With tears streaming down her cheeks Mary again interposed, despite a wail of protest from Mamma.

"He's well liked, Father! Indeed he is! Mr. Findlay takes an interest in him. I know that."

"Pah! Ye don't expect me to believe what he tells ye. It's a pack of lies, a pack of lies," he shouted again, raising his voice at her. "He's a low-down scum. What can ye expect from that kind of stock? Just rottenness. It's an outrage on me that ye ever spoke to him. But ye've spoken to him for the last time." He glared at her compellingly, as he repeated fiercely, "No! Ye'll never speak to him again. I forbid it."

"But, Father," she sobbed, "oh! Father, I - I "

"Mary, Mary, don't dare answer your father back! It's dreadful to hear you speak up to him like that," came Mamma's voice from the other end of the table. But although its purpose was to propitiate, her interjection was on this occasion a tactical error and served only to direct momentarily the tyranny of Brodie's wrath upon her own bowed head, and with a jerk of his eyes he flared at her:

"What are you yammerin' about? Are you talkin' or am I? If ye've something to say then we'll all stop and listen to the wonder o' it, but if ye've nothing to say, then keep your mouth shut and don't interrupt. You're as bad as she is. It's your place to watch the company she keeps." He snorted and, after his habit, paused forcibly, making the stillness oppressive, until the old grandmother, who had not followed the trend of the talk or grasped the significance of the intermission, but who sensed that Mary was in disgrace, al-

lowed the culmination of her own feelings to overcome her, and punctuated the silence by suddenly calling out, in a rancorous senile tone:

"She forgot her messages the day, James. Mary forgot my cheese, the heedless thing she is;" then, her ridiculous spleen vented, she immediately subsided, muttering, her head shaking as with a palsy.