it was;
but that didn't make very much difference, because we were old and
could stand it, and as for you--the less said the better.

But not so with "Dodd."

Here was where the harm came in, you wicked man. You evolved the lying
element of this boy's nature. Heaven knows that he had enough of this
naturally, as I have plainly stated in the early chapters of this
story; but you forced a hot-bed growth out of the seeds of falsehood
that were lying dormant in "Dodd's" young mind.

Amy Kelly had covered these up, under the foundation walls of truth, so
deep that if you had built on what she started the germs would have
died where they lay. But no, you threw down the square blocks that Amy
had laid with so much care; you spread the dung of deception over the
dying seeds, and by the help of the unnatural heat which this foulness
generated, brooding down from above, you sprouted the germs of untruth
in the boy's soul, and set a-growing plants whose roots run down into
hell!

You taught "Dodd" Weaver to believe that a lie was better than the
truth; that it would serve him better; bring him more glory; make him
stand better in the eyes of his fellows, and that no one could find him
out in all this trickery and deception.

"Dodd" learned in your school; O, yes; he learned that which it took
him many years to forget, and you are to blame for it. Some day I hope
you may be compelled to face that lying old record of yours and that
lightning flashes of guilt may be made to blaze into your treacherous
eyes from out those pages that looked so clean when you showed them
off, while the thunder of outraged truth rolls about your head till
your teeth chatter in your mouth and your bones shake in your deceitful
skin.

You see things must be made even somehow, and somewhere, and such a
sinner as you have been deserves all this and more too.

Then, there was Mr. Sharp, who kept green and growing the shoots that
Mr. Sliman had sprouted. "Attendance" was Mr. Sharp's hobby. He kept
a blackboard in the front hall of his school house, where it would be
the first thing any one would see when he came into the building, and
on this he scored the record of attendance every day.

There was no harm in that, I am sure; but then, this teacher used to
keep the clock a little slower than town time, and besides, be had a
way of ringing bells and bells at morning and at noon, and of not
counting as tardy any one who got into the building any