“Judge me by the truth I speak,” he answered. “Save in these things my life has been an unclasped book for all to read.” “Speak to the charge of brawling and drink, David,” rejoined the little Elder Meacham with the high collar and gaze upon the ceiling. “Shall I not speak when I am moved? Ye have struck swiftly; I will draw the arrow slowly from the wound. But, in truth, ye had good right to wound. Naught but kindness have I had among you all; and I will answer. Straightly have I lived since my birth. Yet betimes a torturing unrest of mind was used to come upon me as I watched the world around us. I saw men generous to their kind, industrious and brave, beloved by their fellows; and I have seen these same men drink and dance and give themselves to coarse, rough play like young dogs in a kennel. Yet, too, I have seen dark things done in drink--the cheerful made morose, the gentle violent. What was the temptation? What the secret? Was it but the low craving of the flesh, or was it some primitive unrest, or craving of the soul, which, clouded and baffled by time and labour and the wear of life, by this means was given the witched medicament--a false freedom, a thrilling forgetfulness? In ancient days the high, the humane, in search of cure for poison, poisoned themselves, and then applied the antidote. He hath little knowledge and less pity for sin who has never sinned. The day came when all these things which other men did in my sight I did--openly. I drank with them in the taverns--twice I drank. I met a lass in the way. I kissed her. I sat beside her at the roadside and she told me her brief, sad, evil story. One she had loved had left her. She was going to London. I gave her what money I had--” “And thy watch,” said a whispering voice from the Elders’ bench. “Even so. And at the cross-roads I bade her goodbye with sorrow.” “There were those who saw,” said the shrill voice from the bench. “They saw what I have said--no more. I had never tasted spirits in my life. I had never kissed a woman’s lips. Till then I had never struck my fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove the lass in sorrow into the homeless world. I did not choose to fight; but when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl’s sake to follow and bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my hat, and there I laid him in the dust.” “No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave,” observed the shrill Elder. “In truth I hit hard,” was the quiet reply. “How came thee expert with thy fists?” asked Elder Fairley, with the shadow of a smile. “A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln on the hill. He was once a sailor and a fighting man.” A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders. They were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation.