The Right Stuff | Page 9

baser sort. We
were bound for Inchellan, the Scottish residence of my Chief, who was
sending to meet us at Perth.
As the first-class carriages were all occupied by gentlemen with
third-class tickets, we travelled third with a company who did not seem
to possess any tickets at all. Just before the train started the door was
thrown open and two inebriated Scots, several degrees further gone
than the rest of the company--which is saying a good deal--were hurled
in. If the assemblage had all been of one way of thinking we might
have reached Perth with nothing worse than bad headaches, but
unfortunately some supporters of the other team were present, and in
the midst of a heated and alcoholic debate on the rights and wrongs of
the last free kick, two rival orators suddenly arose, clinched, and
continued their argument at close grips on the floor. In a moment the
party divided itself into two camps, and the conflict became general. As
there were ten people in the compartment, of whom seven were
engaged in a life-and-death struggle, the movements of the
non-combatants--Kitty, myself, and a gigantic youth of gawky
appearance--were, to put it mildly, somewhat restricted. Kitty became
thoroughly frightened, and hampered my preparations for battle by

clinging to my arm. The gigantic youth, seeing this, suddenly took
command of the situation.
"Watch you the young leddy!" he bellowed in my ear, "and I'll sort
them."
With that he hurled himself into the tumult. The exact details of his
performance I could not see, the scientific dusting of railway cushions
not having penetrated any further north of the Forth than it has south of
the Thames; but the net result was that each combatant was pulled off,
picked up, shaken until his teeth rattled, and banged down on to his seat
with a brief admonition to mind his manners, until seven bewildered,
partially sobered, and thoroughly demoralised patrons of sport sat
round about in various attitudes of limp dejection, leaning against one
another like dissipated marionettes; while our rustic Hector, bestriding
the compartment like a Colossus, dared them to move a finger under
penalty of being "skelped."
He bundled them all out at the next stopping-place, without inquiring
whether they desired to alight there or no, and I am bound to say that
they all seemed as anxious to leave the carriage as he was to expel them.
He then shut the door, pulled up the window, and turned to my wife
with a reassuring smile.
"Yon was just a storrm in a teapot," he remarked affably.
He accepted my thanks with indifference, but blushed in a gratified
manner when Kitty addressed him. He was her bond-slave by the time
that we bade him farewell at Perth. I presented him with my card,
which he carefully placed inside the lining of his hat; but he forbore,
either from native caution or excessive shyness, to furnish us with any
information as to his own identity.
Well, here he was, sitting opposite to me in the Reading Room of the
British Museum, and seemingly none too prosperous. Six years ago he
had looked like a young and healthy farm lad. Now, fourth-rate
journalism was stamped all over him.

CHAPTER THREE.
"ANENT."
We conversed awhile in whispers to avoid disturbing the other
worshippers--I always feel like that in the British Museum--and finally
abandoned our respective tasks and issued forth together. With a little
persuasion I prevailed upon my companion to come and lunch with me,
and we repaired to a rather old-fashioned and thoroughly British
establishment close by, where the fare is solid and the "portions"
generous.
My guest, after a brief effort at self-repression, fell upon the food in a
fashion that told me a far more vivid tale of his present circumstances
than the most lengthy explanation could have done. When he was full I
gave him a cigar, and he leaned back in his padded arm-chair and
surveyed me with the nearest approach to emotion that I have ever
observed in the countenance of a Scot.
"I was wanting that," he remarked frankly, and he smiled largely upon
me. He was looking less gaunt now, and the rugged lines of his face
were tinged with a more healthy colour. He was a handsome youth, I
noticed, with shrewd grey eyes and a chin that stood out like the ram of
a battle-ship.
He told me all about himself, some of which has been set down here
already. He had done well at Edinburgh University, and, having
obtained his Arts degree, was on the point of settling down to study for
the ministry--the be-all and end-all of the hope of a humble Scottish
household--when disaster came tumbling upon his family. His brother
David fell sick in his lungs, and the