"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."
"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much in trying to be small.—Tozer, what do you think?"
"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.
"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.
Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.
"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run at him and he runs."
He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.
To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.
"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the "good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on, "and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. 'He was a great fellow my friend Will,' he rang out in yon deep voice of his. 'The thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him.' Man, it made a quiver go down my spine."