A little beyond the Playstow the road to the rectory, and to the Court on the hill, ran up obliquely through the village side, passing very soon into privacy and loneliness. I had almost reached the rectory palings when I saw a boy start out, at sight of me, from the shadow of them and come swiftly on, as if to accost me while yet short of shelter. He was about my own age or a little older, and had a round, freckled face, with dark red hair curled as tight as astrakhan, and a very fat little pug-nose. He was dressed in a brown velveteen jacket and strong corduroy breeches and leathern gaiters, and he looked what, in fact, he was, a miniature gamekeeper. I knew him well enough by sight, having passed him for the last two or three weeks near the school-house, and always, I verily believe, with an odd little tremor of foreboding in my inside. He had proved, on inquiry, to be the only child of Harrier, the squire’s gamekeeper, from whom, and that only on his master’s initiative, a scowling consent to his son’s attending the new school had been wrung by Mr. Sant. But the boy came, though near as rebellious as his father, and had even, until this morning, arrived punctual. Now he advanced, swaggering and whistling, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, and a fine air of abstraction. I tried to dodge him, but for all that, in spite of his pretended preoccupation, he brought his shoulder smack against mine with a force that knocked me sprawling, and, from the mere pain of it, drove the angry tears to my eyes. He wheeled round at once, as I gathered myself up, with a mock apology so impudent that I longed to hit him, but was deterred by the front he showed me. He stood square, balancing on his heels, as tight-knit a young mischief as health and muscle could produce. “Mighty!” he said, with a pretence of being scared. “What I done, Lor? Blest if I ain’t knocked into the dirt the young gen’leman what treats we for sich!” Then my uneasy consciousness understood the nature of this retaliation. “You did it on purpose,” I said sullenly, trying not to whimper as I dusted myself. “_Me_!” he cried, in beautiful astonishment. “Why, howsomever can you charge it to me, master, walking with your nose in the air?” “It’s you that has your nose in the air,” I retaliated malevolently. He flushed through his tan, and squared up to me. “Say that agen!” he hissed, lifting his lip like a weasel. “Once is enough,” I answered. He danced about me, making play in the air with his fists. “Is it!” he gasped, spasmodic. “O yus, o’ course!--I’ll larn you--you dursen’t--foonk!--private poople--yah!--take your lickun, then!” Something must have stirred in the garden at the moment, for he suddenly flounced round and off, his mouth drawn down contemptuous, and his chin stuck out. But I had not done with him by any means.