rom a week's holiday and
found the people of the North Free Kirk mourning in the streets over
their minister, because he was dying of diphtheria, and his young wife
asking grace to give her husband up if it were the will of God, Manley
went to the house in a whirlwind of indignation, declaring that to call
a sore throat diphtheria was a tempting of Providence, and that it was a
mere mercy that they hadn't got the real disease "just for a judgment."
It happened, however, that his treatment was exactly the same as that
for diphtheria, and although he remarked that he didn't know whether it
was necessary for him to come back again for such an ordinary case, he
did drop in by a series of accidents twice a day for more than a week;
and although no one dared to whisper it in his presence, there are
people who think to this day that the minister had diphtheria. As
Manley, however, insisted that it was nothing but a sore throat, the
minister felt bound to get better, and the whole congregation would have
thanked Manley in a body had it not been that he would have laughed
aloud. Many a boy remembered the day when he had been ill and sweating
with terror lest he should die--although he wouldn't have said that to
any living creature--and Manley had come in like a breeze of fresh air,
and declared that he was nothing but a "skulking young dog," with
nothing wrong about him, except the desire to escape for three days from
Bulldog.

"Well, Jimmie, ye don't deserve it, for you're the most mischievous
little rascal, except Peter McGuffie, in the whole of Muirtown; but I'll
give you three days in bed, and your mother will let you have something
nice to eat, and then out you go and back to the Seminary," and going
out of the door Manley would turn round and shake his fist at the bed,
"just a trick, nothing else." It might be three weeks before the boy was
out of bed, but he was never afraid again, and had some heart to fight
his disease.

Boys are not fools, and the Seminary knew that, if Manley had allowed
death to be even mentioned in connexion with Bulldog, it was more than
likely that they would never see the master of the mathematical
department again. And boys are a perfect absurdity, for--as sure as
death--they were not glad. Bulldog had thrashed them all, or almost
all, with faithfulness and perseverance, and some of them he had
thrashed many times; he had never petted any of them, and never more
than six times, perhaps, said a