ather,
who would sooner have resigned than been obliged to own son or daughter
as such in school-time.

"Nothing!" said Jo Kettle, speaking according to the honour that
obliges schoolboys to untruth as a mode of professional honour. Then
Jo, seeing the frown on the master's face, and forestalling the words
that were ready to come from his lips, "But, sirrah, I saw you!" amended
hastily, "At least, I was only asking Agnes Anne to sit a little farther
along!"

"What!" cried my father, with the snap of the eye that meant punishment,
"to sit farther along, when you had no interest in this classical
lesson, sir--a lesson you are incapable of understanding, and--all the
length of an empty bench at your left hand! You shall speak with me at
the close of the lesson, and that, sirrah, is now! The class is
dismissed! I shall have the pleasure of a little interview with Master
Joseph Kettle, student of mensuration."

Jo had his interview, in which figured a certain leathern strap, called
"Lochgelly" after its place of manufacture--a branch of native industry
much cursed by Scottish school-children. "Lochgelly" was five-fingered,
well pickled in brine, well rubbed with oil, well used on the boys, but,
except by way of threat, unknown to the girls. Jo emerged tingling but
triumphant. Indeed, several new ideas had occurred to him. Eden Valley
Academy stood around and drank in the wondrous tale with all its ears
and, almost literally, with one mouth. Jo Kettle told the story so well
that I well-nigh believed it myself. He even turned to me for
corroboration.

"Didn't he tell you that, Duncan? That was the way of it, eh, Duncan?"

I denied, indeed, and would have stated the truth as it was in Guard
Webb. But my futile and feeble negations fell unheeded, swept away by
the pour of Jo's circumstantial lying.

Finally he ran off into the village and was lost to sight. I have
little doubt that he played truant, in full recognition of pains and
penalties to come, for the mere pleasure of going from door to door and
"raising the town," as he called it. I consoled myself by the thought
that he would find few but womenfolk at home at that hour, while the
shopkeepers would have too much consideration for their tills and
customers to follow a notorious romancer like Jo on such a fool's
errand.

I cannot tell how that afternoon's lessons were got over in Eden Valley
Academy. The hum of disturbance reached even the juniors, skulking
peace