ather,' the boy answered.

'I heard him makin' a boast this afternoon,' said Samson, rolling
bullyingly in his arm-chair, 'as you and him had fowt last holidays, and
as he gi'en you a hiding.'

Joe said nothing, but looked as if he expected the experience to be
repeated.

'Now, what ha' you got to say to that?' demanded his father.

'Why,' began Joe, edging back a little, 'he's bigger nor I be, an' six
months o'der.'

'Do you mean to tell me,' cried Samson, reaching out a hand and seizing
the little fellow by the jacket, 'do you mean to tell me as you allowed
to have enough to that young villin?'

'No,' Joe protested. 'That I niver did. It was the squire as parted us.'

'You remember this,' said his father, shaking him to emphasise the
promise. 'If ever you agree to tek a hiding from a Reddy you've got one
to follow on from me. D'ye hear?'

'Yes, father.'

'Tek heed as well as hear. D'ye hear?'

'Yes, father.'

'And here's another thing, mind you. It's brought to me as you and him
shook hands and took on to be friends with one another. Is that trew?'
Joe looked guilty, but made no answer. 'Is it trew?' Still Joe returned
no answer, and his father changing the hand with which he held him, for
his own greater convenience, knocked him off his feet, restored him
to his balance, knocked him off his feet again, and again settled him.
'Now,' said Samson, 'is it trew?'

The boy tried to recoil from the uplifted threatening hand, and cried
out 'No!'

'Now,' said Samson, rising with a grim satisfaction, 'that's a lie.
There's nothin' i' the world as I abhor from like a lie I'll teach thee
to tell me lies. Goo into the brewus and tek thy shirt off; March!'

The little girl clung to her mother's skirts crying and trembling. The
mother herself was trembling, and had turned pale.

'Hush, hush, my pretty,' she said, caressing the child, and averting her
eyes from Joe.

'March!' said Samson, and Joe slunk out of the room, hardening his heart
as well as might be for endurance. But when he was once out of sight of
the huge bullying figure and threatening eye and hand, the sight of his
cap lying upon a chair in the hall supplied him with an inspiration. He
seized the cap, slipped out at the front door, and ran.

The early winter night was falling fast by this time. Half a dozen stars
twinkled intermittently in the black-blue waste of sky, and when the lad
paused to listen for possible sounds of pursuit the hollow moa