Bonny knew well what was on his lap--a cleverly-plaited hare-wire. Bottler had shown him how to do it, and now he was practising diligently, under the auspices of his first hat. Mr. Hales was a “beak,” of course; and the aquiline beak of the neighbourhood. Bonny had the honour of his acquaintance, in that fierce aspect, and in no other. The little boy knew that there was a church, and that great people went there once a-week, for still greater people to blow them up. But this only made him the more uneasy, to clap his bright eyes on the parson. “Hold there! whoa!” called the Rev. Struan, as Bonny for his life began to cut away; “boy, I want to talk to you.” Bonny was by no means touched with this very fine benevolence. Taking, perhaps, a low view of duty, he made the ground hot, to escape what we now call the “sacerdotal office.” But Struan Hales (unlike our parsons) knew how to manage the laity. He clapped himself and his pony, in no time, between Master Bonny and his hole, and then in calm dignity called a halt, with his riding-whip ready at his button-hole. “It is--it is--it is!” cried Bonny, coming back with his head on his chest, and meaning (in the idiom of the land) that now he was beaten, and would hold parley. “To be sure, it is!” the rector answered, keeping a good balance on his pony, and well pleased with his own tactics. He might have chased Bonny for an hour in vain, through the furze, and heather, and blackberries; but here he had him at his mercy quite, through his knowledge of human nature. To put it coarsely--as the rector did in his mental process haply--the bigger thief anybody is, the more sacred to him is his property. Not that Bonny was a thief at all; still, that was how Mr. Hales looked at it. In the flurry of conscience, the boy forgot that a camel might go through the eye of a needle with less exertion than the parish incumbent must use to get into the Bonny-castle. “Oh hoo, oh hoo, oh hoo!” howled Bonny, having no faith in clerical honour, and foreseeing the sack of his palace, and home. “Give me that wire,” said Mr. Hales, in a voice from the depth of his waistcoat. “Now, my boy, would you like to be a good boy?” “No, sir; no, sir; oh no, plaize, sir! Jack nor me couldn’t bear it, sir.” “Why not, my boy? It is such a fine thing. Your face shows that you are a sharp boy. Why do you go on living in a hole, and poaching, and picking, and stealing?” “Plaize, sir, I never steals nothin’, without it is somethin’ as don’t belong to me.” “That may be. But why should you steal even that? Shall I go in, and steal your things now?” “Oh hoo, oh hoo, oh hoo! Plaize, sir, I ha’n’t got nothin’ for ’e to steal.” “I am not at all sure of that,” said the rector, looking at the hermit’s hole longingly; “a thief’s den is often as good as the bank. Now, who taught you how to make this snare? I thought I knew them all pretty well; but this wire has a dodge quite new to me. Who taught you, you young scamp, this moment?”