"Mr Forbes, sit down," bawled the chairman; and Alec obeyed, though with evident reluctance.
"I say the accusation is false," repeated Beauchamp. "I do not say that Mr Forbes consciously invented the calumny in order to take away my character: such an assertion would preclude its own credence. Nor do I venture to affirm that he never was stabbed, or thrown into the river. But I ask any gentleman who happens to be aware of Mr Forbes's devotions at the shrine of Father Lyaeus, which is the more likely—that a fellow-student should stab and throw him into the water, or that, as he was reeling home at midnight, the treacherous divinity of the bowl should have handed him over to the embrace of his brother deity of the river. Why then should even his imagination fix upon me as the source of the injury? Gentlemen, a foolish attachment to the customs of a long line of ancestors has led me into what I find for the first time to be a dangerous habit—that of wearing arms;—dangerous, I mean, to myself; for now I am wounded with my own weapon. But the real secret of the affair is—I am ashamed to say—jealousy. Mr Forbes knows what I say to be true—that a lady whom he loves prefers me to him."
"Don't bring her name in, you brute!" roared Alec, starting again to his feet, "or I'll tear your tongue out."
"You hear, gentlemen," said Beauchamp, and sat down.
A murmur arose. Heads gathered into groups. No one stood up. Alec felt with the deepest mortification that his adversary's coolness and his own violence had turned the scale against him. This conviction, conjoined with the embarrassment of not knowing how to say a word in his own defence without taking some notice of the close of his adversary's speech, fixed him to his seat. For he had not yet fallen so low as to be capable of even alluding to the woman he loved in such an assembly. He would rather abandon the field to his adversary.
Probably not many seconds had passed, but his situation was becoming intolerable, when a well-known voice rose clear above the confused murmur; and glancing to the lower end of the room, he saw Cosmo Cupples standing at the end of the table.
"I ken weel eneuch, gentlemen," he said, "that I hae no richt to be here. Ye a' ken me by the sicht o' the een. I'm a graduate o' this university, and at present your humble servant the librarian. I intrude for the sake o' justice, and I cast mysel' upo' your clemency for a fair hearin'."
This being accorded by general acclamation,
"Gentlemen," he resumed, "I stan' afore ye wi' a sair hert. I hae occupied the position o' tutor to Mr Forbes; for, as Sir Pheelip Sidney says in a letter to his brither Rob, wha was efterwards Yerl o' Leicester upo' the demise o' Robert Dudley, 'Ye may get wiser men nor yersel' to converse wi' ye and instruck ye, in ane o' twa ways—by muckle ootlay or muckle humility.' Noo, that laddie was ane o' the finest naturs I ever cam' across, and his humility jist made it a pleesur to tak' chairge o' 'm baith mentally and morally. That I had a sair doon come whan he took to the drink, I am forced to confess. But I aye thocht he was strauchtforet, notwithstandin' the whusky. I wasna prepared for sic a doonfa' as this.—I maun jist confess, Mr Cheerman, that I heard him throu' the crack o' the door-cheek. And he broucht sic deevilich accusations—"
"Mr Cupples!" cried Alec.