the swaying of a branch near by, that so startlingly suggests the waving
in the wind of a threadbare cloak.




DICKY OF KINGSWOOD


Your Border ruffian of the good old days was not often a humorist. Life
to him was a serious business. When he was not reiving other people's
kye, other people were probably reiving his; and as a general rule one
is driven to conclude that he was not unlike that famous Scotch terrier
whose master attributed the dog's persistently staid and even melancholy
disposition to the fact that he "jist couldna get enough o' fechting."

In olden times, "fechting" was the Border man's strong point; but in
later, and perhaps less robust, days there were to be found some who
took a degenerate pride in getting by craft what their fathers would
have taken by force. Of such, in the early days of the eighteenth
century, was Dicky of Kingswood. Had he lived a hundred or a hundred and
fifty years earlier, Dicky would no doubt have been a first-class
reiver, one of the "tail" of some noted Border chieftain, for he lacked
neither pluck nor strength. But in his own day he preferred the
_suaviter in modo_ to the _fortiter in re_; his cunning, indeed, was not
unworthy of the hero of that ancient Norse tale, "The Master Thief," and
in his misdeeds there was not seldom to be found a spice of humour so
disarming that at times his victims were compelled to laugh, and in
laughter to forget their just resentment; and with the perishing of
resentment, to forego their manifest duty and that satisfaction which