itated a moment and then disappeared in the passage. Yet even here he
stood irresolute, looking at the closed door behind him, and passing his
hand over his still flushed face. Presently he slowly and abstractedly
ascended the flight of steps, entered the smaller passage that led to
the back door of the shop and opened it.

He was at first a little startled at the halo of light from the
still glowing stove, which the greater obscurity of the long room had
heightened rather than diminished. Then he passed behind the counter,
but here the box of biscuits which occupied the centre and cast a shadow
over it compelled him to grope vaguely for what he sought. Then he
stopped suddenly, the paper he had just found dropping from his fingers,
and said sharply,--

"Who's there?"

"Me, pop."

"John Milton?"

"Yes, sir."

"What the devil are you doin' there, sir?"

"Readin'."

It was true. The boy was half reclining in a most distorted posture on
two chairs, his figure in deep shadow, but his book was raised above his
head so as to catch the red glow of the stove on the printed page.
Even then his father's angry interruption scarcely diverted his
preoccupation; he raised himself in his chair mechanically, with his
eyes still fixed on his book. Seeing which his father quickly regained
the paper, but continued his objurgation.

"How dare you? Clear off to bed, will you! Do you hear me? Pretty
goin's on," he added as if to justify his indignation. "Sneakin' in here
and--and lyin' 'round at this time o' night! Why, if I hadn't come in
here to"--

"What?" asked the boy mechanically, catching vaguely at the unfinished
sentence and staring automatically at the paper in his father's hand.

"Nothin', sir! Go to bed, I tell you! Will you? What are you standin'
gawpin' at?" continued Harkutt furiously.

The boy regained his feet slowly and passed his father, but not without
noticing with the same listless yet ineffaceable perception of childhood
that he was hurriedly concealing the paper in his pocket. With the same
youthful inconsequence, wondering at this more than at the interruption,
which was no novel event, he went slowly out of the room.

Harkutt listened to the retreating tread of his bare feet in the passage
and then carefully locked the door. Taking the paper from his pocket,
and borrowing the idea he had just objurgated in his son, he turned it
towards the dull glow of the stove and attempted to read it. But perhaps