every moment, while Aleck watched, as if he would slip
off, but never slipping once, and finally turning at the top to take off
and wave his hat, and then he was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE.

"Oh, dear!" groaned Aleck. "How am I to face him?" and he went on till
only a few steps divided him from the cultivated garden, where he
stopped again. "I wonder where he is. In the study, I suppose--write,
write, write, at that great history. Can't I leave it and get into my
room with a bad headache? It's only true. It aches horribly. I'll
send word by Jane that I'm too poorly to come down. Bah!" muttered the
boy. "What nonsense; he'd come up to me directly with something for me
to take. I wonder whether he is in his room or out in the garden. He
mustn't see me till I've been up into my room and done something to my
hair. Perhaps he's in the summer-house and I can get in and upstairs
without his seeing me. Oh, if I only--"

"Hullo! Aleck, lad, what are you doing there? Why are you so late?
Dinner has been ready quite an hour."

The captain had suddenly appeared from behind a great clump of waving
tamarisk, and stood looking down at the lad.

"I was coming to see if you were in sight, and--why, what in the name of
wonder is the matter with you? Where have you been? Why, by all that's
wonderful, you've been fighting!"

"Yes, uncle," said the lad, with a gasp of relief, for it seemed to him
as if, instead of taking the bold plunge, swimming fashion, he had been
suddenly dragged in.

"I thought so," cried the captain, angrily. "Here--no, stop; come up to
the house, to my room. We can't talk here."

"I don't see why not," thought the lad, dismally. "There's plenty of
room, and we could get it over more easily, even if he does get into a
furious passion with me."

But the captain had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along
over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down
upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and
then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry words that
was to come.

He did not glance round nor speak, but strode on, evidently growing more
and more out of temper, the lad thought, for as he walked he kept on
kicking the loose shelly covering of the path over the flower beds,
while the silence kept up seemed to Aleck ominous in the extreme.

"But, never mind," he thought; "it must soon be over now. What a sight
I must