Bob Son of Battle | Page 5

to meet him with a fiery speed his sober gait belied. The two raced back together into the yard.
"Poor lad!" said Sam'l gloomily, regarding the newcomer.
"Poor heart!" muttered Tammas. While the Master's face softened visibly. Yet there looked little to pity in this jolly, rocking lad with the tousle of light hair and fresh, rosy countenance.
"G'mornin', Mister Moore! Morn'n, Tammas! Morn'n, Sam'l!" he panted as he passed; and ran on through the hay-carpeted yard, round the corner of the stable, and into the house.
In the kitchen, a long room with red-tiled floor and latticed windows, a woman, white-aproned and frail-faced, was bustling about her morning business. To her skirts clung a sturdy, bare-legged boy; while at the oak table in the centre of the room a girl with brown eyes and straggling hair was seated before a basin of bread and milk.
"So yo've coom at last, David!" the woman cried, as the boy entered; and, bending, greeted him with a tender, motherly salutation, which he returned as affectionately. "I welly thowt yo'd forgot us this mornin'. Noo sit you' doon beside oor Maggie." And soon he, too, was engaged in a task twin to the girl's.
The two children munched away in silence, the little bare-legged boy watching them, the while, critically. Irritated by this prolonged stare, David at length turned on him.
"Weel, little Andrew," he said, speaking in that paternal fashion in which one small boy loves to address another. "Weel, ma little lad, yo'm coomin' along gradely." He leant back in his chair the better to criticise his subject. But Andrew, like all the Moores, slow of speech, preserved a stolid silence, sucking a chubby thumb, and regarding his patron a thought cynically.
David resented the expression on the boy's countenance, and half rose to his feet.
"Yo' put another face on yo', Andrew Moore," he cried threateningly, "or I'll put it for yo'."
Maggie, however, interposed opportunely.
"Did yo' feyther beat yo' last night?" she inquired in a low voice; and there was a shade of anxiety in the soft brown eyes.
"Nay," the boy answered; "he was a-goin' to, but he never did. Drunk," he added in explanation.
"What was he goin' to beat yo' for, David?" asked Mrs. Moore.
"What for? Why, for the fun o't--to see me squiggle, "the boy replied, and laughed bitterly.
"Yo' shouldna speak so o' your dad, David," reproved the other as severely as was in her nature.
"Dad! a fine dad! I'd dad him an I'd the chance, " the boy muttered beneath his breath. Then, to turn the conversation:
"Us should he startin', Maggie," he said, and going to the door. "Bob! Owd Bob, lad! Ar't coomin' along?" he called.
The gray dog came springing up like an antelope, and the three started off for school together.
Mrs. Moore stood in the doorway, holding Andrew by the hand, and watched the departing trio.
"'Tis a pretty pair, Master, surely," she said softly to her husband, who came up at the moment.
"Ay, he'll be a fine lad if his feyther'll let him," the tall man answered.
"Tis a shame Mr. M'Adam should lead him such a life," the woman continued indignantly. She laid a hand on her husband's arm, and looked up at him coaxingly.
"Could yo' not say summat to un, Master, think 'ee? Happen he'd 'tend to you," she pleaded. For Mrs. Moore imagined that there could be no one but would gladly heed what James Moore, Master of Kenmuir, might say to him. "He's not a bad un at bottom, I do believe," she continued. "He never took on so till his missus died. Eh, but he was main fond o' her."
Her husband shook his head "Nay, mother," he said "'Twould nob' but mak' it worse for t' lad. M'Adam'd listen to no one, let alone me." And, indeed, he was right; for the tenant of the Grange made no secret of his animosity for his straight-going, straight-speaking neighbor.
Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the larch-copse bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now he crept stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind the water-butt.
How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap till that gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence; how he ran the roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a portly sow, mother of many, is of no account.
At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice arrested him.
"Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we lamed you yo' letters."
So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,--Bob, son of Battle, last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.
Chapter II.
A SON OF HAGAR
It is a lonely country, that about the Wastreldale.
Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the