"Don't talk about it, boy," cried the old man, hoarsely. "You are
bringing up the past, Aleck, with all its maddening horrors. I can't
talk to you and explain. It was at the end of a disastrous day. Our
badly led men were put to flight through the mismanagement of our
chief--one high in position--and someone had to suffer for his sins,
there had to be a scapegoat, and I was the unhappy wretch upon whom the
commander-in-chief's sins were piled up. They said that the beating
back of my company caused the panic which led to the headlong flight of
our little army. Yes, Aleck, they piled up his sins upon my unlucky
shoulders, and I was driven out into the wilderness--hounded out of
society, a dishonoured, disgraced coward. Aleck, boy," he continued,
with his voice growing appealing and piteous, "I was engaged to be
married to the young and beautiful girl I loved as soon as the war was
over, and I was looking forward to happiness on my return. But for me
happiness was dead."

"Oh! but, uncle," cried the boy, excitedly, catching at the old man's
arm, "the lady--surely she did not believe it of you?"

"I never saw her again, Aleck," said the old man, slowly. "Six months
after my sentence the papers announced her approaching marriage."

"Oh!" cried the lad, indignantly.

"Wait, my boy. No; she never believed it of me. She was forced by her
relatives to accept this man. I have her dear letter--yellow and
time-stained now--written a week before the appointed wedding-day which
never dawned for her, my boy. She died two days before, full of faith
in my honour."

Aleck's hands were both resting now upon his uncle's arm, and his eyes
looked dim and misty.

"There, my boy, I said I could not explain to you, and I have uncovered
the old wound, laying it quite bare. Now you know what it is that has
made me the old cankered, harsh, misanthropic being you know--bitter,
soured, evil-tempered, and so harsh; so wanting in love for my kind that
even you, my boy, my poor dead sister's child, can't bear to live with
me any longer."

"Uncle!" panted Aleck. "I didn't know--"

"Let's see," continued the old man, with a resumption of his former
fierce manner; "you said you would not run away, only go. To sea, eh?"

"Uncle," cried Aleck, "didn't you hear what I said?"

"Yes, quite plainly," replied the old man, bitterly; "I heard. I don't
wonder at a lad of spirit resenting my harsh, saturnine ways. What a
life for a la