Old times seemed come back again at the Grange. There was frequent visiting betwixt it and Cotmanhaye Manor—a coming and going without ceremony, and full of pleasantness. George had made a journey to Yorkshire to give some account of his stewardship, and there were wise people who foresaw the return of Elizabeth Drury, at least some day, to Bilts’ Farm. Thorsby and his once more joyous, handsome wife, and cherub-looking boy with them, were often driving over, and again commonly spending the Sundays there. Thorsby again made his little, familiar visits amongst the cottages of Woodburn Green, and talked over his travels in America with Howell Crusoe, the inquiring schoolmaster, who seemed half tempted to migrate thither himself some day. “Well,” said Mr. Woodburn, as Thorsby mentioned this at dinner one day, “I should be sorry for Crusoe to leave us. He has his faults, but I don’t know where we should mend him. He has confessedly very warm Welsh blood, and though naturally amiable and humane, he has been given to thrashing his boys a little too freely. When I have reasoned with him, he always quoted Solomon as ungainsayable authority, ‘Spare the rod, and spoil the child.’ It was in vain that I told him I would rather spoil the rod and spare the child. He always used to tell the boys, in the established language of the schoolmasters, that it hurt him much more to flog a boy than it hurt the boy. But one day, as he said this to a little boy, who sat sobbing and snorting, with his eyes, nose, and very red cheeks all dashed and drowned in tears, the poor lad cried out, ‘I only wish I could believe it’—at which the whole school burst into an uncontrollable shout of laughter. Enraged at this, and feeling the keen satire in the boy’s words, Howell dealt about him, in a regular Welsh tantrum of passion, with his cane on the heads and shoulders of the scholars. This settled the riot, except for an isolated burst-up of smothered merriment, here and there, which he visited with strokes of lightning. “But what was the consequence? The lads who had caught the full fury of Crusoe’s angry blows, commenced a conspiracy which they cherished for a proper opportunity; and one Saturday afternoon, when Crusoe had gone into Cotmanhaye woods to gather nuts, suddenly the whole school issued from a thicket, and surrounding him, gave him such a pounding with hazel cudgels, as inspired him with a wonderful agility in running through the wood, leaping the fence, and scouring homewards at a pace that vastly amused the troop of little rebels. It was necessary to send for the doctor, who, being a bit of a wag, carried the story as a rich morsel of news all round the country. He enlivened his narrative by making the boys cry, all the time they thrashed their domine, ‘Well, does it hurt you as much as it does us?’