As he went along the familiar road, his grief broke out afresh. Almost every object reminded him of his best friend, who was gone, and would never, never come again. He lingered awhile with a strange, melancholy feeling over the ruins of the chaffinch's nest that still lay on the road. There was one object, however, that he could not face, and that was the cruel loch which had drowned his friend; and to escape it he went round by the Myre Farm, and down the links. Then as he came near the village, the thought suddenly flashed across his brain: What if Bob should be there, if he should have recovered, and, for some reason, gone to school by another way, and should be sitting waiting for him? But alas! no such joyful experience awaited him, but another of a very different kind.
There is a set of well-meaning but narrow-minded Christians, who take a very paltry view of God's government of this vast and complicated universe. They imagine that every calamity is a judgment, that it is the punishment of some particular sin, and that this sin can be identified. They are also convinced that it is their duty to call attention to this calamity, and hold it up as a warning to their fellow-men. And this they call "sanctifying the dispensation of Providence." Mr Sloan was one of these; and when Willie entered, he was beginning to read to his awestruck scholars a speech which his minister, the Rev. Mr Moodie, of the Original Protesting Church, had prepared for him:
"They were met," he said, "under the gloom of a sad calamity. One of their number, while playing by the loch side on the Fast Day, had been drowned. His heart bled for the poor boy cut off in the springtime of his days. But while he owed a duty to the dead, he also owed a duty to the living. He had now to tell them that God was reading to them a terrible warning. Had this unfortunate boy been attending to his duty, had he been at church, had he been observing the day set apart by God's own people, he would still have been in the land of the living and the place of hope. As it was, the punishment fell upon him in the midst of his sin, and without any time for repentance he was sent before the Great Judge. It was an awful thought, but if they believed the Bible it was a thought that they could not help having, that their unfortunate schoolmate was now bitterly repenting his neglect of ordinances in the place of woe."
At the sound of these last three words, horror fell upon the young listeners, and a childish voice was heard calling out, "It's a lee."
"Who said that?" cried the master, white with rage.
"William Torrance," cried the officious Christopher Bain, in a tone of exultation; and, seizing the culprit by the collar, he dragged him forward.
The master took the child by the throat, and shook him. "Now, sir! do you know what you are saying? you are calling, not only my word, by the Word of God a lie. Do you still say that what I said was a lie?"
"It's no true," said Willie, with flashing eyes, and a look of determination on his childish features.
"Then," said the master, taking off his coat and pulling out the tawse, "I must punish you, first for the offence, and then I must flog you till you express your regret for what you have said."