ollow with the spoons and plates,
Wattie Morrison had taken the tureen, and out of spite at Robert, had
emptied its contents on the head of Shargar, who was still tied by the
feet, with the words: 'Shargar, I anoint thee king over us, and here
is thy crown,' giving the tureen, as he said so, a push on to his head,
where it remained.

Shargar did not move, and for one moment could not speak, but the next
he gave a shriek that made Robert think he was far worse scalded than
turned out to be the case. He darted to him in rage, took the tureen
from his head, and, his blood being fairly up now, flung it with all his
force at Morrison, and felled him to the earth. At the same moment the
master entered by the street door and his wife by the house door,
which was directly opposite. In the middle of the room the prisoners
surrounded the fallen tyrant--Robert, with the red face of wrath, and
Shargar, with a complexion the mingled result of tears, ink, and soup,
which latter clothed him from head to foot besides, standing on the
outskirts of the group. I need not follow the story farther. Both
Robert and Morrison got a lickin'; and if Mr. Innes had been like some
school-masters of those times, Shargar would not have escaped his share
of the evil things going.

From that day Robert assumed the acknowledged position of Shargar's
defender. And if there was pride and a sense of propriety mingled with
his advocacy of Shargar's rights, nay, even if the relation was not
altogether free from some amount of show-off on Robert's part, I cannot
yet help thinking that it had its share in that development of the
character of Falconer which has chiefly attracted me to the office
of his biographer. There may have been in it the exercise of some
patronage; probably it was not pure from the pride of beneficence; but
at least it was a loving patronage and a vigorous beneficence; and,
under the reaction of these, the good which in Robert's nature was as
yet only in a state of solution, began to crystallize into character.

But the effect of the new relation was far more remarkable on Shargar.
As incapable of self-defence as ever, he was yet in a moment roused to
fury by any attack upon the person or the dignity of Robert: so that,
indeed, it became a new and favourite mode of teasing Shargar to heap
abuse, real or pretended, upon his friend. From the day when Robert thus
espoused his part, Shargar was Robert's dog. That very evening, when she
wen