ck with the
sensitive timidity which unkindness had caused, and sorry to have given
him pain in all his troubles, said kindly--

"There, Arty, never mind; I didn't mean it; don't be afraid; tell me
what they did to you. I saw a light in our dormitory as I was coming
back from Percival's, and I saw something dragged through the window.
What was it?"

"That was me," said Eden naively.

"You?"

"Yes; poor me. They let me down by a sheet which they tied round my
waist."

"What, from that high window? I hope they tied you tight."

"Only one knot; I ever so nearly slipped out of it last night, and
that's what frightened me so, Walter."

"How horribly dangerous," said Walter indignantly.

"I know it is horribly dangerous," said Eden, standing up, and
gesticulating violently, in one of those bursts of passion which flashed
out of him now and then, and were the chief amusement of his
persecutors; "and I dream about it all night," he said, bursting into
tears, "and I know, I know that some day I shall slip, or the knot will
come undone, and I shall fall and be smashed to atoms. But what do they
care for that? and I sometimes wish I were dead myself, to have it all
over."

"Hush, Arty, don't talk like that," said Walter, as he felt the little
soiled hand trembling with passion and emotion in his own. "But what on
earth do they let you down for?"

"To go to--but you won't tell?" he said, looking round again. "Oh, I
forgot, you didn't like my saying that. But it's they who have made me
a coward, Walter; indeed it is."

"And no wonder," thought Walter to himself. "But you needn't be afraid
any more," he said aloud; "I promise you that no one shall do anything
to you which they'd be afraid to do to me."

"Then I'm safe," said Eden, joyfully. "Well, they made me go to--to
Dan's."

"Dan's? what, the fisherman's just near the shore."

"Yes; ugh!"

"But don't you know, Arty, that Dan's a brute, and a regular smuggler,
and that if you were caught going there, you'd be sent away?"

"Yes; you can't think, Walter, how I _hate_, and how frightened I am to
go there. There's Dan, and there's that great lout of a wicked son of
his, and they're always drunk, and the hut--ugh! it's so nasty; and last
night Dan seized hold of me with his horrid red hand, and wanted me to
drink some gin, and I shrieked." The very remembrance seemed to make
him shudder.

"Well, then, after that I was nearly caught. I think, Walter,