As a faither, I must grin and bear it; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-Clerk, son or no son, Mr.Erchibald Weir would have been in a jyle the night." Archie was now dominated.

Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man's self in the man's office.

At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had struck--and perhaps basely struck--at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even nettled him.
"I place myself in your hands without reserve," he said.
"That's the first sensible word I've had of ye the night," said Hermiston.

"I can tell ye, that would have been the end of it, the one way or the other; but it's better ye should come there yourself, than what I would have had to hirstle ye.

Weel, by my way of it--and my way is the best--there's just the one thing it's possible that ye might be with decency, and that's a laird.