“You beat me; you beat me quite!” said he. “There’s the making of a fine man in you; you have sharpness, shrewdness, a kind of industry, or what may be doing for that same; every chance of a paternal kind--that’s to say a home complete and comfortable--and still you must be acting like a wean! You were not at the school to-day. I’m keeping it from Miss Campbell as long as I can, but I’ll be bound to tell her of your truancy this time.” He risked the surrounding hand a moment from his books, bent a little and tapped the boy’s jacket pocket. “Ay! A book again!” said he slyly. “What is it this time? But never mind; it does not matter. I’ll warrant it is not Mr. Butter’s Spellings nor Murray the Grammarian, but some trash of a novelle. Any exercise for _your_ kind but the appointed task! I wish--I wish--Tuts! laddie, you are wet to the skin, haste ye home and get a heat.” Gilian did not need a second bidding; but ran up the street, without slacking his pace till he got to the foot of the Paymaster’s stair, where the wind from the pend-close was howling most dismally. He lingered on the stair, extremely loth to face Miss Mary with a shame so plain upon his countenance as he imagined it must be. No way that he could tell the story of the _Jean’s_ disaster would leave out his sorry share in it. A quick ear heard him on the stair; the door opened. “Oh, you rascal!” cried Miss Mary, her anxious face peering down at him. “You were never in the school till this time.” She put her hand upon his bonnet and his sleeve and found them soaking. “Oh, I knew it! I knew it!” she cried. “Just steeping!” He found an unexpected relief in her consternation at his condition and in her bustle to get him into dry clothing. After the experience he had come through, the storm and the spectacle he had seen as in a dream from the shore, he indulged in the cordiality and cosiness of the warm kitchen for a little with selfish gladness. But it was only for a little; the disaster to the vessel and the consciousness that his own part in the business would certainly come to light, overwhelmed him again, and it was a most dolorous face that looked at Miss Mary over the viands she had just put before him. “What ails the callant?” she demanded in a tremble, staring at him. He burst into tears, the first she had seen on his face since ever he had come to her house, and all her mother’s heart was sore. “What mischief were you in?” she asked, putting an arm about his neck, and her troubled face down upon his hair as he shook in his chair. “I am sure you were not to blame. It could not have been much, Gilian. Tuts! tuts!” And so she went on in a ludicrous way, coaxing him to indifference for the sin she fancied.