"No," wheezed John.
"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College! Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or this nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."
Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy. Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins of his listeners with a start of fear—it leapt so suddenly.
"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.
John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go and take it.
"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn! The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but he wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "he wasna feared; no, by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?... Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye know—a splurge to attract folk's attention!"
John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.
"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye; "take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something about that—some poetry or other. Who was it?"
"I dinna ken," whimpered John.