In earlier days, the far back days of youth, I knew a rustic whose square and thick-set figure was a picture of his sturdy and indomitable mind. He was slow of speech and slow also of mind, but what he knew he held with the grip of a vice and he would yield nothing in conversation. If you said it was raining (when it might be pouring) he would reply that it was showery. If you declared a field of com to be fine he said that he had seen “waur” (worse), and if you praised a sermon he granted that it wasna bad; and in referring to a minister distinguished throughout the land for his saintliness he volunteered the judgment that there was “naething positively veecious in him.” Many a time did I try, sometimes to browbeat him, and sometimes to beguile him into a positive statement and to get him to take up a position from which he could not withdraw. I was always beaten, and yet once I was within an ace of success. We had bought a horse on the strength of a good character from a dealer, and were learning the vanity of speech in all horse transactions, for there was nothing that beast did not do of the things no horse ought to do, and one morning after it had tried to get at James with its hind legs, and then tried to bring him down with its fore legs, had done its best to bite him, and also manoeuvred to crush him against a wall, I hazarded the suggestion that our new purchase was a vicious brute. He caught the note of assurance in my voice, and saw that he had been trapped; he cast an almost pathetic look at me as if I was inviting him to deny his national character and betray a historic part of unbroken resistance. He hesitated and looked for a way of escape while he skilfully warded off another attack, this time with the teeth, and his face brightened. “Na!” he replied, “I'll no admit that the horse is veecious, we maun hae more experience o' him afore we can pass sic a judgment, but”--and now he just escaped a playful tap from the horse's fore-leg--“I'm prepared to admit that this momin' he is a wee thingie liteegious.” And so victory was snatched from my hand, and I was again worsted.