Crossing from the school to his lodging, an arm occupied by a great
bundle of books, the other contending with an umbrella, was the dominie,
and he started at the sight of his errant pupil who nearly ran against
him before his presence was observed.

"Well, Gilian?" said he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking
a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock
jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its
whalebone ribs till they almost snapped.

Gilian stopped, looked hard at the ground, said never a word. And old
Brooks, over him, gazed at the wet figure with puzzlement and pity.

"You beat me; you beat me quite!" said he. "There's the making of a fine
man in you; you have sharpness, shrewdness, a kind of industry, or what
may be doing for that same; every chance of a paternal kind--that's to
say a home complete and comfortable--and still you must be acting like
a wean! You were not at the school to-day. I'm keeping it from Miss
Campbell as long as I can, but I'll be bound to tell her of your truancy
this time."

He risked the surrounding hand a moment from his books, bent a little
and tapped the boy's jacket pocket.

"Ay! A book again!" said he slyly. "What is it this time? But never
mind; it does not matter. I'll warrant it is not Mr. Butter's Spellings
nor Murray the Grammarian, but some trash of a novelle. Any exercise for
_your_ kind but the appointed task! I wish--I wish--Tuts! laddie, you
are wet to the skin, haste ye home and get a heat."

Gilian did not need a second bidding; but ran up the street, without
slacking his pace till he got to the foot of the Paymaster's stair,
where the wind from the pend-close was howling most dismally. He
lingered on the stair, extremely loth to face Miss Mary with a shame
so plain upon his countenance as he imagined it must be. No way that he
could tell the story of the _Jean's_ disaster would leave out his sorry
share in it. A quick ear heard him on the stair; the door opened.

"Oh, you rascal!" cried Miss Mary, her anxious face peering down at him.
"You were never in the school till this time." She put her hand upon
his bonnet and his sleeve and found them soaking. "Oh, I knew it! I knew
it!" she cried. "Just steeping!"

He found an unexpected relief in her consternation at his condition and
in her bustle to get him into dry clothing. After the experience he had
come through, the storm and the spectacle he had