the truth, Billy Jack, man though he was, held his father in dread.

"How did you come to do it?" he asked Thomas. "Why didn't you let Don
begin? It was surely Don's business."

"I don't know. It slipped out," replied Thomas. "I couldn't stand
Jimmie's yelling any longer. I didn't know I said anything till I found
myself standing up, and after that I didn't seem to care for anything."

"Man! it was fine, though," said Billy Jack. "I didn't think it was in
you." And Thomas felt more than repaid for all his cruel beating. It was
something to win the approval of Billy Jack in an affair of this kind.

It was at church on the Sabbath day that Donald Finch heard about his
son's doings in the school the week before. The minister, in his sermon,
thought fit to dwell upon the tendency of the rising generation to
revolt against authority in all things, and solemnly laid upon parents
the duty and responsibility of seeing to it that they ruled their
households well.

It was not just the advice that Donald Finch stood specially in need of,
but he was highly pleased with the sermon, and was enlarging upon it
in the churchyard where the people gathered between the services, when
Peter McRae, thinking that old Donald was hardly taking the minister's
advice to himself as he ought, and not knowing that the old man was
ignorant of all that had happened in the school, answered him somewhat
severely.

"It is good to be approving the sermon, but I would rather be seeing you
make a practical application of it."