"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.
"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look, look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there—coming round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing unseen.
The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on the floor.
Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a child! When will Ye be satisfied?"
Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and was throwing tumblers at his mother!
"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite compassion—"puir body!"
"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to her next, after killing his faither."
"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you mean?"
"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled at the sharp question.
"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny, though, it seems uncanny."