The smart of his back and legs recalled him, after a few moments of bewilderment, to a mental torture he had scarcely yet had time to feel.

He--David Grieve--had been beaten--thrashed like a dog--by Jim Wigson! The remembered fact brought with it a degradation of mind and body--a complete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revenge seem an impossible output of energy.

A nature of this sort, with such capacities and ambitions, carries about with it a sense of supremacy, a natural, indispensable self-conceit which acts as the sheath to the bud, and is the condition of healthy development.
Break it down and you bruise and jeopardise the flower of life.
Jim Wigson!--the coarse, ignorant lout with whom he had been, more or less, at feud since his first day in Kinder, whom he had despised with all the strength of his young vanity.

By to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh.

'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim?
Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do _him_ noa harm--a cantankerous yoong rascot--pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him.