hero who was going to do this wonderful thing so simply.

"I got four yesterday," said another, "an' I wasna' doin' onything. By
criffens! it was sair, an' gin I had only had a horse's hair, I'd soon
ha'e putten his tawse oot the road."

"I got four yesterday too," said another, "an' a' because I was looking
at yon new laddie wha cam to the schule yesterday. By! they were sair. I
never heard auld Cabbage-heid till he cam up an' telt me to put oot my
haun."

"It's Peter Rundell's his name," chimed in another. "He's the Boss's
laddie. My! if you just saw what fine claes he has on. A new suit, an'
lang stockings, an' a pair o' fine new buits."

"Ay, an' a white collar too," said another, "an' hundreds o' pooches in
his jacket."

"He has a waistcoat wi' three pooches in it--yin for a watch--an' a
braw, black, shiny bonnet."

"He had a white hankey too, an' sweeties in yin o' his pooches."

Robert felt a certain amount of resentment as he listened to the
description, and he grudged Peter Rundell his new suit for he himself
had never known anything of that kind, but had always worn "make-downs"
created by his mother's clever fingers out of the discarded clothes of
grown-ups.

"Auld Cabbage-heid didna' like me looking at Peter Rundell an' that's
the way he gied me four, but I'll get a horse's hair too, an' his tawse
'll soon get wheegh. He's awful cruel, Rab," he said, turning to Robert,
"an' ye'd better look oot."

Each and all had some fearful story to tell of the cruelty of the
headmaster, and all swore they'd get even with him. These stories filled
Robert with a certain fear, for he was an imaginative and sensitive boy.
Still he knew there was no escape. He must go to school and go through
with it whatever the future might hold for him.

So far he had grown wild and free, and loved the broad wide moor which
began even at the end of the row where he lived. It seemed to him that
there never had been a time when he did not know that there was a moor
there. Nothing in it surprised him, even as a child. Its varied moods
were already understood by him, and its silences and its many voices
appealed to and were balm to his soul. The great blue hills which
fringed it away in the far distance were for him the ends of the world,
and if he could go there some day, he would surely look over and
find--what? The thought staggered him, and his imagination would not, or
could not, construct for him what was at the other side. A