with an angry colour in their cheeks, was a very strong boy, otherwise I
should have advised them to "go" for him.

Oddly enough I heard of another boy who exercised the same kind of
cruelty and destructiveness over another common a few miles distant.
Walking across it I spied two boys among the furze bushes, and at the
same moment they saw me, whereupon one ran away and the other remained
standing. A nice little fellow of about eight, he looked as if he had
been crying. I asked him what it was all about, and he then told me that
the bigger boy who had just run away was always on the common searching
for nests, just to destroy them and kill the young birds; that he, my
informant, had come there where he came every day just to have a peep at
a linnet's nest with four eggs in it on which the bird was sitting; that
the other boy, concealed among the bushes had watched him go to the nest
and had then rushed up and pulled the nest out of the bush.

"Why didn't you knock him down?" I asked.

"That's what I tried to do before he pulled the nest out," he said; and
then he added sorrowfully: "He knocked me down."

I am reminded here of a tale of ancient Greece about a boy of this
description--the boy to be found in pretty well every parish in the
land. This was a shepherd boy who followed or led his sheep to a
distance from the village and amused his idle hours by snaring small
birds to put their eyes out with a sharp thorn, then to toss them up
just to see how, and how far, they would fly in the dark. He was seen
doing it and the matter reported to the heads or fathers of the village,
and he was brought before them and, after due consideration of the case,
condemned to death. Such a decision must seem shocking to us and worthy