meeting, she had a chance of interfering with success.

But ere Nancy, the servant, could follow with the spoons and plates,
Wattie Morrison had taken the tureen, and out of spite at Robert,
had emptied its contents on the head of Shargar, who was still tied
by the feet, with the words: 'Shargar, I anoint thee king over us,
and here is thy crown,' giving the tureen, as he said so, a push on
to his head, where it remained.

Shargar did not move, and for one moment could not speak, but the
next he gave a shriek that made Robert think he was far worse
scalded than turned out to be the case. He darted to him in rage,
took the tureen from his head, and, his blood being fairly up now,
flung it with all his force at Morrison, and felled him to the
earth. At the same moment the master entered by the street door and
his wife by the house door, which was directly opposite. In the
middle of the room the prisoners surrounded the fallen
tyrant--Robert, with the red face of wrath, and Shargar, with a
complexion the mingled result of tears, ink, and soup, which latter
clothed him from head to foot besides, standing on the outskirts of
the group. I need not follow the story farther. Both Robert and
Morrison got a lickin'; and if Mr. Innes had been like some
school-masters of those times, Shargar would not have escaped his
share of the evil things going.

>From that day Robert assumed the acknowledged position of Shargar's
defender. And if there was pride and a sense of propriety mingled
with his advocacy of Shargar's rights, nay, even if the relation was
not altogether free from some amount of show-off on Robert's part, I
cannot yet help thinking that it had its share in that development