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Fact was, we felt somebody ought to speak to Fenwick–so all the fellows said. But of course, when it came to the point, they pitched on me, and stuck at me till they made me promise.

So I met him and said to him: “Now, look here, Fenwick, this is playing it pretty low down on the old man at home and your mother. Better let up on this drinking and cutting round loose. It’s skittles anyway, and will come to no good!” Just as I would say to you fellows.

I think Fenwick Major was first of all a bit staggered at my speaking to him. Later he came to himself, and told me where to go for a meddling young hypocrite.

“Who are you to come preaching to me, any way?” he said.

And I admitted that I was nobody. But I told him all the same that he had better listen to what I said.

“You are playing the fool, and you’ll come an awful cropper,” I went on. “Not that it matters so much for you, but you’ve got a father and a mother to think about.”

What Fenwick Major said then about his father and mother I am not going to tell you. He had maybe half a dozen “wets” on board, so we won’t count him responsible.

But after that Fenwick Major never looked the way I was on. He drank more than ever, till you could see the shakes on him from the other side of the street. And there was the damp, bleached look about his face that you see in some wards up at the Infirmary.

[ Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. Their heads are bent eagerly towards Chirnside.

But I heard from other fellows that he still tried to work. He would come out of a bad turn. Then he would doctor himself, Turkish-bath himself, diet himself, and go at his books. But, as I am alive, fellows, he had got himself into such a state that what he learned the night before, he had forgotten the next morning. Ay, even the book he had been reading and the subject he was cramming. Talk about no hell, fellows! Don’t you believe ’em. I know four knocking about Edinburgh this very moment.

But right at the close of the session we heard that the end had come. So, at least, we thought. Fenwick Major had married a barmaid or something like that. “What a fool!” said some. I was only thankful that I had not to tell his mother.

But his mother was told, and his father came to Edinburgh to find Fenwick Major. He did not find the prodigal son, who was said to have gone to London. At any rate, his father went home, and in a fortnight there was a funeral–two in a month. Mother went first, then the old man. I went down to both, and cursed Fenwick Major and his barmaid with all the curses I knew. And I was a second-year medical at the time.

I never thought to hear more of him. Did not want to. He was lost. He had married a barmaid, and I knew where his father and mother lay under the sod. And my own old mater kept flowers on the two graves summer and winter.

One night I was working here late–green tea, towel round my head–oral next morning. There was a knock at the door. The landlady was in bed, so I went. There was a laddie there, bare-legged and with a voice like a rip-saw.

“If ye please, there’s a man wants awfu’ to see ye at Grant’s Land at the back o’ the Pleasance.”

I took my stick and went out into the night. It was just coming light, and the gas-jets began to look foolish. I stumbled up to the door, and the boy showed me in. It was a poor place–of the poorest. The stair was simply filthy.