Great in Edam and on all the banks of the Edam Water was Nipper Donnan, the King of the Smoutchies.
And it was into his hard, rough, unclean hands that our brave General Napoleon had fallen. Now Nipper had been reared in special hatred of the Smiths of Windy Standard. Mr. Picton Smith it was who, long ago at Edam Fair, as a young man, had interfered with Drover Donnan, when he was just settling to "polish off" a soft, good-natured shepherd of the hills, whom he had failed to cheat out of the price of his "blackfaces." Mr. Picton Smith it was who on the same occasion had sentenced the riotous drover to "thirty days without the option of a fine." He it was in times more recent who had been the means of getting the Black Bull shut up, upon the oft-repeated complaint of the Chief Constable.
And so all this heritage of hatred was now to be worked off on the son of the gentleman by the son of the bully. Of course it might just as well have been the other way about, for there is no absolute heredity in Smoutchydom. The butcher might easily have been the gentleman, and the landlord's son the Smoutchy bully; only to Hugh John's cost, on this occasion it happened to be the other way about.
The lads who followed Nipper Donnan were mostly humble admirers—some more cruel, some less, but sworn Smoutchies to a man, and all afraid to interfere with the fierce pleasures of their chief. Indeed, so absolute was Captain Nipper Donnan, that there never was a time when some of his band did not bear the marks of his attentions.
CHAPTER XVII
BEFORE THE INQUISITION.