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,

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?"