Bob Son of Battle | Page 9

who does. But then, as ye say, Mr. Burton,
I'm peculiar."
The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager

credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson
Leggy determined to bring him to task on the matter.
Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old minister,
with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no truck with the
man who never went to church, was perpetually in liquor, and never
spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon the interview fully
resolved not to be betrayed into an unworthy expression of feeling;
rather to appeal to the little man's better nature.
The conversation had not been in progress two minutes, however,
before he knew that, where he had meant to be calmly persuasive, he
was fast become hotly abusive.
"You, Mr. Hornbut, wi' James Moore to help ye, look after the lad's
soul, I'll see to his body," the little man was saying.
The parson's thick gray eyebrows lowered threateningly over his eyes.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk like that. Which d'you
think the more important, soul or body? Oughtn't you, his father, to be
the very first to care for the boy's soul? If not, who should? Answer me,
sir."
The little man stood smirking and sucking his eternal twig, entirely
unmoved by the other's heat.
"Ye're right, Mr. Hombut, as ye aye are. But my argiment is this: that I
get at his soul best through his icetle carcase."
The honest parson brought down his stick with an angry thud.
"M'Adam, you're a brute--a brute!" he shouted. At which outburst the
little man was seized with a spasm of silent merriment,
"A fond dad first, a brute afterward, aiblins--he! he! Ah, Mr. Hornbut!
ye 'ford me vast diversion, ye do indeed, 'my loved, my honored,
much-respected friend."

"If you paid as much heed to your boy's welfare as you do to the bad
poetry of that profligate ploughman--"
An angry gleam shot into the other's eyes. "D'ye ken what blasphemy is,
Mr. Horn-but?" he asked, shouldering a pace forward.
For the first time in the dispute the parson thought he was about to
score a point, and was calm accordingly.
"I should do; I fancy I've a specimen of the breed before me now. And
d'you know what impertinence is?"
"I should do; I fancy I've--I awd say it's what gentlemen aften are
unless their mammies whipped 'em as lads."
For a moment the parson looked as if about to seize his opponent and
shake him.
"M'Adam," he roared, "I'll not stand your insolences!"
The little man turned, scuttled indoors, and came runnng back with a
chair.
"Permit me!" he said blandly, holding it before him like a haircutter for
a customer.
The parson turned away. At the gap in the hedge he paused.
"I'll only say one thing more," he called slowly. "When your wife,
whom I think we all loved, lay dying in that room above you, she said
to you in my presence--"
It was M'Adam's turn to be angry. He made a step forward with burning
face.
"Aince and for a', Mr. Hornbut," he cried passionately, "onderstand I'll
not ha' you and yer likes lay yer tongues on ma wife's memory
whenever it suits ye. You can say what ye like aboot me--lies, sneers,
snash--and I'll say naethin'. I dinna ask ye to respect me; I think ye

might do sae muckle by her, puir lass. She never harmed ye. Gin ye
canna let her bide in peace where she lies doon yonder"-- he waved in
the direction of the churchyard-- "ye'll no come on ma land. Though
she is dead she's mine."
Standing in front of his house, with flushed face and big eyes, the little
man looked almost noble in his indignation. And the parson, striding
away down the hill, was uneasily conscious that with him was not the
victory.
Chapter III.
RED WULL
THE winter came and went; the lambing season was over, and spring
already shyly kissing the land. And the back of the year s work broken,
and her master well started on a fresh season, M'Adam's old collie,
Cuttie Sark, lay down one evening and passed quietly away.
The little black-and-tan lady, Parson Leggy used to say, had been the
only thing on earth M'Adam cared for. Certainly the two had been
wondrously devoted; and for many a market-day the Dalesmen missed
the shrill, chuckling cry which heralded the pair's approach: "Weel
done, Cuttie Sark!"
The little man felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented
his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose
forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A
wenomous one!" and "A