ising odour.

"It's very good of you, Jane," began Aleck; "but--"

"My! You are a sight, Master Aleck! Whatever have you been a-doing to
yourself?"

"Fighting, I tell you," said the boy, smiling in the middle-aged maid's
homely face.

"Who with, my dear?"

"Oh, some of the fishermen's boys over at the town."

"Then it didn't ought to be allowed. You _are_ in a state!"

"Yes; I know without your telling me. What's under that cover?"

"Roast chicken and bacon, my dear."

"Oh, I couldn't touch it, Jane!"

"Now, don't say that, my dear. People must eat and drink even if they
are in trouble; because if they don't they're ill. I know what I've
brought you isn't as nice as it should be, because it's all dried up,
and now it's half cold. So be a good boy, same as you used to be years
ago when I first knew you. There was no quarrelling with your bread and
butter then, and you were always hungry. But, there, I must go. I
wouldn't have master catch me here now for all the millions in the Bank
of England. Oh, what a temper he is in, to be sure!"

"Have--have you seen him lately?" asked Aleck, excitedly.

"Seen him? No, my dear. He's shut himself up, like he does sometimes;
but I could hear him in the kitchen, walking all over my head, just like
a wild beast in a cage, and now and then he began talking to himself
quite out loud. It's all your fault, Master Aleck, for he was as
good-tempered as could be this morning when I went in to ask him what I
was to get ready for dinner, and what time."

Jane closed the door after her with these words and left Aleck with the
tray.

"Yes," he said, bitterly, in his pain; "it's all my fault, I suppose,
and I'm to go away from everything I like here."

He raised the cover over the plate as he spoke, and a pleasant,
appetising odour greeted his nostrils; but he lowered the cover again
with a gesture of disgust.

"I couldn't touch it," he said, with a shudder, "even to do me good.
Nothing would do me good now. My face feels so stiff, and my eyes are
just as if they'd got something dark over them."

He went near the window again to look out in the direction of the sea,
with some idea of watching the birds, of which so many floated up into
sight above the cliffs that shut in the Den. But it was an effort to
look skyward, and he sat down by the window to think, in a dull, heavy,
dreamy way, about his uncle's words.

And it seemed to him, knowing how stern and unco