He exercised—
Woodcraft.
Observation without being noticed.
Deduction.
Chivalry.
Sense of duty.
Endurance.
Kind-heartedness.
He little thought that the act which he did entirely of his own accord would years afterwards be held up as an example to you other boys in teaching you to do your duty. In the same way you should remember your acts may be watched by others after you, and taken as an example too. So try to do your duty the right way on all occasions.
Since writing down the above story I have visited the place, Stang's Cross, where the gibbet, with a wooden head hanging from it, still stands as a warning to evildoers. Some foolish people used to believe that toothache could be cured by rubbing the teeth with chips of wood cut from this gibbet, and used to come from miles round to get them. Mrs. Haldane, the mother of our present Secretary of State for War, remembers seeing the effigy of Winter hanging on the gibbet, and recalls with horror the doleful rattling of the chains on which it swung in the night wind on the lonely moor. The gibbet is known as "Winter's Stob."