into one, not push each other away.

The next time he met the boy who struck him, so far was he both from
resentment and from the fear of being misunderstood, that he offered
him a rosy-cheeked apple his mother had given him as he left for
school. The boy was tyrant and sneak together--a combination to be
seen sometimes in a working man set over his fellows, and in a rich
man grown poor, and bent upon making money again. The boy took the
apple, never doubted Clare gave it him to curry favour, ate it up
grinning, and threw the core in his face. Clare turned away with a
sigh, and betook himself to his handkerchief again, The boy burst into
a guffaw of hideous laughter.



Chapter IX.

Clare the defender.


This enemy was a trouble, more or less, to every decent person in the
neighbourhood. It was well his mother was a widow, for where she was
only powerless to restrain, the father would have encouraged. He was a
big, idle, sneering, insolent lad--such that had there been two more
of the sort, they would have made the village uninhabitable. It was
all the peaceable vicar could do to keep his hands off him.

One day, little Mary being then about five years old, Clare had her
out for a walk. They were alone in a narrow lane, not far from the
farm where Clare was so much at home. To his consternation, for he had