Cleg had betaken himself to the class of Miss Robina Semple, an excellent maiden lady of much earnestness and vigour. She was so busy explaining the Scripture lesson, that she did not at first observe the addition to the number of her scholars in the wholly undesirable person of Master Kelly. The lesson was the parable of the lame man at the pool of Siloam. Now in Miss Semple's class there was a lame boy named Chris Cullen. He sat listening with strained attention and invincible eagerness to every word which fell from his teacher. Cleg, to whom all lessons were much alike, listened also—chiefly, it may be, because he saw the reflection of an angel's smile on the face of the lame boy, Chris Cullen. "What gars ye hearken like that, Chris?" whispered Cleg, with some anxiety. Only the news of a prize fight would have brought such an expression of interest to his own face, or (it might be) the announcement that his father had got ten years. "It's aboot a man that got a dook, an' then he could walk!" said Chris, speaking hurriedly over his shoulder, being anxious not to miss a word. "What hindered him to dook afore?" asked Cleg. "He couldna get doon to the water-edge," said Chris. "Was the bobby there?" persisted Cleg, to whom the limit of where he might not go or might not do coincided with the beat of the officers of Her Majesty's peace. "_Wheesht!_" interjected Chris Cullen, "she's telling it the noo!" For the lame boy, his teacher existed for this purpose alone. The calm, high voice of Miss Robina Semple went on—Robina Semple, whom some called "a plain old maid"— "And so the poor man, who had no one to carry him down to the edge when the angel troubled the water, had to stay where he was, and somebody else got in before him! Are you not sorry for him?" "Never heed, Chris Cullen," broke in Cleg, "I'll cairry ye doon on my back mysel'! There's naebody will daur to hinder ye dookin' in ony dub ye like, when I'm cairryin' ye!" Cleg Kelly was certainly acquiring, by contact if in no other way, certain Christian ideas. For the rest he was still frankly pagan. Now at this particular date Hunker Court Sabbath school was run under a misapprehension. It was the idea of the superintendent that a little sugared advice would tame the young savages of the courts and wynds. Hence the hour of instruction was largely taken up with confused sound and fury. Samson would have been wiser if he had suborned a prize-fighter of good moral principles to teach the young idea of Hunker Court how to shoot head foremost out at the door. Under these circumstances it is conceivable that some good might have been done. But as it was, under the placid consulship of Samson Langpenny, teachers and scholars alike had a good deal of physical exercise of an interesting and healthful sort. But the moral and religious improvement was certainly to seek.