The Deemster

, gracious, quiet-a tall fair-haired maiden of twenty, with a drooping head like a flower, with a voice soft and low, and the full blue eyes with their depths of love and sympathy shaded by long flut

nting his daughter. As for Ewan, he had falsified every hope of the Deemster. His Spartan training had gone for nothing. He was physically a weakling; a tall spare youth of two-and-twenty, fair-haired, like his sister, with a face as s

aw he would not go, and the Church he was resolved to follow. The Bishop had then newly opened at Bishop's Court a training college for his clergy, and Ewan sought and obtained admission. The Deemster fumed, but his son was not to be moved even by his w

his father's old foe, the vicar of the parish. When knowledge of this act of unwisdom reached the Deemster his last remaining spark of interest in his son expired, and he sent Mona across to Bishop's Court

people for six generations, the place where he himself had been born, t

, a yet fairer vision of the old days coming back to him hour by hour, but he saw nothing of all that. Disappointed in his sole hope, his son, whom truly he had never loved for love's sake, but only for his own sorry ambitions, he sat down under his disappointment a doubly soured and thrice-hardened man. He had grown noticeably older, but his restless energy

was Dan in the heart of it. "Aw, and middling few could come anigh him," the people used to say. But more than in Dan's great stature and great strength, the little Deemster took a bitter pleasure in his daring irreverence for things held sacred. In this regard Dan had not improved with improving years. Scores of tricks his sad pugnacity devised to help the farmers to cheat the parson of his tithe, and it added not a little to the Dee

conscientious intention of dealing with the Bishop's son as he would deal with any other. The examination took place in the library of Bishop's Court, and besides the students and the examiner there were some six or seven of the cle

think you can read

e had never thought

ou have an idea that you know it well e

an idea on

magine that I'm your pupil, and proce

the bookcase and fumb

n at the parabl

id his best to find the place. "So I'm to be t

t is

re to be t

e yourself my tut

nxiety. "Is not that a rather difficult s

over his grandson lof

s hand toward Dan, and at that he sat down in th

inkle. He was standing before the table with the Greek Testament open at t

ge places, Archd

you are now the tutor-I

con's silver-tipped walking-cane which lay on the table and brought it down again wit

nts of blue at that moment, but he rose to his

"first read me the

h other's faces. The Archdeacon's expression was no

n a tone of mild condescension-"a few fals

this is going too far,"

Dan, with a look of

d some protested in white wrath, and the end of it all was that the examination came to a sudden terminatio

et wider apart in the lives and fortunes of their children. Each felt that the other was frustrating his dearest expectations in his son, and that was an offense that neither could forgive. To the Deemster it seemed that the Bishop was bearing down every ambition of his life, tearing him up as a naked trunk, leaving him a childless man. To the Bishop it s

ds, they had screamed at the sea-gulls with one voice, and still they were boy and girl together. But once they were stooking the barley in the glebe, and, the day being hot, Mona tipped back her white sun-bonnet, and it fell on to her shoulders. Seeing this, Dan came stealthily behind and thought very craftily to whisk it away unobserved; but the strings by which it was tied caught in her hair and tugged at its knot, and the beautiful wavy shower fell rip-rip-rippling d

doing, behold, there were Mona's rosy lips under

king disgrace as a duck takes water, and losing the trace of it as easily. Twenty times he stood between the scapegrace and the Bishop, twenty times he hid from the good father the follies of the son. He thought for that thoughtless head that never had an ache or a care under its abundant curls; he hoped

-Ewan's love and temper and Dan's heedless harshness and the great nature be

e qualities grew as he grew in years, and one day Dan went on a long journey, leaving Derry behind, and when he returned he had another dog with him, a great shaggy Scotch collie, with bright eyes, a happy phiz, and a huge bush of a tail. Derry was at the gate when his master came home, and he eyed the new-comer with looks askance. From that day Derry turned his back on his master, he would never answer his call, and he did not know his whistle from the croak of a corn-

ep together and take them out at the gate in the shortest time. Ewan, then newly married, was there, and beside him was his child-wife. Time was called, and Dan's turn came to try the mettle of his Laddie. The dog started well, and in two or three minutes he had driven the whole flock save two into an alcove of hurdles close to where Ewan and his wife stood together. Then at the word of his

ho was a perch or two up the meadow, turned round and saw what had happened, and that his dog'

e it with your lu

sion Ewan explained how D

rker with wrath than i

ed in a sneer. He turned to the people aro

es of every one had been on the two straggle

pealed to strangers as witness to his word, his fa

came Derry again, his muzzle on his snout, whisking his tail, and fris

e turned to a great pallor, an

uzzle," he said, "but who ever heard

s were aflame, but for an instant he conquered his emotions and said, with a constrained

e told me a lie," he said, and hi

his head down, his very heart surging itself out of his choking breast. And, as he passed through the throng, to carry away from that scene the madness that was working in his brain, he overheard the mocking comment

of his wife, and, quivering from

voice that was like a cry. "Now, you shall prove

ely carried aw

ive, the young parzon!" the peopl

ces of the people. In another instant his eyes were swimming in tears; he took a step toward Ewan, flung his arms about him, and buried his head i

latherskites!" "Och, man ali

und, raised himself to his full he

on't fight my cousin, and he shan't fight me; but if there's a man among you woul

n budged