gone the back way in order to hide my apples. I had an unpleasant
half-hour, despite my mother's tears, and was sent at once to confess to
Friend James Pemberton. The good man said I was a naughty boy, but must
come later when the apples were red ripe, and I should take all I wanted,
and I might fetch with me another boy, or even two. I never forgot this,
and did him some good turns in after-years, and right gladly too.

In my own mind I associated David Dove with this painful interview with my
father. I disliked him the more because, when the procession entered the
school, a little girl for whom Warder and I had a boy friendship, in place
of laughing, as did the rest, for some reason began to cry. This angered
the master, who had the lack of self-control often seen in eccentric
people. He asked why she cried, and on her sobbing out that it was because
she was sorry for me, he bade her take off her stays. These being stiff,
and worn outside the gown, would have made the punishment of the birch on
the shoulders of trifling moment.

As it was usual to whip girls at school, the little maid said nothing, but
did as she was bid, taking a sharp birching without a cry. Meanwhile I sat
with my head in my hands, and my fingers in my ears lest I should hear her
weeping. After school that evening, when all but Warder and I had wandered
home, I wrote on the outside wall of the school-house with chalk, "David
Dove Is A Cruel Beast," and went away somewhat better contented.

Now, with all his seeming dislike to use the rod, David had turns of
severity, and then he was far more brutal than any man I have ever known.
Therefore it did not surprise us next morning that the earlier scholars
were looking with wonder and alarm at the sentence on the wall, when Dove,
appearing behind us, ordered us to enter at once.