neighbours because he was
too clever for them and kept on getting richer. His hard side was for
the world and his soft side for his family. Not that he was really
soft in any respect. He had had to fight his life-battle alone,
beginning with nothing, and the many hard knocks had hardened him, but
the few who knew him best could testify to the warm Irish heart that
continued unchanged within him, albeit it was each year farther
from the surface. His manners, even in the house, were abrupt and
masterful. There was no mistaking his orders, and no excuse for not
complying with them. To his children when infants, and to his wife
only, he was always tender, and those who saw him cold and grasping,
overreaching the sharpers of the grain market, would scarcely have
recognized the big, warm-hearted happy-looking father at home an hour
later when he was playing horse with his baby daughter or awkwardly
paying post-graduate court to his smiling wife.

He had little "eddication," could hardly read, and was therefore
greatly impressed with the value of "book larnin'," and determined
that his own children should have the "best that money could git in
that line," which probably meant that they should read fluently. His
own reading was done on Sunday mornings, when he painfully spelled out
the important items in a weekly paper; "important" meant referring
to the produce market or the prize ring, for he had been known and
respected as a boxer, and dearly loved the exquisite details of the
latest bouts. He used to go to church with his wife once a month to
please her, and thought it very unfair therefore that she should take
no interest in his favourite hobby--the manly art.

Although hard and even brutal in his dealings with men, he could not
bear to see an animal ill used. "The men can holler when they're hurt,
but the poor dumb baste has no protection." He was the only farmer in
the country that would not sell or shoot a worn-out horse. "The poor
brute has wurruked hard an' hez airned his kape for the rest av his
days." So Duncan, Jerry and several others were "retired" and lived
their latter days in idleness, in one case for more than ten years.

Raften had thrashed more than one neighbour for beating a horse, and
once, on interfering, was himself thrashed, for he had the ill-luck to
happen on a prizefighter. But that had no lasting effect on him. He
continued to champion the dumb brute in his own brutal way.

Among the neighbour