Bob, Son of Battle Part 8

"None o' that, James Moore.--David, what d'ye say?"

David looked up into his protector's face.

"Yo'd best go wi' your feyther, lad," said the Master at last, thickly.

The boy hesitated, and clung tighter to the shielding arm; then he walked slowly over to his father.

A bitter smile spread over the little man's face as he marked this new test of the boy's obedience to the other.

"To obey his frien' he foregoes the pleasure o' disobeyin' his father,"

he muttered. "n.o.ble!" Then he turned homeward, and the boy followed in his footsteps.

James Moore and the gray dog stood looking after them.

"I know yo'll not pay off yer spite agin me on the lad's head, M'Adam,"

he called, almost appealingly.

"I'll do ma duty, thank ye, James Moore, wi'oot respect o' persons," the little man cried back, never turning.

Father and son walked away, one behind the other, like a man and his dog, and there was no word said between them. Across the Stony Bottom, Red Wull, scowling with bared teeth at David, joined them. Together the three went up the bill to the Grange.

In the kitchen M'Adam turned.

"Noo, I'm gaein' to gie ye the gran'est thrashin' ye iver dreamed of.

Tak' aff yer coat!"

The boy obeyed, and stood up in his thin shirt, his face white and set as a statue's. Red Wull seated himself on his haunches close by, his ears p.r.i.c.ked, licking his lips, all attention.

The little man suppled the great ash-plant in his hands and raised it.

But the expression on the boy's face arrested his arm.

"Say ye're sorry and I'll let yer aff easy."

"I'll not."

"One mair chance--yer last! Say yer 'shamed o' yerself'!"

"I'm not."

The little man brandished his cruel, white weapon, and Red Wull shifted a little to obtain a better view.

"Git on wi' it," ordered David angrily.

The little man raised the stick again and--threw it into the farthest corner of the room.

It fell with a rattle on the floor, and M'Adam turned away.

"Ye're the pitifulest son iver a man had," he cried brokenly. "Gin a man's son dinna haud to him, wha can he expect to?--no one. Ye're ondootiful, ye're disrespectfu', ye're maist ilka thing ye shouldna be; there's but ae thing I thocht ye were not--a coward. And as to that, ye've no the pluck to say ye're sorry when, G.o.d knows, ye might be. I canna thrash ye this day. But ye shall gae nae mair to school. I send ye there to learn. Ye'll not learn--ye've learnt naethin' except disobedience to me--ye shall stop at hame and work."

His father's rare emotion, his broken voice and working face, moved David as all the stripes and jeers had failed to do. His conscience smote him. For the first time in his life it dimly dawned on him that, perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for complaint; that, perhaps, he was not a good son.

He half turned.

"Feyther--"

"Git oot o' ma sight!" M'Adam cried.

And the boy turned and went.

Chapter VI. A LICKING OR A LIE

THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and in one point only father and son resembled--industry. A drunkard M'Adam was, but a drone, no.

The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy; yet he could never satisfy his father.

The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.

"Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!" as the boy s.n.a.t.c.hed a hard-earned moment's rest. "You and I, Wullie, we'll brak' oorsel's slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs."

And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he sickened with weariness of it all.

In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that he was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally of a reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir. And it was only the thought of his friends there that withheld him. He could not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had in the world.

So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows and abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work was ended, he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony Bottom. And on Sundays and holidays--for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be his due--all day long, from c.o.c.k-crowing to the going down of the sun, he would pa.s.s at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness, and still held on his way.

Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him with a courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir two only ever dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and that not through David.

James Moore suspected something of it all, for he knew more of M'Adam than did the others. While Owd Bob knew it as did no one else. He could tell it from the touch of the boy's hand on his head; and the story was writ large upon his face for a dog to read. And he would follow the lad about with a compa.s.sion in his sad gray eyes greater than words.

David might well compare his gray friend at Kenmuir with that other at the Grange.

The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny, lion-like yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the k.n.o.b-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs'

h.e.l.l. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus, and Van Tromp.

Nor, in the matter of war, did he confine himself to his own kind.

His huge strength and indomitable courage made him the match of almost anything that moved. Long Kirby once threatened him with a broomstick; the smith never did it again. While in the Border Ram he attacked Big Bell, the Squire's underkeeper, with such murderous fury that it took all the men in the room to pull him off.

More than once had he and Owd Bob essayed to wipe out mutual memories, Red Wull, in this case only, the aggressor. As yet, however, while they fenced a moment for that deadly throat-grip, the value of which each knew so well, James Moore had always seized the chance to intervene.

"That's right, hide him ahint yer petticoats," sneered M'Adam on one of these occasions.

"Hide? It'll not be him I'll hide, I warn you, M'Adam," the Master answered grimly, as he stood, twirling his good oak stick between the would-be duellists. Whereat there was a loud laugh at the little man's expense.

It seemed as if there were to be other points of rivalry between the two than memories. For, in the matter of his own business--the handling of sheep--Red Wull bid fair to be second only throughout the Daleland to the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. And M'Adam was patient and painstaking in the training of his Wullie in a manner to astonish David. It would have been touching, had it not been so unnatural in view of his treatment of his own blood, to watch the tender carefulness with which the little man moulded the dog beneath his hands. After a promising display he would stand, rubbing his palms together, as near content as ever he was.

"Weel done, Wullie! Weel done. Bide a wee and we'll show 'em a thing or two, you and I, Wullie.