'No more a boy than you were, Rhys, when you first tried to fill your dead father's place, and told your mother you were "old enough to do your duty." Have you forgotten that? Or are you younger than you were then?'
Whether he had forgotten, or did not choose to remember, he turned off with a light laugh, and the remark, 'I'm not doing my duty in idling here.'
But conscience is a mill that grinds at all hours, and unsought, and Robert Jones had set the wheels in motion.
'Willem,' said the peat-cutter to the depressed boy, just before he cracked his whip to set his unloaded team in motion downhill, 'if you build up your life as well as you have built up your garden wall, you'll do. It is firm and compact, and the stones are set evenly together. But strife between brothers is a bad foundation to build upon. And it is not for a lad of your age to be unruly, and oppose the brother who has so long been working for all of you. There is time enough before you to build walls or churches, or what you will; but you have none to lose if you would bind the bond of brotherhood around you, or lay the foundation of a Christian life, look you.'
William's eyes brightened, and his chest expanded under his Saturday's sullied smock-frock, as his early friend commended his handiwork, for
'Praise is pleasanter than honey,'
and hitherto he had not been cloyed with the sweetmeat. But his aspect changed. He did not relish the bitter dose of advice mingled with the honey, for his whole soul was in rebellion.
Yet, swift and sharp as the man's whip crack, memory brought back those other words to the same purport the stranger, Mr. Morris, had spoken long ago, and every hoof-beat of mule or ass seemed to hammer them into his brain.
Far down the steep hill were beasts and driver before William roused from his reverie, and rushed after them, shouting as he went. The man turned.
'What is it, Willem?'