“Ay, John, I’m glad you remember me; but I have better cause to remember you, for you once nearly knocked out my brains with a rake when I was crawling through the manse beech-hedge to get at the minister’s rasps.  Oh, yes, you did, John!  You hated small boys, you know.  And specially, John, you hated me.  Nor can I help thinking that, after all, taking a conjunct and dispassionate view of your circumstances, as we say in the Presbytery, your warmth of feeling was entirely unwarranted.  ’Thae loons—­they’re the plague o’ my life!’ you were wont to remark, after you had vainly engaged in the pleasure of the chase, having surprised us in some specially outrageous ploy.

“Once only, John, did you bring your stout ash ‘rung’ into close proximity to the squirming body that now sits by your fireside.  You have forgotten it, I doubt not, John, among the hosts of other similar applications.  But the circumstance dwells longer in the mind of your junior, by reason of the fact that for many days he took an interest in the place where he sat down.  He even thought of writing to the parochial authorities to ask why they did not cushion the benches of the parish school.

“You have no manner of doot, you say, John, that I was richly deserving of it?  There you are right, and in the expression I trace some of the old John who used to keep us so strictly in our places.  You’re still in the old house, I rejoice to see, John, and you are likely to be.  What! the laird has given it to you for your life, and ten pound a year?  And the minister gives you free firing, and with the bit you’ve laid by you’ll juik the puirhoose yet?  Why, man, that’s good hearing!  You are a rich man in these bad times!  Na, na, John, us Halmyre lads wad never see you gang there, had your ‘rung’ been twice as heavy.

“Do ye mind o’ that day ye telled the maister on us?  There was Joe Craig, that was lost somewhere in the China seas; Sandy Young, that’s something in Glasgow; Tam Simpson, that died in the horrors o’ drink; and me—­and ye got us a’ a big licking.  It was a frosty morning, and ye waylaid the maister on his way to the school, and the tawse were nippier than ordinar’ that mornin’.  No, John, it wasna me that was the ringleader.  It was Joe Craig, for ye had clooted his lugs the night before for knockin’ on your window wi’ a pane o’ glass, and then letting it jingle in a thousand pieces on the causeway.  Ye chased him doon the street and through the lang vennel, and got him in Payne’s field.  Ye brocht him back by the cuff o’ the neck, an’ got a polisman to come to see the damage.  An’ when ye got to the window there wasna a hole in’t, nor a bit o’ gless to be seen, for Sandy Young had sooped it a’ up when ye were awa’ after Joe Craig.

“Then the polisman said, ’If I war you, John, I wadna gang sae muckle to the Cross Keys—­yer heid’s no as strong as it was, an’ the minister’s sure to hear o’t!’ This was mair than mortal could stan’, so ye telled the polisman yer opinion o’ him and his forebears, and attended to Joe Craig’s lugs, baith at the same time.