“And did ye think it would be pleasing to your brother to have a tradesman of the same name and blood as himself in the same place?” asked Bates with lack of toleration in his tone.

“That’s all very fine!”—­scornfully.  “You know as well as I do that my lord and my gentleman come out to this country to do what farm-hands and cattle-men would hardly be paid to do at home—­”

“When they’ve ruined themselves first, but not till then,” Bates put in.

“And besides, old Robert sets up to be a saint.  I didn’t suppose he’d look upon things in the vulgar way.”  This reflection was cast on Bates as one of a class.  “Was I likely to suppose he’d think that to kick one’s heels on an office stool was finer than honest labour, or that my particular kind of labour had something more objectionable about it than any other?  In old times it was the most honourable office there was.  Look at the priests of the Old Testament!  Read Homer!”

“I don’t know that I’m understanding ye about Homer.”

“Why, hear him tell the way the animals were cut up, and the number of them—­yards and yards of it.”

“But in the Bible the animals were used for sacrifice; that’s very different.”  Bates said this, but felt that a point had been scored against him in the poetry of Homer; the Old Testament was primeval, but Homer, in spite of ancient date, seemed to bring with him the authority of modern culture.

“If they were, the people feasted upon them all the same, and the office of preparing them was the most honourable.  I’m not claiming to be a priest (I leave that to my respected brother); I claim my right in a new country, where Adam has to delve again, to be a butcher and a gentleman.”  All his words were hot and hasty.

“But ye see,” said Bates, “in the towns here, things are beginning to regulate themselves much in the shape they take in the old country.”

“My brother cares more what people think than I do.”

“And a verra good thing too; for with the majority there is wisdom,” put in Bates, keen and contentious.

“You think so, do you?”—­with sarcasm.

“Ye must remember ye’re young yet; your brother has seen more of the world—­”

Now Alec Trenholme had had no intention of telling what, to his mind, was the worst of his brother’s conduct, but here he slapped the table and burst out angrily: 

“And I tell you he believes as I do, but he hasn’t pluck to act up to it.  He’s not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it’s for the sake of his school.  He’s living a lie for his own pride.  He’s got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother.  With all his prayers and his sermons in church every Sunday, he’d let me go to the dogs rather than live out the truth.  He thinks I’ve gone to the devil now, because I left him in a rage, and I told him I’d go and learn to spend my money, and drink, and swear, and gamble as a gentleman should.  He thinks I’ve done it, and he writes and implores me, by all that’s holy, to forsake evil courses; but never a word like ’Come back and set up your shop, old fellow, and I’ll be your customer.’  That’s the amount of his religion.”