His face grew hard, and instead of meeting the boy's eyes he looked downward and moodily kicked a lump of peat with his foot. Jack longed to ask the meaning of that phrase "breach of parole" which he had heard so often of late in connection with his brother's name. He did not dare to put the question, but his patience was presently rewarded, for Frank began to speak again, not to him, but to himself. "A promise!" he muttered, his face still dark. "A promise under compulsion is no promise. If I promised not to bear arms for the king again, it was a promise made to rebels, and against my duty and theirs, and was null and void from the beginning! Who shall say it was not, or that my honor was concerned in it? Still, these Roundheads, if they catch me, will fling it in my face! And Duke Hamilton looked coldly on me. I would, after all," he added, in a voice still louder, "that I had not taken Goring's advice." What Goring had advised was so clear, though Frank said no more, that Jack looked at his brother with his eyes full of sympathy. He saw, with the astonishing clearness which children possess, that Frank's conscience was ill at ease--so ill at ease that the mere thought of his broken parole, now it was too late to undo the wrong, brought all that was hard, and fierce, and desperate in his nature to the surface, mingling a kind of ferocity with his native courage, and converting hardihood into recklessness. Comprehending this, the lad gazed at him with a face full of timid sympathy; until Frank, awakening from his absent fit, glanced suddenly up and met his look. "What! have you not gone?" he said roughly, and with a reddening cheek. "You do not help me by staring at me like a dead pig! If you can get food, no matter what it is, don't bring it here. You may be followed. Lay it down at the opening of this rat-run, where you enter it from the house. I shall find it when the coast is clear."