The boy, who had no affection for his dog, left him with the greatest unconcern when he saw what had happened, and, finding himself hungry, sat down by the wayside to eat his dinner.  He had not long been there before a poor blind man came groping his way out with a couple of sticks.  “Good morning to you,” said the boy.  “Pray did you see a little girl come this road with a basket of eggs upon her head, dressed in a green gown, with a straw hat upon her head?” “God bless you, master!” said the beggar, “I am so blind I can see nothing, either in heaven above or in the earth below.  I have been blind these twenty years, and they call me ‘poor old blind Richard.’”

Though the poor old man was such an object of charity and compassion, yet the little boy determined, as usual, to play him some trick, and as he was a great liar and deceiver, he spoke to him thus:  “Poor old Richard, I am heartily sorry for you with all my heart.  I am just eating my breakfast, and if you will sit down by me I will give you part, and feed you myself.”  “Thank you with all my heart!” said the poor man; “and if you will give me your hand I will sit by you with great pleasure, my dear good little master.”

The little boy then gave him his hand, and, pretending to direct him, guided him to sit down in a large heap of wet mud that lay by the roadside.  “There,” said he, “now you are nicely seated I am going to feed you.”  So, taking a little of the dirt in his fingers, he was going to put it into the blind man’s mouth; but the man, who now perceived the trick that had been played him, made a sudden snap at his fingers, and getting them between his teeth bit them so severely that the wicked boy roared out for mercy, and promised never more to be guilty of such wickedness.  At last the blind man, after he had put him to very severe pain, consented to let him go, saying as he went:  “Are you not ashamed, you little scoundrel, to attempt to do hurt to those who have never injured you, and to want to add to the suffering of those who already are sufficiently miserable?  Although you escape now, be assured, sir, that if you do not repent and mend your manners, you will meet with a severe punishment for your bad behavior.”

One would think that this punishment would have cured him entirely of this mischievous disposition, but, unfortunately nothing is so difficult to overcome as bad habits that have been long indulged.  He had not gone far before he saw a lame beggar that had just made a shift to support himself by the means of a couple of sticks.  The beggar asked him to give him something, and the mischievous little boy, pulling out his sixpence, threw it down before him, as if he intended to make him a present of it; but while the poor man was stooping with difficulty to pick it up, the wicked little boy knocked the stick away, by which means the beggar fell down upon his face; and then snatching up the sixpence, the little boy ran away laughing very heartily at the accident.