usehold. There was another
silence, and Armstrong said:

'I gev ye till morning, and then Paul, my lad, ye'll have yourself to
thank for what may happen. I'll be at the bottom o' this matter, or I'll
know the reason why. I'm no friend to the rod, but I'll not stand by
open-eyed an' see you walkin' straight to the deevil without an effort
to turn ye. An' I'll have naething less than a full confession. Ye may
luik for a flogging if I don't get it, and a daily flogging till I do.
For, my lad, if I flay your back, and break my heart to do it, I'll win
at the truth.'

They went down the long dark garden together, and at the kitchen-door
Armstrong paused.

'It's a sore thing,' he said, 'for a man to have to misuse his ain flesh
an' blood. But ye're not of an age to understand that. Remember, Paul,
this is not my seeking; but I'll have the truth by foul means or fair.
And it's just you to choose.'

Paul entered the kitchen, and his mother was for instant justice, as she
saw it, but Armstrong intervened.

'This matter is in my hands,' he said.

He was a very quiet and yielding man in many things, but when he chose
to speak in that way he made his word law.

Then came the lonely night. The wretched poet, a weedy lad who had
overgrown his strength, lay in bed and cried in anguish. He topped his
father by a head already, though he was but three months beyond his
fifteenth birthday, and if he had chosen to fight he might perhaps have
held his own. But a thought so impious never entered his mind. He was
helpless, and he lay blubbering, undignified, with a breaking heart. He
did not think much or often of the coming pain, but he brooded on the
indignity and injustice until he writhed with yelps of wrath and hatred
and agony of heart, and awoke Dick, who wanted to know what was the
matter, and was roughly sympathetic for a time, until, finding he could
make out nothing, he turned and went to sleep again.

There were black looks in the morning everywhere, for Paul was known
to be in deep disgrace again. He swallowed a cup of the thin, washy
coffee--its flavour of chicory and coarse brown sugar was nauseous on
the palate of the man at the tent door--and then his father, pale as
himself, rose amidst the affrighted boys and girls, and motioned him
silently to the sitting-room. This was a sort of family vault, with its
scanty furniture in grave-clothes, and a smell of damp disuse about it
always, even in summer-time.

'Are ye r