But to-day she had her head also tied in a napkin, rolled white and smooth about her brows. Cleg glanced at it with the quick comprehension which comes from a kindred bitterness. "Her?" he queried, as much with his thumb and eyebrow as with his voice. "Aye," said Vara, looking down at the floor, for in the Lands such occurrences were not spoken of outside the family; "yestreen." Hearing the voices at the door, little Hugh, Vara's brother of four, came toddling unevenly upon legs which ought to have been chubby, but which were only feeble and uncertain. He had one hand wrapped in a piece of white rag; and, whenever he remembered, he carried it in his other hand and wept over it with a sad, wearying whimper. Cleg again looked his query at Vara. "Aye," said the girl, her eyes lighting this time with a glint of anger; "the bairn toddled to her when she cam' hame, and he asked for a bit piece. And wi' that she took him and gied him a fling across the floor, and he hurt his airm on the corner of the bed." And Cleg, though he had given up swearing, swore. "The wean's asleep!" said Vara; "speak quietly." And upon tiptoe she led the way. The dusk of the cellar was so dense and the oppression of the foul air so terrible that had not Cleg been to the manner born, he could hardly have reached the little crib where the baby lay huddled among swathings of old petticoats and bits of flannel, while underneath was a layer of hay. Vara stood gazing with inexpressible rapture at the babe. "Isna he bonny—bonny?" She clasped her hands as she spoke, and looked for the answering admiration in Cleg's face. "Aye," said Cleg, who knew what was demanded of him if he expected to remain Vara Kavannah's friend; "he's juist terrible bonny—elegant as a pictur'!" He had heard his father say that of a new "jemmy." In truth, the babe was but skin and bone, with the drawn face of a mummy of five thousand years—and tiny hands, prehensile like those of a monkey. "Vara," said Cleg, "ye canna bide here. I maun get ye awa'. This is no to be tholed. What hae ye had to eat the day?" "We had some broth that a neighbour brocht in yesterday, and some fish. But the fish was bad," said Vara, flushing and hesitating even to say these things to Cleg. The badness of the fish, indeed, sufficiently advertised itself. At the mention of something to eat little Hugh sharpened his croon of pain into a yell. "Hugh's awsome hungry! Hugh boy wants his dinner!" Vara went to him and knelt beside him. "Hush thee, Hugh boy!" she said, speaking with a fragrance of motherliness which must have come to her from some ancestor, for certainly never in her life had she experienced anything like it. "Hush! Hugh boy shall have his dinner if he is a good boy! Poor handie! Poor, poor handie!" And the girl took the swollen wrist and torn hand into hers and rocked to and fro with the boy on her knee.