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 witheld 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 hoy was invincibly stubborn.
Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the
habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent
dogged-ness, 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