"Oh, mother!" he cried hungrily; "will you never have it ready?"
He did not heed her shouted answer, for he had heard steps on the stony track, and seen the shambling figure of a man coming towards him. Drunk, was he? Alexander knew the signs, but men seldom stagger at breakfast-time, and the nearest house of call in the direction whence the stranger came was six or seven long miles away across the hills. No; on a nearer view he was certainly not drunk. But what, then, was the matter with the man?
"Boy"—he stood before the horse-block, and plucked at the tufts of moss clinging to his clothes—"is this a farm?"
"No," said Alexander, wondering at the little man with the sparse, disordered hair. "There's moss on your head, too," he said.
The stranger put up his hand an inch or two, and dropped it. "Everywhere," he murmured. "Was it your dog I heard barking?"
"May be. He's a loud barker."
"Do you think I could have a cup of milk? I'm very cold. I lost my way up there, among the hills."
"Were you out all night?" asked Alexander, kindling.
"All night—yes. Among the rocks. I thought I should fall off. I was afraid."
"Did you—see things?"
"Mist. Figures in the mist. And a sheep cried, and stones fell sometimes, and there was a noise of water. If I could get warm——"
Alexander put out a steadying hand. "Will you come in?" he said. "My mother'll see to you."
The man suffered himself to be led out of the sunshine through a place which seemed long and dark and cavernous, and so into a room where a fire glowed and crackled, and an open door and window let in the light.
"Mother!" said Alexander.
A woman looked up swiftly from the frying-pan. "I didn't hear you for the bacon frizzling," she said. "Oh! who is it, Alec? Here, put him into the chair. Quick!"
"He's been out all night," he says.
"He looks like it." She touched his hands. "He's perished. Take off his boots, and tell your father. I'll warm some milk. Poor soul!"
The little man, with Alexander at his feet, had sunk back against the red cushions of the chair. The strain of his expression had relaxed, and now he smiled.
"Bacon," he said on a note of satisfaction—"bacon."
"No, no; you'd better have some milk. It will warm you. Milk first, bacon afterwards, perhaps."
She spoke soothingly, entirely at her ease, doing the work that came most readily to her. He blinked and straightened himself before he took the cup. The woman seemed tall, and splendid, and compelling.
"I'm afraid—I'm afraid I had almost fallen asleep. The warmth——"
"Drink this," she ordered.
"Thank you." He shivered. "Forgive my troubling you. If I may rest for a little while——"
She patted his shoulder. "Yes; you shall go to sleep. Push the chair nearer to the fire, Alec. Jim"—she turned to her husband, who stood in the doorway—"when I've warmed the bed we must get him there, or he'll be ill." She looked down smilingly at the half-conscious occupant of the chair. "He's just a bundle of cold and fright," she said.
Bidden to hang up the damp coat of the visitor, who now lay snug in bed, Alexander obeyed with so much vigour that two small books fell from the pockets to the floor.
"His name's Edward Webb," he announced. "And he reads poetry. Keats, this one, and 'Paradise Lost.'" He turned the pages and stood reading.
"Are those your books, Alexander?" said his father. The voice was irritable, and the dark face moody. Expectant, almost hopeful of a retort, he watched his son.
"They're his."
"Then put them down."
"But I think he'd like me to dry them. Where was the man lying to get so wet?"
"Give them here. I'll see to them. What did you say his name was?"
"Edward Webb. I think I'll just put them in the sun. They're good books, and he's read a lot in them."
"Does it say where he comes from?"
"I wouldn't think of looking," said Alexander. "They're his property. But I'll dry them."
"Alexander——" began his father noisily, but the boy had stepped out of doors with a face changed from natural gravity to impishness.
Rutherford shouted at his wife. "Clara, I've had enough of it. He'd defy me if I lay dying. As if I wasn't fit to touch the books! There's something wrong with the lad."
"Jim, don't wake that poor man with your shouting," she said briskly. She looked serene and competent. "Eat your breakfast. And as for Alexander, he didn't choose you for his father, and it's for you to make him glad he's got you"—her tone changed—"as glad as I am that you're my man."
He flushed. "Clara, is it true that you're still glad?"
She had time to drop a light kiss on his hand before Alexander darkened the doorway.
Edward Webb's first waking thought was that his nightshirt was a new acquaintance. It was rougher than his own, and so long that he felt like a babe in swaddling clothes—an apt simile, as he would have confessed had he been able to see himself disinterestedly, for his face, worn as it was with anxieties, had in it something of youth and indestructible innocence. He had slept for hours without a movement, and only his head was visible above the smoothly turned sheet, but he brought forth an arm and examined his sleeve. It was drab-coloured, and striped with pink. It was not his. He looked about him, and remembered.
He was in the house of the Good Samaritans. There was a boy with dark eyes, and a woman who had appeared to him as Warmth and Strength, and, more dimly, a man who had helped him to bed—a tall, dark man. No doubt this was his nightshirt—a durable garment, but irritating to the skin. He wondered what time it was. He had no idea how long he had slept, nor at what hour he had found the valley and the white house, with its blessed signs of habitation; but it was at the first breath of dawn that he had left his rocky perch, and, stumbling, falling, almost crying aloud in misery, had made his way down the mountain. Memory took him again through the night's adventure, and farther back—to last Monday morning, when he had bidden Theresa good-bye. It was their habit, when he started on his journeying, to play their game of Beauty and the Beast.
"What shall I bring back this time, Beauty?" he would ask, and she, glowing at the name she wished were justly hers, would clasp her hands ecstatically before she answered: "A white satin dress, please, dear Papa, and shoes to match, with silver roses on them, and a silver rose for my hair." Or it might be a string of diamonds, a great feathered fan, a boar-hound to be her stately guardian.
"The real Beauty," he reminded her one day, "was content with a single rose from a garden."
"I know," she said, and for a moment lost her brightness; but then, "I think that's lovely in a story," she told him. "Yes." She acted it. "'Bring me a white rose, Papa. I don't want anything else.' But she would, you know, when it came all faded. But I'm glad the story lets her say that."
But he had slightly changed the form of his question on this latest morning.
"If you could have anything in the world, Theresa, what would it be?"
"Oh!" she cried joyously, as though that thing were already hers, and through her mind there paced a fair procession of the desired. But she knew her decision long before it was spoken. "I should have an adventure," she said.
"I can't bring you that, I'm afraid."
"No—oh no!"
"But