or, leaning heavily on a
staff. Making out by the noise the whereabouts of the small boy, the old
man turned suddenly to him with a great roar like a bull, before the
blast of which the boy disappeared, blown away as chaff is blown before
the tempest. The minister's first impulse was likewise to turn and flee.
Thirty added years had not changed the old instinct, for when John
roared at any of the town boys, conscious innocence did not keep any of
them still. They ran first, and inquired from a distance whom he was
after. For John's justice was not evenhanded. His voice was ever for
open war, and everything that wore tattered trousers and a bonnet was
his natural enemy.

So the minister nearly turned and ran, as many a time he had done in the
years that were past. However, instead he went indoors with the old man,
and, having recalled himself to John's clear ecclesiastical memory, the
interview proceeded somewhat as follows, the calm flow of the
minister's accustomed speech gradually kindling as he went, into the
rush of the old Doric of his boyhood.

"Ay, John, I'm glad you remember me; but I have better cause to remember
you, for you once nearly knocked out my brains with a rake when I was
crawling through the manse beech-hedge to get at the minister's rasps.
Oh, yes, you did, John! You hated small boys, you know. And specially,
John, you hated me. Nor can I help thinking that, after all, taking a
conjunct and dispassionate view of your circumstances, as we say in the
Presbytery, your warmth of feeling was entirely unwarranted. 'Thae
loons--they're the plague o' my life!' you were wont to remark, after
you had vainly engaged in the pleasure of the chase, having surprised us
in some specially outrageous ploy.

"Once only, John, did you bring your stout ash 'rung' into close
proximity to the squirming body that now sits by your fireside. You have
forgotten it, I doubt not, John, among the hosts of other similar
applications. But the circumstance dwells longer in the mind of your
junior, by reason of the fact that for many days he took an interest in
the place where he sat down. He even thought of writing to the parochial
authorities to ask why they did not cushion the benches of the parish
school.

"You have no manner of doot, you say, John, that I was richly deserving
of it? There you are right, and in the expression I trace some of the
old John who used to keep us so strictly in our places. You're still in
the old