vid's shoulder before
the boy had guessed his approach.

"Did I bid ye come hame after school, David?" he asked, concealing his
heat beneath a suspicious suavity.

"Maybe. Did I say I would come?"

The pertness of tone and words, alike, fanned his father's resentment
into a blaze. In a burst of passion he lunged forward at the boy with
his stick. But as he smote, a gray whirlwind struck him fair on the
chest, and he fell like a snapped stake, and lay, half stunned, with a
dark muzzle an inch from his throat.

"Git back, Bob!" shouted James Moore, hurrying up. "Git back, I tell
yo'!" He bent over the prostrate figure, propping it up anxiously.

"Are yo' hurt, M'Adam? Eh, but I am sorry. He thought yo' were going for
to strike the lad."

David had now run up, and he, too, bent over his father with a very
scared face.

"Are yo' hurt, feyther?" he asked, his voice trembling.

The little man rose unsteadily to his feet and shook off his supporters.
His face was twitching, and he stood, all dust-begrimed, looking at his
son.

"Ye're content, aiblins, noo ye've seen yer father's gray head bowed in
the dust," he said.

"'Twas an accident," pleaded James Moore. "But I _am_ sorry. He thought
yo' were goin' to beat the lad."

"So I was--so I will."

"If ony's beat it should be ma Bob here tho' he nob'but thought he was
doin' right. An' yo' were aff the path."

The little man looked at his enemy, a sneer on his face.

"Ye canna thrash him for doin' what ye bid him. Set yer dog on me, if ye
will, but dinna beat him when he does yer biddin'!"

"I did not set him on yo', as you know," the Master replied warmly.

M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.

"I'll no argie wi' ye, James Moore," he said. "I'll leave you and
what ye call yer conscience to settle that. My business is not wi'
you.--David!" turning to his son.

A stranger might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's father.
For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few paces above
them was the little man, pale but determined, the expression on his face
betraying his consciousness of the irony of the situation.

"Will ye come hame wi' me and have it noo, or stop wi' him and wait till
ye get it?" he asked the boy.

"M'Adam, I'd like yo' to--"

"None o' that, James Moore.--David, what d'ye say?"

David looked up into his protector's face.

"Yo'd best go wi' your feyther, lad," said the Master at last, thickly.
The boy hesitated, and clung tight