is life it dimly dawned on him that,
perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for complaint; that, perhaps,
he was not a good son.

He half turned.

"Feyther--"

"Git oot o' ma sight!" M'Adam cried.

And the boy turned and went.

Chapter VI. A LICKING OR A LIE

THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and in one point only
father and son resembled--industry. A drunkard M'Adam was, but a drone,
no.

The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy; yet he
could never satisfy his father.

The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips
contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.

"Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his
hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!" as the boy snatched
a hard-earned moment's rest. "You and I, Wullie, we'll brak' oorsel's
slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs."

And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he sickened
with weariness of it all.

In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was
miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that he
was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally of a
reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir. And it
was only the thought of his friends there that withheld him. He could
not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had in the world.

So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows and
abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work was ended,
he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony Bottom. And on Sundays
and holidays--for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be
his due--all day long, from cock-crowing to the going down of the sun,
he would pass at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly
stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of
the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness,
and still held on his way.

Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him with a
courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir two only ever
dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and that not through David.
James Moore suspected something of it all, for he knew more of M'Adam
than did the others. While Owd Bob knew it as did no one else. He could
tell it from the touch of the boy's hand on his head; and the story was
writ l