"Poor Eel, the old man's going to report him!" we whispered to each other.
And then we heard the words of the Angelical Scholiast.
"Shake hands, Mr. Denholm. If, as ye say, this has been a lesson to you, it has been no less a lesson to me. Let us both endeavour to profit by it, unto greater diligence and seemliness in our walk and conversation. We will say no more about the matter, if you please, Mr. Denholm."
* * * * *
We cheered the old man as he went out, till he waved a kindly and tolerant hand back at us, and there was more than a gleam of humour in the kindly spectacles, as if our gentle Hermeneut were neither so blind nor yet so dull in the uptake as we had been accustomed to think him.
As for the Eel, he became a man from that day, and, to a limited extent, put away childish things—though his heart will remain ever young and fresh. His story is another story, and so far as this little study goes it is enough to say that when at last the aged Professor of Hermeneutics passed to the region where all things are to be finally explicated, it was Gilbert Denholm who got up the memorial to his memory, which was subscribed to by every student without exception he had ever had. And it was he who wrote Dr. Galbraith's epitaph, of which the last line runs:
"GENTLE, A PEACE-MAKER, A LOVER OF GOOD AND OF GOD."
DOCTOR GIRNIGO'S ASSISTANT
"Off, ye lendings!" said Gibby the Eel to his heather-mixture knicker-bocker suit, on the day when his Presbytery of Muirlands licensed him to preach the gospel.
And within the self-same hour the Reverend Gilbert Denholm, M.A., Probationer, in correct ministerial garb, had the honour of dining with the Presbytery, and of witnessing the remarkable transformation which overtakes that august body as soon as it dips its collective spoon in the official soup.