At last, with the aid of his nose, he made up his mind, and knocked.
"Come in," cried a voice of peculiar tone.

It reminded Alec of something he could not at all identify, which was not wonderful, seeing it was of itself, heard once before, that it reminded him.

It was the same voice which, as he walked to the debate, the first night, had warned him not to look at rainbows.
He opened the door and entered.
"What do you want ?" said the voice, its source almost invisible in the thick fumes of genuine pigtail, through which it sent cross odours of as genuine Glenlivat.
"I want you to help me with a bit of Homer, if you please, Mr Cupples--I'm not up to Homer yet." "Do ye think I hae naething ither to do than to grin' the grandur o' an auld haythen into spunemate for a young sinner like you ?" "Ye dinna ken what I'm like, Mr Cupples," returned Alec, remembering his landlady's injunction not to be afraid of him.
"Come athort the reek, and lat's luik at ye." Alec obeyed, and found the speaker seated by the side of a little fire, in an old easy-chair covered with horsehair; and while undergoing his scrutiny, took his revenge in kind.

Mr Cupples was a man who might have been of almost any age from five-and-twenty to fifty--at least, Alec's experience was insufficient for the task of determining to what decade of human years he belonged.

He was a little man, in a long black tail-coat much too large, and dirty gray trousers.