h, but I've had a hard day. Will ye be sae gude as to give me a glass
of wine, Mistress Leighton?"

Ann started as though from a trance.

"Wine, Doctor?" she stammered. "I'm sorry. We have no wine in the
house."

"Not even a drop of whisky?"

Ann shook her head.

"Nae whisky in the medicine-chest, nae cooking sherry in the pantry?
Weel, weel, I must be gaeing." And without a look at Ann's rising color
or the Reverend Orme's twitching face the doctor was gone.

The Reverend Orme fixed his eyes upon his wife.

"When the boy awakes," he said, "not a word to him. Send him to my
study." Ann nodded. As the door closed, she fell upon her knees beside
the bed.

An hour later the study door opened. Shenton entered. His father was
seated, his nervous hands gripping the arms of his chair. On the desk
beside him lay a thin cane. He motioned to his son to stand before him.

"My boy," he said, "tell me each thing you have done to-day."

There was a slight pause.

"I have forgotten what I did to-day," answered Shenton, his eyes fixed
on his father's face.

"That is a falsehood," breathed Leighton, tensely, "I am going to thrash
you until you remember."

Leighton saw his boy's frail body shrink, he saw a flush leap to his
cheeks and fade, leaving them dead-white again. Then he looked into his
son's eyes, and the hand with which he was groping for the cane stopped,
poised in air. In those eyes there was something that no man could
thrash. Scorn, anguish, pride, the knowledge of ages, gazed out from a
child's eyes upon Leighton, and struck terror to his soul. His boy's
frail body was the abiding-place of a power that laughed at the strength
of man's hands.

"My boy, O, my boy!" groaned Leighton.

"Father!" cried Shenton, with the cry of a bursting heart, and hurled
himself into his father's arms.

CHAPTER V

The next day was the first of the long vacation, and with it came an
addition to the Leighton household. Mammy was given a temporary helper,
a shrewd little maid, with a head thirty years old on shoulders of
twelve. Lalia was her name. The Reverend Orme had chosen her from among
his charity pupils. He himself gave her his instructions--never to leave
Shenton except to run and report the moment he escaped from her charge.

Lalia was accepted without suspicion by the children not as a nurse, but
as a playmate. Weeks passed. The four played together with a greater
harmony than the three had ever attained.