 
 lent attitude in the astrakhan collar. His black eyes 
 sparkled and his nostrils in the curving Semitic nose 
 dilated at the sniff of an adventure. 
 
 "Jehosaphat, Spens!" he cried. "What on earth was 
 that?" 
 
 296 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 297 
 
 "What did you think you saw?" asked the Doctor. 
 
 "What I thought I saw was a blessed giant," replied 
 Mandeville, the instinct of the " Tickler" awakening 
 strongly in him, "a blessed giant, seven feet high if he was 
 an inch. But the thing's absurd. What did you think 
 you saw, Spens?" 
 
 The Doctor remained silent for a moment or two. The 
 little mare was fidgeting with cocked ears and steaming 
 flanks. 
 
 "There's only one," he began, and then said half to 
 himself, "The thing is absurd. I left him in bed with 
 pneumonia, not a bad attack, but still an attack." 
 
 "What are you muttering about?" asked Mandeville, 
 "Do you know anything about this apparition? Out with 
 it, if you do!" 
 
 "Maybe I do and maybe I don't," replied the Doctor, 
 with due caution. "Mandeville, just get down and turn 
 Grizel's head. We must go back and find Donald. I 
 expect he dropped off when we bolted." 
 
 "Right!" replied Mandeville, hopping down in his long 
 astrakhan coat. "Easy, my gal, Uncle's not angry. 
 Gently does it." 
 
 He hopped in again and the mare retraced her foot- 
 steps at a more moderate pace, even though she jumped 
 about in spite of the Doctor's gentle and practised hand. 
 
 "We mustn't lose our Donald, of course. And, per- 
 haps, " the insinuating gleam of the accomplished "Tickler" 
 shone in his eyes, "perhaps we might try and find that 
 other feller. I don't know what he wanted, but I know 
 I should like him. He'd be worth a whole catch of two- 
 headed seals." 
 
 Dr. Spens drove on in silence, a frown of perplexity on 
 his forehead. 
 
 "You bit of old bedrock," cried Mandeville, "I believe 
 you know more than you'll say. Hulloa, isn't this Donald? " 
 
298 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 A muddy figure came running down the road to meet 
 them. 
 
 "All right, Donald?" asked his master laconically. 
 Donald touched his hat. 
 
 "No bones broken?" 
 
 Donald touched his hat again. 
 
 "Very well, get up behind, then." 
 
 Donald touched his hat a third time. 
 
 "I say," began the "Tickler" eagerly, but Donald 
 touched his hat a fourth time and got up behind as com- 
 manded by his master. "Aren't you going to ?" started 
 the accomplished "Tickler" again, turning to the Doctor. 
 One look at the Doctor sufficed and he stopped talking. 
 Spens' face was so stern set that even the volatile and 
 irrepressible Mandeville, with his Jewish flair for a good 
 thing, was silenced when he saw that face. He under- 
 stood that this was a case of the Doctor's business and 
 moreover he suddenly understood, also, why Spens had 
 remained seventeen years in a remote Scotch village. 
 The world-famous Mandeville of Mandeville's Circus had, 
 perhaps, if we dare say it, been thinking his old friend 
 rather a stick-in-the-mud, but now his respect for the Doc- 
 tor increased twenty-fold. He knew a man when he saw 
 one (ten years' management of a large business had taught 
 him that), and he saw that, although poor and unknown, 
 his old friend was a man. Mandeville was disciplinarian 
 enough to know that he must obey. As the Doctor said 
 no word they splashed along through the mud in silence. 
 In a moment or two they saw a figure lying on the road. 
 Grizel pricked up her ears again. 
 
 "Whoa!" said the Doctor pulling up the little mare. 
 
 "Donald! Come and hold her head." 
 
 The silent Donald touched his hat a fifth time and stood, 
 as commanded, like a statue at the mare's head. 
 
 "Mandeville," said the Doctor, in a short, sharp voice 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 299 
 
 very different from his usual sober and rather gentle tones, 
 "I think this is a patient of mine. The case may be 
 very serious. I shall need your assistance." 
 
 "Right," replied the accomplished " Tickler." Anything 
 new was in the way of an adventure for him. The two 
 stepped out of the trap and approached the figure lying 
 in the road. It was face downwards. The coat and 
 trousers were all torn, mud-be-spattered, covered with little 
 twigs and brushes of heather. The rain had drenched them 
 and begun to dry upon them, though the clothes, if such 
 uncouth and shapeless coverings could be called clothes, 
 were still clinging damp. The great hands, like shoulders- 
 of -mutton, and inches of brown arm stuck out of the sleeves, 
 and the flaming red head seemed almost fiery enough to 
 scorch up a puddle of water, near which it was reposing. 
 There appeared yards and yards of the figure lying in the 
 road. 
 
 " Jehosaphat ! " cried Ambrose Mandeville. "It is a 
 giant. What's the matter with him, Spens? Is he dead? 
 Just like my cursed luck this week, if he is." 
 
 "It'll be marvellous, if he isn't," replied the Doctor. 
 " Come on, Mandeville. This isn't a time for talking. We 
 must get him into the trap somehow. Turn him over 
 gently. You take his feet. I'll take his head." 
 
 Mandeville was, for his height or any height, excep- 
 tionally strong; the Doctor, toughened by mountain air 
 and simple living, no weakling. Yet how they groaned, 
 struggled, heaved, and panted before they could raise the 
 inanimate Jim ! At last they lifted the huge figure. He 
 hung a dead weight in their arms and his face was deathly 
 white where it could be seen amid all the mud which 
 covered it. 
 
 "You can bring the trap up now, Donald," said the 
 Doctor. Grizel danced a bit at the sight of the huge red- 
 headed burden they bore, but somehow or other they man- 
 
300 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 aged to hoist Jim into the front seat. He had never moved 
 a muscle or opened an eyelid. 
 
 "I'm afraid his goose is cooked," said Mandeville dis- 
 consolately as he surveyed the unconscious Giganticulus. 
 "Oh! if only I had a yard measure. But I'm certain he 
 must be all right. He must be over the standard size." 
 
 In spite of the gravity of the case, Mandeville's feelings, 
 the feelings of the entomologist when he finds a rare speci- 
 men, or the book-collector when he lights on a priceless 
 folio, ran away with him. Even as the aforesaid book- 
 collector measures the height of a volume, so the accom- 
 plished "Tickler" of the B. P. mentally sized up the huge 
 jetsam of the road. 
 
 "Coat, Ambrose!" said the Doctor with hand out- 
 stretched and his eyes still on Jim. 
 
 "Coat?" queried Mandeville vaguely. 
 
 "Yes, yes, your coat," answered Spens, a trifle impa- 
 tiently. "Your astrakhan's just the thing to keep the 
 boy warm. There's not much chance of saving his life, 
 but we must take all the chances there are. 
 
 "I should just about think we must," echoed Mande- 
 ville fervently. "Coat! coat! coat by all means! Jehos- 
 aphat! I'm glad I brought it." 
 
 He stripped himself of the costly and splendid garment, 
 and together they wrapped it round the shoulders of the 
 unconscious Jim. The Doctor bound his own modest 
 ulster round the sick boy's knees. 
 
 "Climb up, Mandeville, climb up behind!" said the 
 Doctor briskly, "and hold the boy's shoulders to prevent 
 him slipping. I'll sit in front and keep him as cosy and 
 comfortable as I can while I drive. Donald, you come 
 along as quickly as possible." 
 
 In spite of the sucking, viscous mud, enough to wrench 
 ligament or tendon if she stepped in a hole, Dr. Spcns drove 
 his little mare as fast as he could, while Mandeville half- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 301 
 
 stood and half-knelt at the back of the dogcart, holding 
 Jim's shoulders as directed. So curiously constituted is 
 human nature that although before he had felt cold in his 
 astrakhan coat, now when he was without it and with this 
 excitement, the chill of the morning air remained absolutely 
 unnoticed. 
 
 "Now, Doctor," he said as he leant over his friend's 
 shoulder, "perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me 
 who and what this creature is." 
 
 "I'll tell you one thing he is," replied Spens. "He's 
 drunk in addition to having pneumonia. His breath reeks 
 of whiskey." 
 
 "If he's been running about all night in that storm with 
 pneumonia upon him, he must have been either drunk or 
 mad." 
 
 "The whiskey may just have given him a chance," said 
 Dr. Spens thoughtfully. 
 
 "Once again, who and what is he?" asked Ambrose 
 Mandeville. "You called him a boy just now." 
 
 "You came with me to see a phenomenon," replied 
 Spens. "When you told me you were the Mandeville of 
 Mandeville's Circus, my old hospital friend, I thought 
 you might like to see it. Well, this is the phenomenon." 
 
 "By Jove so you brought me along to see him. I'm 
 awfully obliged, old chap. I owe you a debt that I believe 
 I shall never be fully able to repay. He is a phenomenon 
 and no mistake. But how does he come to be in this 
 deplorable condition?" 
 
 " Seventeen years ago I helped to bring this young scoun- 
 drel into the world." 
 
 "Seventeen! only seventeen!" cried Mandeville with 
 the astonishment of all those who saw Jim for the first 
 time. 
 
 "That's so," answered the Doctor. "I helped to bring 
 him into the world and still remember what a lot of trouble 
 
302 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 he gave. I believe I prophesied trouble with him then. 
 He was by far the biggest baby I've ever seen and, on the 
 whole, it's best to be ordinary if one wishes to be happy. 
 Poor Jim Macdonald has found this out. He's been in 
 one scrape after another for the last five or six years. It 
 was only yesterday morning that I offered to try and do 
 something for him if he liked to leave Tuchan and have a 
 shy at the luck elsewhere." 
 
 Mandeville was silent. His face looked as if the problem- 
 department in his brain was working overtime: his eyes 
 were dull-opaque, downcast instead of flashing and bril- 
 liant. That was his appearance in moments of concen- 
 tration. 
 
 "What are his parents?" he asked at length. 
 
 "Father works in the Quarries here." 
 
 "He's only seventeen you say. Then, by Almighty Jove, 
 he ought to grow some more. My poor old friend Tung 
 Pu grew till he was twenty-two years old, grew till he 
 became the world's tallest man. Our friend ought cer- 
 tainly to grow some more." 
 
 "Ought to, if he pulls through," answered the Doctor 
 laconically. "There's a growing look about him still. 
 His chances of recovery aren't, however, very great, I 
 fear." 
 
 "H'm-m," muttered Mandeville. "He's got pneumonia, 
 you say." 
 
 "I left him in bed with it yesterday. Caught a cold 
 working in the Quarries, I suppose. These silly fellows 
 get overheated, it's been fearfully hot this week, and then 
 sit down in their shirts to cool. Result, of course, pneu- 
 monia." 
 
 "Spens!" said Mandeville, "I beg to inform you that 
 the tallest man in the world, at the present moment, is 
 only seven feet six, and so " 
 
 "Well!" 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 303 
 
 "This boy's simply got to pull through." 
 
 "I'm not in the habit of neglecting my patients," replied 
 the Doctor with aggravating calm. 
 
 "Of course you're not," cried Mandeville, his less re- 
 strained nature boiling over, "but I say," in his excite- 
 ment his Jewish speech became more and more marked, 
 "you know this is a big thing, Doctor. It's going to be a 
 boom. A cinch. A regular gilt-edged investment. One 
 doesn't find giants of seventeen years old, who are over 
 seven feet high, every day. The boy must live." 
 
 "I'll do my best," said Spens in his usual calm and gentle 
 voice. 
 
 "Of course you will, old chap," cried Mandeville. "I 
 don't doubt it for an instant, but " 
 
 "Don't move about so or you'll shake the patient." 
 
 "Oh! confound you, Spens," cried the great Ambrose 
 violently. " What a fellow you are. Doesn't your common 
 sense tell you that you can trust me to look after him? 
 Why, he'll be worth hundreds and hundreds to me. There 
 hasn't been a decent-sized giant since old Tung Pu popped 
 off the hooks. Puny, pretentious, made-up things they've 
 been, one and all. I had hopes when I saw our red-headed 
 friend at first. Then I thought he'd done growing. But 
 now I hear he's only seventeen and might have nearly 
 another five years' growth, Jehosaphat! I can't, can't, 
 can't think of his dying. Spens, the boy must live!" 
 
 "We will do our best, "said the Doctor, taking a pull on 
 Grizel and compassion on Mandeville's impatience. "But 
 I warn you that it will be touch and go. Poor Jim!" 
 
 "He will be lucky Jim, if he recovers." 
 
 "If?" said Spens in a low, sad voice. "Ambrose, is 
 your world made of 'ifs' after all?" 
 
 "No, dear old boy, of course not," answered the "Tick- 
 ler" in rather a shamefaced way, "but yet I can see it on 
 the hoardings already. 'The Scotch Giant Mandeville's 
 
304 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 latest attraction.' Gad can't I see it, and the people 
 all craning their necks, and the crowd at the turnstiles! 
 It will be a boom. The B. P. want tickling just at this 
 moment. They're tired to death of Sarah Muggins, the 
 Bearded Woman, fine golden beard though she's got, and 
 the Lilliputian Troupe, and the Dog-faced Man. I've done 
 my best by letting them write articles in magazines and by 
 arranging with the R. C.'s for an account of the conver- 
 sion of Sarah Muggins, but the game is getting slow. We 
 want a Novelty at Mandeville's Circus and, if this boy lives, 
 as he must and shall, by God! we've got it. The Perform- 
 ing Seals were all very well in their way, but what would 
 they be to a Scotch Giant? He shall wear tartans and a 
 bonnet. Jehosaphat! can't I see him! Can't I hear the 
 ladies applauding as he comes into the ring and the kids' 
 shouting! Spens, I tell you this boy must live." 
 
 Dr. Spens could not help smiling once more. Twenty 
 years in a remote region of Scotland had seen him grow 
 steadier continually and continually soberer, had seen his 
 sandy hair turn the whity colour that all sandy hair does 
 with age. Scarcely an emotion had marked all this pas- 
 sage of time. Everyone took him as a matter-of-course 
 and he too had long ago begun to take as a matter of 
 course, everyone and everything. 
 
 Mandeville's outcries woke chords in him that had slum- 
 bered for twenty dreamless, almost cowardly years. 
 
 "Still the same exuberant and imaginative chap, Am- 
 brose," he said even more indulgently than usual. "You 
 seem the first human being I have come across for half a life- 
 time the concentrated essence of all humanity's activity. 
 Perhaps you never knew what it was to go on doing things 
 simply because it was your duty or there was nothing else 
 to do. You, Mandeville, bring me a breath of the romance 
 of effort. You make me understand the joy of doing 
 things because they are delightful, not because they must 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 305 
 
 be done. You have proved strong enough to retain all 
 your energies and enthusiasms undiminished. O your 
 strength ! How a weak fellow like me covets it ! Ambrose, 
 you remind me of the times of chivalry." 
 
 "I don't know about that, old man," replied Mandeville. 
 arranging his fur coat solicitously round Jim's shoulders. 
 "As far as I remember we Jews didn't have much of a time 
 in the age of chivalry. It was that blessed old black-hole 
 and tooth-drawing epoch. But, you are right. I couldn't 
 live in a poke-away place like this (not that the scenery 
 isn't picturesque) alleviating the rheumatism of old ladies 
 and helping young ones to increase the population. I'm a 
 hustler. I must go on till I drop or bust. I love fighting. 
 Perhaps Mandeville's Circus is only symbolic. As you've 
 told me, I have superb lungs, a magnified^ heart, a bull- 
 neck, and a brain-in-compartments. I know how to make 
 use of my opportunities, thanks to the kindly fate that 
 fashioned me to what I am. Here, in my fur coat, is an 
 immense opportunity. This Scotch boy must live." 
 
 "Well, Ambrose," replied the Doctor, letting his mare 
 slow into a walk, "I won't deny that you've inspired me. 
 I'm almost ashamed of my old pithless resignation." 
 
 "Oh! oh! What rot you are talking, my dear fellow!" 
 cried the "Tickler" with a kindly look in his brilliant black 
 eyes. "Do you not suppose, yes know that there is any 
 amount of the admirable in you? I, Ambrose Mandeville, 
 admire you. I admire beyond all words anyone who can 
 tolerate the humdrum for ten minutes, let alone twenty 
 years. Our little pill of a world is only spun round on its 
 axis by the deification of the humdrum. Remember the 
 Great Duke's words: 'There is nothing in the world 
 really worth getting. Yet everyone can do their duty.' 
 What a sublime utterance!" 
 
 " I hope I have always done my duty," replied the Doctor, 
 "but for many years I've gone on doctoring because there 
 
306 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 was nothing left to do except doctor. Somehow or other 
 you have vitalised me afresh. I feel determined to save 
 this boy for you perhaps, perhaps for himself. The 
 young monster has had a bad name here. I don't know 
 how much foundation there is in it. But, as I said before, 
 if you live among ordinary people, it's best to be ordinary 
 yourself. That's why I've become such a disgracefully, 
 horribly ordinary person. I sometimes think that a coun- 
 try doctor must be the most ordinary person in creation. 
 Do you know that for years and years those twin moun- 
 tains, between which we are even now climbing, have been 
 an impassable barrier between me and the world? Just 
 looking at them morning, noon, and night has reconciled 
 me to, possibly, the most humdrum life on earth. Well, 
 well! One adapts oneself to one's environment. There's 
 more of the chameleon, it seems to me, than of any other 
 creature in human beings. We call it making the best of 
 things." 
 
CHAPTER LIII 
 
 IT was noon before they arrived at the Doctor's cottage, 
 delayed by the havoc which the great storm had 
 wrought on the mountain roads. Jim was still uncon- 
 scious, though once or twice during their journey he had 
 opened his eyes and moaned feebly. 
 
 In spite of his anxiety the " Tickler" had with accom- 
 plished eye assimilated all the wild and romantic scenery 
 of Jim's birthplace and sketched into his notebook the 
 intended background for the advertisement of^the Scotch 
 Giant. His was a robust and sanguine nature which never 
 sanctioned the thought of defeat. Such are the natures 
 which perform the apparently incredible. 
 
 It was certainly he, or nobody, who could drag Jim 
 back from his fearful relapse' not so much by his half- 
 forgotten medical knowledge as by his own unexampled 
 vitality. 
 
 The old housekeeper, something shaken, cried out when 
 she saw the red-haired burden in the dogcart. 
 
 But the "Tickler" allowed her no time for more than that 
 one shriek. 
 
 He, as it were, took complete possession of her, rounded 
 her up, chivied her upstairs and down, set her warm- 
 ing blankets and filling hot-water bottles, imbued her 
 even with some of his own spirit of adventure and con- 
 tinual success. If it was Dr. Spens who gave the definite 
 orders, it was the exuberant, active, all-compelling "Tickler" 
 who had them carried out with the despatch of ordered 
 fury. 
 
 Jim's parents were summoned to the Doctor's house. 
 
 307 
 
308 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 The "Tickler" received them, bewildered Euphemia, hur- 
 ried Alexander out of his ordinary deliberation, made 
 Jim entirely his own before the village couple had even a 
 dim comprehension what had happened. 
 
 The next day he drove the mare into Duke's Ferry and 
 came back with a nurse. 
 
 The day after he interviewed the Reverend Simon and 
 found that worthy in many-worded rage at the trans- 
 lation of Jim. The exotic "Tickler" in no way conduced 
 to his greater calm. 
 
 "But but but " he spluttered pompously, "it 
 is a young criminal, Mr. ah Mandeville." 
 
 "On the contrary, it is a magnificent young giant," 
 replied the "Tickler" and, seeing the black furrows knitted 
 on the Reverend Simon's square forehead, then tried his 
 gentlest arts of persuasion, the silken scabbard that 
 hides the steel. "After all," he went on, "granted that 
 Jim has injured the bull, seriously frightened a young lady, 
 granted the case is somewhat mysterious, no useful end 
 will be served by pushing it further. The bull is dead, 
 the young lady gone away, the culprit in a perilous con- 
 dition. If he recovers, he has his entry to the world's 
 stage open to him. Why, my dear and reverend Sir, put 
 an obstacle in his way? Mind you, I don't believe you really 
 have a case. There is more to be said for Jim than you 
 think and also half the bull's price for Mr. Thomson if he 
 will take it." 
 
 And so, hearkening to the "Tickler's" honeyed but de- 
 cisive words, the Reverend Simon resolved not to be 
 vindictive. 
 
 So much was settled, but Jim's life was still the really 
 important thing. 
 
 "This isn't to be a case of thinking about money," said 
 Mandeville again and again to Spens. "My purse, as 
 they say in the old romances, is at your disposal My 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 309 
 
 copper-top, my huge, lonely, magnificent, troublesome 
 ginger-head, must be saved, whatever the cost. It isn't 
 like spending money without getting a return. If we 
 can save him between us, this young giant's going to be 
 a big thing. He's worth a hundred pound an inch. By 
 God ! he's gilt-edged good enough security for a maiden 
 aunt. I won't have a specialist from London. I'll leave 
 him to you, old pal. It shall be you and I who will save 
 him." 
 
 "And, by God, Mandeville, we will save him!" cried the 
 Doctor, raised at last to a pitch of enthusiasm by the fiery 
 and optimistic words of the famous "Tickler" of the B. P. 
 
 "Hurrah!" cried Mandeville. >' 
 
 "Hurrah!" echoed Spens, for the moment forgetting 
 that his patient lay in an agonising crisis upstairs. i 
 
 "Hurrah!" cried the old housekeeper, now in the grip 
 of enthusiasm and excitement. "Hurrah!" In that small 
 house there were three people, beside the trained nurse 
 hired from Duke's Ferry, devoted to the task of saving 
 our Jim's life. . . . 
 
 The "Great Tickler" had moved in a "north-westerly" 
 direction and his habitual good fortune the good- 
 fortune that always attends tireless, objective energy, 
 and persons with short necks, short legs, short tempers, 
 and a magnificent circulation had not deserted him. 
 For, by now, there was a distinct improvement in the young 
 giant's condition. His fever was less; he slept naturally 
 for some hours at night; and, in the words of the medical . 
 profession, took nourishment more freely. So stirred was 
 Mandeville by the undoubted recovery of James that he 
 let a whole fortnight pass without sending one single com- 
 munication to his headquarters. 
 
 Such behaviour was unprecedented. But then Jim 
 Macdonald was unprecedented too. 
 
 Meanwhile the wires flashed and vibrated over every 
 
310 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 country in Europe, and ocean-going ships, harbour-officers, 
 and coast-detectives were visited with the same ceaseless 
 question. Had anyone seen a short, thickset, hook-nosed 
 gentleman, the celebrated Ambrose Mandeville? Had such 
 an one been noted on their railway-platforms? walked 
 their decks? arrived, disguised or otherwise, in their ports? 
 
 And always to the ceaseless queries came back the 
 answer, "No." 
 
 Meanwhile, in the "Tickler's" office, the correspondence 
 accumulated in such portentous heaps that it seemed as 
 if nothing but an outbreak of fire could deal with it satis- 
 factorily. The letters bore the stamps of almost every 
 country in the world, the postmarks of almost every 
 great city. 
 
 And to all, the secretaries could only answer, "Wait." 
 Nothing was known about the "Great Tickler" except 
 that he had moved in a north-westerly direction, on 
 business or pleasure, vide telegram, if genuine. A whole 
 little world was dislocated. 
 
 A formidable posse of secretaries distracted. 
 
 And all this time, with his chin in his hand and his 
 flashing black eyes bent on a white and freckled face, he 
 sat by Jim's bedside heedless of everything till the new 
 Scotch Giant was out of danger. 
 
 But eminence has its disadvantage. The "Tickler " could 
 not lie hidden long. An enterprising Scotch reporter 
 had noticed his well-marked features in Glasgow and at 
 length, with considerable exercise of ingenuity and patience, 
 tracked him to Tuchan. So one evening a tremendous 
 panting was heard from the windows of the sick-room and 
 a big automobile drew up in front of the Doctor's house. 
 
 "I am discovered," cried Mandeville dramatically, "and, 
 confound me, Spens, if I hadn't forgotten Mandeville's 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 311 
 
 Circus completely and let it go to rack and ruin and all 
 because of my carroty-haired monster. Heaven knows 
 what quantities of money I may not have lost by my 
 extraordinary behaviour! But never mind! It was worth 
 it certainly worth it. If Jim recovers, and by Jehosa- 
 phat, I'm sure he will, he's picking up every day now, 
 if he recovers, he'll pay me back my losses and bring me a 
 fortune to boot. Oh! marvellous Jim, most astounding 
 of human beings on whom these two eyes have ever lighted, 
 
 red-haired Immensity (that hair is worth a thousand a 
 year in itself), with regret I leave you ! See, my dear Spens, 
 that he has everything he needs, I have left a cheque for 
 a hundred in your consulting-room, and wire me at once 
 if anything goes wrong. We will have the best London 
 specialist down in that case. But rats! It will be all 
 right, I know. I left our friend Jim to you in the beginning, 
 Spens, and, you see, I didn't misplace my trust. I know a 
 man when I see one and I know when I've got a good pal. 
 
 1 haven't managed a big circus for nothing. Better a 
 pal who's interested in the job than a specialist who isn't. 
 I'm still Doctor enough to know that. The will is the 
 chief thing, isn't it, Spens, in anything except surgical 
 cases. 
 
 "Au reservoir, old chap, and for your invaluable assist- 
 ance best thanks. Keep-a-running! Ta-ta! I must off 
 it." 
 
CHAPTER LIV 
 
 IT might add to the excitement of the story if I could 
 assert with truth that Jim had two or three, or even 
 one fearful relapse during which he hung over the abyss 
 suspended by a thread. 
 
 But such a statement would not be the truth. The 
 "Tickler" had infused such energy into his nurses and 
 perhaps (for who can be certain about such a thing?) even 
 into the unconscious Jim, that once on the road to recovery, 
 he never turned back. 
 
 His illness can be easily and shortly described. Day 
 after day, week after week, till weeks grew to months, he 
 lay in the Doctor's cottage, gradually getting a little 
 longer and a little stronger. 
 
 When he had recovered his senses he spoke little, nor did 
 he perhaps think very much. He was too weak to do more 
 than watch the good day growing, blazing, and dying away 
 through the window of his room; too helpless to wish for 
 anything more than a comfortable bed and regular meals. 
 Taking it one way and another he devoured a huge bulk 
 of food. The peace of his surroundings and his own weak- 
 ness had wiped away all the old morbid horror of a super- 
 growth. His vitality had been too much exhausted for 
 him to feel anything very deeply or remember anything 
 much. And now at last the Doctor judged it time to pre- 
 pare Jim for the strange fate that presently awaited him. 
 
 "Jim, my boy," said he, "how would you like to see the 
 world? You know I have always taken an interest in you, 
 and now I have discovered an old friend who takes an even 
 bigger interest in you than I do." 
 
 312 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 313 
 
 "Wha's he?" said Jim in the uncompromising manner of 
 a son of the soil. 
 
 "A very old friend of mine called Mr. Mandeville," 
 answered the Doctor. "He was with me when we picked 
 you up on the road and helped to bring you back to my 
 house." 
 
 "An' then?" said Jim, for the Doctor was tacking back- 
 wards and forwards in his speech in rather a ludicrous man- 
 ner and undecidedly humming and hawing. The truth is 
 that, having embarked on the explanation, he found it a 
 trifle awkward to tell a fellow-mortal, even if it was only 
 Jim, that he was to be carried off in a month or two as an 
 exhibit in a circus. The glamour leant to the strange hegira 
 of Jim by the "Tickler's" presence had a little faded 
 since he departed and the Doctor had fallen back into the 
 matter-of-course and conventional. His gentle face grew 
 quite agitated as he sought for a form of words which 
 would neither hurt Jim's feelings nor falsify the truth. 
 
 "He's rather a queer character, an eccentric, Jim, though 
 undoubtedly something of a genius," he continued at last 
 (which was certainly true, though the rude Jim had no 
 conception of the word's meaning), "and he was much 
 struck yes, really astonished and delighted at your 
 um ah unusual size." 
 
 Jim could not help wincing and his change of countenance 
 did not escape Spens, who thereupon proceeded more 
 gingerly than ever, shirking the point of his explanation 
 in the weakest-minded way. 
 
 "He was so delighted with you, Jim, that as soon as 
 you're strong again, he wants to take you to London. I 
 I do hope you'll go with him, Jim. It's a great chance 
 a very great chance " He fled and Jim was left to 
 ponder. 
 
 At Mandeville's request the Doctor had written him a 
 
314 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 bulletin every day, saying that James was now rapidly 
 recovering his strength and putting on those inches that 
 were as good as banknotes to the ambitious "Tickler." 
 
 "You think our friend will reach eight feet?" asked the 
 "Tickler" among other things. "London is rife with 
 rumours of a new sensation." 
 
 "Easily," replied Spens by return of post, for in such a 
 correspondence he was prompt. "I have not measured 
 him, but the bed seems to grow shorter and shorter for him 
 every day. There is no doubt that his illness, as is often 
 the case, has made him grow beyond all knowledge. I am 
 convinced that you would now be staggered by his appear- 
 ance. . . ." 
 
 ' ' Famous ! Famous ! Famous ! ' ' the answer came. 
 Let me know at once the day he reaches eight feet and I 
 will come down. Things could not go better. If ever I 
 can do anything for you, my dear Doctor, remember your 
 old pal, Ambrose. Meanwhile expect one day soon an 
 artist. He is to sketch Jim for the poster. I made the 
 plan of it when I was with you in Tuchan and only want a 
 good likeness. This is a clever fellow. . . ." 
 
 There are any number of clever fellows but few subjects 
 like Jim and, such being the case, the sketches this clever 
 fellow made were the beginning of his reputation. On the 
 occasion of the visit the Doctor allowed his patient to 
 leave his bed for the first time and lie on a long sofa. 
 
 Long as it was, however, it was twelve inches or more 
 too short for Jim, who had to rest his feet on a chair. 
 
 "Good-morning, Mr. Macdonald," said the artist, 
 ushered in by Dr. Spens. "I hope you are picking up your 
 strength again." ^ 
 
 Such ceremony was as unaccustomed to Jim as a shirt 
 would be to a cow. He could not articulate a word, only 
 open his eyes or his mouth, and stare at the speaker. 
 
 "I don't know if Dr. Spens here has told you," went on 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 315 
 
 the artist rapidly, noticing Jim's embarrassment, perhaps, 
 with a painter's quickness of perception, "but Mr. 
 Mandeville is very anxious to secure some sketches of you 
 and has commissioned me to make them. I need not, I 
 am sure, my dear Mr. Macdonald, assure you that I esteem 
 it a very great privilege to have the honour of drawing such 
 a distinguished person as yourself." 
 
 Our poor Jim could still utter no word. The sum of his 
 experience had been hitherto small, and all these hints and 
 tokens of another world than Tuchan had been crowded 
 into a very small measure of time. 
 
 "You had better begin at once," whispered the Doctor, 
 and so the artist drew forth his materials and set to work 
 from a position where the light fell favourably upon that 
 freckled, flame-topped face of Jim. Some might have 
 found a ludicrous thing in him his open mouth and eyes 
 his immense length outstretched. Some had, we know. 
 But to the true artist such things are by no means the things 
 ludicrous. 
 
 So with cunning pencil this clever fellow sketched in 
 our hero's face on the paper, with clean, decisive lines, 
 in profile, in three-quarters, in full; thereafter he shaded 
 it cunningly, and did make it lifelike, with deftly laid 
 tints, in more pictures than one. And, though he worked 
 swiftly and easily, nearly two hours sped in the task, 
 for his soul was in the work, and after that with a bow 
 and a grave good-day he withdrew leaving Jim still word- 
 less and staring. So this is how the great poster came 
 into being, the poster better known perhaps than any 
 other in London, than "Alas! my poor brother," "Pear's 
 Soap," or that other famous Scotch character, "Wee 
 Macgregor." 
 
 After the young man had left with perhaps half-a-dozen 
 sketches of Jim in his possession and the exhilarating feel- 
 
316 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 ing that two of them at least were masterpieces, the Doc- 
 tor remembered his promise to measure Jim as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 Surely this first day that he had come out of bed was a 
 golden opportunity. 
 
 He hunted about in his consulting-room till he found a 
 yard measure and coming back to where Jim lay, extended 
 on a sofa with his huge feet resting on a chair at the end 
 of it, went down on his knees at those feet. 
 
 So much new and extraordinary had happened to Jim 
 lately that at first he paid little attention. When, however, 
 Dr. Spens took the measure from his coat, kept it taut an 
 instant from the sole of Jim's foot to the top of his shin 
 bone, held his note-book open and entered something there- 
 in, the sick giant's interest was unusually roused. 
 
 "What are ye daein', Doctor?" he asked in a low hol- 
 low voice, which, in spite of the subdued tone, seemed to 
 have increased in power since his illness. 
 
 "I promised Mr. Mandeville to measure you on the 
 earliest opportunity, Jim," replied the Doctor, busy at his 
 task. 
 
 "Measure me?" asked Jim vaguely. 
 
 "He wants to know when you've grown to eight feet 
 high," said the Doctor, as he held the tape from Jim's 
 shoulder to the crown of his flaming head and then went 
 to the window to examine the result, forgetting for the 
 moment, perhaps, that it was not a thermometer. He 
 was a trifle absent-minded sometimes, the good Doctor. 
 
 A sudden spasm of pain went through Jim's body. Were 
 such things possible? Did real human beings ever attain 
 such monstrous, impertinent proportions? What had be- 
 come of all the dreams of his early years that he should 
 one day stop growing and be more or less normal? Was 
 there truly and verily a likelihood of his reaching this 
 hideous height? O, let the day at least be deferred awhile! 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 317 
 
 Dr. Spens turned round from the window; his face was all 
 shining with pleasure. 
 
 "Jim," he cried. 
 
 Mournfully looked the patient at him. 
 
 "You're eight feet high to-day. Hurrah! A bottle of 
 champagne for supper to-night! You shall have a glass, 
 Jim, in which to drink to your future health and prosperity. 
 It will do you good." 
 
 The Doctor patted him kindly on the shoulder, looked 
 in the big, freckled face with that exquisite sympathy 
 which was part of his nature, and left the room to despatch 
 an immediate telegram to Mandeville. Jim remained 
 alone on his sofa by the window. The Doctor's an- 
 nouncement had been, for the moment, little less than 
 stunning. True, he had spoken some strange matters to 
 Jim the other day, but, then, the giant had been so accus- 
 tomed to finding his immensity a source of woe that it 
 was difficult for him to realise all at once that it was now 
 going to bring both distinction and profit. He had never 
 been alert of brain and the shadowy, dreamy state of con- 
 valescence made his capacity for apprehension more opaque 
 than ever. 
 
 Yes it was the thing undoubted, irrefutable. He was 
 eight feet high by the yard measure the test that can- 
 not lie. 
 
 For an instant he had the wild idea of ending it all, of 
 raising that gigantic but enfeebled carcass, down which, 
 to the toes, he looked with an overwhelming access of dis- 
 gust and loathing, and hurling it from the window onto the 
 road beneath. He dallied with the notion long enough, 
 for the sight of the body, lying crushed and mangled below, 
 to become familiar to him he could not help shuddering 
 then realised that, in the first place, he could not 
 possibly get through the frame, and in the second would 
 probably not terminate a miserable existence by dropping 
 
318 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 fifteen feet. Why he could now almost step onto the 
 ground ! 
 
 Alas! There was no help for it. 
 
 He, Jim, had at last become a true and veritable gigas 
 was now the Twentieth-Century-Monster, and Titan- 
 in-Trousers, of which fate all his life there had been grim 
 and shadowy forebodings. His gianthood had been as 
 firmly established as the king upon his throne. For ten 
 minutes, perhaps, all the old miseries, half-forgotten in 
 the appeasing weakness of recovery, half blotted out by 
 weeks of delirium and insensibility, returned. There may 
 never have been more miserable moments in Jim's life 
 than those ten, during which the past once more and for 
 the last time came -violently back. 
 
 Then the new vitality, gained by him lately, reassumed 
 power. The blood, the fresh blood flowing in his veins, 
 had brought new ideas into his head. The old channels 
 down his nerves had been filled up in a time of oblivion 
 and rest. Nature had done her work. Jim was beginning 
 to be a different person. 
 
 Pride, that gotten by him in some measure even 
 before his illness, blew her trumpet in his ear, and he 
 remembered how once in fair fight he had overthrown 
 a young bull. This when his height was no more than a 
 petty, contemptible seven feet! With the additional 
 stature now his, what miracles of strength and daring 
 could not be wrought in the world! He was separated 
 from his fellow-mortals, but what then had the majority 
 of them done for him hitherto! Let them crawl on with 
 their little business somewhere down by his feet. He, Jim, 
 would stalk, heedless of them, through the world. A 
 giant, acknowledged and admired was he now, a giant 
 full-blown and in complete working order. 
 
 He owed allegiance to none but his own race. 
 
CHAPTER LV 
 
 EUPHEMIA expected the great Mr. Mandeville every 
 moment. She moved in her own little world and 
 perhaps, as she had never realised to the full the fact of 
 having an extraordinary son like James, so she could not 
 realise that there was a world in which his abnormality 
 might prosper. The " Tickler " had seemed to her a short, 
 fat, little man, who must be out of his senses. If, however, 
 he wished to take Jim, Jim who was such a nuisance at 
 home, he had better do it, she supposed. Naturally she 
 could not parade Jim's destiny before her imagination. 
 Every day the kitchen must be made bright and neat. 
 It was her house, her little world, in which she held 
 absolute sway. She scoured and scrubbed and dusted. 
 To the unimaginative her efforts would have held a pathetic 
 insignificance. James had been furnished out as smartly 
 as possible. He sat among pillows by the fire, for the 
 middle of October was cold so far north, still looking 
 pale from his recent illness and, in that little kitchen, huge 
 beyond all dreams of hugeness, with an air of having still 
 in his system a latent capacity for growth. 
 
 There was a rattle of hoofs outside in the street, a sound 
 of cheering, and then a clap at the door. 
 
 Euphemia opened it. 
 
 Donald, there, she knew. Dr. Spens holding the reins 
 and Mr. Mandeville at his side, also. On the back seat 
 was a diminutive person hi a large coat, whose countenance 
 was strange to her. 
 
 "Hulloa, Mrs. Macdonald, good-morning! Pleased to 
 see you again," cried Mr. Mandeville in his rich and reso- 
 
 319 
 
320 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY' 
 
 nant voice. Euphemia curtsied and then stared bewil- 
 dered, twisting her hands in her apron. Youthful Tuchan, 
 which had followed the dogcart with cheers, now, silent 
 and gaping, encompassed the party round. A circle of 
 flushed faces and saucer eyes stared at Mandeville's magnifi- 
 cent astrakhan and the beaked, black-eyed face between 
 the wings of the collar. 
 
 "Boys and girls!" cried the " Tickler," "do you know 
 what I've come to see in your two-penny-half-penny little 
 village? The Scotch Giant! It will be something for you 
 to remember all your lives." Then he turned to Euphemia. 
 "How is Jim this morning?" said he, flashing his black 
 eyes into hers. 
 
 "Weel eneuch, Sir," gaped Euphemia confusedly, as 
 Mandeville brushed past her in his eagerness to catch the 
 first sight of Jim. Yes, there he was sitting before the 
 kitchen fire, his face turned, one shoulder-of-mutton hand 
 on the chair, half-ready to rise from his seat. The spec- 
 tacle of him in his armchair threw Mandeville into an 
 ecstacy. "My dear boy! My admirable James! What 
 a splendid recovery! Jehosaphat, how you have grown! 
 It's the thing of the century! Don't get up, my dear boy. 
 Mrs. Macdonald " 
 
 Euphemia curtsied confusedly once more. 
 
 "You should be proud to be the mother of such a son. 
 Confound me! if I knew how you did it. Doctor! didn't 
 I tell you? Is the ''Great Tickler" ever wrong in his 
 prognostications? Haven't we knocked out all the other 
 giants on the market? The public won't have any more 
 use for them than a toad has for side-pockets." 
 
 "Gently, Mandeville. I can't have you exciting my 
 patient," replied the Doctor, with his usual smile of 
 amusement at the "Tickler's" exuberance. 
 
 " Rats, my dear feUow ! " replied the " Tickler. " " Excite- 
 ment never did anybody any harm, but all the same I 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 321 
 
 didn't come here to talk. Time is short. The B. P. is 
 on tip-toe already. We mustn't have a disappointment. 
 I have promised that James should appear in London the 
 first day of the Christmas holidays. Mandeville's Circus 
 will have a treat in store for the kiddies. The first day of 
 the Christmas holidays! D'you hear that, Jim? Don't 
 that buck you up a bit? Eh! Mrs. Macdonald, that's a 
 beautiful little boy of yours! A-ha! Trust the 'Tickler's' 
 eye! But, Spens, there's any amount to do this morning 
 and I must catch the afternoon train from Duke's Ferry. 
 Can't stop away a fortnight this time. First of all I must 
 have a talk with Jim, Jim, the vast, the magnificent. 
 Then we must call in Mr. Hay, great little Mr. Hay of 
 the Haymarket, and measure him for some suits. That 
 all right, Spens?" 
 
 "Perfectly," replied the Doctor and, thinking it best that 
 Mandeville and Jim should have a private talk together, 
 withdrew Euphemia to her bedroom, on pretext of examin- 
 ing her chest for a cough. 
 
CHAPTER LVI 
 
 LEFT alone with James Macdonald, Mandeville rubbed 
 his hands in delight and chuckled to himself. 
 
 "My dear boy," he said, "I'm so glad to see you on the 
 road to recovery. But, of course, you don't remember 
 me. Last time we met you were dead-plumb unconscious. 
 My hat! I shan't forget the sight of you lying on that 
 road in a hurry." 
 
 This hook-nosed, black-eyed gentleman was quite new 
 in James' experience. He was astonished to find anyone 
 in such a state of delight at seeing him. 
 
 Was he not the outlaw? he, who had outraged, in- 
 sulted, and defied Tuchan at large? he, who was ridicu- 
 lously different from ordinary people, a figure of fun, 
 a fantastical man-monster, a sight to amuse or revolt 
 according to temperament? Then he suddenly remem- 
 bered. This was the gentleman who, according to Dr. 
 Spens, had so much admired him. It seemed, indeed, 
 very strange to James, hardly credible, like one of those 
 half-real dreams he had during his illness. 
 
 His life was like some fantastic dream now. 
 
 "Ye'll be Mr. Mandeville," he said. "Dr. Spens told me 
 about ye." 
 
 "And you know you're coming to London with me, 
 James. You're to be one of the sensations of the Christ- 
 mas holidays. Can't you imagine yourself standing on the 
 stage before thousands of people, and all the little boys 
 and girls shouting, 'Hurrah for the Scotch Giant! ' and the 
 band playing, 'See the Conquering Hero comes.' You 
 shall wear a bonnet and a kilt, and strut up and down the 
 
 322 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 323 
 
 stage, and show yourself off, and all the spectators will 
 shout again. Then fine ladies and gentlemen from Grosve- 
 nor Square and Berkeley Square, lords and countesses and 
 millionairesses, will come up onto the stage and shake your 
 hand, and you'll shake theirs and say, 'How d'you do?' 
 'It's a braw morn, the morn,' just to give them the pleasure 
 of hearing you speak. And then with the superb and roar- 
 ing voice of yours you shall sing, 'My luv is like a red, red 
 rose,' and 'Scots wha hae,' and finish up by dancing the 
 'Highland Fling' and the 'Sword Dance.' 
 
 James, pale and huge and propped up in his chair with 
 pillows, looked at Mandeville in a hazy and dreamy fash- 
 ion, while he walked up and down the room, acting the whole 
 scene, which his imagination forecast, with a fiery unction 
 and prodigality of gesture that seemed to make it almost a 
 reality. 
 
 To James, unacquainted with any form of life save that 
 in the little Scotch village and the Quarries, the sense of 
 what Mandeville said was very remote, but what he did 
 understand, frightened him. He would never have the 
 courage to show off that huge body which had been, all 
 through his life, the hateful cause of his misery and mis- 
 fortune. Mandeville's outburst caused a revulsion against 
 the faint feeling of pride that had begun to grow since the 
 episode of the bull. Besides how distant all that seemed. 
 The thought of what was ahead sapped all his courage. 
 He felt content to go on humbly in Tuchan. 
 
 Till that moment, till everything was made clear by the 
 vivid imagination and life-like gestures of the "Tickler," he 
 had never in the least realised what was in store for him. 
 With this sudden revulsion all his self-conscious disgust 
 at himself returned. He had never, even in his new-found 
 pride, contemplated this. 
 
 "Let me bide here," he said. "A canna dae it." The 
 Jew stopped in his march like one shot. 
 
324 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 " Cannot do it? " he cried. " My dear lad, this is absurd. 
 You don't mean what you say." 
 
 "I mean what I say richt eneuch." 
 
 "But why?" inquired the "Tickler." "What is the 
 reason that makes you unwilling? Think of the life. 
 Jehosaphat! Just compare Tuchan and London, and not 
 only London, but the world, foreign cities, kings perhaps. 
 You can't be serious, dear boy." 
 
 "I'm nae wishfu' to show masel' in public," said James, 
 with that latent obstinacy which had, in part, been a cause 
 of his misfortunes. "I'll bide at hame." 
 
 Before his illness James would have concealed the rea- 
 sons which made him unwilling to follow the "Tickler's" 
 fortunes, or, at any rate, have attempted to put others on 
 a false scent in order to save himself the pain of divulging 
 his own feelings. He was, however, changing. 
 
 His skin, hide, epidermis, nervous system, whatever 
 you like to call it, was becoming tougher. Already he 
 felt less sensitive to slight and misfortune. 
 
 Only 
 
 The thought of standing up to the public gaze with 
 thousands of strong white lights glaring upon him, of 
 hearing his name shouted by thousands of gaping strangers, 
 of making those mighty limbs, which all his life had been 
 shame and misery to him, the spectacle for a city's comment 
 or applause, smote him at the present with terror and 
 astonishment. 
 
 "I canna show masel'," he said again, huge and pale. 
 "I'll bide at hame. It's nae sae bad." 
 
 The "Tickler" clasped his hands in despair. It almost 
 looked as if he were about to fall at James' feet and suppli- 
 cate him with prayers. 
 
 "My boy, my boy!" he cried in a kind of anguish. 
 
 "I'll bide at hame," said James more doggedly and 
 stubbornly still. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 325 
 
 The "Tickler" flung open his opulent, astrakhan coat. 
 There was something regal and dominant about him. The 
 glance of old Jewish kings flamed from his black eyes, the 
 glance of a race that has been despised, spat upon with 
 contumely, harried and tortured, but never conquered 
 the flashing glance of the Chosen Race. 
 
 "My boy," he cried, "why do you not wish to come with 
 me?" 
 
 "I hate ma huge body. I canna show it," whispered 
 James. 
 
 It was the first time he had ever made this confession 
 to anyone. 
 
 The Jew looked at him strangely. 
 
 In the huge face, in which the bones and the freckles 
 on the dead-white showed after the giant's recent illness, 
 there was something like a dogged, hunted look. Hard 
 as the Jews are to the outside world (and no wonder after 
 their centuries of oppression), they are tender to their own 
 people and tender to suffering in others. 
 
 So the Jew looked at James and then said gently: 
 
 "My boy, why do you hate your magnificent big 
 body?" 
 
 "An' wherefore sud I not?" burst out the youthful 
 giant, all the sensations felt in the course of his life pouring 
 forth in wild words. 
 
 "Hae I no been the mock of a' the bairns an' lassies 
 since I was a bit lad? Did they no mak' pictures o' me 
 on the wa's. Hasna everyane flyted and jeered at me for 
 the last ten years? An' what was the reason of it a' save 
 this body o' mine? But for that I micht ha' been happy 
 an' contented here at hame or hae mairrit a decent lassie, 
 same as ma elder brithers. As it is, I hae been alane a' 
 ma life, an' alane I maun stay till I dee. Wha' wad hae 
 onythin' tae dae wi' a giant save stare at him in a show? 
 A giant canna hae friens or bairns. He's a thing apairt 
 
326 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 like a great rock on a muir, wi' naethin' save the cryin' o' 
 the whaups and the winds for his companions." 
 
 A sob shook the vast and enfeebled frame of James 
 Macdonald and he buried his face in his hands. 
 
 "Boy," said the "Tickler," "we can none of us be what 
 we want to be or have what we want to have. 'Tis an 
 ancient and true reflection. Do you know that although 
 I have the most superb heart, the most magnificent lungs 
 in Europe, and a brain, Napoleonic, in compartments, I 
 would, in some moods, sooner be a tall, fair man, whose 
 brain was never sufficiently nourished and was bound to 
 give out after forty! If you come with me, you gain Fame 
 and Fortune. These are great goddesses and many seek 
 to touch the hem of their garments. You may be lonely 
 and, indeed, loneliness is a sad thing, but you can partially 
 forget it in new sights, new countries, new faces. Look down 
 from your great height, James, and despise the world." 
 
 "It's easy for ye to say these things, Mr. Mandeville," 
 said James, "but then lucky for ye ye werena born a 
 giant." 
 
 "My dear boy," replied the sympathetic "Tickler," " I 
 have met other giants, none such magnificent specimens 
 as you, I admit, and other human beings whom some freak 
 of nature has removed from the usual sphere of activity of 
 humanity. I have been head of Mandeville's Circus for 
 nearly twenty years and I know what I am talking about." 
 
 "An' did they a' get used to showin' theirsel?" asked 
 James. 
 
 "You are not the only sufferer in the world, James," 
 replied the "Tickler." "They all suffered once, but they 
 came to the conclusion that it was the best thing for them 
 to make use of those very oddities which distinguished 
 them from the rest of mankind. And now, James, behold 
 them prosperous, rich, and happy." 
 
 "Rich and happy," repeated the giant, "but, Mr. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 327 
 
 Mandeville, dae they never feel unhappy when they think 
 they are unlike ither folk?" 
 
 "I do not think that after a time they mind," replied 
 the "Tickler." " Their oddities become a second nature to 
 them, you see. They are a kind of family, between whom 
 perhaps there is a tacit understanding of sympathy, drawing 
 a livelihood from' their more conventionally moulded rela- 
 tions. After all, James, they have in these very oddities 
 sources of wealth and distinction and I think that, in time, 
 they even become rather proud of those differences, which, 
 in earlier days, no doubt used to make them miserable. 
 Yes, yes, I am sure it is so." 
 
 "An' if I gang wi' ye, wha'll be at the " James 
 gulped, "circus beside me." 
 
 "Well, my dear James, there's the Bearded Woman 
 whose name is Sarah Muggins, and the Lilliputian Troupe 
 and the Dogfaced Man, and Lombroso, the Venetian Dwarf, 
 and a host of others." 
 
 "An' ye say they're happy wi' ye and dinna mind 
 their " Jim sought about for a word. 
 
 "Physical characteristics," supplied the " Tickler." "No, 
 James, I pledge my word they do not. Why, note 
 their occupations, when not engaged in the official business 
 of the circus. Sarah Muggins signs post-cards for 'the 
 Snatcho Hair-Restorer Company,' and writes tracts on 
 Roman Catholicism, to which she has lately become a 
 convert. There is no attempt made at Mandeville's 
 Circus to interfere with the liberty of conscience. The 
 Lilliputian Troupe jointly edit a Children's Magazine 
 called Little Tots. Kids from all over the world communi- 
 cate with them in thousands. The Dogfaced Man is no 
 mean hand at a snappy article. His range is wide. He 
 can give you an interesting ten minutes whether he chooses 
 'The State of the Money-Market' or tells you 'How it 
 Feels to be a Freak.' -^ * 
 
328 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 " My boy, are these the vocations of unhappy creatures ? " 
 
 "It maun be anither world," said the giant dreamily. 
 
 "Another world or another state of mind, which is the 
 same thing," replied the "Tickler." "Perhaps my freaks 
 have rid themselves of the ordinary human emotions and 
 affections, but then they were not born like ordinary 
 human [beings, and in so far as they were in touch with 
 ordinary humanity they were miserable. 
 
 "That was only logical. 
 
 "The Unnatural could not mix with the Natural. The 
 Natural were too many, too hard, too strong. Now they 
 have withdrawn into a place of refuge. They are fenced off 
 from the Natural. The Natural can only see them through 
 glass windows, from behind bars. The turnstile guards 
 Sarah Muggins as efficaciously as the briar-hedge guarded 
 the Sleeping-Beauty, or the labyrinth fair Rosamund. 
 
 "0, my James, if you could see the many- headed Nat- 
 ural come pushing, gaping, and grinning on a Saturday after- 
 noon ! It has saved up its pennies, hard-won in the grimy 
 struggle for existence, to stare at the cosy, peaceful Un- 
 natural. Workmen, their wives and children, clerks in 
 their shabby-respectable coats with their petty-minded 
 respectable consorts, fine ladies with lorgnettes and an 
 air of contempt and pity mingled, in they come at the 
 turnstiles pushing, gaping, and grinning, knocking up 
 against each other, protesting, apologising, passing surly 
 word and mindless commonplace, types of the world which 
 goes on outside ceaselessly, irrationally, the world where 
 men are trampled down for lost causes and fight for ideals 
 which they do not understand. 
 
 "In comes the crowd. 
 
 "Boy, you should see it on a Saturday afternoon. 
 
 "In comes the crowd oh piteous irony! to stare at 
 and jostle in front of those whom the great Potter has 
 marred. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 329 
 
 "And they, the cosy Unnatural Lombroso the 
 Venetian Dwarf, Sarah Muggins the Bearded Woman, 
 Jo-Jo the Dogfaced Man, the Boneless Wonder, and 
 India-rubber-skinned Ike when they see the many 
 headed Natural crowding in front of them, pointing and 
 giggling with shrill, squeaky voices, opening eyes in wonder, 
 and making coarse pleasantries, do they regret, do they 
 suffer, do tJiey feel alone and aloof from the world out of 
 which this many-headed Natural comes gaping, grinning, 
 and jostling? 
 
 "Ah, Boy! They just sit in their appointed places 
 and smile in secret. The voices and words of the many- 
 headed Natural are meaningless for them. They sit like 
 kings and queens receiving an audience, or like the old 
 Assyrian idols in the British Museum, calm, inscrutable, 
 strong." 
 
 The "Tickler" flung back his opulent astrakhan coat 
 and his black eyes flashed the proud glance of the con- 
 queror and anon softened with a kindly glance at Jim, who 
 sat chin in hand with his wild red hair falling over his fore- 
 head. Jim listened. Much he did not understand, but 
 the dominant, virile nature of the "Great Tickler" of the 
 B. P. mastered his weakness like a tonic. Mandeville 
 made a gesture as he looked at him. 
 
 "Once," he said, "they may have been unhappy like 
 you, boy. They may have mourned because they were not 
 and could not be like other people. Their sensitive natures 
 may have suffered agonies because they were in the world 
 and yet not of it. They may have wanted friends, love, 
 and happiness. Now all these old feelings, all these old 
 sufferings have passed away like a dream. They are still 
 in the world but no longer do they regret that they are 
 not of it. 
 
 "The world, which the many-headed Natural knows, 
 where lost causes are fought for and ideals, which no man 
 
330 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 understands, no longer exists for them. They are in a 
 new world, a world which many-headed Natural does 
 not know, a world where no sorrow knocks at the door. 
 
 " Boy, once they sorrowed too much but now the tears 
 are dried from their eyes, are wiped away. They dwell 
 calm and happy in this new world of theirs and hear but 
 dim murmurs of the old one raving outside, of trumpets 
 blown for wars confusedly and rumours of an endless and 
 mysterious battle. Humanity marches on to a far-off, 
 unknown doom, with great wars and crying of prophets 
 and waving of banners and lamentations of the lost. Hu- 
 manity marches on crying its little gospels, seeing its 
 temples and its nations overthrown and buried, casting 
 away its old gods and taking new, but my cosy Unnatural 
 sits in its appointed places, and watches the march of 
 Humanity. It takes toll of Humanity. Long ago Hu- 
 manity cast it out." 
 
 The huge, red-headed figure in the chair, chin in hand, 
 watched Ambrose Mandeville as he paced the room in his 
 astrakhan coat. Ignorant as he was, more than half the 
 meaning of the Jew's words escaped him, but his unduly 
 sensitive organism and his awakening brain vibrated to 
 the trumpet-call. Mandeville with his opulent coat, many- 
 coloured cravat, huge pearl tie-pin, a king's gift, and 
 glittering patent-leather boots seemed the very epitome 
 of the twentieth century, but, in reality, he was a throw- 
 back' to some ancient Hebrew prophet rousing a sluggish 
 city from its worship of materialism. It was the gospel 
 of force he preached, the call "to take toll of the World." 
 
 "Jim," he said turning to the huge red-headed boy 
 whose eyes never left his face, "Jim, your world, your 
 tiny self-centred Scotch village, your local Pharisee (I 
 refer in these metaphorical terms to the Reverend Simon 
 McManus), the girl whom you loved with a boy's imagina- 
 tive love, the only love in the world, the only one worth 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 331 
 
 giving or having, have all cast you out. They have cast 
 you out into the world. 
 
 "From your great height, my James, you can assuredly 
 see it lying before you shining rivers, mountains of 
 ore, walled cities of a thousand spires, the sea with its 
 innumerable traffic of ships, the foam-girt islands. 
 
 " Those very peculiarities, which were^your disadvantage 
 for the humdrum life of your village, my James, now become 
 your asset, your prospect, your money-bags. The world 
 is for you, now, one vast treasure-hoard. My James, we 
 will rifle the hoard together. Only the negative people 
 can be happy. Your vast size has forever prevented you 
 from being negative. Therefore you cannot be happy. 
 You see your substitute for happiness. Come with me!" 
 
 "Mr. Mandeville," said James with the vague, lost look 
 of those who say good-bye to old things and as yet do not 
 understand the new, "I'll come wi' ye. Sure as death, 
 I'll come wi' ye." 
 
 In one instant, with flying coat and flashing eyes, the 
 "Tickler" had bounded across the room and was at the 
 Scotch Giant's side. He shouted with delight, clapped 
 Jim upon the shoulder, wrung his limp shoulder-of-mutton. 
 hands, cried, "Bravo! Bravo! ! Bravo! ! !" In another 
 instant he had buttoned up his fur-coat and again become 
 the man of business. Like a man of business, he wasted 
 neither his enthusiasms or his powers of oratory. 
 
 "Right oh! my boy," he said. 
 
 Then called to Dr. Spens. 
 
CHAPTER LVII 
 
 THE Doctor came down the stairs with Mrs. Mac- 
 donald. 
 
 "Is it fixed up?" he asked. 
 
 "James Macdonald is coining with me," replied the 
 ''Tickler." 
 
 Mrs. Macdonald stood with her old air of perplexity, 
 twisting her toil-worn hands in her apron. The business 
 was altogether out of her ken. She had never understood 
 how she came to have a son like James she, the tiny 
 woman. Everything connected with him was extraor- 
 dinary, incomprehensible. Apparently the strange, short, 
 fat, noisy gentleman was going to take him away. 
 Why? Euphemia could not understand. She had talked 
 the matter over with Alexander. He had smoked a 
 pipe over it and said that on the whole they could not 
 interfere. 
 
 Something caught and shook Euphemia. 
 
 Old memories came flooding back, memories of her big 
 boy, her pride in him, the time when he was ill and Dr. 
 Spens there had barely brought him back to life. Extraor- 
 dinary and incomprehensible as was everything connected 
 with him, Jim was her son, her great, clumsy, puppy son. 
 
 She and he seemed to have drifted apart. Jim oughtn't 
 to go away. 
 
 He must stop at home, so that she might take care of 
 him. 
 
 He had been unhappy. Otherwise he would not want to 
 go away. 
 
 Perhaps he might think better of going. Thus, twisting 
 
 332 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 333 
 
 her hands in her apron, she pondered in perplexity. Then 
 suddenly, burying her face in it, burst into tears. 
 
 "Don't take on, Mrs. Macdonald," said Dr. Spens. 
 
 "We are not going to hurt him," reassured the 
 "Tickler." 
 
 "I'll be richt eneuch, mither," said James himself. 
 Once, perhaps, the thought that his mother wanted him 
 at home might have been enough to detain him, but now 
 he was harder and tougher. The old life, the old cottage, 
 the old village, the old commonplaces, seemed now mean- 
 ingless to him. The " Tickler" had aroused feelings that 
 must be satisfied, even at the cost of hurting himself. 
 The world, beyond the great twin peaks of More and Moich, 
 called him and he must go. He had lost, in some way, 
 the sense of pleasure or pain in so far as they affected him- 
 self or others individually and looked now at everything 
 on a greater scale, had already begun, even as the "Tickler" 
 prophesied, to stand outside Humanity. All these old 
 people seemed so insignificant, their sorrows so trifling. 
 Even as the "Tickler" prophesied, he had begun to 
 look down from his great height. 
 
 Before these three her son, Mandeville, and the Doc- 
 tor, Euphemia felt lost and lonely. Some dear, old, vague, 
 nameless thing had vanished. She twisted her toil-worn 
 hands in her apron after drying her eyes with it. Her last- 
 born son was no longer dependent on her but on this black- 
 eyed, hook-nosed stranger. All the maternal heart of 
 Euphemia, so insensible to the real sufferings of Jim, and 
 nature will have it so, was wrung by this last actual fact 
 the loss of Jim. He, huge, pale, fiery-headed, looked at 
 her from his chair. At present he was too weak to walk 
 much, but with some difficulty he got up and shambled 
 towards Euphemia as she stood sniffing and twisting her 
 toil-worn hands in her apron. 
 
 "Dinna greet, mither," said he, laying his vast hand on 
 
334 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 her shoulder, beside him Euphemia looked like a little 
 child, "I'll be richt eneuch." 
 
 Jim touched her across a chasm of years only for a 
 moment alas! and then he was further off than ever. 
 The last link with her big puppy boy was broken. If mere 
 words were needed to remind her the "Tickler" supplied 
 them. 
 
 "When can I have James, Doctor?" asked he, all intent 
 on business. 
 
 "In a month, I should say, he could travel," replied the 
 Doctor. 
 
 "A month!" cried Mandeville, "and then hey for the 
 world!" 
 
 " Now, however, hey for the tailor! Curiously enough his 
 name is Hay, Hay and Sons of the Haymarket, one 
 of the swaggerest London tailors. Hay diddles us by 
 charging extravagant prices, but James must have of the 
 best. Let us make Hay while the sun shines! I'll call 
 him. Hey for Mr. Hay!" 
 
 A little man, the third of the party in the dogcart, 
 followed Mandeville back into the room. He was a queer 
 mixture of deference, condescension, shrewdness, and 
 exquisite neatness. His dress was, in fact, utterly fastidi- 
 ous, yet at the same time modest. He was not accustomed 
 to have such queer clients and was at pains to show it. At 
 the same time the " Tickler" was a valuable patron. He 
 could not afford to lose him. 
 
 "Now then, Mr. Hay, to business!" said the "Tickler." 
 
 Mr. Hay cast a glance of such mingled and subtle emo- 
 tions round the humble cottage that it defies description 
 or at any rate analysis, and then rapidly took in the vast 
 red-headed Jim standing by his mother. 
 
 "Let me make known your new client to you, Mr. Hay. 
 Let me introduce the Scotch Giant, James Macdonald." 
 
 The poor little tailor measured once more the colossal 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 335 
 
 proportions of him whom the exuberant Mr. Ambrose 
 Mandeville called "Copper-Top." That fiery shock of 
 hair, tumbling above the round, white, freckled face, 
 touched the very ceiling of the little kitchen; the bulk of 
 him seemed the bulk of some domesticated pachyderm; 
 the hands, the terrible hands of pursuers in sorry dreams. 
 So, from crown to sole, the faltering glance of Mr. Hay 
 appraised the scale of the Scotch Giant. To see him there, 
 huge, raw-boned, incomplete, yet dwarfing all, was in itself 
 an experience to be remembered for life; to think that he 
 must be measured, clothed, confined in garments cut by 
 the house in the Haymarket, an overpowering thought that 
 left the imagination near bankrupt. 
 
 Mr. Hay had been tailor to the late-lamented Marquis 
 of Fotheringay and had, for the lustrum during which that 
 exotic young nobleman dazzled the world of fashion by 
 his marvellous costumes and eccentric behaviour, received 
 orders of the most wonderful description without winking 
 an eyelid. Never before, however, had he been requested 
 to make garments for an "Illustrious Man-Mountain." 
 Though prepared for his latest office he could not dissemble 
 his utter astonishment. He had never seen such a figure. 
 He stood gasping. 
 
 "Can you make a neat job of the Scotch Giant, Mr. 
 Hay?" asked the "Tickler." 
 
 "The firm will do its best, Mr. Mandeville," said the 
 neat and diminutive Mr. Hay, stroking his pointed, promi- 
 nent, little chin, and looking pensive. "I hope to give 
 every satisfaction." 
 
 "James may stand up to be measured, Doctor, I sup- 
 pose," said Mandeville. 
 
 "For a short time,"- replied Spens. 
 
 " Come into the middle of the room then," said Mande- 
 ville. "Don't hold yourself too stiffly, Jim. Stand up 
 straight." 
 
336 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 James Macdonald did as commanded. All the curious 
 ritual was part of his new life. He had never gone through 
 it before; knew not the ceremony of clothing, only the 
 necessity of covering nakedness. Euphemia looked on 
 mournfully twisting her toil-worn hands in her apron. 
 Mr. Hay, as he stared up at the vast red-headed figure, for 
 once in his life seemed at a loss. 
 
 "If you'll measure the Scotch Giant, I'll take down the 
 figures," said Mandeville. "I've a pocket-book and pen- 
 cil. I know the game all right." 
 
 "Very well, Mr. Mandeville," said the tailor, "but- 
 
 He stood there still stroking his prominent, pointed, 
 little chin in perplexity. 
 
 " Well, what is it, Mr. Hay? " asked Mandeville. "How 
 can we assist you? I'm anxious that the clothes of the 
 Scotch Giant should be a credit to your old-established 
 house, both for your sake and mine. 
 
 "We mustn't have a failure. His walking-dress must 
 be the talk of town. How can we assist you?" 
 
 "The fact is, Mr. Mandeville," replied diminutive Mr. 
 Hay with his mingled air of deference and condescension, 
 to which was now added a certain amount of embarrassment, 
 "the fact is that owing to the er abnormal propor- 
 tions, if I may so, of your um remarkable protege" 
 (good word for Mr. Hay), "I er find myself unable 
 to measure any part of him except his legs. A very singu- 
 lar circumstance, if I may say so, gentlemen, and one 
 utterly unparalleled in my experience." 
 
 "Oh! that's all right, Mr. Hay," said the "Tickler" 
 cheerily. "Make a start with the legs and work upwards. 
 You can have a chair to stand on, or perhaps the Doctor 
 will hold you up." 
 
 Mr. Hay coughed. A pleasantry that seemed to him in 
 bad taste always brought on a cough, slight but decisive. 
 These were queer clients, thought diminutive Mr. Hay. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 337 
 
 In the old times, Hay and Son only worked for the nobility 
 and gentry, but now the old institutions were crumbling. 
 Hay and Son, like everyone else, had to take what they 
 could get. 
 
 Therefore why not a chair? 
 
 "Thank you, Sir. If I may," he said. 
 
 "Are you ready, Mr. Mandeville?" 
 
 "Aye, Aye," said the "Tickler" in his cheery fashion. 
 
 Diminutive Mr. Hay whipped a measure out of his 
 pocket and started operations. 
 
 He uttered a magic number. The "Tickler" made reply 
 and ciphered in his note-book. The measuring of James 
 had begun. 
 
 And what a historic measuring it was! Never before 
 had tape spanned that stupendous chest, the huge muscular 
 thighs, that thick columnar neck! Never before had any 
 record but that of the eye valued the immense actualities, 
 the immense possibilities of the Scotch Giant! 
 
 I often think, as I recall this scene, that some notable 
 painter, a man of humorous, deft, pathetic touches, should 
 find there inspiration. Do not these fate-laden moments 
 demand another life on canvas, cry for an immortality 
 that my poor pen can never give them? 
 
 Are not the characters, gathered together hi that little 
 cottage room, sufficiently strange, incongruous, and dra- 
 matic? Such a painter could draw up the "Tickler" vivid, 
 masterful, alert, deus ex machina-, Dr. Spens, gentle, 
 rather grey, a little tired, and a little sad; Euphemia, 
 utterly bewildered, slipshod perhaps, blubbered with tears, 
 eternally twisting her hands in her apron, and mortally 
 astounded at such a strange rite. Then putting all the 
 power of his mind and craft behind his brush, shall he limn 
 James Macdonald, eminent, ignorant, rude, in health little, 
 in determination more, feeling the destiny that calls great 
 men, and before him, a-tiptoe on the chair, the little Snip, 
 
338 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 with tape in fingers, and clacking portentous figures of 
 measurements beyond our own conceived dimensions. I 
 have lived with them all, these people, yea know them as 
 friends, and now I must shortly bid them farewell. Yet 
 would I have their portraits as a remembrance. 
 
 The measuring of James was over at last. 
 
 "Jim, you'd better sit down again by the fire," said Dr. 
 Spens. "It will never do to overtire yourself if you're 
 wanted by Mr. Mandeville in a month." 
 
 "Pray, Mr. Mandeville, what will your er protege 
 require?" asked Mr. Hay. "I've measured him for over- 
 coat as well as lounge-suit and evening dress. How many 
 of each would he desire?" 
 
 ' "Have you not measured for a tail-coat, Mr. Hay?" 
 asked Mandeville. 
 
 "Your pardon, Sir, I have. I forgot I have measured 
 for morning and frock." 
 
 "Well, to start with, we'd better have dark and light 
 morning, dark and light frock, four lounge-suits, thick and 
 medium, and three pairs of trousers." 
 
 "Very good, Sir," said Mr. Hay, visibly brightening up. 
 Although the clients were queer, at any rate they gave 
 substantial orders and he was going to be rewarded for 
 his visit to Scotland. 
 
 .. "It'll take a deal of cloth, Mr. Mandeville," he added 
 parenthetically. "It will, if you'll excuse my saying so, 
 Sir, be a singular undertaking." 
 
 "Of course it will," replied the " Tickler." "You have a 
 customer to be proud of. He's unique, a gilt-edged security, 
 Mr. Hay. It will be worth the while of your firm to turn 
 him out a successful rig. He's going to be the biggest 
 boom London's seen for many years. And now about 
 waistcoats? " 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 339 
 
 "Waistcoats! Yes, Sir, certainly. And how many of 
 them will he require, Sir?" asked the little tailor, looking 
 still brighter. 
 
 "Let me see. One vest to each suit, Mr. Hay, and three 
 fancy." 
 
 "What colour, Sir? Knitted or cloth?" 
 
 "Aha!" murmured Mandeville meditatively, "something 
 striking! Something flash! Waistcoats to arrest the eye! 
 That is what we need. Winter is coming. Mr. Hay, let 
 them be knitted, knitted close and warm. The lungs 
 of our big Copper-Top here are hardly sound. We will 
 keep him snug through the winter; we will keep him smart. 
 Make me, Mr. Hay, waistcoats of pure wool, one puce, one 
 crimson, and one orange. Such a figure as that of our 
 gigas can carry off anything. Let him walk our London 
 streets fronted with ripe, glowing colour." 
 
 " Very good, Sir." Little Mr. Hay snapped together his 
 note-book and the " Tickler" handed him the sheet of paper 
 containing James' measurements. "Very good, Sir." 
 
 "That'll be all, thank you, Mr. Hay. We'll join you 
 in a moment." 
 
 The little tailor left the room with a slight inclination 
 to Jim and Euphemia who had, her hands still twisted in 
 her apron, watched the operations without a word. 
 
 "Now, Mrs. Macdonald," said the "Tickler" heartily, 
 "our business is finished for the day. Provided all goes 
 well, I'll come and fetch James in a month with the Doc- 
 tor's permission. My boy," he said turning to the gigas, 
 "I hope you will look forward to the ending of this month 
 as eagerly as I do." 
 
 But Euphemia had been dumfoundered by the cere- 
 mony which she had just witnessed. 
 
 "Air a' they claes for Jim?" she asked. 
 
 Never in her life had she heard of such a quantity of 
 clothes being ordered at one time for the same person. 
 
340 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 She hardly believed the sight of her eyes and the hearing 
 of her ears. And was that neat little person, who saluted 
 her so courteously, a tailor? It seemed as if beings from 
 a new world had entered her little cottage. 
 
 For the first time she began to be conscious to what 
 an extraordinarily changed existence her great puppy-boy 
 James must be going. 
 
 "Air a' they claes for Jim? " she cried again. "What can 
 a body want with them a'?" 
 
 "Ah! Mrs. Macdonald," said Mandeville, "James is 
 going to be a big thing, the talk of the town, the boom 
 of the century. He's none of your half-and-half giants, 
 no elastic-necked six-footer. He's a regular out-and-outer, 
 James is. He and I are going to make a splash. You ask 
 me what he will do with all these clothes, Mrs. Macdon- 
 ald, I'll tell you." 
 
CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 " IV/f RS * MACDONALD > " cried he > fallin S at the same 
 
 IV J. time into one of his magnificent attitudes and 
 those bursts of somewhat florid eloquence to which he was 
 addicted, like Napoleon and no doubt also Timur the 
 Tartar, Attila, Alexander, and other great conquerors, 
 "what is this universe we live in but an incomprehensible 
 riddle? " Euphemia looked utterly bewildered as always, 
 and Jim still stared under the fringes of his red hair with 
 almost as little comprehension. 
 
 "While we say 'now' the moment passes. There is 
 no 'now.' Can you say, Mrs. Macdonald, how far I exist 
 outside your own perception of me? Dare you positively 
 affirm that I really do exist? That you yourself do? No. 
 There is no absolute proof of such things." 
 
 "Aiggs-es?" queried Euphemia, dolefully trying to grap- 
 ple with the " Tickler's" language. "I dinna ken ony 
 aiggs." 
 
 "A very regular hypothesis, Mrs. Macdonald," replied 
 the "Tickler." "You know, of course, the old axiom, ab 
 ovo omne vivum, but as you pertinently say, is there any- 
 thing vivum, any ovum at all?" 
 
 "Ambrose Ambrose," exclaimed Spens, but the "Tick- 
 ler" impatiently waved his beringed hand and continued : 
 
 "The atoms that compose the body commonly known 
 as Mrs. Macdonald are themselves composedjof an infi- 
 nite number of electrons. For your information, my dear 
 madam, in case you do not know it, I may as well state 
 that an electron is in about the same ratio to an atom as 
 our earth is to the solar system, and who can tell whether 
 
 341 
 
342 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 our solar system may not be perhaps itself an atom in the 
 red corpuscles of the blood of some giant? How in the 
 name of fortune, in the face of these great mysteries, can 
 we mortals take ourselves seriously? How can America 
 squabble with Germany over some trade boundary? How 
 can our own Britain convulse itself over such a trumpery 
 question as Dreadnoughts? How can one creed be set 
 up against another with every appearance of infallibility? 
 How can men talk glibly of right and wrong? How can 
 we remain in the same dimension as our ordinary, strenu- 
 ous, bustling life? Really, Mrs. Macdonald, I must catch 
 hold of this chair just to get myself back. I must feel 
 something homely and commonplace in my grasp. When 
 the Prince of Wales came to see Mandeville's Circus I 
 had to hold a captain's biscuit in my pocket just to make 
 myself forget that we were both a hundred million miles 
 distant from the sun and to remind myself that I must 
 call him 'Your Royal Highness.' My dear Mrs. Mac- 
 donald, I really hope you will never be reduced to holding 
 a captain's biscuit in order to get back into your proper 
 dimension. It is very hard, huge, and uncomfortable in 
 one's pocket. That is why I always carry one about. 
 There is nothing like a hard and uncomfortable experience 
 to make one imagine for the moment that one really 
 does exist. It feels like it anyway and that's something. 
 Now why have we invented creeds, kings, ceremonies, 
 laws, and, last and most important of all, clothes? 
 Simply, in order that the ordinary business of our funny 
 little earth may be carried on, simply to prevent the 
 continued necessity of holding on to 'chairs' and 'cap- 
 tain's biscuits.' Clothes are indeed our safety-anchor. 
 A distinguished metaphysician and mystic once went 
 naked, was heavily fined, and incarcerated. I do not pity 
 him. Such a deliberate blow at the world's moralities of 
 convention should have been even more rigorously pun- 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 343 
 
 ished. Clothes, Mrs. Macdonald, as you press me to 
 give you my philosophy of them, are the most important 
 link in the whole elaborate chain that binds us to earth. 
 Were it not for clothes we should see the whole elaborate 
 edifice we have built up tumble down like the walls of 
 Jericho. Oh! my dear Madam, never be tempted to go 
 without your apparel." 
 
 Euphemia gazed at the inspired " Tickler " every moment 
 more open-mouthed and staring. 
 
 "The very fact of dressing, tedious though it is, turns 
 the key on the great mysteries. Listen now! We cannot 
 find a collar-stud. Frenzy seizes us. We use abominable 
 and intemperate language. Blush incontinently at our 
 excess when the stud is retrieved. Lo and behold! with- 
 out any trouble at all we have been living in our proper 
 dimension. We have done wrong and repented. Looked 
 for something and found it. That five minutes in the 
 morning is just an exemplar of our lives. We have attached 
 a certain definitive meaning to something said and done. 
 Hurrah! We have forgotten our lightning-brief unreality 
 and plunge joyfully into the business of the day. We 
 shall continue to attach certain definite meanings to all 
 we hear, say, and do till we fall to unconsciousness. Oh! 
 fortunate us! Blessed be the man who invented clothes, 
 gave us something intended to be practical, but invested 
 with an elaborate symbolism of its own. My dear Mrs. 
 Macdonald, we have, in the course of the ages, fully decided 
 that we must attach the highest importance to the sym- 
 bolism of clothes. Kings, bishops, admirals, generals, 
 cricketers, railway-porters, postmen, and lord-mayors all 
 have peculiar and selected clothing thus goes the train 
 of thought, the chain that must fetter us down in our 
 dimension. We dignify all our institutions and societies 
 with reality and then dignify our clothing because it is 
 representative of them. Thus goes that strange symbol- 
 
344 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 ising of the practical and utilitarian which composes our 
 world. 'Quite right, too,' you will say, Mrs. Macdonald, 
 and I am with you. Never doubt it. I cannot carry a 
 captain's biscuit in my pocket, night and day, forerer and 
 aye. It is far too big. Oh! yes, our arrangements are 
 eminently sensible. And so, by a clear, if topsy-turvy, 
 chain of reasoning we come to the philosophy of clothes, to 
 the mighty symbol of dress. 
 
 "When once we begin to flout the weird and wonderful 
 ceremony, if at any time we scamp our shaving, Mrs. 
 Macdonald, or put on an old pair of trousers because they 
 are more comfortable than our new ones, in what deadly 
 danger we are! 
 
 "We are in risk of getting out of our dimension again. 
 
 " When I walk up Piccadilly Hill and that sun, a hundred 
 million miles off, is shining and the birds are twittering 
 in the leafy Green Park, and the dandies, glossy and radiant, 
 come brushed, pranked, and careless out of their clubs 
 to saunter up Bond Street before luncheon, and the little 
 ladies in their summer finery skip, with lifted skirts, out 
 of their motor-broughams into modistes' and jewellers', 
 what a thrill of admiration at the world's great common- 
 sense the scene gives me ! I relax my grip of the captain's 
 biscuit in my trouser-pocket, hitherto the only blot on my 
 appearance, and saunter up Bond Street myself almost 
 as pranked, glossy, and careless as my admired dandies. 
 
 "I begin even to wish I was fair and tall, not short and 
 square. But a grey day! when all the little fairies are in 
 doors or close-carriages; when no one walks as if he thought 
 anything worth a moment's struggle, joy, or sorrow; when 
 London is lost in a Lethe of fog. 
 
 "What a terrific effect those days have upon me! How 
 ghastly are my endeavours to keep within the dimension! 
 
 " Many is the captain's biscuit I have broken with my 
 clutch of despair. 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 345 
 
 "I have to take a taxi and drive straight to my friend 
 Mr. Hay of the Haymarket. It is only a fierce and sus- 
 tained argument over the fit of a coat, an intense mental 
 application to the choice of a suit, which can save me in 
 these moods. 
 
 "Again, again, I say, clothes are our safety-anchor. 
 Mrs. Macdonald, do you still ask why I am dressed so 
 opulently? 
 
 "Opulence is the badge of my people. But in many 
 ways I am unlike them. I have adopted the good com- 
 mon-sense way of the world in symbolising the practical 
 and the utilitarian. 
 
 "Hence the growth of my great circus. 
 
 "Hence the splendid fashion of my dress. 
 
 "Hence the numerous articles of apparel I have ordered 
 for Jim. 
 
 "/ revere the societies and institutions of the world be- 
 cause they keep me within my dimensions. Jim is to be a 
 magnificent institution. His clothes must be a symbol 
 of all that is powerful and great. O, Mrs. Macdonald, 
 here we can only walk on the water when it is frozen. 
 
 "Directly our feet touch fluidity we are drowned. So 
 top-hat is raised to top-hat, sabre lifted to epaulette, 
 cocked-hat doffed to crown and all these strange fancies 
 in the same dimension elaborately greet, court, and flatter 
 each other. Our Jim must be as intricate, fanciful, and 
 honourable as anyone else in this dimension. The dress 
 he wears must be eloquent of that great world common- 
 sense, which has declared him to be of importance." 
 
 "Ambrose," said the Doctor, who had listened to Man- 
 deville's discourse in his usual patient manner, "if you talk 
 any more you will miss your train. There's only just 
 time for you to get back to Duke's Ferry. After all, you 
 will see Jim again in a month." 
 
 The "Tickler" pulled out his watch. 
 
346 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 " Jehosaphat, Spens, you're right, " he said. " Good-bye, 
 Mrs. Macdonald." 
 
 The tiny woman held out a flag of utter capitulation. 
 Mandeville had swamped her once and forever. Such 
 bewilderment as hers had, surely, never before been 
 painted on a human countenance. 
 
 She was too overwhelmed even to bob. 
 
 So. 
 
CHAPTER LDC 
 
 "TN a month, my dear boy," said "Tickler," with a 
 
 JL cheery shout, as he took his place in the dogcart. 
 
 "Two lounge-suits, an orange vest, and a fur-coat, Sir," 
 deferentially murmured Mr. Hay from the back. "You 
 shall have them in a month, Sir. Never fear." 
 
 "Sir," to Jim! How quickly the face of the world 
 changes! 
 
 "In a month! Jim laddie, ye maun gae in a month," 
 cried Euphemia, burying her face in her son's huge form 
 in one of those public displays of emotion to which she was 
 so prone. 
 
 "In a month!" echoed Jim, half-unconsciously aloud, 
 as he watched the Doctor's cart retreat followed by the 
 children of Tuchan, all shouting and jumping to get a view 
 of the two strangers. 
 
 It is the first time since his illness that Jim has been seen 
 out of doors. In the excitement of watching the magnifi- 
 cent " Tickler " evanish orientally hi the Doctor's dogcart, 
 Tuchan notices him not to begin with as he stands before 
 Macdonald's, watching too. Then the children suddenly 
 see him. In their minds he has always been a terrific, 
 remote, legendary figure; in the infantile minds his five 
 months of illness seem as ten years to older folk, and so 
 ancient accusations have been forgotten in his new-found 
 celebrity. Surely Jim was always one to be cheered, and 
 loudly their shrill shouts applaud him. 
 
 And now on the threshold of such gigantic eminence as 
 few men attain to, we leave Jim Macdonald. 
 
 347 
 
348 A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 
 
 The old days of ignoble insult, of misunderstanding, 
 which he was too bewildered, too timid to resent, have 
 passed away. Now, indeed, he has pride in himself, 
 power over himself, the power that comes from pride. 
 Truly it is no small thing to overthrow young bulls single 
 handed; truly he, whom the great Ambrose Mandeville 
 chooses to favour, may call himself "Lucky Jim." 
 
 Moreover, in the brain under that fiery pile of hair a 
 kind of philosophy is hatching. 
 
 The past has left a sting, it may be ineradicable, but he 
 can be optimistic about the future. He begins to see that 
 he must take the best of himself, that those mighty 
 thews and immense limbs were not given him for nothing, 
 that he can take delight in displaying them to countless 
 of his fellow-creatures, less well-furnished, in spite of the 
 agonies and miseries which they caused him in old time. 
 
 From these, "quaint, crumpled- up, unsignifiedalian ob- 
 jects," he is forever removed by the girth of his huge 
 trunk, the monstrous rounds of his limbs. Let them pur- 
 sue their petty little occupations, his is to stand, aloof and 
 immense, admired of all; shamed and yet shameless; 
 where the great arc-lights whitely illuminate him and the 
 voices of thousands shout. 
 
 Their world is not his world; but never let him mind, for 
 the "Tickler" had introduced him to a new one. There 
 was no place for him while they still tried to claim him ; no 
 rest for him until they cast him out. Soon the great fold- 
 ing-doors will shut behind him; bar out the jostling, fret- 
 ful, harsh, ignorant pigmies who have surrounded him 
 hitherto; hide him in great cool chambers where his 
 retreat shall be majestic and inviolate, whence occasionally 
 he shall issue forth. 
 
 And now already on every hoarding through the vast 
 
A PORTENTOUS HISTORY 349 
 
 metropolis, London, posters ten or fifteen feet high have 
 been plastered by the " Tickler's " advertising craft. Huge, 
 copper-topped, and proud our gigas figures, clad in kilts 
 and a bonnet, and carrying in one shoulder-of-mutton 
 hand a fir-tree uprooted. The other touches his bonnet 
 in salute. Behind him rise the great twin peaks, deline- 
 ated, of More and Moich, and underneath him is written: 
 
 "JAMES MACDONALD, THE SCOTCH GIANT, 
 COMES TO LONDON FOR THE CHRIST- 
 MAS HOLIDAYS. BOYS AND GIRLS, 
 COME IN YOUR THOUSANDS." 
 
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