when he remarked one day at the Arms: "Masel', I aye prefaire the
good man who does no go to church, to the bad man who does. But
then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm peculiar."

The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager
credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson
Leggy determined to bring him to task on the matter.

Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old
minister, with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no
truck with the man who never went to church, was perpetually in
liquor, and never spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon
the interview fully resolved not to be betrayed into an unworthy
expression of feeling; rather to appeal to the little man's better
nature.

The conversation had not been in progress two minutes, however,
before he knew that, where he had meant to be calmly persuasive,
he was fast become hotly abusive.

"You, Mr. Hornbut, wi' James Moore to help ye, look after the
lad's soul, I'll see to his body," the little man was saying.

The parson's thick gray eyebrows lowered threateningly over his
eyes.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk like that. Which
d'you think the more important, soul or body? Oughtn't you, his
father, to be the very first to care for the boy's soul? If not, who
should? Answer me, sir."