So when the school broke up, and the children were scattering over the road and water-meads, the wide-mouthed boy came up to Jan and snatched his slate from him. “Give Jan his slate!” cried Jan, indignantly. He was five years old, but the other was seven, and he held the slate above his head. “And who be _Jan_, then, thee little gallus-bird?” said he, tauntingly. “I be Jan!” answered the little fellow, defiantly. “Jan Lake, the miller’s son. Give I his slate!” “Thee’s not a miller’s son,” said the other; and the rest of the children began to gather round. “I be a miller’s son,” reiterated Jan. “And I’ve got a miller’s thumb, too;” and he turned up his little thumb for confirmation of the fact. “Thee’s not a miller’s son,” repeated the other, with a grin. “Thee’s nobody’s child, thee is. Master Lake’s not thy vather, nor Mrs. Lake bean’t thy mother. Thee was brought to the mill in a sack of grist, thee was.” In saying which, the boy repeated a popular version of Jan’s history. If any one had been present outside Dame Datchett’s cottage at that moment who had been in the windmill when Jan first came to it, he would have seen a likeness so vivid between the face of the child and the face of the man who brought him to the mill as would have seemed to clear up at least one point of the mystery of his parentage. Pride and wrath convulsed every line of the square, quaint face, and seemed to narrow it to the likeness of the man’s, as, with his black eyes blazing with passion, Jan flew at his enemy. The boy still held Jan’s slate on high, and with a derisive “haw! haw!” he brought it down heavily above Jan’s head. But Jan’s eye was quick, and very true. He dodged the blow, which fell on the boy’s own knees, and then flew at him like a kitten in a tiger fury. They were both small and easily knocked over, and in an instant they were sprawling on the road, and cuffing, and pulling, and kicking, and punching with about equal success, except that the bigger boy prudently roared and howled all the time, in the hope of securing some assistance in his favor. “Dame Datchett! Missus! Murder! Yah! Boohoo! The little varment be a throttling I.” But Mrs. Datchett was deaf. Also, she not unnaturally considered that, in looking after “the young varments” in school-hours, she fully earned their weekly pence, and was by no means bound to disturb herself because they squabbled in the street. Meanwhile Jan gradually got the upper hand of his lubberly and far from courageous opponent, whose smock he had nearly torn off his back. He had not spent any of his breath in calling for aid, but now, in reply to the boy’s cries for mercy and release, he shouted, “What be my name, now, thee big gawney? Speak, or I’ll drottle ’ee.” “Jan Lake,” said his vanquished foe. “Let me go! Yah! yah!” “Whose son be I?” asked the remorseless Jan. “Abel Lake’s, the miller! Boohoo, boohoo!” sobbed the boy.