It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing on his authority which was the chief cause of his animosity against James Moore. The Master of Kenmuir it was at whom he was aiming when he remarked one day at the Arms: "Masel', I aye prefaire the good man who does no go to church, to the bad man who does. But then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm peculiar."
The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson Leggy determined to bring him to task on the matter.
Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old minister, with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no truck with the man who never went to church, was perpetually in liquor, and never spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon the interview fully resolved not to be betrayed into an unworthy expression of feeling; rather to appeal to the little man's better nature.
The conversation had not been in progress two minutes, however, before he knew that, where he had meant to be calmly persuasive, he was fast become hotly abusive.
"You, Mr. Hornbut, wi' James Moore to help ye, look after the lad's soul, I'll see to his body," the little man was saying.
The parson's thick gray eyebrows lowered threateningly over his eyes.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk like that. Which d'you think the more important, soul or body? Oughtn't you, his father, to be the very first to care for the boy's soul? If not, who should? Answer me, sir."
The little man stood smirking and sucking his eternal twig, entirely unmoved by the other's heat.
"Ye're right, Mr. Hornbut, as ye aye are. But my argiment is this: that I get at his soul best through his leetle carcase."
The honest parson brought down his stick with an angry thud.
"M'Adam, you're a brute--a brute!" he shouted. At which outburst the little man was seized with a spasm of silent merriment.
"A fond dad first, a brute afterward, aiblins--he! he! Ah, Mr. Hornbut! ye 'ford me vast diversion, ye do indeed, 'my loved, my honored, much-respected friend."
"If you paid as much heed to your boy's welfare as you do to the bad poetry of that profligate ploughman--"
An angry gleam shot into the other's eyes. "D'ye ken what blasphemy is, Mr. Hornbut?" he asked, shouldering a pace forward.