er's heat.

"Ye're right, Mr. Hornbut, as ye aye are. But my argiment is this: that
I get at his soul best through his leetle carcase."

The honest parson brought down his stick with an angry thud.

"M'Adam, you're a brute--a brute!" he shouted. At which outburst the
little man was seized with a spasm of silent merriment.

"A fond dad first, a brute afterward, aiblins--he! he! Ah, Mr. Hornbut!
ye 'ford me vast diversion, ye do indeed, 'my loved, my honored,
much-respected friend."

"If you paid as much heed to your boy's welfare as you do to the bad
poetry of that profligate ploughman--"

An angry gleam shot into the other's eyes. "D'ye ken what blasphemy is,
Mr. Hornbut?" he asked, shouldering a pace forward.

For the first time in the dispute the parson thought he was about to
score a point, and was calm accordingly.

"I should do; I fancy I've a specimen of the breed before me now. And
d'you know what impertinence is?"

"I should do; I fancy I've--I awd say it's what gentlemen aften are
unless their mammies whipped 'em as lads."

For a moment the parson looked as if about to seize his opponent and
shake him.

"M'Adam," he roared, "I'll not stand your insolences!"

The little man turned, scuttled indoors, and came running back with a
chair.

"Permit me!" he said blandly, holding it before him like a haircutter
for a customer.

The parson turned away. At the gap in the hedge he paused.

"I'll only say one thing more," he called slowly. "When your wife, whom
I think we all loved, lay dying in that room above you, she said to you
in my presence--"

It was M'Adam's turn to be angry. He made a step forward with burning
face.

"Aince and for a', Mr. Hornbut," he cried passionately, "onderstand I'll
not ha' you and yer likes lay yer tongues on ma wife's memory whenever
it suits ye. You can say what ye like aboot me--lies, sneers, snash--and
I'll say naethin'. I dinna ask ye to respect me; I think ye might do sae
muckle by her, puir lass. She never harmed ye. Gin ye canna let her bide
in peace where she lies doon yonder"--he waved in the direction of the
churchyard--"ye'll no come on ma land. Though she is dead she's mine."

Standing in front of his house, with flushed face and big eyes, the
little man looked almost noble in his indignation. And the parson,
striding away down the hill, was uneasily conscious that with him was
not the victory.

Chapter III. RED WULL

THE winter came and went;